So, in The United Kingdom, all schools, both state and private have to offer a religion class, from ages 4-around 15.
Students learn about the importance of religion in various people’s lives, learn about what different religions believe and practice, write essays and have discussions from the perspective of various religions, you also learn about philosophy and ethics in a secular way as well.
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They are legal as long as they don’t advocate one religion over another. So, a “religion class” that is just about Christianity would not be legal, but a religion class that teaches Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc. and their origins and the role they play in various cultures would be allowed.
I don’t think they’re particularly common though.
I’m not sure about the legality, but all of those topics were covered in school for me. They were just various parts of History, Sociology, English, and Philosophy classes rather than being all together as one class.
You can absolutely teach religion in US public schools. You cannot promote religion
Not in public schools but in religious private schools. In public schools they get a basic idea of most religions but it never really goes in depth at all.
Some schools offer a History of Religion Class, but most do not.
Teaching religion is strictly prohibited in public (state funded) schools.
Teaching about religion in a historical context is not. So you can teach about religions impact on a culture, can’t have kids memorizing the apostles creed and praying in class.
Private schools can do whatever they want, and parochial schools are common. I was taught religion in 15 of my 18 years of education.
Our history classes touch upon major religious throughout history, but we don’t have “religion” classes in our public (state) schools.
For example we talked about Islam in my history classes when covering the Middle East. Similarly, the Catholic Church and Protestantism was talked about when we covered European history.
Yes they can teach religion as long as the school doesn’t promote religion.
My state covers major religions in world history. Mostly pathetic circumstances of its founding, the basic tenants, and how it spread.
I don’t think religion classes are required anywhere but you can, for sure, teach people about religion. I took a world religions class in high school (as an elective), we learned about, uh, all the major world religions.
What is not allowed is to advocate for a particular religion. So, you are allowed to explain what catholics, orthodox, protestants, Hindus, Muslims etc believe. You are not allowed to say “Here is why the transubstantiation is a papist lie, you should believe xyz instead to avoid going to hell” or something.
Religions get mentioned in history, geography, and other social studies classes, but typically we weren’t really studying the religions themselves so much as how they affected historical events or settlement patterns and things like that. Also in literature class we touched a bit on how various religious elements such as bible stories are referenced in other media and everyday language.
I do remember briefly covering the sort of core beliefs and practices of major religions, but we didn’t study any of them in depth. Like just enough for a very basic understanding of that aspect of the world.
What about people who believe in The Flying Spagetti Monster?
It’s legal, but most schools won’t touch them. My high school wouldn’t have dreamed of it
Elective only. Not all districts offer them.
I feel like most public schools in the US incorporate teaching about religion into their history classes. Private schools (read: *religious* private schools, which make up many of the private schools) will explicitly teach religion, like how a church, mosque, temple, etc. will teach religion.
I don’t know how common they are, but my school (public) essentially had a Christianity class. It was called “The Bible as Literature” and it consisted of reading parts of the Bible along with a few biblically-inspired short stories.
Legally speaking, you can’t promote religion in a public institution, but by framing the class as a lesson in comparative literature, the school was able to offer it as an elective. It didn’t promote Christianity on paper, but in practice, that was its sole purpose.
It was a pretty laid-back/easy class though, so tons of people took it regardless of their religiosity.
It wasn’t popular or well known but my high school had an elective religion class for upperclassmen.
I never had a class solely about religion but when I had AP Euro, a lot of it was about religion. Catholic monarchies, then Henry viii splitting from it, that sort of thing.
It would be unusual to have a specific course dedicated to the academic study of religion in K-12. Not saying it doesn’t happen, there’s 14,000 public school districts in this country so I’m sure at least some do.
That said its impossible to teach history without also discussing the impact of religion on US and world events.
But you can definitely take those courses for that in college.
We covered various world religions like others have said in social studies/history classes as we covered different parts of the world. What they believe, major beliefs and what not.
“The bible as literature” was a class offered in high school but only as an elective which meant you didn’t need to take it to graduate.
An informative class surveying different religions would very much be legal in the US, as well as history that is related to religion. You’re not going to find a Biblical exegesis class in a public school, but you will find teaching about history and basic beliefs of different religions.
What you describe is perfectly acceptable. What is not allowed, however, is a class that promotes worship of a particular religion. There is a difference between learning about different religions (i.e. exploring world view points) and being made to practice a religion and read the Bible/Quran/other holy book in a manner that makes you apply those religious principles to your own life.
Some religious private schools might
Not in public schools no.
Not in my school. Though they do have it in private religious schools I’m pretty sure. And they have them in college
I can’t say for sure about public schools, but when I attended Catholic school they taught other religions and other Christian denominations. They also took us on a field trip to a synagogue.
I’m not sure if it was strictly required by the state, though my AP World History made it sound like it was part of the curriculum when we learned about religions in 10th grade. We learned about Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. but it was purely in a historical context. The teacher was a devote Catholic but he knew he had to keep that to himself. Once we started the Christianity lesson he let us know so we could call him out if he started to sound biased.