Disgusting Example of Indoctrination

[Mudhammam]

You should look up the Irish education system some day, of the eight years children have at primary level, nearly two (half an hour every school day, and at least a month each before first communion and confirmation. Not to mention all the preparation for christmas and easter every year) are taken up with religious instruction, by the fact that a) all schools have to have a religious ethos, b) over 97% of primary schools have a religious patron (mostly the rcc bishop) who, despite not having put a penny into the construction nor maintenance nor salary costs, gets exclusive say on how that religious ethos is carried out, and c) department of education guidelines mandating the half hour a day religious instruction (not education where students get a general idea of all religions, but instruction where they are taught about why one religion is right and everything else is wrong). The situation is not quite as bad at secondary level, but you still get at least two hours a week religious instruction over five/six (depending on if you do transition year or repeat the leaving) years of your teens.

Having gone through the Irish education system, trust me, schools should be the last place religion is allowed into. If people are worried about moral formation, then a civics class is more than adequate and far more adequate than a religion class. If parents want their children brought up religious, let them teach the children about religion themselves outside school hours or petition their priest/imam/pastor/rabbi for some form of Sunday school when religious observances happen.

I wasn't raised Irish, but I was indoctrinated in all of the ways that rob shows concern over, and I sympathize with those concerns. A LOT of the people I went to Christian school with are fucked up in my view, when it comes to thinking critically about their own religion, including to some extent my brother, but the funny thing is, they wouldn't see it that way, and many of them are probably extremely happy to have been brought up in that bubble. And at the same time, in terms of thinking critically, I'm not so sure most people who come out of our public school system are on average more introspective. Perhaps thinking critically and being indoctrinated are not mutually exclusive.