UK Teacher: Does Keeping Religion Out of US Schools Prepare Kids For Life?

What I find a bit of an enigma is this: On one hand, religion is to be kept out of the classroom and yet, on the other, as some defenders of Corbett seem to be pointing out, it is impossible to cover European history without looking at the role of religion. How do your educators reconcile the two?

When it comes to the coverage of European history in your schools, does the role of the Reformers such as Luther and Tyndale in empowering the common people by translating the scriptures out of Latin and into their own languages ever get examined? Do your schools examine the huge roles of Calvin, Knox and Zwingli in liberating the people from the 16th century bondage of a corrupt Roman Catholic church?

Or does religious history only get examined when it’s appropriate to bash the church?

When Martin Luther King gets covered in the US syllabus, is his spiritual motivation as well as his social and political activism examined?

It seems like your system is quite similar to France’s where religion is to be kept at a long arm’s length. I once asked a French school teacher, “Why are you so afraid of religion in France?” He didn’t like this as the French, like most of us, are a rather proud people!

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