Ban forced religious studies in schools

[jstrodel]

What is wrong with people going to the kind of schools that match their worldview, and the state simply paying for the part that agrees with a general curriculum. I think a general education like you have said is useful.

The fact is that a state education is imposing its own philosophy on people, though it may not be explicitly religious, it still has its own faith. Why should people be forced to pay for that faith?

After school Bible study is totally different than a rigorous schooling that exists. I don't see how anyone with a clear conscience can support imposing their philosophy on others and call themselves a free thinker at the same time.

People should be able to use their educational tax dollars as they see fit. Atheists should not have to pay for religious education, neither should religious people have to pay for atheistic or liberal education.

If you can, detail to us all exactly what this atheistic of liberal philosophy that is being imposed entails. So far you're just said that it exists but you haven't so much as hinted at what it might be. And just for the record, the absence of your specific faith doctrine is not a philosophy on its own.

All of the words, the philosophy that underlies the words, the assumptions and values that are being transmitted, the role of nationalism and capitalistic assumptions about behavior in state education, the view of gender, the way that historical events are treated with different levels of respect and points of view are taken consistent with the ideology of the state/liberalism, the way that controversial scientific issues are handled such as abiogenesis and many other issues. The philosophy of the educators determines the curriculum, impartiality is just a value to constrain the will from tainting information but necessarily the will exists to be directed toward the which wisdom defines.

They call it "liberal education" for a reason. And yes, sometimes liberal education advocates politically liberal issues (this was true in the high school that I went to - a private school and is even more true in college). More common I think is that the liberal educators refuse to take positions on issues that are of very serious social consequence, they simply have a view of education that allows them to censor all the parts which do not fit into their philosophy. They call this "impartiality".

The hallmark of liberal education is to deny that education is inherently philosophical. But the great thinkers and educators of history have been philosophers and what is called science is really an elaborate system of philosophy with ultra specialized methods of handling specific kinds of information. The disciplines arose out of mens philosophical temperaments, they were not discovered, they were not revealed from heaven as many atheists think. They came from men who thought about the world in a specific way and applied that way of thinking to their work.