Which is more important: Secular or Religious education

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Michael, Jul 15, 2009.

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Which is more important: Secular or Religous education

  1. Secular education

    26 vote(s)
    92.9%
  2. Religious education

    2 vote(s)
    7.1%
  1. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Which is more important: Secular or Religious education?

    By "important" you can take this to mean important for the individual but also for society.

    Why?


    I think the question is pertinent, this is the sort of question politicians have to ask themselves. They only have so much money and resources to spend on their educational systems.
     
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  3. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Education should be concerned with teaching truth and facts.

    Deliberately teaching untruths or teaching things that are not known to be true but are portrayed as truth, does a diservice to everyone, and isn't education but indoctrination and dishonesty.
     
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  5. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    23,053
    Why not both? The two don't have to be mutually exclusive, ya' know.

    For the state, or public, education, I think it should be only secular. Because if it's religious also, which religious beliefs do you teach? ..there are hundreds if not thousands.

    So, see, I couldn't answer your poll because you didn't give the necessary selection.

    Baron Max
     
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  7. The Esotericist Getting the message to Garcia Valued Senior Member

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    Hmmm. . . I think a distinction needs to be drawn actually. There are in fact three kinds of education. There is 1. religious 2. compulsory government institutionalized and 3. freedom of thought to be educated however the parents best see fit.

    As long as government mandates compulsory education, we will have a problem. As long as there are "requirements" that must me met by the government, we will still have a problem.

    Education of the young is where all the power in society lies. Around the turn of the century, the elites and the big industrialists that had plans to control the worlds masses understood that the massive capitol outlays necessary for huge industrial enterprises could not be justified or indeed continued if the masses were educated with an "entrepreneurial" and "inventive" spirit. Not everyone could be a "captain of industry." Thus, it is necessary to make schools the institutions that they are, to basically brainwash, dumb people down, and make them all think the same.

    Next, it is critically important to make people, "consumers" and to make them "infantile" far into adulthood. The changes between people today and people 150 years ago are quite dramatic and it has all been accomplished purposefully through education.

    What ever way you go, if you get your education through an institution, you are doomed. They are all farces with political agendas. In government run schools, you will NEVER learn the truth about power, government, industry, mind control, or any such related topic. In fact, in regards to topics such as these, you will be inculcated with ideas that should discussions come up about these topics, you will be programed to react STRONGLY should any idea contrary to what has been programmed into you be taught.

    But, that same holds true of religious education. What do you think they are going to teach you of the Spanish inquisition? Or (if you live in America) the history of Salem Massachusetts or the honest reasons that freedom of religion was included in the constitution of the United States? Or how about do you think they will approach evolution? Or what angle do you think they will approach the dispute between Galileo and the church from? History, Biology, and several other subjects are bound to be adversely influenced by dogmatic interests.

    So you see, ANY time an institution is involved with education, the institutions interests are necessarily first, the childrens minds are second. This, is the reason I am here. I consider this board populated by societies most motivated intellects. (There aren't many left.) The swoop like vultures of the Grim Reapers of culture have sucked the souls of most of the beings left on this tiny blue planet. T.V., Sports, Video Games, popular music, Shopping, the way the imagined "obsessive need" for relationships & sex & love is constantly pushed on us in the popular media, celebrity gossip, psychology & psychiatry, and the drink and drugs we use to numb and fill the void. . . all of it takes us further from that magnificent potential we originally possessed, as we let the planet and it's collective culture and consciousness slip further into oblivion.

    The only way to break free from the mind control that has been chained to us, is to SELF-EDUCATE, like real intellectuals did in the 1700's and 1800's. Hell, if Thomas Edison were born today, they would have labeled him with ADD, given him a chemical lobotomy with some Ritalin, and he'd have ended up working in a gas station or flipping burgers. No doubt. Look it up.

    - Woodrow Wilson
    from an address to The New York City High School Teachers Association
    Jan. 9th, 1909

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  8. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    It should be ultimately balanced, half secular and half religious. However I believe that religion should have a slightly bigger role in society than secular education, just slightly bigger.
     
  9. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,502
    Depends on (among other things..) the particular context.
    For example (and I could be wrong here...), isn't there some line in US constitutional legislation about the official 'separation of church and state'?

    Here in Canada one has, on the municipal level, the option to direct one's taxes towards public or religious schools.
     
  10. lightgigantic Banned Banned

    Messages:
    16,330
    Depends what learning outcomes one is on the look out for.

    Economic development etc is the arena of secular ed.
    Liberation etc is the arena of religious ed.

    Economic development etc is sometimes labeled as preyas (grants short term happiness)
    Liberation etc is sometimes labeled as sreyas (grants long term happiness)

    Or to put it another way, not even the best economic development programs can solve the issue of suffering in the material world (on the contrary, more often than not it contributes to it).

    Essentially all that one requires is food, clothes and shelter. Any further material advancement is simply window dressing (since one essentially doesn't require more than 2 meters to sleep and owning a bakery franchise doesn't enable one to eat more bread)

    IOW economic development minus (properly applied) religious ed tends to promote greed etc
     
  11. SkinWalker Archaeology / Anthropology Moderator

    Messages:
    5,874
    A good secular education should include educating on religion, but not, perhaps, in the manner that those afflicted by the virus if religion would desire. An objective and comprehensive curriculum covering both extant and extinct religious beliefs and the cult rituals that accompany them would benefit both the individual and the society. The individual would more likely be inoculated against the virus of religion and those that accept religious superstitions would at least do so with a perspective of understanding that there are many, many such beliefs and none more right than any other.
     
  12. Bishadi Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,745
    i think i am in LOVE

    that is the most beautiful line of reasoning to address the futures (our children) education that i have ever read since being alive! :bawl:



    thank you
     
  13. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    If that was the case, then there'd never be any teaching of ancient history or even some relatively recent history ...it's mostly without factual info.

    And we'd never, ever be teaching any of the theory of evolution ...since it's almost all speculation based on some old bones that have been found.

    Yep, there'd also be no teaching of sociology ...all of that is speculation based on a few samples of social life.

    I don't know, seems if we went with only facts and truths, we'd all have a pretty limited "education", wouldn't we? 2+2=4, okay, you can graduate!

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    Baron Max
     
  14. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    11,888
    That's only a fact under certain specific conditions.
    School just got easier: go play in the sun or something...
     
  15. Bishadi Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,745
    what a funny way of thinking?

    so if i say:

    "it's a particle and a wave as they are both while the math remains completely uncertain to either; randomly speaking of course"

    can i have my toilet paper, now too?
     
  16. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    Huh? With all that garbage you typed, what are trying to say?

    Baron Max
     
  17. Lori_7 Go to church? I am the church! Registered Senior Member

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    10,515
    Institutions are crap. Institutions are our ever present scapegoat. Community is what is important.
     
  18. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,502
    The difference being...??
     
  19. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    23,049
    so you think that "bible time" should equate to the same amount of time spent teaching: History, english (or whatever language your country speaks), maths, science, sexual education, health, physical education, second language, metal work, wood work, sewing, cooking ect ect. (note these are a mix of primary and high school topics not one or the other)

    BULLSHIT

    Michael i agree 100% with you, resorces are short (and by that i mean teachers time) and to give a fair and balanced amount of time to all religions would be impossable when balanced against the sorts of things which HAVE to be taught. Religion is in no way as important as English, Maths, Politics, Law and consitution (under the banner of history and SOSE), science and Sex Ed
     
  20. Lori_7 Go to church? I am the church! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,515
    The difference being...institutions control you, instead of you controlling yourself.

    ANARCHY!
     
  21. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,485
    Alright, I can answer this from personal experience. I attended a Mennonite Brethren school for two years. Where my education was almost strictly religious. The only subject we learned that didn't have any religious anything in it was math and that's because they couldn't think of a way to squeeze religion in (aside from word problems). So I'm going to say that the best education is secular, Secular, SECULAR! When you spend all of your time learning religion, you don't spend time learning things that actually might matter in life. When I finished 7th grade I knew nothing a 7th grader was supposed to know. Ask about anything: evolution? I didn't know; ancient history? If it wasn't about Daniel being fed to the lions, Joseph and Mary walking around or Jesus, I didn't know; a great piece of literature? If it wasn't the bible, a story about someone who reads the bible, or the miserable life of someone who didn't read the bible, I didn't know. You may think that stuff doesn't matter in life, but it does. If you want your kids to learn religious values then that is what Sunday school is for. Religious education you can take it or leave it, but good luck getting into good college on exclusively a religious education.
     
  22. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,502
    As always, you miss the point.
    Community is an institution.

    And by the by, anarchy has nothing to do with either of these concepts.
     
  23. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Very interesting.

    Yeah, I think religion should in a secular way, as in archeology and sociology and even psychology. But, to be taught religion as if it were real, well, no way. I just can not see what good would come from teaching kids mainly about Xenu and Xenuic theology? It just seems like it would do more harm than good? Math, Science, Literature etc... these are important.
     

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