Quote:
Originally Posted by redwitch
If parents would teach their children to think and reason rather than blindly follow, it wouldn't matter if a teacher had an agenda. I was fortunate that I had parents who allowed me to question, who did not try to fit me into their shoes and beliefs. I was also fortunate enough to have seen the world while a child and learn of different cultures and religious beliefs through firsthand experience.
To me, schools today should be teaching both sides of Islam. The beauty and faith of the religion and the hatred espoused by those who bastardize the Koran. This does not mean indoctrinating a child into being a Muslim, it means giving an understanding of that religion. Our planet has become too small for people to not try to understand. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime or even in the lifetime of my daughter, but I'm hoping and praying that one day the people of this world will come to embrace each others' differences. This cannot occur without education.
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Redwitch I would gently disagree with your approach. Schools should not teach any "side" of any religion. The school should teach the basic features of a faith in a manner a Western learner can understand. Monotheistic, polytheistic, non-theistic. What are the religious practices of the adherents as they impact history? Who are the main historical players. What was the environment culturally and geographically and politically in which the religion grew and what import did it have on the topics being presented. Unless you want to present both sides of Christianity.. the good and brutal, both sides of Hinduism etc. Somehow I was taught about the major faiths of the world without feeling anyone was attempting to proselytize. No school should teach the "beauty" of any religion. That is a judgment subject to the opinion of the presenter. No school should be picking particular words from THE BOOK of any faith to attempt to encapsulate everything about that religion. We all know what particular phrases the Islamophobes would pick from the Koran, the anti-Semites from the Pentateuch, the anti-Christians from the NT.