The renowned academy, parents: Do not impose your religion on your children

Authorial writing by Oxford University academic biologist and British author: Richard Dawkins

Last week, the Islington Gazette newspaper reported that the local government council of London's small town, Islington, has banned pork products from primary school lunches. News of an immediate ban has been denied, and the truth is unknown.

It would really be a good argument for a stop on human grounds. There are convincing facts, after all, that pigs have degrees of intelligence and consciousness comparable to our beloved domestic animals. But no such human consideration has been mentioned.

Council for Children and Family Executive Member Joe Calouri was quoted in Gazette as saying: With no pork in our schools, we can keep costs low and reduce the cost of food by maximized the lunch budget under challenging economic circumstances.

The main argument was clarified by another spokesman from the council, as quoted in Gazette and rescripted in The Independent, one of Britain's most respected national newspapers:

Some four-year-old, different religious and ethnic affiliations may not know which food contains pork, or may not be aware of the importance of avoiding it because of their own culture or beliefs”.

Whatever the truth about the original news about the ban itself, there is something in that quote that would have to dance and hit you in the face. The beliefs of their “”? “The faiths of a four-year-old? Hasn't this spokesman recalled that children who are too young to be aware of the importance of their “faiths” can also be very small to have those beliefs in the first place?

How could it be “the beliefs of a four-year-old important to her if she doesn't even know what her beliefs are?

Would you ever talk about the political beliefs of a four-year-old? Hannah's a four-year-old socialist, Mark a conservative.

Who would dream of saying something like that? What would you say if you read a demographic article if it said something like this: “One in three children born today is a neo-platonist Kantian child. If the birth trend continues, existentialists will be exceeded in 2030”.

The pointless names of schools of philosophy of thought that I invented are of no importance.

I chose surreal names in order not to be distracted by the main point. Religion is our only exception to the rule: Do not label children according to their parents ' opinions.

And if you want to make exemptions for the opinions we call religious, and pretend it's less inappropriate to talk about “Christian children” or “Muslim children”, you better have a good argument under your sleeve.

How can such an argument seem? First, some say that labelling children as Muslims, as it were, or Catholic, is not worse than labeling them French or Swedish. But that is not a good comparison. A country's integrity, like it or not, has legal implications.

Your country gives you a passport, you are allowed to vote in the elections, it can also list you to go to war. But if you know what nationality someone belongs to, it tells you nothing about his thinking about something.

The French person may be left, right, pacifist, or war lovers, pros or against abortion, vegetarianism, Windos, Macintosh, or Linux.

Unlike national labels, religious labels carry a trunk of personal opinion. Catholics believe that Jesus was born of a virgin mother who never died but was only raised to heaven with her whole body.

The Mormons believe that Jesus visited America and that local Americans migrated from Israel. It's not good to equate a catapholic label around a child's neck, which says, “this child believes that Jesus has risen”, with “AB” Blood Group. It is gradually against the ideals of all honest educators that children should be taught how to think.

Second, there will be people who will say, leaving religious doctrine behind, we should consider that a child belongs to a cultural tradition like his parents. Jewish families are based on a calendar of festivals and rituals that differs from that of Christians, Muslims, Hindus.

It is reasonable that children will participate in traditional lunches on Friday nights will help make the Dieali cake on the required day. I understand that, and it would be a pity to see certain ancient traditions disappear (even though I would set the limit when it comes to child fasting or circumcision).

Many of my Jewish friends (most of them all are atheists) see nothing wrong with celebrating traditional festivals, and I enjoy serving “Carole” in a cathedral.

But there really is an important difference between your children's involvement in bad traditions, and imposing on them unbased opinions on the nature of life or cosmos. Tradition is correct when it comes to songs, literature, styles of dress, or architecture.

But tradition is a terrible basis for ethics, or belief in the origin of the Universe or the evolution of life.

Indoctrinating your opinions in children's vulnerable minds is bad enough. The worst feeling is defiitist assumption, universally accepted by society in general, including secular society, that children inherit parents' beliefs and language should reflect this.

Religious and secular people have taken the notion that children should be labeled by one religious name or another.

Even labels for life: when entering a hospital, or joining military service, you have to fulfill the gap in which you have to show which religion you belong (which could be “ne”).
We regularly read demographic projections like, “From this, and this year France will be 50% Muslim”.

Such a prediction can only be made if we are based on the assumption that children born by a Muslim couple are small Muslim children who will grow up to raise their next small Muslims.

Divorce courts may require them to decide whether a child of a broken marriage should grow up as Catholic” or “grows up as Protestant”. No one has ever asked a divorce court to give the verdict whether the child should grow up as football player”; “grow as ornithologist”; “grows as liberal” or “grows as conservative”; “grows as Macintos” or “grows as Windows<15>.

The feminists have successfully raised our awareness of the common language over gender. Today no one speaks for “on man one vote” or “the rights of man”. Using “man” in such a context provokes immediate indignation. Even those who use sextic languages know that they are using it, even making it deliberate to cause indignation. The point is that our consciousness has risen.

Our language has changed because we have become aware of secret assumptions that we have previously overlooked.

Let's all raise awareness, and the consciousness of society, on the religious labeling of children. Let's get away from these religious labels as we learned about sexting. <x0.>

Whenever you hear someone talking about a Catholic “child”, stop where they are. Would you talk about a “post-modernist child” or “the state rights child”? What you've been saying is the “Catholic parents' child”. And the same for “Muslim children”, etc.

If, when you've read the quote of Council of Isnington's spokesman, nothing has jumped and hit the face, please read it again. Are you aware now?

Writing in English, KETU /Awe from the North