The newest trend in government education - Question the church but trust us!
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Posted on 02/16/2004 5:40:14 AM PST by NYer
The teaching of religious education in schools should be renamed spiritual education, with children being taught more about atheism and less about the life of Jesus and the 10 Commandments, according to the Government's favourite think-tank.
The lessons should be widened to include "non-religious belief systems", a report by the Institute For Public Policy Research says. It calls for equal weight to be given to agnosticism and humanism as is given to Christianity. Children should also be taught about cults such as the Baha'i, made famous by the government scientist Dr David Kelly, paganism and even environmentalism.
The report, What Is Religious Education For?, is being considered by education ministers as they draw up the first national curriculum guidelines on religious instruction.
Some of the report's conclusions will provoke controversy. Instead of accepting the 10 Commandments, children should be taught to question the plausibility of events and teachings in the bible, it says. Rather than referring to God, they should be taught that there is a "divine being whose moral judgments are significantly more reliable than ours".
"From the age of five, children should learn that there are people who do not believe in God, the afterlife or the power of prayer or that the Universe was created," the report says. They should also be told from an early age of the alternatives to marriage and that there are non-religious ways of marking momentous experiences. A heavy emphasis would also be given to educating children about Islam to guard against what the think-tank regards as a growing phobia in schools towards Muslims.
Children with strong religious beliefs would be encouraged to question them and to ask what grounds there are for holding them. "Pupils would be actively encouraged to question the religious beliefs they bring with them into the classroom, not so they are better able to defend or rationalise them, but so they are genuinely free to adopt whatever position on religious matters they judge to be best supported by the evidence."
It is understood that the report is being considered by ministers at the Department for Education and Skills as they draw up the first national curriculum guidelines for what should be taught during RE. The department intends to consult teachers and academics during the summer. But the IPPR's ideas are likely to be among the most influential of the contributions received by ministers as they draw up the new guidelines with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
The New Labour think-tank has a history of producing schemes that have become official Labour Party policy. Its former director, Matthew Taylor, is head of policy planning at the Number 10 policy directorate.
Its advice on RE, however, was criticised yesterday. Gary Streeter, a leading light of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, said it was a step in the wrong direction to jettison Christianity at a time when 75 per cent of British people described themselves as Christian.
"What is there to learn about atheism?," he said. "If there is anything, it could be learnt in five minutes, whereas Judeo-Christianity has sustained us for 2,000 years. We need Christianity in more detail not less."
The newest trend in government education - Question the church but trust us!
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
The west is commiting suicide...
Notice the implied meaning is that Christian children with strong religious should be "encouraged" - it would be very un-PC to question any other religion (like Islam), socialism or the government group-think.
Uh, no. There's far, far too much endorcement of that already in the gubmint skoolz.
Well that would be a good start. But that might require closing the school for lack of anything to teach as Humanism IS the state sanctioned school religion a large percentage of what is taught is based on humanistic doctrines.
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