DEBATE - RELIGION SHOULD BE TAUGHT AT SCHOOLS (against).

AGAINST THE MOTION.

By Akshaya Ramesh

School is a place for attaining knowledge, not a battle ground for people to prove the superiority of their religion - which will eventually happen, if religion is taught at schools. Religion has already embarked upon Politics and the last thing we need is Educational Institutions associated with religion.

Religion is a highly sensitised issue. People identifying themselves by their religion are easily offended. No matter how hard we try to balance the study of each religion, their dissenting interpretation and values might be contradictory and the slightest error or negligence might be blown out of proportion! 

One religion alone has a myriad of details. Students don't just study religion at schools and feeding such a vast amount of information to youngsters is unacceptable and time-consuming.

I see no point in introducing religion study as a means to impart values and and morals, when we have parents and teachers to help us discern right and wrong, impart values and punish them for their misconducts - introducing religious studies will, in no way, encourage students to imbibe values. All they're ever going to do is take this as an insignificant subject, that they would attend for the sake of it and barely pay attention to what's happening in class.

My worthy opponents may put forth the argument that over the course of say about 12 years of schooling, it isn't impossible to cover the studies of all the religions, that it is possible to give the students a general idea of each - I absolutely agree. But what is the point in introducing "religious studies" just so they get a "general idea"? If a subject is introduced, it must be taught in detail - but obviously and unfortunately it would be virtually impossible to draft a generic curriculum that would #1 include all of the details, #2 succeed in pleasing everyone and #3 not offending anyone. The framers of the curriculum could definitely be motivated by political agenda and inevitably, the instructors will have a soft spot for their religion. There's no way we can stop them from being biased and winding up preaching their religion. Result? Children would grow up with partial knowledge and tend to be judgemental.

What will happen to atheists? We can't force them to take these classes and we can't exempt them. Will they even get a choice, in the first place? What are they to do while the believers study "religions"? Do we have to sit by and watch while the "believers" mock the "atheists" and alienate them like it's a sin for questioning the existence of God(which is probably what they'll be learning), for not believing in something that hasn't been proved yet. That's what they get for having different opinions.

Society is profoundly blemished by religious differences. It is an extremely impractical idea to introduce religious studies to facilitate tolerance and harmony among various religious groups. I do acknowledge the importance of it, but given that the aforementioned problems are more than just probable to occur, we need a more efficient and rational idea than this one.

If everyone is taught religion at school, it becomes a norm to believe. Gen Y deserves a chance to look within, choose to believe what they want and seek answers.