Australian federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott thinks Australian children should have required Bible teaching:
“I think everyone should have some familiarity with the great texts that are at the core of our civilisation. That includes, most importantly, the Bible. I think it would be impossible to have a good general education without at least some serious familiarity with the Bible and with the teachings of Christianity. That doesn’t mean that people have to be believers.”
Not everyone agrees though:
“It’s one thing to say every child needs a good knowledge of history and geography or science,” Dr Ali said. ”But it is something else to say all children should have a knowledge of the Bible. That might hurt other people who have their own holy scriptures,” he said.
And the Australian Education Union’s federal president, Angelo Gavrielatos, said that religion was not a priority for schools. ”There is a place for comparative studies of religion in the curriculum, but ultimately we consider it a private matter for parents and their children,” he said.
I am actually more in agreement with Abbot than Ali. I think Abbot is right that kids in school should be exposed to the Bible, as it is a large part of Western history. Children should be taught the history of the Bible, how it was compiled, and an overview of what the various authors included in the Bible teach.
But it shouldn’t only be the Bible. Children should also be taught the same overview of the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao-te-ching, the Vedas, and perhaps others.
First, I see it as good education. These books have changed the world and still hold mindshare over people. For that reason alone, it is important. The words of these books have crept into modern language and humor, and part of education is to learn those allusions.
Second, it serves as an educational vaccine against fanaticism and fundamentalism. Usually extremism comes from ignorance injected with pious emotionalism. When someone understands the history of many religions and their holy books, they’ll know these fundamentalists are lying and/or ignorant. In other words, the children will be less likely to become religious suckers.
Third, it encourages free thinking. Children should not be compelled to believe one religion and sheltered from information about the others. Give them the information, and let them choose for themselves the path they will journey upon.
So I think the Bible and its history should be taught in school, along with other religious holy books. But the Bible should never be exclusively taught — that would be like only teaching David Copperfield in English Literature.
As I was reading this article, at first I was uncertain about your agreement with Mr Abbot. However, after reading your expansion on the subject, I really have to agree with you. The more that is taught early on, the better the children will be later in life.
I agree with you, although I also think it’s not quite as important as it used to be. You can learn what you need to know for historical and literary purposes without having to teach the Bible itself. However, it also has some passages that I think do have literary value apart from learning where we get certain words and phrases. But so do many other books we don’t study! :)
I disagree with your first point, I do not see the books themselves as that important to the religion. Most adherents have barely read their own holy books, and their familiarity extends only to the sections that they have heard read to them or that they needed to look up to confirm their point of view. Even those that have read their holy book in it’s entirety still pick and choose what to follow and what to explain away.
Studying of the religion itself is perhaps a better use of time. Reading the bible won’t tell me much about why Christians oppose abortion other than tipping me off that they have some weird obsession with sex and gender roles.
However, within the last few years I have completed secondary education at an Australian school. I cannot support mandatory holy book education. I could not trust the teachers to keep their personal beliefs out of it and I could not trust the student body to not fawn over the bible while criticizing the other religions for their silly beliefs and strange rituals. That said, we’ve got plenty of unbelievers, but I’d rather spare them the increased friction that would result.
And, as a uni student doing computer science / engineering, I feel that much more time needs to be devoted to science in our schools. Every semester I see otherwise intelligent people struggle with basic concepts and I can’t help but think that I’d be one of them if I hadn’t picked up on the fact that my physics teacher was an idiot.
I’m much inclined to agree with you about teachers being unable to keep their personal beliefs out of mandatory religious study. I had a Creationist science teacher when I was in year 9 of my Australian school… He spent the least possible amount of time on the big bang theory and evolution, to the delight of a couple of select students in the class. The rest of us were a little confused.
The god botherers know the only people gullible enough to believe the bible are children. Religion can only die when we stop them from poisoning the minds of our children. Let’s make Lord of the Rings a bible replacement, and really open up kids’ imaginations. We also need to call bullsh*t when organised religion treats humanity like morons: http://bit.ly/79AWtE
Maybe a class on the history of science would be good too. To show kids how these ideas came up,
and above all, that we have not finished discovering things.
Finding out about the wonders of science, the universe…
Lots of things I would like to see kids learn.
But where will this time come from ? The time they spend learning how to count ? read ? write ?
Maybe better if schools have a good library and try to teach kids to enjoy reading, or that “learning is a good thing !!”.
When I started engineering studies, my teachers complained a lot that most people they took on, had to be retrained for a year, because they did not have the basic rights.
Only people coming from schools which went further than the official program were able to cope with the workload, the different concepts to learn, …
I wish for schools where people who wants, can go further. No dumbing down to make sure everybody get to pass exams… And for people who cannot, more options.
Religious history/studies would come last in my list of things to teach.
I agree about the history of science class. Neil Postman has some interesting ideas about how all subjects should be taught as history — I’m inclined to agree.
Although I might quibble about the best way to achieve it, I, too, think kids need a basic understanding of the Bible, because so much of Western history doesn’t make sense without it. I’m certainly not scared that making them study the Bible will turn them into Christians. I dare say that I couldn’t be an atheist if I wasn’t as familiar with the Bible as I am.
I disagree, no religious text should be taught in school. Religions themselves should be discussed but specific texts should be left up to the parents. The problem is that [i]teaching[/i] a class about a religious text must take one of 2 stances. 1. The text is fact or 2. The text is fiction. Neither of these show a separation of church and state. For an educator to openly endorse, or condemn; any religious text should not be allowed in a public classroom.
Many, if not all, colleges/universities offer theology/philosophy classes that cover these topics. It should be saved for that time.
My own high school had a “Biblical Literature” class (public school in Indiana w/ ~1200 student) but not alternative religious text literature classes.
The problem is that teaching a class about a religious text must take one of 2 stances. 1. The text is fact or 2. The text is fiction.
I don’t see how that is necessary. Why is it impossible to maintain an agnostic stance towards the text while teaching it?
Except that the bible is clearly wrong on many many fundamental issues that impact on the quality of a child’s education.
If the bible were to be presented for what it is – a compendium of tribal myth and folk lore, it would be beneficial to any student of literature or history (provided it is not regarded as history). Unfortunately, that is not Abbott’s design. He’s a die-hard Catholic wingnut who pushes his faith barrow by any means necessary. He has taken a strong anti-science stance against action on climate change, stem cell research and abortion (just to name a few). The only coherent aspect of his policies is a wish to return to 1950′s social values.
The man is a danger to secular Australia.
Daniel, I agree with you 100% all the way down the line.
I love it when this happens!
Thegoodman, I’m not sure I get your distinction between “taught as fact” and “taught as fiction.” It is entirely possible to teach about any kind of literature at all and make absolutely no judgments about whether it really happened or not.
“For an educator to openly endorse, or condemn; any religious text should not be allowed in a public classroom.”
Why? Because students will never, ever run into people who endorse or condemn that book in the rest of their lives? Because of the first amendment (which I don’t think applies here)? Because of a clause in one of Thomas Jefferson’s letters?
To be honest, no matter how well meant the attempts to keep religion from being taught in schools, they are incredibly short-sighted. Religion is something kids will find out about. Their reactions could be fanaticism for or against, or anything in between.
Yes, the government has a responsibility to keep its policies secular. I think that is a great policy, and I’m glad it’s there. At the same time, though, a comparative religions course in high school will be more immediately useful to someone’s life than probably any other class. A class that compares the literatures of different world religions is probably five times more useful than a class in which students read a collection of American short stories. I’m an English lit person, so this hurts to say, but giving high schoolers something in high school that they actually benefit from can’t be bad.
I really do think it is entirely possible to teach religion without infringing upon the boundaries of church and state. The problem, of course, is that it takes a good teacher, which US high schools occasionally lack. But that’s another question all together.
Why?
Um…
Because students will never, ever run into people who endorse or condemn that book in the rest of their lives?
Teachers enjoy a great deal of power over their students, making this sort of interaction extremely more complicated and perilous than the average generic “run[ning] into people who endorse or condemn that book” situation.
Because of the first amendment (which I don’t think applies here)?
The students are a captive audience. It is naughty to proselytize (either way) to a captive audience.
Because of a clause in one of Thomas Jefferson’s letters?
The Wall of Separation of Church in State was not invented ex nihilo from Jefferson’s correspondence. It was an idea with general and not particularly controversial status at the time the nation was founded, though the boundaries of the notion are continually adjudicated (and the intermingling of cultural versus strictly religious practices have made this a bit more complicated as they have begun to diverge). Regardless of its origins, the Wall is a good idea, as it is the best way to avoid a de facto establishment of religion, as the plain text of the 1st Amendment avoids a de jure establishment.
“Teachers enjoy a great deal of power over their students, making this sort of interaction extremely more complicated and perilous than the average generic “run[ning] into people who endorse or condemn that book” situation.”
Like I said, I’m all for the separation of church and state. But, a) that is no reason not to teach students *about* religion in a classroom setting. And, b) you seem to be basing your argument around the idea that teachers have the potential to be quite damaging to their students. The thing is, that is true about strong personal conviction on any subject, and is a criticism of teaching itself more than it is a criticism of teaching a particular subject.
I agree that teachers who heavily favor one side or the other will be bad for their students *and* potentially damaging to the favored policy of secular governments. However, this is not unique to teaching about religion. I think you’d agree that a good teacher would teach this type of class effectively, meaningfully, and would remove as much bias as possible.
Not every teacher is good, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean that we should remove the potential for education because there are bad teachers. It is analogous to shutting down schools because there might be bad teachers in them. The education system assumes that teachers can convey knowledge to their students and educate them about the world. If you are calling that into question, that’s cool, but then what you are really arguing for is the drastic overhaul of school systems (which is probably needed, but not what we’re talking about.) If we have to assume that teachers can do their jobs with some degree of effectiveness in order to justify having schools at all, I don’t see why teaching students about world religions is any different.
I think the relevant difference is that ultimately, matters of religion are matters of belief (and conscience), and as such tend to be more difficult to change/less amendable to amendment than the sorts of things that are usually taught in school. It is difficult to get a teenager invested in one or another way of modeling an atom, but the same is not true of a teen’s choice of deity and the manner of worship. If you have a bad teacher who omits or twists facts, in most subjects rectification is just a short hop to Wikipedia away. Not so with religion, where the emotional investment is unparalleled.
As you identify, many of the problems here are really problems with education in general; I just tend to think that religion as an academic subject tends to turn all those background issues up to eleven in a way that very few things can.
I agree, I just think its necessary.
I think it is, on some level, necessary, but I’m with brgulker insofar as the timing, so at least a student would have some meager innate resistance to indoctrination (of whatever sort) due to age and experience, and perhaps if lucky some rudimentary critical thinking skillz.
And schools have totally ignored the cowbell in their marching bands. There should be more cowbell!
Would religion be a hot topic for schools to take on? Yes. And there will always be teachers who choose not to teach it correctly, but I can’t believe that would be the norm. Currently, many schools have sex education, and this is a designed program for the teachers in many districts. I don’t see why a religious studies class couldn’t also be pre-structured, one that teachers would have to use. Therefore covering all the world’s major religions and not just one point of view.
And there will always be teachers who choose not to teach it correctly, but I can’t believe that would be the norm.
With religion, the stakes are higher. Immortal souls are not generally perceived to be on the line in most other subject areas. Perceiving such high stakes makes people act in odd fashions.
Currently, many schools have sex education, and this is a designed program for the teachers in many districts. I don’t see why a religious studies class couldn’t also be pre-structured, one that teachers would have to use. Therefore covering all the world’s major religions and not just one point of view.
Seeing as how in many school districts in the US, this boils down to abstinence-only pablum, I don’t think this is a very good model. I mean, think about it, in a Christian-majority nation with a terrifying number of school boards being populated by Laura Ingraham clones, what do you think a religious education curriculum designed by the average district would actually look like?
Well I can’t speak for Australia, but in NZ right across the channel we have a state cirricula that includes sex ed. It gives parents the right to opt-out from the get-go, which is my only real criticism of it.
In this state cirricula I was taught the basic mechanics of sex (although I can’t remember when, because the books at home had much more detail and lived on the bottom shelf), menstruation, wet dreams, safe sex (although not until waaaaaaay to late for most of my class), some physiology and a huge wallop of how to look after your body. It was horrificly awkward and we all hated it. But there was never any commentary, never any discussion about whether or not it was right to do it.
Elemenope, please don’t project the USA situation around the rest of the world. Australia has 20 million people and a much better integrated federal system than America. It’s a very different environment. State mandated cirricula is the norm for pretty much every other topic, including sex-ed.
Elemenope, please don’t project the USA situation around the rest of the world.
Didn’t mean to do that. Just illustrating how it would play out in the USA. I don’t know enough about Australian culture to comment competently on these sorts of issues, though I’d imagine that the problems encountered would be similar in kind, if not in degree. Humans are humans, and all that. Anywhere where the stakes are perceived to be very high and one group is a solid majority (and perceives the stakes to be high), things are going to play out poorly where education is concerned.
“Seeing as how in many school districts in the US, this boils down to abstinence-only pablum, I don’t think this is a very good model.”
I guess this would depend on the school district. I know this is not the case where my younger cousins go to school. It was pretty much just the mechanics.
But my point was that if it is done correctly, I think it would be a brilliant idea. Getting to that point may be another story.
Adding the bible to history class would be something I would support. Most Christians I talk to don’t realize it was almost 400 years after the crucifixion before someone thought to collect all the different stories and put them in one single book. They also don’t realize that it was done by committee, not by the divine revelation of some monk.
As for ‘teaching the bible’, that I have problems with. Its a large text with a complex history. I think most people would benefit from an in depth scrutiny of it, but we have so little time to teach kids as it is. Having a class devoted solely to religious studies would be a waste of time.
History classes should stop skirting the influence of religion. It plays a central part in the course of history, and should be taught as such.
I wouldn’t necessarily object to the idea of including some type of worldview/world religions/sacred literature class as Daniel has proposed.
However, there are some very significant (and potentially crippling) problems related to actually putting the idea into practice. Off the top of my head, in no specific order:
1) Finding qualified teachers. I’d be qualified to teach high shcoolers about the bible, how it was created, basic themes, motivations of different authors, etc. But even after 7 years of academic work, I’m in no way qualified to teach about those same things with respect to other world religions. Frankly, I don’t know that you’d be able to find enough people who are qualified to teach those things about all of the sacred text of today’s influential religions.
2) Bias. If Daniel Florien and I were teachers of the exact same content in the same high school, our classes would undoubtedly look different. He’s a fairly staunch nonbeliever and I’m a fairly staunch believer — I don’t see how we could be completely objective, regardless of how good our intentions are and regardless of how hard we might try.
3) Scholarly disagreement over core issues. DF mentions,
The first thing that comes to my mind is, “Whose version of that do you want to teach?” These are highly and hotly debated issues in biblical scholarship, to take Christianity as just one example. It’s easy to say, “We should teach kids about how the bible was compiled.” It’s an entirely different and much more difficult thing to actually figure out which compilation story you’re going to tell.
Anyway, like I said, I don’t have an objection to the idea generally; I just don’t see how it works logistically.
The first thing that comes to my mind is, “Whose version of that do you want to teach?” These are highly and hotly debated issues in biblical scholarship, to take Christianity as just one example.
Teach the controversy! Heh, as dumb as that tends to be in the sciences, in history it actually makes sense. When there are disputed interpretations, teach them all and point out the strengths and weaknesses of each view.
I agree though that finding qualified people to actually do any of this would be a right pain, and the salaries that such rare people could command would be absurd.
Teach the controversy! Heh, as dumb as that tends to be in the sciences, in history it actually makes sense. When there are disputed interpretations, teach them all and point out the strengths and weaknesses of each view.
I think I could add to my list above:
4) When to teach this, as in, at what point in a child’s/young person’s cognitive development would this type of subject matter be beneficial?
I would think that if you’re A) giving basic and overview and B) going beyond overviews and teaching disagreements, you’ve got to be landing somewhere in the 10-12th grade range (in the U.S.). That subject matter requires quite a bit of abstraction and critical reasoning, I would think.
Tenth sounds about right.
We could teach the various perspectives in scholarship. I have no problem teaching what people think even when I don’t agree with it.
Of course we’d both be biased (I’d have a hard time not smirking when I explained why some people today believe in creationism), but I think it can be done. You can’t ever rid yourself of bias, but you can be fair.
Also, I’m not talking about anything seriously in-depth. Just overviews. I can’t tell you much about some holy books, but given a few days of research, and I could put something good enough together.
If I were teaching a class like that, I’d try and bring in representatives from each religion to answer questions. Perhaps I’d even bring in multiple representatives to show how they disagree with each other [evil grin].
Also, I’m not talking about anything seriously in-depth. Just overviews. I can’t tell you much about some holy books, but given a few days of research, and I could put something good enough together.
For the record, that’s what a lot of homeschooling parents say….
ZING!
Very true, but I’m also not a teacher. And as you know, I’m fine with homeschooling as long as the parents are willing to invest the proper amount of time into learning what they’re teaching.
I feel like I’ve heard this discussion before…
:P
DAMN IT WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY YOU BURGER FLIPPING HOMESCHOOLER I’M SO ANGRY NOW!!!! ARGH!!! HOMESCHOOLING MCDONALDS KILL KILL KILL KILL kill kill kill DEEEEEEEEESTRUCTION!!!!!!!!!!!
oh sorry, we’re not to that point yet.
Actually, I just accepted a position at Subway, so I’m not a burger flipper anymore. Veggie slicer would be more appropriate, thank you.
Dude, I said no mayo. I freaking HATE mayo! And for the love of Christmas, wipe that knife before you slice my sub!
Also, can you please start carrying butter? And stop looking at me weird whenever I ask for it on my white-bread-and-only-ham sandwich?
;)
Dude, it pisses me off that subway won’t carry swiss cheese anymore. I mean c’mon. Swiss cheese is like a staple sandwich ingredient. After I realized they stopped carrying it, I basically stopped going. A national sandwich chain won’t carry a basic cheese that literally millions of people like? Forget it.
Your’e kidding, right? Subway doesnt carry swiss anymore? Thats criminal.
I have just one thing to say to all of you:
:P
PBBBBBBBTTTTTTTTTTTTHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Haha, I was wondering when LRA was going to take the gloves off…
lol @ LRA :)
The internet needs a sacrasm font. :)
Caps lock comes highly recommended.
Here you go: http://www.glennmcanally.com/sarcastic/downloads.htm
oooh!
Must have!
I think children Should be taught to read the bible, in the same context as Greek and Roman Myths, etc… after all, it has had a significant cultural impact on western civilisation. I agree that the Gita and the Koran should be taught too, for much the same reasons.
I also agree with Daniel about how teaching the bible can help prevent fundamentalism. Besides, if kids learn about the bible at the same time they learn about all the other myths we humans have come up with, it might help them realise that christianity is just another tall tale made to scare puny mortals…
Full disclosure: From NZ, which is not Australia. But in many aspects, including teaching, very similar.
I’m hearing a lot of hate for state-set cirricula here, and a lot of not-really understanding how those things work. Now I may be biased here, because my social studies and history teachers were frakking awesome. This was despite being at a low decile school.
NZ has a completely state mandated ciriccula. There is some wiggleroom – you can take the race relationship topic on either America or South Africa, for instance, but you have to do it on NZ as well. You can do a section on natural processes section on floods or volcanos.
The section your teacher chooses is determined entirely by two things: local appeal and available resources. If the school already has the set of text books for volcanos, you’ll probably be doing volcanos, and if there is a volcano nearby you’ll proabably have the textbooks for volcanos.
When I was 14 (I think?) my class did a section on world religion. It was my favourite section of the year! We did some reading on each – basic principles, where it was found and in what numbers, some history, holy books. Then we were divvied into groups and each group was assigned a religion and we produced a rather large poster on it, which was then assessed. (NZ state cirricula is big on posters. This always enraged me as I fail at posters so badly.) The teacher didn’t have to know loads about the topic: we had text books. He knew the material we were expected to cover, and enough on top of that to answer the kinds of questions 14 year olds asked. But we were expected to go to the library and dig out the relevant Osbourne Big Book of X. I know we covered Christianity, Islam and Judaism, but I can’t remember if we went over Hinduism (we had quite a large population of Fijian and Mainland Indians in my area as well, so we probably did) or Buddism or any of the more obscure ones. Most of us knew about Hari Krishna by then because we’d seen them in the next city over.
This wasn’t the teacher standing up front with a Bible telling us what he thought of it. This was a legitmate study of comparative religion, with a state mandated set of materials and reccommended methods of assessment.
I’m all for kids having a quickie class in comparative religions. However, I don’t think most religions would be taught correctly unless representatives of the various major religions would be allowed to present the material. Christianity would be one of the hardest to present, with its over 3500 sects.
Can we please also make sure noone teaches about the Holocaust unless they’re either a Jew, or a Nazi or a war vet? Can we please also make sure noone teaches Shakespeare who isn’t an actor from King James IV’s court?
For a highschool education, regularly updated text-books written by people who are experts in the topic is enough to direct study, and more than enough information for most students. All good education should be supplemented by appropriate primary sources, regardless of topic.
Why is learning about religion any different?
can one book be the Kama Sutra? jk
Hey, technically it *is* a kind of religiously-inspired book… ;)
I agree that if taught comparatively, this is a part of a well rounded education. However, as Abbott says himself in the article, when discussing the importance of teaching various texts, “That includes, most importantly, the Bible.” He means that. They don’t call him the Mad Monk for nothing. I doubt that teaching comparative religion is high on his agenda, rather, to push his own cause further. I’ve heard the defense before: “But this country was founded on Christian ideologies”.
I think that mythology should be taught to all students, either as a separate subject or under a humanities or literature umbrella. In theory, the bible should absolutely be included in that mix, along with works like, for example, The Odyssey, The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Popol Vuh, but only if all of the literature is approached from the same angle of detached academic interest in a fictional work.
Now, imagine a fundy teacher in the United States’ “bible belt” with this class in his/her hands and what it could turn into, and you can easily see why this is a bad idea in practice.
I agree with your point f view on this, Daniel, though I would add a fourth important reason for studying all of the mentioned texts: to understand the poetry, plays, and literature of past centuries, one must have a working knowledge of the religious works influencing the authors and the societies they were writing to.
Yep, to me that fits under #1.