There is an important and common misconception in the US that the
freedom of religion guaranteed to us under the first ammendment is
actually a freedom from religion. Schools in this country were once
quite Christian, too Christian. I'm not here to argue that, over the
years that was taken out of schools. Once it was gone, the people
against religion tried to further remove any discussion or mention of
religion in school. Teachers who choose to read to themselves there
Bible during a class silent reading time are fired. Schools take out
mention of religion or the Bible out of history classes. They went
from the good step of taking out teaching of religion to the bad step
of taking out acknowledgement of religion. Many places now do their
best to pretend it doesn't exist. This is nearing violating the first
amendment by establishing Atheism as our national religion.
The point being made here is that we are going the wrong way. We now
teach students ignorance when it comes to religion. It is ignorance
that breeds the intolerance and misunderstanding towards religion that
we see today. Why do so many Americans have such warped views of
Islam? It is easy to blame the government, yet I don't believe that to
be the core of the problem. Don't we teach that more knowledge leads
to better understanding? Why then is ignorance the preferred method of
dealing with religion? Doesn't religion play an incredibly important
part in most of the worlds cultures?
What this country really needs is general religion education. I'm not
talking about the kind one would recieve from their church, temple, or
whatever. This would provide general knowledge on religions of the
world. This class would give an unbiased(or as close as actually
possible to unbiased) look at the major beliefs, events, and
difference between major world religions. There wouldn't be anymore of
an opportunity for a teacher to insert a certain slant than there
already is in any other class. We also need to stop the changing of
history, students should know that Christianity played a far larger
role in the creation of the US and its historical documents than did
Hinduism or any other religion. They should be able to learn how
certain religions influenced almost everything in history.
The idea that we should teach religious ignorance is hurting us, and
leading us to a place that cannot be described as good.