As for this non issue. The Province of Alberta is NOT dropping evolution from the curriculum, nor is it adding creationism to the curriculum. It is allowing parents the RIGHT to exclude their kids from subject matter that would go against their own religeous teachings.This is no different than what is allowed right now when it comes to parents having the option of opting their kids out of sex ed classes.
ger, I get what you're saying, and I'll try to keep my post respectful towards those of religious beliefs... but you know I struggle with the whole idea of organized religion and this subject is one of the key reasons why... so bear with me if you can...
The suggestion that the state should allow parents to exclude certain scientific information from their children's education for religious reasons raises at least 2 concerns for me. (btw, I do believe that allowing parents to pull kids from class for these reasons is just a PC tap dance around actually dropping curriculum - the end result is the same)
First of all, this will open a hell of a Pandora's box in terms of setting precedents. What else will religion be allowed to block from a child's education? With the proliferation of various religions within Canada, it's not at all outside the realm of possibility that allowing this could be a prelude to a flood of objections to other material that is currently taught. To my eyes, this is looking an awful lot like another huge slide downhill under the umbrella of that bastion of human rights gone awry: Political Correctness... another good idea taken so far to the extreme, it's a complete bastardization of it's original intent. IMO.
ahem... anyway, back to education and religion lolll....
In Canada, we have determined a curriculum of education that we have deemed as a nation of educators, is a
minimum standard of knowledge with which we should be arming our children to go forth and become productive and informed members of society. Arbitrarily pulling significant chunks of fact from curricula not only negates our rights as a society to insist upon a full and complete education for our children, it rather nicely creates fertile ground for the social malady of ignorance to flourish - lacking the information needed to make informed decisions when religious doctrine and science disagree is robbing children of the arena in which they will acquire those critical thinking skills I raised in my first post.
I've been taught that keeping people in the dark is one of the first tenets of crowd control. If a religion - ANY religion is to stand on its' own merit, it should be able to easily withstand a full education in any subject - without eliminating key and fundamental aspects.
The main question this raises for me is why on earth any one that's raising their kids in this country is unable or unwilling to sit their kids down at the kitchen table and discuss with them why their specific religion does not support what they've been taught in school. If a
child, once armed with facts, is able to effectively refute information based on doctrine .... well, you see how I struggle with not only religion, but the methods it has to resort to if it's to stay alive in today's society...