Religious symbolism in classrooms has again become an issue in European countries, with the European Court of Human Rights ruling against Italy in a case brought by a mother who wanted to ensure a secular education for her children.
She complained that in every classroom in the school in Northern Italy, there was a crucifix on the wall. Such an endorsement by a secular educational establishment of a particular religion denies the right of the child to choose whether or not to believe it. It also restricts the rights of parents to bring up their children in a manner consistent with their convictions. So said the ruling.
This recent judgment was understandably unpopular with the Catholic Church, which denounced, through a Vatican spokesman, the interference in such a "profoundly Italian matter" and argued for respecting the country's Christian heritage. Such appeals to culture, though, demanding respect for traditional symbols, are controversial not least because in Italy, the hanging of crucifixes in classrooms was established through the Lateran Treaties between Mussolini's Fascist party and the Vatican.
Mussolini negotiated the Catholic Church's acceptance and support of the fascist state by making Catholicism the state religion. Mussolini instituted a fascist education regime, backed by the Catholic Church – in the classroom, the use of fascist education books was presided over by the crucifix on the wall.
This close link between the Vatican and fascist regimes of the past inevitably suggests a parallel between political indoctrination and religious indoctrination.
It is clear that the church authorities see the ban of religious symbols in classrooms as a fundamental attack on their rights, but it is worth questioning first why this is seen as such a serious challenge, and second, why they feel it is so important to display Christian symbols to children.
The old Jesuit motto "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" is a potent indication of the power of indoctrinating young children. Religious institutions are very well aware that inculcating belief in young children is essential for maintenance of membership and recruitment into their churches. They do it because it works. Any restriction on their access to young children will mean that many more children will grow up willing to question the rationality of a belief in a God.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
As a Jew, I rather enjoy what the Eurotrash court has done; they have forced the Italian government to choose between the Vatican and the Fascists (the 1929 Lateran Accord) on the one side, and the idea of no moral indoctrination in its schools on the other. Both choices stink. It is always a pleasure for me to see a European government have to squirm.
While most Europeans don't give a damn about Christianity (which in my eyes is a good thing), they do have a sense of morals, though I have to admit that it can be puzzling at times. Having expressed my sense of schadenfreude satisfactorily, I now move to the article itself.
The author is refusing to give credit where credit is due.
The idea that you do not eat the kid next to your for lunch comes from Judaism, transmitted to Christianity. While that is not the only possible source this idea can come from, it is the source of this idea in Italy and Europe. But Bob Lloyd, the atheist, refuses to acknowledge that fact. He refuses to give credit where credit is due. Children do not have "the right not to be indoctrinated". Parents are responsible for the raising of children (it was a parent who brought this case in the first instance) and it is parents who are responsible for indoctrinating them as well. More to the point, teachers, who have individual rights to free expression, need not be restricted in wearing a kippa or tzitziot in schools, or a cross or a hijab. They, like the all adults in Europe have a certain amount of freedom of expression - or should. Europeans haven't quite figured that out yet, though.
2 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, haven't you confused the promotion of religious dogma and moral indoctrination?
They are not even remotely the same thing and this ruling has nothing to do with morality or, to use a more pertinent word, ethics.
3 - Bob Lloyd
Ruvy, there is no question about schools developing in their pupils a sense of moral values and ethical responsibility. Of course they do it.
The question is whether educational institutions should be displaying religious symbols which necessarily gives the authority of the institution to the symbol. In Christian schools, displaying the crucifix is endorsing the Christian religion and when children are growing up, they absorb values very easily - that's precisely why the Jesuits were so keen on educating children.
Very many ideas come from Judaism but that doesn't automatically make them morally right. Very many ideas come from Islam and Hinduism too, the latter being at least as old as Judaism. Religions absorb ideas from society and also transmit them. In the Christian religion, the concept of hell was a late developer, deriving from the Jewish notion of sheol. Even Hinduism has a similar concept in the notion of naraka.
Many of the religions have a notion of being a chosen people, being privileged by having been selected by a deity, and this is a very disturbing notion to inculcate into children. Islam, Judaism, and some types of Christianity try to persuade children of this idea. Just because these ideas are pushed by religion, does not make them either correct, nor socially acceptable.
We have to question whether any religious group has the right to inculcate such ideas into children when they so easily form the basis of prejudice. It would surely be far more useful to society to have them understand that some people believe these ideas.
We always judge religious morality against the morality which is desirable for society as a whole and although religious people try to do this in reverse, it's never quite convincing. They always compromise in the interests of society in the end, whether it's softening certain aspects of the Sharia courts, or using theologians to reinterpret awkward texts.
The more fundamentalist elements, of course, refuse to adjust their morality in line with the development of society. They will continue to quote from contradictory religious texts but adjust their choices more subtly. Some are responsible for the major conflicts in the world.
But I agree that it's a difficult question. Do parents really have a right to indoctrinate their children? The importance of the Strasbourg judgement, I think, is that it stops state educational institutions from pre-empting the child's right to establish their own beliefs rationally.
4 - Bob Lloyd
[The idea that you do not eat the kid next to your for lunch comes from Judaism, transmitted to Christianity. While that is not the only possible source this idea can come from, it is the source of this idea in Italy and Europe. But Bob Lloyd, the atheist, refuses to acknowledge that fact.]
Sorry Ruvy, I wasn't ignoring this comment - it just seems incoherent to me. Want to try again?
5 - Irene Wagner
Could the person with whom Bob Lloyd was agreeing in #3 please self-identify?
"But I agree that it's a difficult question. Do parents really have a right to indoctrinate their children?"
Assuming for the sake of argument that they don't: How might an atheist who is also a parent or teacher need to adjust in response to that realization?
"...it is difficult to find any specifically religious values that are not also secular values."
It's not at all difficult for me to find them, but could it be that your inability to do so stems from your opinion that a specifically religious value that isn't also a secular value is, by its very definition, not a value? How might you, as a teacher, keep your disdain for the value of contemplative prayer, for instance, a secret from your students, who look up to you as a role model, when you discuss the motivation for the lifework of historical figures such as George Washington Carver or William Wilberforce or Ghandi?
So the Ichthus Fish badges on teacher's cars have to go? What about the badges featuring be-legged Darwin fishes? or the be-legged Darwin fishes being consumed by the larger Truth fishes? You're trying to bring a major industry to its knees, so to speak, Bob, and is that really a good idea in these difficult economic times?
6 - Irene Wagner
teachers' cars
7 - Cindy
Do parents really have a right to indoctrinate their children?
I'm not really sure what that means--a 'right'? Who has a 'right' or gives a 'right'? This statement seems to imply that there are people who are not indoctrinated. So, whose right is it to indoctrinate children--parent's or state's?
If I saw anyone commonly calling for no one to indoctrinate children, I would be happy with that. I am for raising children to be thinking people who make their own choices. I find it troubling that people speak as if schools are not cultural indoctrination machines.
8 - Bob Lloyd
Irene, what specifically religious values are not also broadly accepted secular values? Care and concern for others, charity, fairness, generosity, justice, honesty, respect for people and property, the list goes on and on.
The fact that they are accepted into a religion at all, implies that they were generally acceptable to society as a whole. It is certainly true that there are many socially unacceptable religious practices and Sharia law is an obvious example, and these vary across cultures. Arguably, the Christian discrimination against women priests is another. But the central values of major religions accord very well with secular values.
There is absolutely no problem for atheists to discuss the values of George Washington Carver or William Wilberforce or Ghandi, and it is perfectly easy to consider the role of contemplative prayer in their teachings. No atheist has disdain for the values held by these people. They simply don't believe in supernatural beings.
An atheist can just as easily teach about the ideas of Voltaire, Pascal, Descartes, Hume, Hegel or Kant, without in any way sharing their particular beliefs. Just because an atheist doesn't agree with an idea, it doesn't mean they can't teach about them, critically evaluate them and respect the people who held those views.
It's important as a teacher (and I speak from experience) to be able to keep your own views out of the teaching, to provide educational space for pupils to develop their own ideas. A role model is not a template.
9 - Bob Lloyd
[I find it troubling that people speak as if schools are not cultural indoctrination machines.]
It's true that many people turn a blind eye to the indoctrination that goes on in schools with a religious bias.
But as Irene implied, schools are not there to inculcate specific religious doctrinal beliefs into children. They are there to educate children, to teach them about the world, to provide them with the thinking skills they need to possess, amongst other things, being able to distinguish between fact and idea.
It's a lamentable fact that schools are often treated as indoctrination machines by the religious bodies, certainly in the UK. Despite the formal separation of church and state in education, very many faith foundations continue to inculcate religious belief into children, pre-empting their decisions about what to believe in.
Though it's an unpopular view, I think parent's should also try not to expect that their children should adopt their particular faith. One of the reasons why religious institutions find that view so worrying, is that without the indoctrination of children, religions would need to convince people to believe, and that it infinitely harder to do than to indoctrinate children.
10 - Bob Lloyd
[So the Ichthus Fish badges on teacher's cars have to go? What about the badges featuring be-legged Darwin fishes? or the be-legged Darwin fishes being consumed by the larger Truth fishes? You're trying to bring a major industry to its knees, so to speak, Bob, and is that really a good idea in these difficult economic times?]
LOL. If we're dependent on the sale of fish badges, we're all doomed!
But I do think that teachers are in a different position to, for example, employees in a workplace of peers, because of that responsibility to manage the learning environment. While I was teaching, I didn't discuss my personal views when managing discussions amongst pupils - because I wasn't teaching my views. Likewise, I didn't sport the badges and atheist paraphernalia.
Like most teachers, I would use the questions to get the students to question themselves, justify their own beliefs, evaluate the views of others. No-one pretends it's easy to do this but it is mark of professionalism that teachers do not teach their own views as facts. More teachers need to recognise this.
11 - Irene Wagner
Now you know why I asked you so many questions. See ya 'round, Bob!
12 - Bob Lloyd
#11, Irene, you didn't get around to saying what specifically religious values are not secular values. Now we might never find out...
13 - Mark
"Faith in education signifies nothing less than belief in the possibility of deliberate direction of the formation of human disposition and intelligence. It signifies a belief that it is possible to know definitely just what specific conditions and forces operate to bring about just such and such specific results in character, intellectual attitude and capacity." John Dewey
14 - Bob Lloyd
Mark, do you think that means "faith in education" or "faith" in education? It's clearly the former. Dewey was a consistent opponent of religious instruction but also argued that a secular education was the best way of ensuring religious values - he saw the most important of the religious values as being those supported by a secular society. Interesting stuff.
15 - Mark
I thought that the ambiguity would add something.
16 - Cindy
Bob,
schools are not there to inculcate specific religious doctrinal beliefs into children.
To inculcate religious doctrine, you'll have to pick a society that has a professed state religion. This society uses schools to inculcate other things--specific cultural and socially approved biases, for example.
They [schools] are there to educate children, to teach them about the world, to provide them with the thinking skills they need to possess, amongst other things, being able to distinguish between fact and idea.
That is what we are told schools do. The idea that this is the actual function of schools, itself, is a good example of a culturally indoctrinated notion. Schools actually function best to do the opposite of what you stated.
17 - Irene Wagner
re:12. It's a semantics problem. #8, para 3 led me to believe you understood, but I was mistaken, so I will try again.
The communication glitch here concerns the meaning of the term "value." A value, to you and to me, is anything that is at least beneficial to oneself, if it harms no one else, and at best is beneficial to others as well.
There's the "people the value harms to those it helps" ratio to consider, but to simplify, and actually, to drive a point home, lets assume that nobody on the planet would value anything that benefitted some at the expense of others.
So we assume everyone on the planet has identical values, and lives in harmony. What if one day, a group of people decides to single out one person--just one person on the planet--to receive the full force of all the animus pent-up after years of being perfectly unselfish to virtually everybody else continally? Even if everyone were TRYING to be agreeable, there'd still be well-meaning nuisances. So, "the group" would elect just ONE person to represent all those "nuisance" people, and we'd all let 'im have it.
Some people think there is a Person like that, whose name is God, and they value anything that has to do with making him feel welcome and honored in their world.
Richard Dawkins expects me to treat God as a stranger--an unwelcome stranger--even in the intimate setting of my own home, "en famille."
18 - Bob Lloyd
Re:17
A value in the sense I've used it refers to the importance given to particular actions, judged against personal and social interests.
You seem to be implying that atheist values would somehow undervalue the interests of others. There's no truth in that.
You're not driving any point home, because you haven't addressed the question of religious versus secular values.
The benefit accounting that you mention is actually a utilitarian approach, a view supported by David Hume, a well-known atheist philosopher.
There is no reason to assume that atheist ethics and morality assumes that everyone has identical values. Far from it. Atheists simply don't believe in supernatural beings - and that's it. They're not amoral or unethical people at all. They just don't believe in gods.
So it's not a semantic problem at all. The values which are socially cherished are secular values, not at all specifically religious. You haven't mentioned anything which is a specifically religious value - you've referred to a religious belief, which is quite different.
And it really doesn't matter what Richard Dawkins wants or doesn't want you to think. And in any case, I think you are probably misrepresenting him - he almost certainly just wants you to think rationally about beliefs and their reasons. I can't imagine him commenting on how people ought to relate to a superbeing.
19 - Irene Wagner
That being understood (I hope), there is enough common ground in the way we define "a value" for us to agree on a set of secular graces-- e.g., kindness, generosity-- that we'd hope a child going to our public school, or State-run school, would adopt as his own values.
And we'd train, and try to set a good example, and hope, but couldn't EXPECT a student to adopt those values, any more than a parent can realistically EXPECT that a child will relate to God in a particular way, if at all.
20 - Irene Wagner
I was not at ALL implying that atheist values would undervalue the interests of others. I'm not sure how you derived that from my hypothetical scenario in which the interests of everyone were valued by everyone else
It's late. That may account for a lot of the confusion, too. In an abundance of words...
21 - Irene Wagner
You gave a definition of “value” in #18: the importance given to particular actions, judged against personal and social interests. It describes the virtues and virtuous practices, which, were they to be highlighted in the curricula of State-run schools, would cause offense to neither one of us.
That definition of “value” also covers “specifically religious values that are not also secular values.” Gratitude to God has specifically religious value, to God and to the people manifesting it, so it meets the “importance judged against personal interest” criterion for being a value, twice in my opinion.
The ability to respond is wonderful, to be able to think, and create, and react joyfully to the creativity of others. God gave that to us with the expectation that we’d be using it to communicate with him occasionally, too.
It’s a value I want my children to develop early, so they can walk in a state of “attentiveness to wonder” not only to all that is amazing in nature generally, but to that which is meant by Him to catch their attention specifically. I want them to be convinced of his goodness by actively looking for it, responding to it when they find it, so they’ll have a perspective on reality that will carry them through the dark times, and help them to support others through theirs.
I want all those things for them, but I can’t “expect” it into them. Dawkins expects me to swing too far to the opposite extreme.
I shall disappoint him.
Dawkins asks. "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?"
22 - Bob Lloyd
[The ability to respond is wonderful, to be able to think, and create, and react joyfully to the creativity of others. God gave that to us with the expectation that we’d be using it to communicate with him occasionally, too.]
It's really hard for me to see how that belief that such ability to react is god-given in any way counts as a value.
That people should be considerate of others and appreciative of them, is a value, and is a secular value and has no dependence at all on any religious beliefs.
Having an expectation that children will specifically believe in a god as providing such capabilities flies in the face of reason. Children are perfectly capable of appreciating the tremendous variety of nature without in any way needing to subscribe to religious faith.
The attentiveness to wonder that you mention is not about children being attentive to nature, but being attentive to the expectation that they should believe in a deity. That's just the conflict of values that religion introduces.
Children can and should be encouraged to think about nature, enquire about it, study it, understand it, but why, oh why, should they have to inherit the beliefs of their parents?
Dawkins seems to be asking a very reasonable question. Having encouraged children to be inquisitive and attentive to nature, is it then reasonable to encourage them to believe in a deity? We teach them in schools about the value of evidence and experiment, send them to science classes so they understand that an idea is not the same as a fact, and then expect them to believe things that are not evidenced in the slightest, and actually fly in the face of the available evidence?
It's interesting how many people seem to be happy that their children learn about universal physical laws and the value of evidence and experiment, but also expect them to believe in deities. Isn't that undermining the child's growing rationality?
23 - roger nowosielski
Irene,
I'm afraid I'd have to agree with Lloyd here insofar as the alleged distinction between religious and secular values is concerned. The claim that all values have descended from religious values is strictly a matter of religious belief and need not be recognized by anyone who doesn't share those beliefs. I'd rather think of "the religious impulse" as part of a more general, human impulse and therefore but a segment of general human culture - but one language game among many. Likewise with values, which are general human values to begin with, and later appropriated by the religious cultures for their own purposes as if their own. And although the idea of conscience and our sense of right and wrong will never, I'm afraid, be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, I'm inclined to believe that the idea of functionality was the original idea that gave rise to our notion of values, ethics and morality (just art has evolved from artifice and technical skill in the realm of aesthetics).
Which isn't to say that the grounding of our basic moral nature in a supernatural being is necessarily misdirected and off the wall. There is a sense in which viewing ourselves as not the masters of the universe is more right-headed than asserting the contrary. But this is a matter of human growth, maturity and belief, and ultimately, subjective. It is for each individual to decide for themselves. So no, I can't think of specifically "religious values." Even the notion of "contemplative prayer" has its counterparts in other cultures - such as "meditation" (in Buddhism) or simply "reflection" or "communion with oneself" in a more general setting.
Your point, however, in #5 is well taken, and I quote:
"But I agree that it's a difficult question. Do parents really have a right to indoctrinate their children?" (Lloyd)
"Assuming for the sake of argument that they don't: How might an atheist who is also a parent or teacher need to adjust in response to that realization?" (Irene)
The purported sensibility of Lloyd's question hinges, of course, on the notion of indoctrination which he cleverly smuggles in - and given the limited context of his article and the point he's trying to drive across, he's justified to do so - a purported sensibility you're trying to pierce through by enlarging the discussion to encompass the notion of education. And given this, properly enlarged context, your hypothetical question is indeed well taken: for "how might an atheist who is also a parent or teacher need to adjust in response to that realization [namely, that parents have no right to indoctrinate (read: 'teach, educate') their children]?"
What kind of a world would it be if we deemed it unnatural or wrong to try to teach our children the kind of values we believe in? It's a kind of antiseptic, clinical and unrealistic environment that only an atheist can imagine for themselves and the only one in which he or she is comfortable at - a world in which only facts are teachable and the realm of values is left outside the education project. So yes, your scenario is a challenging one and well taken.
Mark's comment in #15 is also well taken. "Faith" and "belief" apparently are dirty words in an atheist's vocabulary - so intent they are on the notion of certainty that they're unwilling to grant the existence of a gap between belief and knowledge and the proper human response of acknowledging such a gap. That's why the world of facts and anything having to do with "science" holds such an allure for them - out of their desperate need for certainty.
Ultimately, of course, it's just another emotional response, different only in kind from that of an unbeliever. So if there's a moral or a happy ending to this story, it's that we're all in the same boat.
24 - roger nowosielski
"different only in kind from that of a believer."
25 - Bob Lloyd
Roger, welcome to the discussion.
There is a distinction made between "indoctrinate" and "educate" which is that those who are indoctrinated are discouraged from criticism, whereas those who are educated are encouraged to do so. That's why instead of surreptitiously introducing the notion of indoctrination, I stated it plainly. Indoctrination into religious beliefs is to be contrasted with educating about beliefs. The former is not concerned with critical evaluation, the latter is.
There is no need to claim that atheists would avoid teaching children about their values. As I said explicitly, teachers who are atheist teach about values, just as other teachers do. In my own case, I consciously avoided teaching my own beliefs as would any principled professional teacher.
Atheism is not, as is popularly depicted, devoid of values concerned only with the factual. That's a travesty. Atheism is distinguished only by not believing in deities. That's all. Atheists are just as personable, emotional, creative, gregarious, sociable, ethical, principled and constructive as anyone else. They don't espouse some barren intellectual landscape but recognise the richness of nature, human potential, and the diversity of societies just like everyone else. They just don't believe in gods, that's all.
Nor, as is popularly misconstrued, do atheists demand certainty. The very essence of science is that knowledge is contingent, awaiting better explanations, more detail, more observation, more consistent theories. Scientists, contrary to popular belief do not claim certainty. But they do generally have excellent reasons and evidence for the statements they make.