Ethics of teaching young kids religion

[Jeremy]

When I was in the 6th grade, I was a finalist in our school spelling bee. It was me against Raj Patel. And I mispelled, in front of the entire school, the word ‘failure’.

[mikep]

I don't think that's true. I think you can bring up children telling them all the different things people believe, without focusing on any particular belief, and without telling them whether these beliefs are true or not.

hypothetical situation:
Jeremy Jr. (age 6) asks, "This religious studies education is all well and good, dad, but what do YOU believe?"

[Jeremy]

I would probably be straight forward and tell the child what I believe, but you could them that it wasn't important what you believed, only important that they made their own choices about what religious view to hold, that would be maintaining constancy with what I claimed was possible about an objective religious upbringing.

[james]

i would smack the kid until it repeated everything i declared as law

[Langstaff]

[Benjaminzors]

I was raised without a religion but was taught strong morals.

Emily, you weren't by any chance raised Unitarian, were you? (my wife was)

Hey o_o. I'm a Unitarian Universalist. I'm surprised someone brought it up, we're not really all that common.

I wasn't raised Unitarian, didn't find it until high-school really when my parents split (mom was raised UU, dad was strictly against any form of organized religion for some reason which kept us kids out of it, started going to a youth group after that, ya get the idea).

But anyway, this might be intriguing to some of you (maybe not) but in fact there exists an "organized religion" that doesn't preach dogma, has no offical creed, and is unified soley by the belief in each individual's right to their own search for personal truth.

As such I think (and I'm probably biased) that the UUs have a solid means of educating childern about religion thats not preached and (imo) doesn't force any kind of creed. In sunday school, instead of kids being force-fed that Jesus loves them and they're going to burn forever in hell if they're not good little girls and boys, kids actually learn about the different major religions around the world, what they believe, and what it means to those people that believe it. They are also taught the bible stories, not from a litteral perspective, but from an objective perspective, everything is open for discussion and debate.

Seems like a well-informed route to self definition to me.

Anywho back on topic:

I have significant amounts of family that are very devout catholic, and they all have about 10 kids, and they've all had the religion grained into every fiber of their being before they're ever given a chance to hear the term "free thought." We had thanksgiving once in the basement of their church (typically the kids place in the church) and I felt physically ill as I looked around at all the constant propaganda, I couldn't take it and left early.

Some things just seem wrong to me, alas, as stated previously: Whether it's ethical or not depends entirely on perspective, and unless you can change the perspective of the parents that their religion has the possibility of being the "wrong" religion for their child, and that their child is deserving of their own choice of religious views, there's not much anyone can do about it .