The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #130546 Message #2940289
Posted By: Joe Offer
05-Jul-10 - 05:02 PM
Thread Name: Does Religion Deny Music to Children?
Subject: RE: Does Religion Deny Music to Children?
A huge number of people seem to want to deal with disagreement by the suppression of thinking that conflicts with their own. This "suppressive" philosophy seems to be found throughout the full spectrum of philosophical and religious thinking, but particularly at the extreme ends. There are atheists who cannot bear to hear religious ideas, and there are "God-botherers" who cannot stand it if a "Godless atheist" opens his/her mouth.
These people seem to think that the purpose of education is indoctrination, teaching what to think instead of how to think. How do you deal with people like this in a school system, and in other public arenas? I honestly don't know. I feel that public schools here in California have catered too much to these interests, to the point that many things cannot be spoken of in California schools for fear of offending one group or another. That's part of the reason why I sent my kids to Catholic schools in the 1980s. In recent years, the forces of suppressive Catholics have been attacking Catholic schools in my area. They've had success in some local Catholic elementary schools, but so far not in the Catholic high schools and colleges in this area. [I homeschooled my stepson for four years, until he graduated from high school two years ago. I'm quite pleased with the results. My own kids turned out pretty well, too - and please note that my stepson and my children do not consider themselves to be Catholic.]
I think one way to deal with this issue, is to avoid all attempts to use schools for indoctrination for any purpose, no matter how noble. Even the teaching of patriotism can be detrimental to real education. Recognize that the job of education is to expose students to ideas and information, and teach them to use their own intellects to evaluate those ideas. That demands fairly strict impartiality, and I think it also requires respect for all schools of thought, both religious and nonreligious. If Muslims and Christian fundamentalists and atheists are convinced that schools are respectful of them and of what is sacred to them, that may go a long way toward assuaging their fears about what will happen to their children in schools.
-Joe Offer, "Radical Moderate"-