Religion and children
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article discusses those aspects of childhood and religion that overlap. Children usually inherit their religious views culturally from their parents, though they may also be influenced by others they communicate with such as peers and teachers. Aspects of this subject include rites of passage, education and child psychology, as well as discussion of the moral issue of religious education of children.
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[edit] Rites of passage
Most Christian churches practice infant baptism.[1] Confirmation is a rite conferred on infants in the East and in the West at the age of reason.
Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah are terms to describe coming of age of a Jewish boy or girl.
[edit] Education
A parochial school, also known as a religious, faith or sect school, is a type of school which engages in religious education in addition to conventional education. Parochial schools are typically grammar schools or high schools run by churches or parishes.
Islamic religious schools are known in English by the Arabic loanword Madrasah.
The creation-evolution controversy, especially the status of creation and evolution in public education, is a debate over teaching children the origin and evolution of life, mostly in conservative regions of the United States.
In France, children are forbidden from wearing religious symbols at school.
[edit] Criticism of religious indoctrination of children
- Further information: Criticism of religion
Several authors have been critical of religious indoctrination of children, such as Nicolas Humphrey,[2] Daniel Dennett[3] and Richard Dawkins[4].
[edit] Labeling of children as religious
Dawkins has been particularly critical of the unquestioned labeling of children with their parents' religion. He describes the caption of a picture in the Independent of a school nativity play, where four year olds playing the Three Wise Men are described as "Shadbreet (a Sikh), Musharaff (a Muslim) and Adele (a Christian)".[4] He describes the caption as grotesque, and makes his point by asking the reader to imagine the caption reading "Shadbreet (a Keynesian), Musharaff (a Monetarist) and Adele (a Marxist)".[5] He suggests there is little controversy over such labeling because of the "weirdly privileged status of religion".
Dawkins suggests saying "child of Christian parents" rather than "Christian child",[6] and hopes that the phrase will also make children aware that religion is not something that is inherited automatically like eye colour; that they do not have to follow in the religious footsteps of their family. He has tried to raise people's consciousness of this matter, and hopes that phrases like 'Christian child' or 'Muslim child' will "grate like fingernails on a blackboard".[4]
[edit] Religion as a by-product of children's attributes
Richard Dawkins proposes that religion is a by-product arising from other features of the human species that are adaptive.[4] One such feature is the tendency of children to "believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you" (Dawkins, 2006, p.174). He compares children's gullibility with the tendency of moths to fly towards a flame, a similar rule of thumb. Using distant light from the night sky for navigation works most of the time, but can still fail catastrophically, as happens when they spiral into a nearby flame.
The psychologist Paul Bloom sees it as a by-product of children's instinctive tendency toward a dualistic view of the world, and a predisposition towards creationism.[4] Deborah Keleman has also written that children are naturally teleologists, assigning a purpose to everything they come across.[7]
[edit] See also
- Abortion and religion
- Child abuse
- Children's rights
- Emmanuel Schools Foundation
- Homeschooling
- Islam and children
- Military use of children
- Preacher's kid
- Religious freedom
[edit] References
- ^ Major Branches of Religions Ranked by Number of Adherents
- ^ Humphrey, Nicolas (1998). "What Shall We Tell the Children?". Social Research 65: 777–805. “Children, I'll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas – no matter who these other people are.”
- ^ Dennett, Daniel (2006). Breaking the Spell. New York: Viking. ISBN ISBN 0-670-03472-X.
- ^ a b c d e Dawkins, Richard (2006). The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 406. ISBN 0-618-68000-4.
- ^ Or alternatively "Shadbreet (an Atheist), Musharaff (an Agnostic) and Adele (a Secular Humanist)" (Dawkins 2006, p. 338)
- ^ "The is no such thing as a Christian child" (Dawkins, 2006, p. 3)
- ^ Keleman, Deborah (2004). "Are children "intuitive theists"?". Psychological Science 15 (5): 295–301.
[edit] External links
- Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality By John Hartung Skeptic, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1995. Includes the responses of Israeli children to the account of the Battle of Jericho in the Book of Joshua.
