Discussing Religion with Kids

Both our kids went to a RC school. Neither have been to church since, neither have any religious thoughts as far as I’m aware. Let them come to their own conclusions is my motto - it seems to have worked.
 
Give him a shroom and he can see that we are one collective consciousness living a human experience intent on raising our vibrational frequencies to the 5th dimension. Whilst fighting an invisible intergalactic war to keep the planets vibrational level low.


Makes more sense that a white dude in the Middle East called Jesus.
 
mat said:
Give him a shroom and he can see that we are one collective consciousness living a human experience intent on raising our vibrational frequencies to the 5th dimension. Whilst fighting an invisible intergalactic war to keep the planets vibrational level low.


Makes more sense that a white dude in the Middle East called Jesus.
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This is the kind of top parenting advice you just don’t get on mumsnet.
 
I really object to the fact that RE is taught in schools when that time could be dedicated to much more important subjects.

One lesson is all they need. Should take no more than a few seconds...

"There's lots of different religions. Believe in what you want to believe and let others believe in what they want to believe."

Done.
 
Goaters said:
So my 5 year old at school is starting to be taught religion and specifically Christianity. So with this it obviously raises questions for me - an atheist - the sort of response I should provide. He is asking to pray before bed and wants to visit church etc, which obviously I can't object to but equally am fairly uncomfortable with.

An emphasis on critical thinking though is also important. If you raise your children to be skeptical as a general rule, it shouldn't be necessary to go out of your way to have them treat religious claims skeptically. They should end up doing that on their own anyway. Skepticism and critical thinking are attitudes which should be cultivated across a broad range of topics, but again age comes in to this.

So, for parents who are not religious how do you broach the subject? Do you say you don't believe or just go along with it until your child comes to a certain age where he can more form his own opinions?
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I’d send him to the Spaniards for an Inquisition mate!


My Father - an atheist - sent me to a CofE primary school but I didn’t get all that interested in it and by about eight years old I pretty much didn’t believe a word of it and by the time I left at eleven I think I was a convinced atheist.

I do sometimes wonder whether actually going and listening to those stories in class and assemblies and at the church next door to the school made me think ‘well, that didn’t happen!’ quicker than if I hadn’t gone to a CofE school.
 
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Cheesy said:
I really object to the fact that RE is taught in schools when that time could be dedicated to much more important subjects.

One lesson is all they need. Should take no more than a few seconds...

"There's lots of different religions. Believe in what you want to believe and let others believe in what they want to believe."

Done.
Click to expand...
I work in education and, for me, the four most important subjects are English, Maths, PE and Food.

The two latter ones are given next to no importance really. By Year 10 you don’t have to do either of them anymore (even though PE is still there until the end of Year 11, the amount of lessons that are ditched so kids can catch up with coursework or revision for other lessons, some don’t really put a PE kit on after Year 9).

But for fitness and health, extensive education in both for future life fitness and health (and I’m not taking about learning how to hit a hickey ball correctly, I’m talking about proper classroom lessons where you learn about training and the body), knowing how train to stay fit and healthy, knowing how to cook to stay healthy with variety of nutrients and flavours for enjoyment of healthy food… they should be right up there.

RE is just about the most unimportant thing you can learn in school. The history of religions is interesting but bloody fantasy stories being taught as if they really happened - nah!
 
mexico1970 said:
If the school hadn't told him there was a thing called churches he would never have known, same goes for Mosques, Synagogues etc.

IMHO religion should be kept out of ALL schools.
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As a retired teacher of Religious Studies, I am obviously going to disagree. But not for the reasons that you might think.

First of all - though I am only referring here to teaching at the secondary rather than primary level - quite a number of colleagues I worked with were atheists who just happened to be fascinated with religion as a social phenomenon or were attracted to the philosophical and ethical aspects of the subject. So there is not much danger of indoctrination.

Secondly, one of my own university teachers, John Bowker, wrote in the preface to one of the earliest GCSE textbooks that religion was worth learning about because of all the evil that had been perpetrated in the name of it. That’s a pretty good justification in my view.

Thirdly, the subject does tend to get taught in a manner that encourages critical thinking and intelligent scepticism. A quick look at any GCSE or A level syllabus will reveal that. Often, in the terminal GCSE examination itself, the most marks are awarded for questions in which the candidate has to critically evaluate statements such as ‘There are no convincing reasons to believe in God’, or ‘People who claim to have religious experiences are hallucinating’, or ‘There is no good evidence that we survive death.’

Fourthly, although secularisation is happening in some places, the world is still, rather unfortunately in my view, as furiously religious as it ever was in others. So from that point of view it can’t really be avoided.

Plus, people do seem to still yearn for what might be abstractly referred to as the transcendent, some kind of realm beyond the ego, even if they only achieve that through taking drugs, watching City humiliate United, or going to an event like Glastonbury.

Am currently reading Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan’s book Faith, Hope and Carnage, in which Cave admits that he might have devoted a lot of energy to reflecting on a being that does not exist, but that faith (tempered by a lot of doubt) got him through the death of his son, still sustains him and continues to inspire his songwriting.

And Christopher Hitchens actually said something similar before he died, admitting, ‘I’m a materialist…yet there is something beyond the material or not entirely consistent with it, what you would call the Numinous, the Transcendent, or at best the Ecstatic…It’s in certain music, landscape, certain creative work; without this we really would merely be primates.’

Should add that I am in no position to make much sense of what Cave and Hitchens are on about as I have never had an experience of anything like that, though I do find music, art and literature to be transporting in a non-mystical sense.

Fifthly, doing an A Level in Religious Studies is one of the best ways to be introduced to atheistic thinking these days, namely, that of luminaries such as the wonderful David Hume, Bertrand Russell, AJ Ayer, Jeremy Bentham, JL Mackie and, of course, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

In fact, one of the best and most resolutely sceptical philosophers around at the present time is a guy called Stephen Law, who often does workshops for sixth-formers. He is actually the author of a book called ‘Believing Bullshit’ which I once contemplated making one of the official textbooks for my A Level students, as the idea of their parents and fellow pupils stumbling across them reading it had a certain subversive appeal. Unfortunately, there wasn’t quite enough overlap between the content of the book and the syllabus that I was teaching at the time to justify that decision. But anyway, here he is in action:



I used to show that to my Year 9’s.

Finally, if Religious Studies was removed from the curriculum, there is a danger that the extremist and sometimes barking mad beliefs that some kids get from home would go unchallenged and would be left to incubate.

There is also a danger that - at A level - if they are studying History, English Literature, Art or even Economics, that a lack of knowledge of religion might leave them a bit of a disadvantage.

For example, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is as much a work of theology as it is of economics, something that would have been immediately apparent to its first readers but is scarcely appreciated now.

Having said that though, it wouldn’t bother me if the name of the subject was changed to ‘Philosophy’ or ‘World Views.’

As far as primary school kids are concerned, I don’t see any reason why they can’t be introduced to a bit of critical thinking even at that age, as there are books and courses designed to specifically do just that. See here:

P4C in the UK

P4C in the UK
www.philosophy-foundation.org www.philosophy-foundation.org

Pete Worley’s publications are really good for that as they are aimed at kids from about 5 upwards.

Anyway, this post is far too long. So will leave it there. Off to cook dinner and listen to Ghosteen again.
 
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