Did you recieve mandatory religious education at any point of your life?

[St Leo]

No, never.

I took an optional World Religions class in Grade 10. Learned a lot.

[lord of the mark]

by the way, the answer for me is no. I received "religious training" at my synagogue - while my parents certainly expected I attend, there was no state sanction.

From ages 8 to 10 i attended on Sunday only, learning bible stories, Jewish holidays, and about Israel. My earliest memory of such is performing as a candle in a Chanukkah play.

From 11 to 13 I had twice a week hebrew classes, to learn the Hebrew alphabet, as well as continued religion classes on Sunday. I was a very good student in Hebrew

From 12 to 13 I studied for my bat mitzvah - this involved learning torah and Hatarah blessings, and learning to read sections of the Torah and haftarah.

After 13 the rabbi tried to organize a post-Bar mitzvah confirmation class, but that fell apart from insufficient interest in my rather small congregation. I later went to a Reform Jewish summer camp where I learned more.


I first learned in any depth about non-Jewish religions from books. I learned about the variety of Christian groups from Will and Ariel Durants "The Age of Faith", a history of the Reformation era. I have since learned from books, and from friends. Ive read the gospels, and read about chinese religion and phil in college. Ive attended several church services, usually at weddings.

The religion (other than Judaism) i most want to learn more about now is Islam. Ive read a couple of histories, but nothing specifically on the religion.

My most recent Jewish religious studies had been reading Rashis classic commentary on the Torah - struggling to follow along the Hebrew, as well as using the Orlinskys english translation. However Ive since turned to reading POTMS bat mitzvah portion, as our synagogue expects parents to join their kids in learning.

BTW, POTM is l337 torah reader

[Dinner]

Nothing even remotely religious was offered at my school. It was part of that whole church-state separation we blue staters have.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Nothing even remotely religious was offered at my school. It was part of that whole church-state seporation we blue staters have.

released time was a policy of New York state. Is NYS not a "blue" state?

edit - apparently it stil is policy in NY.http://www.nycenet.edu/calendar/docs...r2003-2004.htm

[Proteus_MST]

Of course.
In Germany it is mandatory til the 10th class.
Either catholic, or protestant (which I attended to)
or muslim (although in some cases pupils could be exempted from them, for example because there were no organized religious lessons for their belief)

Aside from tha basics of christian religion we also had an overview over the different world religions and, AFAIK in contrast to the lessons the catholics got, our lessons also (especially later on) included a lot of sociology and religious critics, like Feuerbach.

Later, from 11-13th class, religious lessons were voluntary, you could take philosophy instead (for a short time I took lessons in both of them, but I abandoned philosophy, as the teacher preferred to teach things in a slow pace and so it very soon became boring for me ).
I even took Religion as 4th subject for my Abitur-Exams, as we had a good teacher and it was always interesting for me

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Locutus


IMO the class I had was more important for religious people to take than for unreligious ones, as generally speaking religious people tend to be more narrow-minded (though obviously there are plenty of exceptions on both sides). So people shouldn't have to choose, it should be compulsory for ALL.

Of course, that's never gonna actually happen in the real world...

Actually, from my experience 'hard' atheists are more generally narrow-minded than religious people

Jon Miller
(now compare them to fundamentalists and they might be a bit less narrow-minded)

[Zulu Elephant]

Mandatory in the UK. One hour per week
You learn about all the religions, not christianity.

My year was the final one that had to study it without the opportunity to take any exam and get any kind of qualification out of it. My younger sister got to sit an exam and get a GCSE for her one hour per week.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
released time was a policy of New York state. Is NYS not a "blue" state?

Never heard of it. What is it?

[Whoha]

Re: Did you recieve mandatory religious education at any point of your life?

Originally posted by VetLegion
Well, I was mildly surprised learning that Greece has mandatory religious education. Up until now, I thought that was stuff for fundies and their ilk, but I guess it can happen anywhere.

In any case, I consider it an atavism, a remnant of past, a sign of backwardness. (How the hell is it even constitutional? Most constitutions in most countries guarantee religious freedoms!)

But now I learn that FINLAND also has mandatory religious education!!! What the HELL is that, how did that happen?? When?? Why??

And ... who else? I dread to ask, but is there a European Bible Belt too? . Spanning from Finland through... Poland? (could be) and all the way down to Greece? What countries comprise it?

I'm waiting for your responses with trepidation here, for I fear the number may be larger than I thought. At least I know France is not one of them

Proudly stating for Croatia: religious education exists in primary and secondary schools, but it is NOT mandatory. Everyone attends only because of social pressure, especially in small communities where you can't afford to stand out.

nope, I was spared that.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Never heard of it. What is it?

Kids whose parents choose get released early to go to a church run religious ed program.

[Urban Ranger]

Protestant primary school, Catholic (Jesuit) secondary school. Got years and years of that stuff.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Kids whose parents choose get released early to go to a church run religious ed program.

We didn't get released early, it was after lunch, but before the end of the school day, so we had to return. IIRC, a school bus drove us to our individual churches.

[Heresson]

Re: Did you recieve mandatory religious education at any point of your life?

Originally posted by VetLegion
Well, I was mildly surprised learning that Greece has mandatory religious education. Up until now, I thought that was stuff for fundies and their ilk, but I guess it can happen anywhere.

In any case, I consider it an atavism, a remnant of past, a sign of backwardness. (How the hell is it even constitutional? Most constitutions in most countries guarantee religious freedoms!)

But now I learn that FINLAND also has mandatory religious education!!! What the HELL is that, how did that happen?? When?? Why??

And ... who else? I dread to ask, but is there a European Bible Belt too? . Spanning from Finland through... Poland? (could be) and all the way down to Greece? What countries comprise it?

I'm waiting for your responses with trepidation here, for I fear the number may be larger than I thought. At least I know France is not one of them

Proudly stating for Croatia: religious education exists in primary and secondary schools, but it is NOT mandatory. Everyone attends only because of social pressure, especially in small communities where you can't afford to stand out.

There were no religious lessons in Poland before the fall of communism, and later there was a lot of discussion about it, but eventually there is such a course, not mandatory of course. Every religion is at least theorethically granted a course for its children as long as there's an interest in it. Atheists can have "ethic" courses if they like (there were "ethic" courses in my secondary school, but I don't recall anyone in my class attending it. I'm not sure, but I think they had the same dates for these courses for every class, due to lack of interest.
Some political forces want the grades of religion courses not to be placed on the overall diploma, and some want the courses to be placed either at the start, or at the end of lessons, so that people who are not attending them wouldn't have to wait - but everyone's attending it more or less, from my experience (However, I recall I discussed it with colleagues in my primary school and we believed it should be the first or last lesson).
Even me, and I was at some point very anticlerical and spent the lessons arguing with the priest.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Protestant primary school, Catholic (Jesuit) secondary school. Got years and years of that stuff.

Which is comletely right. Complain to your parents for chosing religious schools.

[Flubber]

WEll when I went to school the public schools were all "denominational"-- Thus some people went to Catholic school and others to "integrated" (Anglican, United, Salvation Army).

Given the system there was suprisingly little religious instruction. We had the Lord's prayer every morning (you could absent yourself if you wished) and that was about it.

In higher grades, "religious studies" was a required course but again some people got exemptions-- Getting an exemption was kind of bogus since none of the courses advocated any given religion but merely taught you about their teachings, history and even church governance structure. We learned about hinduism, islam, christianity , judaism,buddism, shintoism, animism and a few more including atheism and agnosticism.

Oh and the school often did provide a venue for various clergy to hold after school instruction for confirmation or dedication for those that chose to do that.

[SpencerH]

I was forced to watch the sound of music over and over and over again every christmas in Sweden. Does that count?