I found this and this through Skepchick (though I am not sure how I got to her blog).
The issue of education of children (and extrapolate as you will) is one that I hold dear. As a child I fought tooth and nail to not be forced to attend Religious Education. Now in retrospect, I was only ever fighting the fact that I was being forced to attend. I had chosen not to attend because the presenters of the material were unable to satisfy my curiousity about inconsistencies.
So how do these tales tie together? My $0.02 would argue that the role of educators is to provide balanced education in as many fields as the professional educators can provide. I think the role of the parent in this is to guide how a child interacts with the knowledge. Surely, no censorship but guided education is far more worthy in the pursuit of excellence?
I think that by providing rounded education de-politicises the curriculum and encourages everyone to their role. Thus religion in education is 'studied' not practiced allowing exposure to the gamit of Dahmic, Abrahamic, atheist and other schools of thought (faith) which would surely assist intuiting tolerance.
Maybe the real fear here is that children may find joy in the multiple moral tales available to them...
2 comments:
Just throwing it out there but isn't the role of the educator to go beyond providing information into the domain of encouraging questioning of what is being taught? I'm not convinced that parents can be relied upon to guide a questioning interaction as there is often too much personally invested by the parents in their own beliefs.
I say this as someone who grew up without being a part of any organisated religion and has had the freedom to draw on whatever sources I wanted to shape my own view of existence. If only all children could be so lucky.
Sure the role of the educator is to guide learning, but the transition between objective and subjective (particularly with Morals) should surely be the role of parents/role models...
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