Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Small victories


I read with pleasure today that a recent High Court legal case (that I posted about earlier this month) to do with our religious education curriculum not including humanism (or non-belief); has been won by the three families who brought the case; yay!

When it comes to education (as opposed to indoctrination) it seems obvious to me that equality is better than preferential treatment and that public religious education should properly reflect the plurality of beliefs in our society as they are now and not as they were in the 18th century. For example, it's baffling why people would think that covering "Sikhism" (400,000 people) is more important educationally than the non-belief of over 14 million people in our country today (and probably many more!). Now, of course, I have nothing against teaching kids what Sikhism is about but in reality they are much more likely to work with or sit next to an atheist (or non-believer) than a Sikh! Decisions like this should be based on evidence and numbers, not special pleading from minority interest groups, it seems as though the judge in this case agreed!

No comments: