Mick wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:

Mick wrote:

ED209 wrote:Well, employers and colleges are always saying that school leavers are excessively numerate and literate but are held back by an insufficient understanding of the tenets of hinduism

There is more to education than vocational training.

Perhaps.

Name one thing that catholicism, and only catholicism, teaches that is of use on the job. Just one thing.

Unless you're going to work for the Vatican, or something like that? Nothing that I can think of, though I don't know why we should measure its worth based upon its vocational utility.

Well, I wouldn't confuse judging the worth of knowledge of religion with judging the worth of teaching it on the public dime.

My boys know a great deal about quite a few religions. We go through books about many of them. It's a wonderful tool to use to sharpen their bullshit filters. You see, and I am certain you know it, religions have a universal common trait. They are all full of shit. You have decided this to be so on all religions ever known to man except one, and you have zero basis to set yours apart from those you have dismissed as bollocks. And, thanks to liberal investigations into religions on our own time, my boys see this clearly.

They also know that some nine tenths of the people on earth live their religious delusions. There is value in knowing what motivates their behaviors if one is to live among the credulous. I would rather we didn't have to do so, but that is an impossibility.

Mick wrote:

HomerJay wrote:Brilliant, so it's Cultural rather than Religious Literacy? So why would it be Religious Education? Why teach the basic tenets of the texts of religion when we could just teach the Asian or Arabic culinary preferences?

And yet when we look at other forms of learning were rarely see cultural literacy as the defining moment that everything works around.

When we teach sex ed should we be teaching Abba songs and the shows of Lisa Minnelli? Or Kylie Minogue perhaps? Them's the gay icons in my street.

Culinary preference is not comparable, since it does not form a worldview. Consider the impact of Islam on Muslims-it affects their whole way of living.

But, as HomerJay points out, religious affiliation is not the only determinant of "culture". He gives gay "culture" as one example. Lots of things affect people's' "whole way of living."

As it happens, my younger daughter is taking a Grade 11 course on "world religions". Her teacher is a Medievalist and they've been spending a lot of time learning about the history of exorcism. She's loving the class.

Scot Dutchy wrote:Just scrap it.

A waste of time AND money.

Learning stuff is never a waste, IMHO.

Nora_Leonard wrote:

tolman wrote:
Surely, ethics and morality have no need to be bundled up with religious education.

You're right. But in my opinion it is best that they are bundled here, as because then that very question can arise: yes, you've got these ethical teachings in religion, but you've also got them outside of religious tradition. I.e. the question of right and wrong is not simply a religious question.

So have moral/ethical/philosophical education which might refer as an aside to what various brands and sub-brands of religions say on an issue (and also to what believers actually seem to do).
Ethics/morality might be something religions talk about (even if effectively only in terms of statements of divine authority rather than argument), but ethics/morality are not the property of religions, nor should education suggest that they are.

Nora_Leonard wrote:

tolman wrote:
Claims of justification for moral/ethical positions which fundamentally reduce to 'god says so' or 'a claimed prophet claimed god said so' seem to have little merit when it comes to someone constructing a framework for moral reasoning, since the positions of any alleged deity on any particular issue could be quite arbitrary yet supposedly not open to question or in need of meaningful justification.

Well it wouldn't be RE in the modern understanding of the subject if students were taught that the only valid arbiter of moral decision making was on the basis of whether "god said so" or not!

But that is effectively what many religions seem to teach.

As far as Christian ethics/morality goes, what could RE lessons say apart from listing all manner of conflicting official positions from one or other brand, and then saying that people either follow dogma without thinking, or choose a morality for themselves with greater or lesser amounts of justification by post-hoc rationalisation and cherry-picking?
Now, I'd be the last to say that the morality/ethics of particular Christians would necessarily be worse as a result of thinking for themselves rather than swallowing dogma, but I would wonder to what extent their personal morality was really arguable as being 'Christian' rather than essentially personal.

The_Metatron wrote:You see, and I am certain you know it, religions have a universal common trait. They are all full of shit.

That may be, but it is hard to demonstrate that they are 100% shit. What is easy to demonstrate is that almost all of them divide the world into 'us' and 'them'. Demonstrating that this is a bad way to start is left as an exercise for the diligent reader.

The_Metatron wrote:You have decided this to be so on all religions ever known to man except one, and you have zero basis to set yours apart from those you have dismissed as bollocks.

Now that's what I call diligence. Gold star for The Metatron.