Role of Religion in Public Schools? - Page 6

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

😆😆 not much different than the concept of sunday schools, madarsas, chinmaya missions i would say. if you are not asking public school system to replace day cares then why are you so hell bent on public schools replacing the religious schools😉😆

rest of your points in red...all repeatitive arguements and i refuse to get drawn in a loop😛

Madarsas and Chinmaya missions are totaly diff.........All religious people studying in chinamaya mission skoll....but in madarsas only muslims for Quran studies.

Originally posted by: sareg

ok, I am not going to respond in detail to this one, since I have noticed you seem to take things awfully personally and this has got a reference to your family

hmmmm...you are the first one to note this about me. no, i am not taking anything personally but i draw a lot from my personal experiences. I have witnessed the great jobs schools are doing towards instilling tolerance for diversity, respecting diversity and teaching good morals to students so I mentioned it here. that's why I am for maintaining the status quo on this issue. i also first hadn experienced how much home environment affects kids getting same education but coming from different walks of life so i mentioned my kids' example. i could have given a chinese family's example as well but the bottomline would have been same.

now, there might be people who are debating on this topic but have noooo idea how public school curriculum here works for over all enhancement of a student. not my fault if such people form beliefs or pov out of their own ignorance of the entire public school system here. we all are presenting our "personal" views on this debate. i just happen to have a personal experience handy....as simple as that😊

You know what, sometimes, we assess others just the same as us. may be debates get personal with you that's why you are infering that I am taking them personally😛 with me...no such issues dude....i hope my above explanation makes sense to you.😊

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

😆 😆 😆 the "for" side needs to get their facts right first. You guys were saying religion will teach good moral values...i proved that schools are teaching it even now...why bring in religion.

Huh 😲 😆 Moral values are anyways enforced my parents why even schools are needed? Religious school are add on on teaching religious values, moral or non moral is different issue. Imagine due to tight schedules parents cannot devote time for kids, apart from family bonding and ramp up studies, whats the harm in helping hand. If religious teaching at school doesn't help then many others like learnings like s* education, societal values are not needed at school.

now you are saying that schools need to teach respect for all religion. arrey, good values cover such things. diversity is accepted in schools and students are taught to be respectful of their differences.

All religion teach respect for humans, No?

only schools can not make any one tolerant or non tolerant. at the end of the day, responsibility still lies with parents!!!

Agreed why don't parents take up cirriculum also, school ka problem hi solved.

lol @ role of religion in public schools. can they first at least teach well what they are supposed to teach? 😉

seriously, do we want kids who can compete in the real economy or ones who can spout sermons? also can we even agree on what that curriculum should be? we've seen what debates on religion turn into, havent we? and who decides that curriculum? some politician or bureaucrat? kyoon yaar, unko aur koi kaam naheen hai?😆

Originally posted by: sareg

that is the beauty with democracy, you look for a candidate who you think will come close to the position you desire.If you support a candidate who is totally against the idea things like this, then this will never happen.

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

the "for" side needs to get their facts right first. You guys were saying religion will teach good moral values...i proved that schools are teaching it even now...why bring in religion.

now you are saying that schools need to teach respect for all religion. arrey, good values cover such things. diversity is accepted in schools and students are taught to be respectful of their differences.

only schools can not make any one tolerant or non tolerant. at the end of the day, responsibility still lies with parents!!!

You are totally confused about who is debating what, please re-read from the beginining if you want, I never made any point about morals/ethics in my initial response, when you brought morals/ethics, I said yeah sure. not my certain theme of argument.

I even tried to make it simple by making a common post only on issues of discussion, now on the issue you dont want to respond it seems😉

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

not much different than the concept of sunday schools, madarsas, chinmaya missions i would say. if you are not asking public school system to replace day cares then why are you so hell bent on public schools replacing the religious schools

rest of your points in red...all repeatitive arguements and i refuse to get drawn in a loop

funny, you respond to a off-the topic joke, but you dont want to comment on the actual argument, b'cos maybe you do not have a argument to base upon,anymore

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

hmmmm...you are the first one to note this about me. no, i am not taking anything personally but i draw a lot from my personal experiences. I have witnessed the great jobs schools are doing towards instilling tolerance for diversity, respecting diversity and teaching good morals to students so I mentioned it here. that's why I am for maintaining the status quo on this issue. i also first hadn experienced how much home environment affects kids getting same education but coming from different walks of life so i mentioned my kids' example. i could have given a chinese family's example as well but the bottomline would have been same.

now, there might be people who are debating on this topic but have noooo idea how public school curriculum here works for over all enhancement of a student. not my fault if such people form beliefs or pov out of their own ignorance of the entire public school system here. we all are presenting our "personal" views on this debate. i just happen to have a personal experience handy....as simple as that

You know what, sometimes, we assess others just the same as us. may be debates get personal with you that's why you are infering that I am taking them personally with me...no such issues dude....i hope my above explanation makes sense to you.

read the very first reply of yours, there were a series of replies where people were taking things personally when it was meant to be generic.

here it is😉

[quote=]

oh...and here I am...totally clueless and thinking that all religions teach the same thing at the end of the day!!! So why bother what 10 things christianity teaches or islaam teaches or hinduism teaches? Just teach them those good things w/o bringing religion in to it. religion is a volatile subject anyways. even with the padhey likhey mature adults. spare the children at least!!!

don't agree with your last statement. i am the way i am because of my parents and same goes for all of us. in today's world, you still find lot more tolerant than fanatic people and lot of these fanatics have been taught in religious schools. i say keep religion out of public school system. one less trouble to worry about!!!

[/quote]

I made a point about curriculum too, you perhaps did not follow it, read the initial post, which you perhaps responded to the 10 things of each religion, that was the peice of curriculum and see here responding too😆

are you responding without even understanding what the other person is saying?

Well I guess since you refuse to engage on the topic of debate at hand, All your 3 points here were for off-topic things, we should just end it here😊

Originally posted by: mermaid_QT

Democracy failed to standardize even regional high school curriculi within our country! Forget some uniformity on an international level. As I remember, state boards were not close to ICSC / CBSE atleast back in 90s. That's where my knowledge of India is stunted..

good, then let us not talk about Indian education system

We know that we failed to standardize even simple non-controversial curriculi such as geography (earth is round according to all states of India! Yey!!! 😆) , Geometry (triangles have 3 sides everywhere.. what a relief 😊) .. Now how many liberal and TOLERANT candidates do we need to figure out what components of all RELIGIONS should be taught to children? Then we need these candidates to convince parents and teachers why RELIGION taught a certain way would benefit the children?

People get uncomfortable when you talk about a particular religion and its flaws, if you start a religious education with flaws, you create negative impressions about the religion to people naturally everyone will have objections. If you start with the good things, the way religion started out, then start out teaching ok, these were the effects in the history classes, you are correlating to kids how people took things out of context, that is how you build up curriculum

now there will always be supposed liberal people who want to not hear good things in the begining but want to hear bad things also(or maybe only bad things), you just need to ignore those people. they are well meaning in their thoughts, but end up messing up the whole concept

As I said before, I see a great system where BOTH- Family & School contribute to providing great education over all, including FAIR INFORMATION of all religions. But I am with Mary jane every time I see such a dream realized! I can't help being hopeless w/o her.

In a perfect world that would work just great, but in the current day

schools are failing b'cos they are not producing good academic children, one of the reason is schools live under the constant fear of parents going beserk and suing them

the statement thrown at schools is, first do the job well, if not we will send them to other schools

but

parents are failing on their peice of bargain and we have more and more intolerant kids coming out of schools, what is the argument there?

my argument is to the parents is

do your job well or let us take part of what you have out of your hands and hand it to the school and give them more leeway,

obviosly we cannot reverse this saying oh the schools are failing let us give more freedom to parents, now that will equate to home schooling and we agree that isnt working😆

Originally posted by: sareg

You are totally confused about who is debating what, please re-read from the beginining if you want, I never made any point about morals/ethics in my initial response, when you brought morals/ethics, I said yeah sure. not my certain theme of argument.

just because you used an "I" there, going by your logic, i shd be infering too that you are taking it personally😉 I said "for" side. I never said "you". now who should go back and read the arguements again😛. Qwerty and Raj did bring up the morality and good values teachings in school via religion!!!

I even tried to make it simple by making a common post only on issues of discussion, now on the issue you dont want to respond it seems😉

and i did respond to the same very common post. btw, i did read the complete post before that common post as well that you changed to your classic "nvmd😉"😆 I refuses to respond to the repeat points you made all over again in red to my response to your common post. I feel that they were answerd in detail in previous posts😊

funny, you respond to a off-the topic joke, but you dont want to comment on the actual argument, b'cos maybe you do not have a argument to base upon,anymore

and who decides it's off topic joke😛 I mentioned how far some parents might go by my example above if things are not put back in perspective. you retorted with that day care joke and I used it to re-introduce my point here. i just connected the decision to use day cares instead of public schools with the decision to use religious schools for relgious teachings than public schools. simple connection here but if you don't want to see that....what can i do yaar😆 I mean we do see ideas like smaller summer vacations etc presented in PTO meetings. that tells me that some parents now a days would rather have school 24/7 than invest their time bringing up their child for whom they are responsible in the first place.

read the very first reply of yours, there were a series of replies where people were taking things personally when it was meant to be generic.

here it is😉

[quote=]

oh...and here I am...totally clueless and thinking that all religions teach the same thing at the end of the day!!! So why bother what 10 things christianity teaches or islaam teaches or hinduism teaches? Just teach them those good things w/o bringing religion in to it. religion is a volatile subject anyways. even with the padhey likhey mature adults. spare the children at least!!!

don't agree with your last statement. i am the way i am because of my parents and same goes for all of us. in today's world, you still find lot more tolerant than fanatic people and lot of these fanatics have been taught in religious schools. i say keep religion out of public school system. one less trouble to worry about!!!

[/quote]

if, all of a sudden, someone is unable to differentiate between tongue in cheek remarks/ anecdotes/ personal experiences and taking things personally, it is their problem...not mine😉 may be you are reading too much in to some innocent remarks and taking them personally😛

I made a point about curriculum too, you perhaps did not follow it, read the initial post, which you perhaps responded to the 10 things of each religion, that was the peice of curriculum and see here responding too😆

please stop assuming what i did or did not do here. i read each and every post here so far and i did not take anything personally here. clear enough for you now😊

are you responding without even understanding what the other person is saying?

....again making assumptions about fellow debators and actually attacking them and their intellect. i am not telling you what you did or did not read or understand. why are you harping about it over and over again. so far, i let things go but now you are attacking a fellow debator by assuming that she did not read the posts, took things personally, and now did not understand what you said. In my opinion, people revert back to these petty attacke when they are getting desperate and do not have anything of substance to add any more😉. you never see me telling that you are not understanding something...do you???

Well I guess since you refuse to engage on the topic of debate at hand, All your 3 points here were for off-topic things, we should just end it here😊

😆😆😆 in a hurry to end the debate here.....wonder why...running out of new points or rebuttals that actually make sense.....is it so😛😆

I still feel that schools should focus on what they were intended to do in the first place - academic knowledge. As it si schools are doing a lot apart from academics for an over all development of the students. Religion is a personal matter to all and should be taught/dealt at home by parents.

As far as all the good things taught by various religions, don't all religions teach healthy habits, inculcate good morals, values, and ethics? Why do we need to specifically single out what hinduism says or what islaam says about not hurting a fellow human being??? Schools are handleing diversity and morality pretty well so far. why to add the names of religion to teach the same things that they are teaching right now w/o involving religion. Now, if you want religious teachings to go beyond the morality they teach, that's where I still maintain that things get personal and better left for parents to deal with.

I agree with CB's post on previous page. Let schools first excel in academic programs, athletics and fine arts along with the counselling they provide to disturbed kids here. Least we can do is dump religion in their bucket too.

Originally posted by: ~LiL*PrInCeZ~

hiya everyone

What is the role of religion in public schools? should it be completely avoided or should all religions be given equal weight? What about religion in terms of history? Does religious education in school develop tolerance and acceptance in the students, or does it defy separation of church and state? should children learn about religion as part of their curriculum?

I specified public schools because religion based private schools like madrassa, catholic school etc obviously will focus on a specific religion and I dont see any harm in it (the parents choose to send their child there fully aware of this and usually all the children follow the same religion so it shouldnt be an issue)

Nice topic Javz👏!!!

I personally feel that there is nothing wrong in learning about the religion of the school we are into!

There is nothing wrong in following the religion followed by the School authoroites in school hours! This helps a child to expose to different religions and help them in identifying the similarities and beauty of diferent religions!!

My entire school education was in Christian Missionaries and I used to enjoy doing Prayers during school hours....I used to enjoy being the part of Christmas celebrations .....I used to enjoy going to Church of our schools..but used to feel bad when the christian students were given some special preference like giving them a bread dipped in wine...

I home we follow brahmin traditions....

I worked with a Muslim College ...So had the oppurtunity to see their practices also.....

All these developed me into a non religious person!!😆 Analysing the concepts and practices of all religions made me a completely anti ritual and anti idol worshipping person!

Still I say some or the religion is necessary right form school days....

At the end of the day the Moral we try to learn such as sacrifice,character ,friendship are same immaterial of the religion we are into!

Wishes,

Mythili

Originally posted by: mythili_Kiran

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I personally feel that there is nothing wrong in learning about the religion of the school we are into!

There is nothing wrong in following the religion followed by the School authoroites in school hours! This helps a child to expose to different religions and help them in identifying the similarities and beauty of diferent religions!!

My entire school education was in Christian Missionaries and I used to enjoy doing Prayers during school hours....I used to enjoy being the part of Christmas celebrations .....I used to enjoy going to Church of our schools..but used to feel bad when the christian students were given some special preference like giving them a bread dipped in wine...

I home we follow brahmin traditions....

I worked with a Muslim College ...So had the oppurtunity to see their practices also.....

All these developed me into a non religious person!!😆 Analysing the concepts and practices of all religions made me a completely anti ritual and anti idol worshipping person!

Still I say some or the religion is necessary right form school days....

At the end of the day the Moral we try to learn such as sacrifice,character ,friendship are same immaterial of the religion we are into!

Wishes,

Mythili

Myth.. you have said the same thing Qwerty mentioned earlier and I agree with your views too... Having been exposed to at least 3 different religions and becoming agnostics means we are open to all religions and their concepts and beliefs and the world has that much less intolerence and fanatisism.. Now if we apply this to every child and we have a chance to a peacefull world that we all so desire and hope to see. I feel ignorance results in fear and offensive in case of religions...

The other point of learning and practising some sort of religion brings structure when growing up, as in Hindu religion where pooja/prayers can only be offered after taking a bath and as much as I hated that while growing up , i can't imagine myself now not having a shower first thing in the morning and later attend to daily activities. Religion does bring a certain amount of discipline in our personal lives when we think about it.