Learning to Cite.

Many people who are involved in education know that one of the most important themes to teach and even more, to deal with is religion. Not because teachers do not know anything about it. But the difficuly that it presents in managing the theme into a class of 40 or 45 students is completely daunting. How to deal with religion without transgressing students’ believes? Or which are the acceptable forms to raise this issue in the classroom? These are the questions that many Chilean teachers are afraid of facing.

The importance of raise this theme in the classroom, it s not to get students agitated but show them the different culture that exist within each religion. It is important that they can value the differences because this improves their cultural knowledge and let them to have a point of view more engaged with the society.

The problem with this issue is the lack of teaching in class. Teachers try to ovoid it or even worse, teachers impose their believe against students’ own. The unexperience of teachers make them to do this error, leaving in students a sense of incomprehension and frustration.

At this point, we differ a little bit with the comment made by an important man in front of this issue. Franklin D. Roosevelt, quoted in The Wars of the Godly, by Reuben Maury “[T]he public schools shall be free from sectarian influences, and above all, free from any attitude of hostility to the adherents of any particular creed.”(213) From the Chilean perspective the only way to make people respect the differences, thus, avoid a future being a target of maltreat is teaching those differences at schools. At this time is when you can make a real change in people’s mind. Moreover, in this cite we can see the misconception of Roosevelt when refering to Religion as “Sectas”. All the religions should be respected even if we do not agreeg with their creeds.

cite:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/quote-r1.htm