Religion is such an important part of many people's lives. According to many people, it plays an important role in maintaining social harmony (but in reality many times it also creates disharmony). Then the question is when there are so many subjects in school like history, maths, chemistry, physics, biology, and social studies that students study in very much detail, why religion is missing? All these subjects are part of the regular school curriculum throughout the world, but there is a very little information about religion in the school books. Why? Why do many intellectuals and governments do not feel comfortable allowing discussion of religion in schools? Why do they feel it's not necessary to teach kids about various religions and help them to choose the one which they want? Most of us give them the freedom to choose their profession, the field they want to pursue their interests, or any hobby they want to pursue, so why is proper training and choice not given when it comes to religion. It's not that kids are too young to understand the complexity of religion. There are special religious schools where one can get enrolled at a very young age and even make a very good career out of that knowledge (like Madrasah, Church schools, and various Muths that kids attend). So, it looks like a very conscious and deliberate decision not to include religion as a separate subject in the school curriculum. It is offered in many universities but not in schools. Kids learn about almost everything during their formative years in school but don't get a chance to learn anything about religion systematically. They get all the information about religion from their family which is totally biased towards the religion the family follows.
I often wonder why it is so? Kids are taught religious traditions and rituals by their parents and other family members, they read many things related to their family's religion and sometimes about other religions but they never study systematically the history and social impact of religion on humanity. We all study World Wars I and II, how many people died in those conflicts, freedom struggle stories about many countries, the development of various civilizations, and many other things. We study them as a part of our history. But somehow there is not much detailed information provided about various religions and their progress (at least in Indian schools where I studied). In the books that I studied in my school days, there was only a little information about how some of the religions originated (like Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism) but nothing special about their struggle and conflicts. I am not a fan of organized religion, I think it has created more rift between people than uniting them, but I didn't know this when I was in school. I also know now that none of the major organized religions were formed by the person who is credited for their creation, Jesus didn't start Christianity, and Mohammad didn't start Islam that people practice today. They just gave some message that they thought might benefit people around them as there were so many social problems at that time. After their death, their followers wanted to propagate that message and formed an organized movement that turned into what we see today, religion within a religion. In my school days, I knew approximately how many people died in each world war, when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, why Hitler was defeated, and many other things but nothing much about religion.
I don't have any answer for why religion is not taught as a separate subject in schools. I don't even know if it should be there or not, but I am curious about what other people think about this issue. If religion is a uniting force and it teaches us peace and compassion about fellow human beings then it should be taught in schools. If we think that it divides us, and preaches hatred towards people from other religions then also it should be taught as it will force us to think about what went wrong with this institution which was supposed to bring us together, and try to rectify those mistakes. Let me know your thoughts about this.
Thanks for reading.
(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)
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