religious education

Last week, the Ohio House of Representatives passed HB 164, the “Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019.  The purpose of the bill is to protect the rights of students to religious expressions without penalty in the public school classroom.  Under this bill, a student cannot be given a punative grade for simply expressing their religious views as part of a class assignment.  The bill sounds sensible enough, given the many documented instances of students receiving poor grades on otherwise well written assignments merely because a teacher disagreed with the student’s religious views of the subject.  A key part of the bill says that no school… “shall prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, Read More ›

That’s being suggested in Britain: Humanists UK welcomed the recommendation that humanist beliefs and values be taught. In general, the commission’s conclusions were a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to save the academically serious teaching of religious and non-religious worldviews in our schools”, said Andrew Copson. But the Catholic Education Service said the report was “not so much an attempt to improve RE as to fundamentally change its character … The quality of religious education is not improved by teaching less religion.”Harriet Sherwood, “Call for atheism to be included in religious education” at The Guardian Surely the Catholic Education Service is missing the point. Atheism is a religious stance and an important one, given that many prominent people are atheists. Teaching beliefs other than Read More ›