Where is the next generation heading?

[fredv3b]

Marshy,

Perhaps I am being really stupid, but I really don't understand what all the fuss is about regarding this amendment. As far as I am aware it makes it legal for faith schools to teach what they could and doubtless would teach, at some other point within a school day, within a sex education lesson. Am I wrong in this understanding, or have I missed why it is so important.

As an aside the video you posted contains a mis-statement of Catholic doctrine, although it is a mis-statement that the Church repeatedly and wilfully makes of its own doctrine. It states that sex is only not sinful within a Catholic marriage and for the purposes of procreation. This is not true, the Church has NEVER TAUGHT that a Catholic couple should not have sex if they know or believe that one or both of them to be infertile, this is not some obscure point of rare practical implication, every year many many thousands of Catholic women reach the menopause or have a hysterectomy. It just annoys me that the Catholic Church repeated lies when explaining their belief that gay sex is sinful, the possibility for procreation is not a requirement for sin-free Catholic sex.

[marshlander]

...belief is just as integral to a person as any other aspect of themselves.

I don't dispute that, but that is a different issue from what I was saying. The values and beliefs I espouse are not innate. They were initially learned but later, and inevitably, modified on the journey you mention. I guess one of my "beliefs" is that I was born with a capacity to love and be loved by another man rather than having to be taught about it. (My journey to fulfil that part of my nature is another story altogether ) There would also appear to be empirical evidence to support that notion.

I'm still struggling to define exactly what I believe these days, but I'll tell you that what I *do* believe, I can't just change it. I can't just ignore it. I can't just pretend it isn't there.

Of course not. Any modification of beliefs is usually an evolution. Starting with the earliest blueprint, whenever we consider that could be, we try ideas out. The fittest ones survive and get carried forward. The dynamic is for that selection process to continue. There is also a dynamic to seek out others who share and can affirm similar ideas. I haven't quite worked out why it is that we sometimes allow ourselves to be aligned with ideologies that force upon us a dramatic change in direction; signing up to a church or a political party, for example. I suspect that something in those ideologies affirms us where we are and we take on the rest of the baggage to avoid being excluded. Over time we can internalise the most extraordinary assertions.

...And yet there are those who will claim that raising children to accept homosexuality as a normal part of life is tantamount to 'indoctrination' and therefore abuse as well.

It may not be a religion, but it is the belief of the parents, ... it comes down to, you can't HELP but teach your children what you believe, whether those beliefs are religious in nature or no.

Which is why I pin such hope on the power of education to introduce children to new ideas and to help them develop the tools to become critically aware of themselves and the world about them. Religion and belief as a need may form part of a rational drive, but the beliefs imposed by religious organisations are not always rational. That homosexuality is a phenomenon occurring throughout the natural world can be seen in observable evidence readily available in increasing quantities. That my love for my partner is "unnatural" and therefore "wrong" or "disordered" because of a poor interpretation of the prejudice of a superstitious person recorded in an ancient book places that assertion on a far less secure foundation.

[fredv3b]

I'm still struggling to define exactly what I believe these days, but I'll tell you that what I *do* believe, I can't just change it. I can't just ignore it. I can't just pretend it isn't there.

Even if it appears, to you, to be irrational?

[marshlander]

... Perhaps I am being really stupid, but I really don't understand what all the fuss is about regarding this amendment. As far as I am aware it makes it legal for faith schools to teach what they could and doubtless would teach, at some other point within a school day, within a sex education lesson. Am I wrong in this understanding, or have I missed why it is so important.

Fred, I would never accuse you of being stupid! The Children, Schools and Families Bill includes sections setting out what the government believes children need to be taught in order for them to understand what is necessary in preparation for healthier relationships, including sexual experiences. For the first time this kind of content is being made explicit in law. Realistically I can hope that most schools will offer this knowledge in the spirit in which it was intended. The original intention was, I believe, in accord with other moves this government has made towards equality and fairness. However, when a school receiving funding from the state is now free to add its own prejudices to factual knowledge there will inevitably be some who will not get the balance right. That the head teacher of a state funded "academy" school feels it is acceptable to teach his pupils that homosexuality is sinful and merely "fashionable" and can say as much on a national radio news broadcast is the tip of an iceberg. It shows, before the bill passes into law, how it will be subverted with relatively little comeback.

As an aside the video you posted contains a mis-statement of Catholic doctrine, although it is a mis-statement that the Church repeatedly and wilfully makes of its own doctrine...

I agree. I felt there were a few things with which I would take issue and others where I would have added some clarification.

[fredv3b]

Marshy,

Surely, faith school were always free to teach their morality, just not in sex ed lessons?

[marshlander]

Marshy,

Surely, faith school were always free to teach their morality, just not in sex ed lessons?

Of course they were. The watering down of this bill was unnecessary in that regard, but doing it devalues the objectives of informing pupils more objectively.

[AgentWashington]

Even if it appears, to you, to be irrational?

Most peoples' beliefs do not appear irrational to themselves.

but doing it devalues the objectives of informing pupils more objectively.

There are countless people who grow up to become a different religion than how they were raised. It is hardly 'objective' to say that raising a child in religion is tantamount to child abuse, or to think you have the right to tell other people how best to raise their children.

Is none of this smacking of hypocrisy to you?

You bristle that religious folk shouldn't have the right to tell you how to live your life, but you think you have the right to dictate how religious folk live?

Bolth are equally wrong and presumptuous.

As I said at first, hopefully the world is moving towards more tolerance all around, not just swinging from one form of intolerance to another.

[marshlander]

...There are countless people who grow up to become a different religion than how they were raised. It is hardly 'objective' to say that raising a child in religion is tantamount to child abuse, or to think you have the right to tell other people how best to raise their children.

Is none of this smacking of hypocrisy to you?

You bristle that religious folk shouldn't have the right to tell you how to live your life, but you think you have the right to dictate how religious folk live?...

Whoa, rather a lot of assumptions here! As imperfect a medium as this is I don't think I have stated anywhere that I claim the right to dictate anything. No other statement could misrepresent my views so completely! Having made more than enough mistakes, although hopefully a few successes, in raising my own children I am certainly not in a position to dictate anything to other parents, most of whom are doing what they can with the tools they have to hand. Whatever my personal hangups may be I don't think I have suggested that I have the answers, because I don't believe that the answers actually exist. Any assertion by anyone that they do is riddled with difficulty as I think you may agree? My views are obviously coloured by my own experience, but they are only views, however strongly I may wish to assert them. I have yet to hear a convincing argument from any believer that what I perceive as their hopes and superstitions can be proven to be exist in the same realm as any other physical phenomena, but I believe I am open to that were it to prove possible (as it happens there is one person on these boards who has experienced phenomena I cannot just shrug off and things that happened to me when much younger I cannot readily explain).

As someone who has worked hard to deal with what happens when one emerges from the shadow of religious deception I am relieved that I no longer know, or even believe "without a shadow of doubt that Jesus lives, that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God, that the Book of Mormon is true and that I may become a god and populate worlds with my spirit children if I can remain faithful and bring up my children in the one true gospel of Christ ..."! That Mormons reaffirm themselves by testifying in similar vein on every first Sunday of every month and at as many other opportunities as they dare is a pressure I am pleased to be without. These "Fast Sunday" confessions include the sight of parents beaming with pride as their little children repeat the same unknowable nonsense. Every utterance hammers that nail in the coffin of freedom of choice just that little bit further, while they continue to claim that "free agency" is one of their basic tenets. That kind of upbringing helped take me to the brink of suicide as a young adult and I see my sins perpetuated in my youngest daughter who has battled with depression for years as she has fought to put her church affiliation behind her. I have never been an absent parent, but I found that leaving the religious upbringing in their mother's hands was a path least likely to add to the stress of a relationship that was already difficult for obvious reasons. If I lived through those years again with what I know now I'd like to think I would have intervened with a more rational point of view. More self-deception, probably.

Catholic children, to the best of my knowledge are brought up believing in the infallibility of the pope and in the certainty of hellfire and eternal damnation for anyone outside the club; the Amish and the Brethren condemn their children to ignorance by depriving them of contemporary education and access to pretty much anything invented after the seventeenth century while Jews, Muslims and many Christians seem to think it's okay to mutilate their sons in ritual circumcision (and I'm not even going to address the horrors inflicted on generations of Muslim women in some societies). If the original blueprints were so intelligently designed what is the need for parents to sacrifice and redesign their babies' bodies? I can't help thinking that were some of these decisions left until adulthood, many more people would begin to see it for what it really is and I doubt that few would be prepared to sacrifice as much of themselves as they seem to be willing to sacrifice their children - and all for the sake of someone who has never, and in all likelihood will never, manifest as a real being.

I wish I could claim it, but I am not being original when I use the term "abuse", although it seems a reasonable description of what passes for acceptable behaviour in many families. Each society determines what is acceptable. We don't send children up chimneys any longer, but presently we seem to be okay with imprinting children with a lifelong guilt about thoughts and actions that often harm no one, but may well be the cause of nightmares and fear about the prospect of hellfire and pain without relief or end. I may not understand it, but I don't have answers either, as I said in a previous message. Richard Dawkins has come pretty close to articulating my personal feelings in The God Delusion

I am persuaded that the phrase "child abuse" is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children...

I don't know if there is another way. We all just do the best we can, but we DO owe it to our children to make sure we are as informed as possible about what we are doing. On this one I trust the government's attempts to bring information to our young people about the facts of life pertaining to relationships to be an honourable attempt to make up for information that may not be as available at home as we would like to believe.

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

[fredv3b]

I'm still struggling to define exactly what I believe these days, but I'll tell you that what I *do* believe, I can't just change it. I can't just ignore it. I can't just pretend it isn't there.

Even if it appears, to you, to be irrational?

Most peoples' beliefs do not appear irrational to themselves.

I think this must be an instance of two peoples divided by a common language, we seem to be meaning different things by the same words.

You state you cannot change or ignore your beliefs, but I am sure you don't follow your beliefs mindlessly, and you are able to take responsibility for your own actions.

[AgentWashington]

I realize that I've taken your entire post and narrowed it down to this one thing, but it just jumped out at me so forcefully...

the Amish and the Brethren condemn their children to ignorance by depriving them of contemporary education and access to pretty much anything invented after the seventeenth century

That is a statement made, in my view, entirely in ignorance.

First, the idea that "contemporary" education is somehow better than those of generations past is not only laughably, it is provably false. These days, it is the "contemporary" education system that is dumbing itself down year after year after year.

For all our 'modern technology,' we seem to have lost the simple ability to teach and learn. All the money and gadgets we dump on it have not improved the problem.

Second, Amish do not 'force' their children to adopt an Amish lifestyle forever. In fact, the Amish go through a 'coming of age' ritual (for lack of a better way to put it) that sends their children out into the world for a time where they will compare the two 'worlds' and decide, for themselves, if they wish to return to the Amish lifestyle and commit to that faith, or if they wish to 'modernize' and leave their homes and become a member of modern society.

I've seen absolutely nothing that indicates children raised in the Amish communities are ignorant. On the contrary, I imagine most of them could whip the pants off any high school student, and probably even a number of college students, in all areas except those specifically related to technology such as, Oh say, auto mechanics or computer repair.

Learning isn't about how many fancy, battery powered gadgets you've got, it's about being equipped with the tools to both better yourself and expand your understanding. Remember the basics? Reading, Writing and Arithmetic? Those don't require modern technology to teach or learn, and it seems to me that the ability to teach and learn them decays with each passing generation.

The value of community, honest work for honest wage, learning the building blocks of knowledge and an openness to accept your children may someday not follow in your footsteps? I really can't fathom your views on their lifestyle.

Sure, I can understand you may not like their religion, they're not asking you to follow it..., or you may not understand their choice to separate themselves from technology, which again, they're not expecting you to do, but does that really warrant such a blanket condemnation?