ARE FAITH SCHOOLS INDOCTRINATION FACTORIES? A RESOUNDING YES YES YES!
Faith Schools - Indoctrination Factories?
Religion should not be taught to children in a way that seeks an unfair
advantage.
Schools teach religion as part of the normal
school day. They also let in evangelists. Both these
things need to be halted for good.
Religion cannot force others to listen to its message except through the school
system. Even parents cannot force a child to hear the gospel even if they try.
Faith schools lead to problems. Pentecostal faith schools damage children by
making them believe God the Holy Spirit speaks through them and makes them speak
in unknown languages. It urges that responsibility be handed over to God instead
of yourself. Scientology schools will teach them that a dose of science fiction
is true. Rastafarian Schools promote the taking of cannabis as a holy rite.
Islamist Extremist schools will urge pupils to hate and to murder "outsiders".
Most Catholics today would agree, despite Church teaching, that faith in God and
in the Church is only opinion not knowledge. Those that are consistent will see
that schools are about imparting knowledge so it would be inappropriate for
schools to be in any way religious.
Should religiously funded schools be forced to employ people against their
ethos?
A teacher of religion can be secretly an Atheist. There is no reason to think
that that person necessarily has to do things or say things that undermine the
ethos.
Teachers and principals have been fired because they were living in a
relationship against the rules of the Church eg a cohabiting couple. It is hard
to reconcile this with the Church teaching that, "We are all sinners but we must
urge others not to sin". The sinner who teaches in a Catholic school is not
urging the pupils to sin merely by his showing bad example. It is up to each
individual to have the sense not to do things just because other people do them.
Are faith schools better?
Some studies show that faith schools are better than non-religious schools.
But these studies cannot speak about all faith schools and all non-religious
schools. It is hard to believe that a Mormon or Seventh-Day Adventist school
which opposes science and truth could really be a good school. So what faith are
we talking about? It is dishonest for people to say faith schools are the best
when they actually mean say Catholic schools or Presbyterian schools.
The studies do not consider other variables. Faith schools might seem to be
better than non-religious schools if the believers have more money and more
support than the non-believers. It is money not faith that is making them
better.
If faith schools are ever better than secular schools, the reason is not because
they are faith schools. Being a faith school in itself does not indicate that it
must be necessarily better. Even in faith schools, going to classes intended to
put the faith into the child to be optional for the child. Religion cannot force
people to listen to its message except through controlling schools - bear that
in mind.
Many faith schools teach a watery form of religion that is pretty close to
secularism. These schools are really almost faith schools in name only.
Faith schools shouldn't be better than secular schools. If they are, is it
because the teachers and parent committees are too aware of the flaws of the
faith school system and are over-compensating in other areas? If you run a
school that wastes time teaching superstition you may feel that you should
maximise the effectiveness of teaching other subjects to make up for this.
Faith schools promote superstition and by separating children of one faith from
another you are tacitly endorsing sectarianism and fear and division. If faith
schools exceed secular schools then this is in spite of their inherent badness
and not because of it. Faith schools separate children according to a religious
label from other children bearing a different one thus implying, "This school is
good because we are us and we are not them. We are holy and have the best
religion. That is why we need a school with our religion's ethos."
Can a secular nation judge what a faith school is?
The state that recognises a school as a state school is saying the religion
running it is really a religion.
Secularism may struggle to learn where religion begins and where religion ends.
Yet it seems to many that it may need to try and know in order to take care that
religion does not get privileges that non-religion doesn't have. Many argue that
the state judging what is a religion and what isn't, opens the door for
religious people to get favourable treatment under the law if the state regards
them as comprising a real religion. The state assessing what is a religion will
drag the state into theology and superstition. When members of one faith are
recognised as a religion by the state and members of another are not, that is
unfair and a violation of secularism. This principle forbids faith schools.
School is for teaching facts not faith and certainly not religious faith
School is for teaching established facts. Religion does not depend on
established facts. It is not interested in scientific verification. Therefore
religion should not be taught in school. Science comes first. Science stresses
experimentation and questioning and getting the facts while religion opposes
this approach though it pretends it does not. Science will help us not airy
fairy tales. If you want to teach something in a school you should be able to
prove its truth.
Even if the Virgin Mary appeared to you right now and said the Roman Catholic
Church was the true Church you could not take her word for it for it might be a
demon instead. Even the Church says that most revelations said to be from Heaven
are dubious. What you would have to do first is make sure that the Catholic
Church is the only right religion and not only that but the best. But, that is
impossible for all religions make the same claim and sound convincing when you
hear their side. To claim to be right in religion is sheer arrogance and wilful
blindness. What is happening is the religionists make assumptions and they bend
everything to fit them which is a barrier to understanding and sincere respect
for other people.
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
“If the law starts forbidding religion to recruit children in school and through
school then the fundamentalists will get stronger in power for they will gain
more followers who fear that the secular world is trying to phase religious
faith out.”
The fundamentalists themselves often are too cowardly to go out and fight for
their beliefs. It is only a vocal minority that do the ranting and the
interfering with politics. If we place enough temptation in the way of the
fundamentalist, the fundamentalist will soften up.
The state should provide education against fundamentalist propaganda.
The argument if correct proves that moderate religion turns extremist when it
meets suppression of any kind. The only answer would be to keep religion out of
schools and work out a plan for handling or preventing the turning to extremism.
Schools might have to debunk fundamentalism.
It is odd that Pope Francis who encourages fear of the Devil and sees his work
everywhere is not classed as a fundamentalist. A person can be fundamentalist in
one thing but not another. Too often people are called fundamentalist in an
effort to discredit them. Is it really up to the state to decide who is a
religious fundamentalist? No that is a religious matter.
“Parents have the obligation to raise their children according to their own
religious faith.”
They do not. At best they might have the right to decide but there is no
obligation.
“Parents have the right to raise their children according to their own religious
faith.”
It depends. Do parents have the right to teach their children that the Battle of
Hastings never happened and was a lie? No. Yet religion claims the right to put
belief before fact in history and science. There is no need to raise children in
your belief and when rights depend on needs the parents cannot have the right. A
parent just needs to make suggestions and show by good example what the right
thing to do is.
Another problem is this. Faith schools lead to segregation and sectarianism. If
these schools vanish, faith will be taught in the home. This would seem to be
even worse than teachers promoting the faith because the parents will often
teach the faith poorly or in a bigoted way. This will have its dangers. People
need to make up their own minds regarding this matter.
"No country has the right to ban children being raised as members of a
religion".
Every country has the right to take steps that at least don't encourage religion
or its propagation. Indeed, it is a nation's duty to be neutral.
And the notion that a child of six or seven is a Muslim or a Catholic is absurd.
It is a lie and dehumanises. Labels dehumanise. That is what they want to do and
that is what would happen anyway as a result of them. They cut both ways.
It is bad enough to do that to an adult but a child?
CONCLUSION
Religion must not be taught in a recruiting or indoctrinating fashion in schools
funded by the state.
Religious indoctrination of children is child-abuse even when the indoctrination
seems on the face of it to be pretty harmless. When a child is indoctrinated to
accept as true a religion that says her or his parents will go to Hell if they
die unrepentant for cohabiting then that is a clear proof that the child is
being abused. Nobody has the right to do that to a child and criminal
proceedings must be considered against the clergy whose teachings are
responsible.
The statutes typically demand that self-esteem be facilitated in schools and
educational establishments. Thus it makes no sense for schools to be Christian
or Jewish or Islamic. It is against the law for they are about God not
self-esteem.