Faith or indoctrination?

I know you can't! I was just explaining the bit that I liked as a child. Of course I didn't like the Good Friday bit, but tbh I don't remember ever thinking about it in that much detail. Don't you think it, sort of, rolls off kids?

Thinking about it now, I hate it.

You can't have easter without good Friday. No-one prettied it up when I was little, and to judge by the things that GC come home from school saying, they are getting the same content as I did.

Sorry for the gobbledigook in my typing.

The part in the garden on Easter morning, when the women thought the risen Jesus was the gardener, is the beautiful. And when they went to fetch the others and the angel said "He is not here but is risen". I loved that.

I am not talking about Good Friday. Obviously.

I think education is an ongoing process of discovering there is rather more to what you have already learned than you knew and that applies to maths as well. I don't think you get away with saying, 'Just believe this' even with quite young children. You can stop them from discussing things with you, because they will understand particular topics are not open to debate but you can't stop them from speculating and talking to other people. That's why I reject the idea of genuine indoctrination. Yes, the story of the crucifixion is horrific but the horrific aspects are not, in my experience, presented to young children in a horrific way. The Easter story is one of hope, surely?

Heavens! - there is nothing lovely about the Easter story. It is gruesome and grotesque and so wrong that little children should be burdened with a tale of people being nailed to crosses. We would not sit 4 and 5 year olds down and talk to them about electric chairs, lethal injections, executions by firing squad.

Children are indeed not uncritical - the important thing is that they are not presented with religion as being in the same category as for instance maths. They are qualitatively different. In the one, you ask questions to learn the proofs, in the other you ask questions and are simply told it is the "truth."

Mine was a joke, too (brainwashing...)

The students too, Ana. We don't put our feet on the chairs, we clear up after making a mess, we do not say F* you to our teacher........it's a joke, anno. They might as well be articles of faith judging by how readily the young accept them.

Those examples are of information, Lilygran and can be supported empirically. They aren't doctrines which cannot be proved but have to be taken on trust through faith.

I meant your students, Lilygran, but the moment's passed...

Ana of course I did! We don't eat the pot plant. Dirty clothes go in the hamper. We don't drink milk out of the bottle. Sprouts are good for you. If you don't clean your teeth you will get cavities. And many more essential doctrines.

I think most primary school teachers do teach. 'this is what Christians believe'
'This is what Muslims believe' etc unless of course the school is a C of E school, and perhaps they do teach it as dogma. I agree that it should be presented as a set of beliefs for children to think about. If ones parents are evangelical Christians they usually give the impression that this is the only way, in my experience ( unfortunately), and for some of us took it as gospel , excuse the pun. Didn't help having a crush on the minister either.

I know of someone who was brought up in a staunch humanist household, whose mother, to everyone's astonishment, became a Christian in her 60s. Her husband of more than 40 years couldn't cope with this and walked out. It's not just the religious who indoctrinate, or show intolerance.

You mean you tried, Lilygran?

Not quite sure how you teach someone to accept anything uncritically! Two DS and all their friends questioned everything all the time when growing up. And three DGS started arguing as soon as they could string two words together. I never found any of the students I taught in forty plus years of teaching were very easy to brainwash either.

feetlebaum you must know what I mean by that.

Can anyone really say, hand on heart, that, as a child, they believed that Jesus, as a man, rose again from the dead? I remember thinking of it as a lovely story that it was nice to go along with. It Wasn't until much later in life that I started to think about it and consider how it might have happened.

We sang a hymn, "There's a home for little children, above the bright blue sky".It was a lovely thought but I did n't believe there were any buildings up there.

Books told me there were fairies in the woods. I so wanted to believe that, but I couldn't. The only difference is, I still don't believe in fairies.

Children are not so easily indoctrinated.

@Jingles "as a thirteen year old adolescent I was taught that most of the vitamins in a potato are just under skin. Have I been indoctrinated?"

Not really, no - the fact can be demonstrated,and the demonstration can be repeated. My point is that no child would come up with the beliefs of a given religion other than being taught them.

What do you mean by 'mass hysteria'?

The dictionary definition of indoctrination is to teach someone to accept a doctrine uncritically. I do think that this is what happens in school at primary level. I think that we should always encourage children's critical faculties and that they should be given the opportunity to ask questions, just as they do in any other school subject.

This is not what happens - they are told that they should thank god for their dinner (or whatever) and that Jesus is the son of god and they sing christian hymns etc. - no-one says that this is the belief of a particular religion. I think that they should say this. I would have no problem with that at all.

I am sure you were honest with your children MiceElf - no-one is suggesting otherwise. I am simply commenting on what goes on in many primary schools (I have seen it and heard it - and it certainly went on when I was at school), and saying that I do not agree with it. Schools should distinguish belief from fact and help children to understand the role and value of both.

feetlebaum argues that indoctrination is proved by the number of believers. It didn't work with him nor with many people who post on GN who describe exposure to faith presented in a quite rigid and inflexible way but also describe how they gave up on it. 'Indoctrination' is one of those words we use to describe the transmission of facts, ideas or beliefs we don't think are true. In former communist countries where religious faith was suppressed for nearly 100 years and Marxism-Leninism was aggressively taught and heresies punished, religion bounced back. And a lot of people abandoned communism.

I believe children can be taught the Christian religion without becoming "indoctrinated".

Feetlebaum as a thirteen year old adolescent I was taught that most of the vitamins in a potato are just under skin. Have I been indoctrinated?

I never went for the Billy Graham stuff. Was obviously mass hysteria.

I am not falling into any traps. And I do not need to be instructed on what I believe by Feedlebaum or anyone else for that matter.

Or, and I am / was honest with my children.

Atqui A neice of my husband was brought up in a distinctly non religious home but got involved with the evangelical wing of the C of E as a teenager.

Her mother has been told if she doesn't believe she won't go to heaven.
My sister in law is sensible enough not to fall out over this.

My father was Church of Scotland and he went his way to church on a Sunday. My mother was a strict Catholic so she went to that church with me in tow. I hated it. I went to a boarding school at a very early age until aged 17 and was taught by nuns. There was a break of around 4 years at the local primary school. By the time I left I had had a bellyful of religion. I have not entered a church since except for weddings and funerals and never intend to do so.

The swinging sixties passed me by for the same reasons as a previous poster.

And we need to tell our children that feetle.

MiceElf - please do not fall into the trap of thinking that those who reject religion for themselves have a "child's understanding" of it. I know that you did not say that, but it is a view held by many religious believers. Some of us know what we have rejected. We have looked into it and found it wanting.

Above all else we should be honest with our children; and I have great difficulty with the way religion is presented to primary school children. There is a thread of indoctrination and this is wrong. They say grace and thank god for their food - I am all for taking a moment to be thankful for what we have and to think about those less fortunate and what we might be able to offer - but the taking of god as read is not honest.

At our local primary the vicar visits, and I have talked with her about the need to be clear that she is presenting what christians believe and not universal belief. She agrees with this - but I do not know what she says when she visits.