Religion: Training or Controversy? - Essay Sample

Introduction

In the secular world, religion is a method of training a particular belief, customs rituals and rites. In western tradition, religious teaching is referred to as a type of training that is separate from academia and which accounts religious beliefs as an essential precept. Religious has for decades remained to be controversial subjects worldwide, countries such as the USA do not fund religious education, nor have they made it a compulsory subject in the curriculum. In other countries, religious education has come from Christian confessionalism, in which the main aim is to promote religious literacy without putting more emphasis on the specific objective of the religion (James & Stern, 2019).

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Religious education has emerged to be a source of conflict in most of the government-sponsored religious learning institution because people in a different country have different religious and non-religious beliefs. Teaching religious is one of the subjects that has passionately and vigorously been debated. Both parties have quiet agreed that regardless of whether it can be shown or not, the subject is essential. In the USA, the debate on religious teaching has been complicated due to the two sub-section in the First Amendment that deals with issues of religion. The Establishment clause and the Free exercise clause. The establishment section prohibited the government from supporting religious education financially. This essay seeks to answer the question, why should religion be taught in the curriculum and why it should not be taught in the curriculum.

Why Should Religion be Part of the Curriculum?

Many argue that yes, religion should be taught in the curriculum because it is a real subject, how then is it a practical subject? Doctrine is termed as a real subject because it provides learners with ethical and moral ideas that help in instilling good behaviors and values in them. From Buddha, Christianity and Islamic belief, we learn some clauses such as "do well to other peoples and be kind to them". Religion provides and promotes character growth in learners due to the excellent training from specific doctrines and beliefs. It is considered to be a formal way of teaching that provides learners with the right materials that will benefit them in future. Many have also argued that religion will help children/people make a knowledgeable decision on the divinity to believe in. This helps the learners to have a broad awareness and well-round thought on faith and various religious cultures instead of only following what their parents tell them. In most learning institutions, religion has become a personal thing that is people are not open to other faiths, teaching religion in the curriculum would hence help children to have a broad and full spectrum of various religions (Feinberg, 2018).

Yes, religion should be part of the curriculum because it teaches ethical values, doctrines are believed to have strong moral and ethical values; therefore, people feel that it is the ideal place for children to begin. Many argue that teaching children different values of various religion would encourage personal reflection and inspire forbearance. Religion is a tool that can be used to divide and bring misconceptions amongst individuals, studying theology in the curriculum will, therefore, help in preventing divisions, non-believe and prejudice in the society.

Religion Should Not Be Taught in the Curriculum

On the contrast while religion promotes positive values, the opposers believe that the same religions will include materials that teach about violence, many will bring stories of how Koran does not condone violence and others will say that the old testaments condone horrific stories, with this in mind that this would cause a lot of confusion to the learners and hence it will be challenging to teach religion in the curriculum. Many argue that children should not be taught many religions; for example, children who are strict Christians or Islamic will find it difficult to inter- learn the two faith. It is not fair therefore to expose children to this kind of teaching since their parents back at home follows only one doctrine. Accepting people of other faith and background is a contradicting statement on teaching religion in curriculum, this is because if children are taught many religion in school it would bring confusion to the entire family (Heinz & Keane, 2018).

Many believe that religion is not the only subject in which ethical issues can be taught, the argument that many religions instill ethical morals and values to learners ill-advised. There are other ways of teaching ethical values; hence religion is not the best way to teach ethical values since certain religions have ethical questions, such as wrong values and behaviors. It is difficult for a teacher to teach all the religions; in most cases, a teacher will only teach one religion in which he or she has good knowledge. Region divides, one should look think about people of a different faith or those who do not have any belief. Therefore teaching one religion in the curriculum then we might end bringing prejudice in the classroom, people do not believe that they can only get good behaviors from a religion. In most cases, many nonbelievers will end up being mere outcasts in the classroom.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the above debate has strong arguments on whether to support or not the training of religion in the curriculum. I do not deny that teaching religion in the curriculum is essential, but I would argue that studying religion in a spiritual sense should not be done in an education set up. It is not good to bring something that is purely based on cultures, beliefs and doctrine in a classroom.

References

Feinberg, W. (2018). Religion and the Public School Curriculum. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Education, 259.

Heinz, M., Davison, K., & Keane, E. (2018). 'I will do it but religion is a very personal thing': teacher education applicants' attitudes towards teaching religion in Ireland. European Journal of Teacher Education, 41(2), 232-245.

Hilton III, J. (Ed.). (2018). Teaching Religion Using Technology in Higher Education. Routledge.

James, M., & Stern, J. (2019). Mastering primary religious education. Bloomsbury Publishing.