Should religious content be banned in Swedish schools?

  • Thread starter Moridin
  • Start date
In summary: I do have a problem of people teaching specific beliefs as being THE one and only true belief exclusive of other beliefs, and I do have a problem with mysticism or mythology taught as being the reality.I have a problem with teaching religion in the public classroom as an alternative to science. Religion should only be taught in a religious setting.This summary is about the Swedish government cracking down on teaching religion in independent faith schools. The new rules will ban biology teachers from teaching creationism alongside evolution in independent faith schools. The Swedish National Agency for Education will also increase the number of inspections of both council-run and independent schools. Finally, a ban on anonymous financial donations to schools will be implemented.
  • #1
Moridin
692
3
I'm from Sweden and I'd though that this would be interesting for the global community.

The Swedish government is to crack down on the role religion plays in independent faith schools. The new rules will include a ban on biology teachers teaching creationism or 'intelligent design' alongside evolution.

"Pupils must be protected from all forms of fundamentalism," said Education Minister Jan Björklund to Dagens Nyheter. [...] Björklund also said the Swedish National Agency for Education would double the number of inspections of both council-run and independent schools. He also announced a ban on anonymous financial donations to schools and said he would make it easier to close schools that were breaking the rules.

[...]

Björklund also said the Swedish National Agency for Education would double the number of inspections of both council-run and independent schools. He also announced a ban on anonymous financial donations to schools and said he would make it easier to close schools that were breaking the rules.

http://www.thelocal.se/8790/20071015/ [Broken]

Confessional education is getting banned

The education that is controlled by the curriculum should be non confessional. That message was given by school minister Jan Björklund at a press conference Monday.

By confessional, he means the education that aims to a confession or that puts forward a certain conviction of the true teaching. According to Dagens Nyheter, a biology teacher [in a religious free school] will not be allowed to present the biblical account of creation side-by-side with evolution

http://www.dagen.se/dagen/Article.aspx?ID=143564 [Broken] (Swedish, but translated above)

Religious content shall be banned in schools. That's a decision made by the leaders of the Alliance, the four-party coalition that currently leads Sweden. They will also stop hidden contributions and a mismanaged school will be shut down within 2 weeks. "The pupils must be protected against all forms of fundamentalism" say Jan Björklund, the Swedish education minister.

[...]

Now it's crystal clear; this content will not be allowed. Some statements made by free-schools have given us a worrying picture, say Jan Björklund.

It will still be allowed to read morning prayer, but as soon as the real teachings begin, it must follow the same content that is taught by the other schools.

Problems in religious free schools has been discussed a lot the last few years. Minister of Immigration Nyamko Sabuni (fp) has wanted to ban religious free schools entirely, and as late as last month, the pary secretary of the Social Democrats Marita Ulvskog has called them 'child prisons'.

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1042&a=704437 [Broken] (Swedish, but translated above)

Swedish Social Democrats [current opposition; actually larger than the ruling government according to recent polls] demands a quick end to religious schools. The Social Democrats demands that the current government quickly create a bill to change the law so that some religious schools can be stopped.

[The Social Democrats is the largest Swedish party and the most likely to win next election]

http://www.dagen.se/dagen/Article.aspx?ID=143546 [Broken] (Swedish, but translated above)

It is all over the news.
 
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  • #2
that clears things up...


Bush isn't a Swede
 
  • #3
Wow, imagine that, schools being required to actually teach real science.
 
  • #4
No way that would fly here. Public schools, yes. However, I take this as mandating what is taught in private schools as well. That is a bit too intrusive for my tastes. BTW, I'm an agnostic, so I do not have any axe to grind here.
 
  • #5
Independent faith schools in Sweden may be privately owned, but they are largely funded by the government. The country also has a national education standard that apply to all schools.
 
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  • #6
Moridin said:
The country also have a national education standard that apply to all schools.

I wish we had a similar standard here. I have no problem with religious schools teaching religious beliefs, but I have a problem with them handicapping their students by teaching them religious beliefs are science (or any other subject other than religion).
 
  • #7
Moonbear said:
I wish we had a similar standard here. I have no problem with religious schools teaching religious beliefs, but I have a problem with them handicapping their students by teaching them religious beliefs are science (or any other subject other than religion).
I have no problem with comparative religion or teaching factual information about religious belief, just as we teach or study different political, sociological or economic systems, philosophies and practices.

I do have a problem of people teaching specific beliefs as being THE one and only true belief exclusive of other beliefs, and I do have a problem with mysticism or mythology taught as being the reality.

And in no way should religion be taught in the public classroom as an alternative to science.
 
  • #8
Moonbear said:
I have a problem with them handicapping their students by teaching them religious beliefs are science (or any other subject other than religion).
Agreed. But nor should religion be excised from a Science class, or any other class. A religous person has additional educational needs; for example, a political science course in a religious school ought to address the religious issues in civic participation. And if their dogma leads them to significantly different a priori beliefs on some topics, a science class should (properly!) discuss where and how Bayesian inference would lead them to different conclusions than the mainstream.
 
  • #9
PZ Myers "Needs more Swedes":
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/needs_more_swedes.php [Broken]




More comments on Panda'sThumb:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/10/sweden-bans-bio.html

Sweden’s centre-right coalition government said in a statement it had agreed to clarify regulations to remove any leeway for religious views to influence the curriculum. “This is naturally brought about by the fact that different viewpoints are being discussed, for instance about the creation of the world - one based on science and one on religious views,” Education Minister Jan Bjorklund told a news conference. “Teaching in school must have a scientific basis.” The Council of Europe this month voted to urge European schools to strongly oppose teaching creationism and intelligent design in science classes, saying attacks on the theory of evolution were rooted in religious extremism. Creationism argues God made the world in six days as set out in the Bible while proponents of intelligent design say some life forms are too complex to have evolved without the aid of a higher intelligence. While most schools in Sweden are run by municipalities, a minority are run by various religious groups. Bjorklund said the government, of which the Christian Democrats are a junior member, would restructure supervision of Sweden’s schools and double funding for inspections to about 300 million Swedish crowns (NZ$61.1 million).
 
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  • #10
D H said:
No way that would fly here. Public schools, yes. However, I take this as mandating what is taught in private schools as well. That is a bit too intrusive for my tastes.
Not for mine. I see little difference between preaching religious dogma to children and raising them on a daily dose of crack cocaine - both cause long-term damage to the brain.
 
  • #11
Hurkyl said:
Agreed. But nor should religion be excised from a Science class, or any other class. A religous person has additional educational needs; for example, a political science course in a religious school ought to address the religious issues in civic participation. And if their dogma leads them to significantly different a priori beliefs on some topics, a science class should (properly!) discuss where and how Bayesian inference would lead them to different conclusions than the mainstream.
The difficulty here is the wide variety of religious axioms that you'd have to separately cover. The Young Earth Creationist, the Scientologist, the Mormon...will all need different arguments.
 
  • #12
Gokul43201 said:
Not for mine. I see little difference between preaching religious dogma to children and raising them on a daily dose of crack cocaine - both cause long-term damage to the brain.

Then you clearly know very little about crack cocaine.
 
  • #13
Ivan Seeking said:
Then you clearly know very little about crack cocaine.
Okay, I was being a little facetious. But only a little. :wink:

Would it make you happier if I replaced the crack cocaine with a heavy knock on the head?
 
  • #14
Gokul43201 said:
Okay, I was being a little facetious. But only a little. :wink:

Would it make you happier if I replaced the crack cocaine with a heavy knock on the head?

Many of the goups out there are terrifying; even speaking as someone who attended a Catholic school and has been very religious. But, yes, having watched people go down on drugs, I found that statement pretty offensive [philosphically speaking].

We had one hour of religion each day and the rest was spent doing the basics. We also got a better education [including science and math] than did most kids in the public schools, which is primarily why my parents scrimped and scraped to send us there [there were no tax credits back then]. All in all I would have to say that it was a positive experience.

Evolution was taught without equivocation.
 
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  • #15
Having seen young, pliable minds (incredibly wonderful things, IMO) being destroyed by indoctrination, I find any downplaying of such "murder" pretty offensive.
 
  • #16
As far as I know, the catholic schools here in the Chicago Archdioceses do not teach creationism/ID in their biology classes.

And while this is not strictly on-topic, in case anyone missed this, you might want to read this preprint that appeared today on ArXiv (actually, it appeared late last night). It reports on a class for science educators on the consideration of whether ID is a science or not. However, that isn't the important aspect, because once everyone understood what "science" is and what ID is, everyone was unanimous in proclaiming that ID isn't a science. What is more important and disturbing is that a small percentage of the participant still, even after acknowledging that ID isn't a science, that it still should be taught in a science class as an "alternative"!

As the report indicated, it is difficult to reconcile with this inconsistency.

Zz.
 
  • #17
Gokul43201 said:
Having seen young, pliable minds (incredibly wonderful things, IMO) being destroyed by indoctrination, I find any downplaying of such "murder" pretty offensive.

Do you mean any religion, or just the fundamentalists and cults.
 
  • #18
According to the 2003 Volunteer Supplement to the Current Population Survey (conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics), 35 percent of Americans devote the greatest amount of their volunteer time to religious organizations and 41 percent volunteer at a religious organization to at least some extent, making religious organizations the most popular site for volunteering. Based on data from the volunteer management survey, we now know that 83 percent of congregations participate in or support social service, community development, or neighborhood organizing projects and 21 percent of America's charities include religious practices and faith as a core part of their mission.
http://www.urban.org/publications/411143.html

What a bunch of crack addicts. Someone must have hit them in the head! :biggrin:
 
  • #19
Gokul43201 said:
The difficulty here is the wide variety of religious axioms that you'd have to separately cover. The Young Earth Creationist, the Scientologist, the Mormon...will all need different arguments.
Why would a Catholic school have to cover those?
 
  • #20
Hurkyl said:
Why would a Catholic school have to cover those?
Oops, guess I misinterpreted what you said. In any case, do you honestly expect say, a Catholic school, to stand by the standards you've set for it? Do you think a majority of them currently do?

And to Ivan, yes, the large part of the Earth's population has been hit on the head repeatedly. A tiny fraction of these people have recovered.
 
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  • #21
Gokul43201 said:
Oops, guess I misinterpreted what you said. In any case, do you honestly expect say, a Catholic school, to stand by the standards you've set for it? Do you think a majority of them currently do?

And to Ivan, yes, the large part of the Earth's population has been hit on the head repeatedly. A tiny fraction of these people have recovered.
I'm cynical enough to believe that most schools (not just religious) don't live up to a reasonable standard.

Though I do admit I imagine what I stated for a religious science class would be particularly difficult to achieve, due to the vehement criticism many express whenever religion and science get anywhere close to one another.
 
  • #22
And if their dogma leads them to significantly different a priori beliefs on some topics, a science class should (properly!) discuss where and how Bayesian inference would lead them to different conclusions than the mainstream.

Shouldn't science belong in science class and religious questions such as 'how does this and that part of science affect our beliefs' belong in religious studies, comparative religion or, with all other options exhausted, at home?

An extrapolated example would be the Holocaust and a given religion that denies it. Should history lessons spend time on discuss where and how Bayesian inference would lead them to a different considerations than mainstream?
 
  • #23
Moridin said:
I'm from Sweden and I'd though that this would be interesting for the global community.
Thanks, I reposted a link to here in another forum, I trust you don't mind.

Link:
http://carnuts.us/viewtopic.php?t=2060 [Broken]
 
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  • #24
Moridin said:
Shouldn't science belong in science class and religious questions such as 'how does this and that part of science affect our beliefs' belong in religious studies, comparative religion or, with all other options exhausted, at home?
Science does belong in science class; isn't that the whole point? A religious person shouldn't have to turn to someone with little or no scientific training to interpret the results of experiment. But if you force their religious context to be kept out of science class, this is exactly what you are forcing them to do.

(Of course, I agree that nonscience should not be taught as science)
 
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1. What is the reason behind Sweden banning creationism and intelligent design?

The ban on creationism and intelligent design in Sweden is a result of their strong commitment to scientific evidence and the separation of church and state. The Swedish government believes that these beliefs have no place in the country's educational system, which is based on scientific principles.

2. How does this ban affect religious freedom in Sweden?

The ban does not restrict individuals from holding their own personal beliefs about creationism or intelligent design. It only prohibits the teaching of these beliefs in schools and universities, which are meant to provide a neutral and evidence-based education for all students.

3. Is this ban unique to Sweden or are there other countries that have similar policies?

Sweden is not the only country that has banned the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in schools. Other countries such as Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands have also implemented similar bans, while others have chosen to leave it up to individual schools to decide on their own curriculum.

4. How will this ban be enforced in schools?

The Swedish government has not specified how they will enforce the ban in schools, but it is expected that it will be monitored through regular school inspections and any violations may result in disciplinary action. Additionally, teachers are expected to follow the curriculum set by the government, which does not include creationism or intelligent design.

5. What impact will this ban have on students' education?

The ban is not expected to have a significant impact on students' education as it only applies to the teaching of creationism and intelligent design. The Swedish education system is still focused on providing students with a comprehensive and evidence-based education in all subjects, including science. Students are also free to explore and discuss their own personal beliefs outside of school.

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