I will start by saying that in my country, untill a couple of years back,religious theachings were mandatory for all classes with the only option to choose the religion that you're partaking in.
This changed somewhere around late 2009-early 2010 when the "Secular and Humanitarian Organization" forwarded a law project to make it an optional class.
Even if is not mandatory anymore there still is no class to replace it so those who attend religion classes will have more grades than those that choose not to.
This was also my case,as I am a 17 years old atheist who still attends those classes because of the grades.
Many parents organizations proposed the replacecemt of it with something else to keep the balance but no school has done anything so far as this is a highly Christian influenced country.
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Perhaps your country needs a wall of separation between church and state.. You will have to struggle to gain and keep it but it is worth struggling for.
Make the class your own forum to express your views if you can.
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with it as long as you have the option of choosing which religion you want to study. Religion has played a huge role in history, so I guess it can't hurt to learn about the one of your choosing as long as it's not being forced upon you with the intention of indoctrination.
Well this is a problem:It's not teaching you about history in the context of that religion,it just reads you from the Bible and than talk about the ways of how to please more the lord and worn about the eternal hell.It is just for indoctrination.
Have lot's of tricky questions ready to ask the teacher. "Why did Mary need to be a virgin?" is always a difficult one for religious teachers to handle. "If Jesus/God knew that Judas would betray him, wasn't that a kind of entrapment?" "Why doesn't god like foreskins?" Where does it say in the New Testament that it's ok to eat pork?" "Why did god reward King David for getting Uriah the Hittite killed so he could have sex with his wife?"
Keep asking, and with luck they'll dump you from the class.
It is not the problem of getting dumped,I can sign out,I am talking about the unballanced medium it creates.
WHOSE god gets the uppermost reign in the class? christian? mormon? Southern Baptist? Allah? Tao? Who gets to decide who teaches what religion in schools? I've always disagreed with that class even when I was a "christian". There are people who do not believe in gods or goddesses, there are many people who have other gods but those don't get a chance in public schools. That question should be asked; who decides which god is taught in public schools? and what about the other children who believe in other gods or don't believe at all? I believe there should NOT be any religious teaching in public schools and in private schools, the class should be one that you can choose not to take and not be graded poorly for your decision. It is not the right of teachers and administrators to force their religion onto innocent minds, darken and warp them. There's enough brainwashing in the world, we don't need more!
Yeah I know Pat,it is indeed quite a messy situation because I personally live in a small town(where even if thou we've got aprox 6 churches and no hospitals)the only ones that can attend this classes are the orthodox children(this is an orthodox country)because for the other religions there is no prepared staff(at least not in my town)and I have quite a few classmates that are catholics or jw(and not that they mind leaving school one hour earlier)but the fact that lets say at the end of the year two classmates competente for the same spot,they both have a common subject that dragged them down,but one gets the upper spot just because he's got that 10 from the religion class.
And to puth it in my teacher's words:
"I will be handing more grades to the ones in the class that went to church on Sunday and can tell me what gospell was preached just to make sure you attend church!"