Every child should be sent to school. There can be no quarrel with this statement, which looks perfectly innocuous. Nonetheless it is hugely problematic. The issue is – what kind of school? The first response to this question is: a good school. The problem begins when one sets about defining what exactly is meant by a good school.

Poor Muslims believe that the madrassa, an Islamic school where children are mostly taught the Koran, and occasionally subjects like maths and science, is a good school since it gives religious education to their children. Rich Hindus believe that good public schools where children are not only taught the three R’s but also a modicum of Hindu scriptures are the right place for their children. Vegetarian parents want their children to go to only those schools where strictly vegetarian food is served. Christians would like their children to receive religious education, but when it is not delivered at the regular state-run schools, they create an institution called the Sunday school. The fact of the matter is that parents with a religious orientation are dissatisfied with a regular secular education, and believe that their children can be ‘good’ only when they are educated in their religious scriptures.

The crisis in the Roman Catholic Church must alert both parents and governments to the dangers of such an attitude, and the risks involved in endorsing a parallel education system, one that has few norms and fewer scruples. Regular schools, schools that are affiliated to a civil, secular and legal board of education have to follow rules. They have to employ trained and qualified teachers, follow a standardized syllabus, and conduct impartial exams to monitor a child’s progress. They have to teach from texts that have been drafted from across the world, and reflect a fairly wide swathe of ideas and belief systems, and they have to impart to the child certain universal truths, which have their basis in scientific research. They follow a certain step-by-step methodology, one that is transparent, and that makes the school accountable for the teaching that a child receives. These schools fall under the purview of civil law, and have to abide by commonly accepted rules. They are expected not to discriminate against children, or hold one belief system superior to another.

Such standardisation assures parents that their children are being equipped to live in a modern world with dignity and empowerment. Religious schools, on the other hand, follow no universally accepted norms of education, discriminate between one child and other on the basis of their religious beliefs and often do not employ properly trained teachers. Most importantly, they manage to work their way around civil laws so that they aren’t accountable to anyone except, of course, God.

The dangers of such a runaway system of ‘education’, though indoctrination is a better word, are apparent. First, take a look at the curriculum. Most madrassas train very small children to learn the Koran by rote. There is no attempt to put the text in any context, and the allegories and metaphors are given a literal meaning, however ridiculous and outré that may be. Many madrassas employ their own students as teachers. These ‘teachers’ do not have any modern training, and continue the tradition of assigning literal meanings to religious texts.

The foremost qualification of the employees of these schools is their allegiance to that particular religion. Everything else is considered dispensable.

It is only natural that students in these schools are vulnerable to the whims and fancies of the employees. There are many secular establishments where young children are subjected to abuse by the staff. Juvenile homes, night shelters and so on have a dubious reputation in many countries. The difference between these and religious schools is that the former are bound by the tenets of civil law, and if found guilty, the staff is liable to punishment according to the law. In the latter, of course, there is no such compulsion. Children are abused at will, and treated as chattel at many religious schools, some of which even chain errant children, while at the same time being indoctrinated with fundamentalist beliefs. Such violations often lead to children developing criminal and violent tendencies themselves.

Religious schools are the schools of choice for parents when the state fails to provide for good quality education for children, a common situation in many parts of the Third World. Wherever the state has performed its duty of giving free and secular education, with a hot lunch, parents have chosen to send their children to these schools in preference to religious schools. They recognise that secular schools have far more to offer to their children than the narrow, restrictive view of madrassas and their Christian equivalent.

Theeagerness on the part of schools to introduce some religious education is largely linked to parents’ desire to give their children a ‘cultural’ foundation. In many parts of the world, urbanisation and the rise of nuclear families have removed grandparents from children’s lives, thus depriving them of the pleasure of listening to myths and religious tales. This gap is sought to be filled by schools and TV channels. But this is a dangerous trend. Grandmothers’ tales are just that, tales. The moment these migrate to schools, they become unassailable truths, to be ‘learnt’. Religious education breeds intolerance. God as a concept can be accepted only as a given, something not subject to scrutiny. Questioners are, by corollary, vilified as immoral or conceited. And yet the desire for a cultural grounding is not just real, but rising, in the face of a world where change is happening at a bewilderingly fast pace.

In the US, a large Christian population is deeply suspicious of the secular credo, and desires that children be protected from secular or ‘godless’ beliefs such as evolution or sex education. Parents are wholly supportive, therefore, of moves to remove such subjects from the school curriculum, even though there is constitutional separation of church and state and schools are not supposed to be influenced by any religious agenda.

Education systems should look at ethical education, rather than religious education. It must be accepted that religious myths are fun to hear, and must be told, but not in a religious context. They must be told in either a historical or sociological context. Children will still get their dose of culture, while retaining a pluralistic ethos. Their education will be far richer if they are taught about all religions, instead of just one, the preferred one of that school. Their critical faculties will be better engaged, and they will learn to understand other civilisations, by understanding their religions.

On a personal note, my own understanding of Christianity developed when I attended a school in England. Unfortunately, Christianity was taught, not from any historical viewpoint but as a part of religious education, which was in those days a compulsory subject, since in UK there is no constitutional separation of church and state. The school system showed no sensitivity towards immigrants who numbered almost twenty percent of the school strength. Such compulsion led to the alienation of the minorities, who either disengaged themselves from this activity or developed hostility towards it.

The desire to inculcate some religious ethos in a child is a widespread one. The danger arises when this desire is translated into indoctrination through the back door, that is, in schools. Religion has to move back inside temples and churches rather than infiltrating civilian life. Children have to be moved away from the tyranny of religious education, and secular and sensitive school boards must look at this issue seriously. A secure and culturally sensitive population is the only answer to the schisms created by religious intolerance, and this sensitivity begins in school. States that continue to neglect the provision of free and compulsory secular education are leaving the door wide open for runaway fundamentalists to exploit children, both physically and intellectually.

--Sangeeta Mall