Quote:
Originally Posted by shakermaker
I left Mount Carmel in 2005, a Roman Catholic High School. My 'Religious Education' lessons were Christian Education and nothing more.
I would back up anyone who would propose for children to be taught about all major religions in schools. Not just major religions but new religious movements and new age secular practices, as their education progresses.
Children should not be made somewhat ignorant by faith schools, as they have been done in the past. (I know - I was one of them. I knew nothing about important beliefs away from Christianity/the West until I took Religious Studies at 'A' level.) Children should be taught about religious diversity regardless of their upbringing or their family's religious convictions.
This is the modern world - a global society. Britain can not continue to be so blinkered and insular. Multiculturalism exists and our children's education should correspond with that. Lack of education about religion breeds ignorance and stereotype, which in turn creates idiocy and hate.
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You are a little behind the times ... to say this is a modern world is to say nothing ... Chaucer could have said the same thing about the 14th century. And the global society thing is just about over and done with; it has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Nationalism is back. Look at the map of Europe today and compare it with one 25 years old. Globalism will soon be nothing more than going to exotic places for a vacation and being able to find a good Thai restaurant in your neighbourhood. The Americans are just as isolationist as they ever were ... globalism to them is mainly economic ... putting a Starbucks on every street corner in the world and sending their military wherever their national interests are involved. Canadians are responding to claims on the Arctic by sending troops to that region led by Inuit Rangers. We are welcoming immigrants who have skills we need in this country ... the rest can stay where they are. And the ones that come here can worship how they damn well please as long as they don't seek to change essential Canadian values. Some dumb ass muslims wanting citizenship recently baullked at taking the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen as part of the citizenship ritual ... screw them, if they don't want to take the oath they don't become citizens ... and as non citizens they sure as hell are not going to tell the rest of us how to run our country, and how to pay respect to our head of state.
I sometimes resist saying what I think about what is happening in England, because it really no longer is any of my business ... having said that, I will shoot off my mouth on this one and say that it seems to me that those in power in England seem not to be able to see the difference between tolerance and surrender. You are bending over backwards ... no, make that forwards ... to accomodate people who blow up your subways and buses and kill and maim your young service men and women.
Within living memory Great Britain along with the three Dominions (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for those who don't know what I am talking about) stood up for the whole world, and held off the Nazis while the Americans took their own sweet time growing a pair. And now, England seems incapable of standing up for itself. Sure the face of England has changed, but from what I read in this forum, the England of our grandparents and great - grandparents is still there, alive, if not well. It's as if pride in one's country and one's history have become distasteful. There is nothing wrong with patriotism ... look at Barb for example, one may not agree with a lot of what she says, but one has to admire ... at least I admire it ... her patriotism and love of her country.