Faith school boom 'creates division'

"The rapid growth of faith-based schools under the previous federal government has threatened the social cohesion of the nation, according to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's most senior education adviser.

[...]

Professor McGaw's remarks reflect a profound shift in education in the past two decades, with more than 200,000 children — almost 40% of non-government school students — now attending a religious school outside the main Catholic, Anglican and Uniting systems.
The change has meant that, for instance, increasing numbers of children are taught creationism as part of their science classes."

The Age, Australia, February 25, 2008

Bulgaria debates bringing religious studies back into schools

"[...] Under a bid to promote respect for minority rights, optional studies on Christianity or Islam were actually introduced about a decade ago though only 14,000 students nationwide follow the course on their respective religion.
But these classes "are attracting less and less interest," said an opponent to the government's plan, Lyutfi Mestan, [...] "Instead of teaching tolerance, this type of religious study has divided pupils," he insisted.[...]
During communism, church-going was not tolerated so when the regime fell in 1989, people reacted by crowding back into churches. Traditional rituals were revived for Easter and Christmas and are still largely followed, even if only 30 percent of Bulgarians define themselves as believers.

[...]

Many Bulgarians still confuse religious faith and superstition, a 2004 Gallup poll showed.
Half of all people in this east European country still believe in black magic and fear the evil eye, while one in five people believe ghosts exist, black cats bring bad luck and that one can talk to the dead, according to the poll.
Gallup analyst Andrey Raychev suggested that imposing religious studies on an atheist population could be "dangerous" if religion was only presented in a good light without discussing the Crusades, the Inquisition or moments when religious fervor led to repression and abuse.
This would be "a grave error", he insisted.

AFP, 23. February 2008

52 per cent say “no” to faith schools and religious symbols

"Muslim headscarves, crucifixes and Sikh bangles should be banned at schools unless they can be incorporated into the dress code, most parents polled in a survey by Reader’s Digest said. Eighty-three per cent feel such religious symbols are unacceptable, while more than half (52 per cent) of parents also disapprove of faith schools, according to the poll by Reader’s Digest."

National Secular Society, 14. September 2007

British Children told to copy lines from Muslim Call To Prayer - to practise their handwriting

Junior schoolchildren were told to copy lines of a Muslim prayer - for handwriting practice. The Call To Prayer copied by ten-year-olds at Newlands Primary School in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, included the lines "Allah is the greatest" and "there is no god but Allah". Angry parent Hayley Clayton told the Sun: "The explanation was that the children were learning about Islam in RE. "But this was like taking an oath. A Muslim child would never be asked to write a Bible passage."
Her stepson Billy Darbyshire was one of the classmates told by his teacher, deputy head Helen Green, to copy the prayer. "Why didn't she choose a passage from a normal story book to teach handwriting?" When she pointed out that three of the 7/7 suicide bombers came from Leeds just 15 miles away, Mrs Green acknowleged that it was a "sensitive issue". "If it's sensitive, why choose that prayer?" she asked.
Billy's dad Martin said there were no Muslims in the class."

Daily Mail, 6th August 2007

Religious Education gives distorted view

"A major new report from Ofsted, the schools inspection body, says that the Religious Education guidelines published in 2004 have failed to make the subject relevant to modern life and don't properly explore the issues. The report says that pupils should be given a more sophisticated understanding of religion's role in the world. Teaching should take a "warts and all" approach that acknowledges that religion can be a force for evil as well as good. "Pupils should be taught that religion is complex," says the report, "and should be given the opportunity to explore that ambiguity."
The report, Making Sense of Religion, found the teaching of Christianity was "often much less rigorous and more fragmented" than carefully sequenced units of work on other faiths. "Work on specific aspects of Christianity, such as the life of Jesus or the Bible, is isolated from an investigation of the religion itself." GCSE syllabuses paid little attention to issues related to religion's role and significance in contemporary Britain.

[...]

When the guidelines were first published by the QCA, the NSS condemned them as "a charter for indoctrination". We said at the time that they did not explore all sides of religious influence in the world, bad and good, but were more like a tool for proselytisers in schools. Now it seems Ofsted has come to the same conclusion."

secularism.org.uk Fri, 29 Jun 2007

[Survey] Is There Disdain For Evangelicals In the Classroom?

"Tobin asked professors at all kinds of colleges -- public and private, secular and religious, two-year and four-year -- to rate their feelings toward various religious groups, from very warm or favorable to very cool or unfavorable. He said he designed the question primarily to gauge anti-Semitism but found that professors expressed positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Roman Catholics and most other religious groups.

The only groups that elicited highly negative responses were evangelical Christians and Mormons.

[...]

Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians probably have two causes: "the particular kind of Republican Party activism that some evangelicals have engaged in over the years, as well as what faculty perceive as the opposition to scientific objectivity among some evangelicals.""

Washington Post, May 5, 2007

A whining article (In the Moonie-owned Washington Post), but interesting nevertheless. It seems being anti-science does not give Evangelicals much credit in classrooms. Probably as little credit as science get in their churches.