oh lordy

If you're religous I'd skip this one.

Last night we had people over for a feed and some drinks and a natter. It was a couple with their two kids, both under seven. They had with them the school report cards for the kids. Sal was first to read, and after finishing she surreptitiously slid the card back to the mother instead of passing it to me. The mother asked if I was interested (I was) and slid the card to me.

Sal later complimented me on the adult, socially gracious way in which I kept my gob shut. She had slid the card back to the mother and away from me after reading the RE section. I don't remember the exact words, but it was along the lines of "understands about God the creator and giver of skills."

OK, so the school is a Catholic school. There was a section on science in which the kid is doing well; in fact the kid is pretty much doing well across the board.

I don't think anyone saw the expression change on my face, or the blood from a tongue thouroughly bitten. It made me angry to read that. The school is clearly teaching creationism. Maybe not in science class, but certainly in RE. Young kids are designed (no, not by a designer) to trust adults. If they don't they die. Human sprogs are born early and utterly dependant upon adults. We have an obligation to not fill there heads with crap.

OK,you can teach kids what religion is, but teach it in a social context. People have religious views, political views, they like different types of music and read different books. Kids may be afraid of scary monsters under the bed, but they grow to know no such thing exists; they do not keep believing that there are monsters under the bed. Their parents probably put them straight, and if the school taught monsters-under-the-bed lessons there would be a fucking riot at parent's evening. So how about we stop telling our kids about the omnipotent white bloke with a beard who is every so nice and loves you a lot? (Well, he does as long as you've been baptised, else you may be fucked right-royally because great-great-to-the-power-of-lots-dad ate an apple. And he ate it after an agent of the same God tempted him to eat it! A mean trick if ever there was one. And while I'm on one, eating one apple means every woman suffers an agonising child birth; what the fuck is that all about? That's your God right there.)

If you genuinely taught small kids lessons from the Bible then you'd in equal measure mess with their heads and scare the shit out of them. The New Testament is morally questionable, ambiguous at best. Big J tells us over and again that if you don't follow him you'll suffer for an eternity. An eternity! I mean that isn't just a fucking long time it is, well, fucked if I know, more than time itself. How about simply stick to the bits about being nice to everyone? Less of the hellfire and brimstone? If what you've got is good it will sell itself, no need to scare us into buying it. The Old Testament is just plain fucking horrible. God, who is great yadda yadda, wiped out all but 8 humans and pretty-well every animal on the planet, all of which he (always he!) had made. What a tosser. And to say sorry for his planetary genocide he gives us the rainbow. Big fucking whoop-do-doo! I can make a rainbow with a torch and a bottle of water. Hardly much of a sorry for killing, statistically speaking, everyone.

Just drop religion from schools. Leave it for people to discover for themselves and concentrate on teaching kids how to add up and read. Of course that would not work out too well for the church.