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World Religion In Public Schools

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World religion should be taught to high school students in public school. Religion is an important part of America’s history, and it has an influential role on America’s achievements. These classes are beneficial because many students after taking the course will be more open-minded to other religions. Students will be exposed to other people who practice different religions in college, so they should not be ignorant to their peers’ practices. Schools need to have world religion classes because studies have shown that America does not know much about world religions. Most Americans do not have basic knowledge of other religions.
Religion is deeply rooted in American history. Peter Marshall is a minister and president of Peter Marshall Ministries …show more content…

Having a world religion class would allow not only students, but teachers to be more open-minded about other students’ religions. Richard Schiffman, a journalist for the Huffington Post blog and a Jew, writes on huffingtonpost.com, “most religious believers have only a cursory knowledge of their own faith, and know next to nothing about the beliefs of other religion.” He compares this to learning the capitals and names of the states, but not knowing other countries or continents. He feels that “ignorance” is the best word to describe the thing that separates religious practice from religious practice, and is often asked by Christians if he “believes in …show more content…

A study done by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showed that the nation flunked a 32-question survey about world religions with a score of 50% (usatoday.com). Shockingly, atheists and agnostics scored a 66% on the survey. Although, it does not appear to be important, nor does it appear to be a good score, it does show that non-religious Americans know more about world religions. An even more surprising statistic from the same survey shows that only 42% of Catholics could name the book of Genesis as the first book in the Bible. Also, almost half of the survey respondents knew the Dalai Lama was Buddhist. As Richard Schiffman said, America has many religious

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