Comments on: Interesting

By: adverbia

adverbia — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:14:09 +0000

Religious discussion certainly has its place in schools, but in a curriculum, not as part of the daily culture of the school (like morning prayers). Classes in history, sociology, humanities, theology, all those are appropriate settings for learning about world religions. I have particular issue with the idea of teaching religiously based pseudoscience as a part of core science curricula.

By: kepirus

kepirus — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:17:00 +0000

Great subject, Lisa!
To reassure you a little, I definitely teach all of the major religions along with the world history – I tell my kids you can’t study history without studying the religions, they’re interconnected. In fact, our district’s World History book has an entire section on religions of the world.
I think part of the problem is high school is ‘History’. The kids here (entire state) get ‘Cultures’ in Middle School where there is too much going on socially – after a few years, they forget everything they learned.

I know some people would gasp, but I leave 6 weeks to teach everything European (Middle Ages, Renaissance, etc.) so that I can devote plenty of time to everything current, and the history behind those current things.

By: reeveslady

reeveslady — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:08:10 +0000

I know! I didn’t learn much about other religions until college, where I got my undergraduate degree in international relations. I think the problem lies in the focus of classroom studies now. Schools are so consumed with “getting the grade” on those standardized tests that they are forced to give (under the No Child Left Behind policy) that they are focusing all their energy on math, reading, and English. Don’t get me wrong. Those subjects are extremely important, but it’s also important to at least learn a little bit about other cultures and religions in this world. I wouldn’t think it would be too hard to incorporate those fields of study in schools. Wouldn’t it fit in with “Social Studies?”