The Roanoke Times has its fair share of religious pandering, but occasionally they get the right idea.
This cartoon by Chris OBrion illustrates the recent ACLU investigations of Craig County’s Bible classes.
Sometimes, I’m proud to be a Roanoker.
25 May 2008
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I agree with Dan Dennett’s proposal that comparative religious studies should be mandatory in any education system. This would involve, of course, students learning about the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, etc., but it would importantly mean that these texts, and the religions with which they are associated, are treated in the classroom as anthropological/sociological/cultural phenomena, not repositories of capital “A” Absolute capital “T” Truth.
Of course, such a proposal is unlikely to gain much favour among the Bible believin’ Christians who dream up such things as Bible curricula, which is why the Craig County Bible classes deserve to be treated with suspicion.
I think that in a healthy democracy there is nothing wrong with students learning about the religious beliefs (or otherwise) of their fellow national and global citizens, just as there is nothing wrong with students learning about the various ethnic or national backgrounds of their fellow citizens. But there is something very wrong with transforming public schools into Christian madrassahs.
Comment by AV — 25 May 2008 @ 5:08 pm
Lol, nice!
Comment by zeynepankara — 26 May 2008 @ 8:50 am
I actually did have something like this in junior high school… our social studies class had a Muslim guest speaker who came in and talked about his faith. It was interesting, although I actually suspect my teacher had an agenda (and this was the *only* religion touched on).
Comment by goffcouture — 26 May 2008 @ 12:50 pm
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