Agnostic mums and dads of children at school- I am after some advice!!

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

Liebs came home last year asking me who would win in a fight, Jesus or Vishnu.

RE in his school is "this is X faith, they believe this, let's visit their place of worship", but even so, children think all they learn from an adult is truth.

I explained different beliefs, still it's confusing to a young child. "Why don't people just believe the truth and only teach that?". Uh, yeah. I teach science so I do. Life is easier. Next topic now.

[~StarBright~]

Thanks ladies!! So far I am dealing with it by the "some beleive this.. and some that" thing, but limeslice i think you are right- the way he is coming home and talking it is more like instruction than education. He is in a composite K/1/2 class so maybe that is why he is starting earlier????

I was a bit the same as you meow.. but i continued to go to the classes so i could stir up discussion lol (who me???!!!) I would much rather religion was taught as an open discussion like that!!

I think I will leave him there for now, and keep harping on about science that we have already discussed and talked about and keep reminding him that lots of people beleive different things and hope he will come to his own conclusions.

Thank you everyone!!

[Trillian]

In my experience, scripture classes are pretty benign in terms of ramming the whole religion thing down their throats, but they do focus on the theory of creation which I always thought was naive because kids are smarter than that. Unless they have been raised to only accept the word of God and creation as the truth and live their lives fully immersed in religious education, then they are going to have questions because it will naturally not make sense to them. We've dealt with it at that age by explaining that people believe in different things and that it's OK to think differently and believe in different things. I DO believe that it's pretty straightforward at this age to explain it pretty simply and then let their questions guide your responses. If they ask questions on a deeper level, then they are probably able to digest a most complicated answer. Despite me being an atheist and DH probably being agnostic if I had to actually label what he is, we made the decision for our kids to attend scripture classes (at a public school) They are only once a fortnight anyway and they are really very innocent. We have to stay in our class while they teach them and I don't have any problems with what they are teaching. It's mostly stuff about creation and then morals etc and I don't have a problem with that. Over the years it has opened some really good dialogue with the kids about different religions and beliefs and why people believe what they do. DS1 was the kid who would always ask the curly questions during the lesson and challenge their ideas (evolution was a particular fave of his) but DD's 1 and 2 and DS2 are happy with the status quo. I don't actively set out to dismiss religion but I will answer their questions truthfully.

[Smoke Jaguar]

I opted my DS out of SRI when he was in public school because I didn't know what was going to get taught by any one volunteer (and having had both an evangelical and Catholic upbringing, I know what kind of random comes out of the evangelicals!!). I started talking to him about how there are people who believe different things around the world, because I knew that my mother would start proselytising to him as soon as she could and wanted him to have a bit of a foundation at home about diversity and respectfully understanding that some people choose stories to understand their world and some people incorporate a bit of both into their world view.
He now goes to a Catholic school since we moved area and that was a conscious decision on my part. I feel far more comfortable with him learning about the Christian God-view of the world in this environment than in the SRI model, and it's a framework I'm very familiar with so I can help him navigate it a lot better. His own teachers are teaching it to him so I can get answers and ask questions directly to someone with a recognised qualification, rather than those volunteers who are not bound by teaching ethics or by any kind of pedagogy outside of their own church's requirements.
I talk to my kids about other religions, and will be making a conscious effort to keep doing this. Not because I believe 'they can choose when they're older', because I'm not raising them to think they even have to have a choice on the radar, but because they will come across people who have all sorts of beliefs and I want them to be understanding and accepting of that (unlike my DP, who is quite intolerant about it).
I had an RE teacher at school (he's now a comic...go figure!) who was happy to tell us that he thought it ok to think of the Bible as allegory, as stories representing knowledge of the world, rather than facts about how the world came to be. I tell my kids that many religions' stories of how the world was made are very similar in theme.
For my own part, I see more value in kids being taught about Aboriginal Dreamtime than be fed Christianity via SRI, in public schools.