[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by GoldHeart

I know Athieism isn't a belief but I'm saying if parents are atheists it doesn't always mean the kids will stay NON religious.

Nothing wrong with teaching Religious Education in schools as long as it's taught properly, when you're being taught in schools unless it's a Catholic school etc I can't imagine them teaching it as "fact" . They never did that when I was at school , it was more a case of this is what it says and you make your minds up .

Even when kids showed disinterest or said they don't believe ,the teacher wouldn't challenge the student ,it was just a response of " well if you don't believe it ok ,I'm just telling you the story " etc .



However I think RE exams were extremely difficult back then , and I wonder what point of view they wanted people to use . Maybe religious studies are different today.

Well like I said 90+% of state schools here are Catholic ethos plus they gave priority to kids who were baptised (which has literally only just been made illegal to do this year) It's a funny one because like i said the schools in Ireland were all set up by the Catholic Church which is why they've got their grip still on there however they're now paid for by tax payers so there's the conflict. Non denominational schools are few and far between so you'd end up having to travel and the kids not wanting to do that because they'll want friends in the area etc etc and logistically it's a nightmare so people were literally baptising their kids to get them into schools and then they had to go to religion class which isn't a fact based class it's further indoctrination. Both my kids are in Secondary school now so the last couple of years I've been putting N/A on the part where it asks what religion they are just to see if anyone would say anything but they haven't