The following is a snapshot from the Science Olympiad text that was provided to my six year old son.
Notwithstanding the religion that we belong to, we have always gone to temples and churches and never taught anything related to religion to my kids. I wanted them to learn and embrace the belief that they could associate themselves with. Though we used to fill the forms as Hindu, Nair, we never taught anything regarding this to our kids as we didn’t want to categorize their friends as Hindu, Muslims or Christians .
But when I started teaching my son for the Science Olympiad, I was shocked to see this question. Why is it necessary to include religion in academics and distinguish it to the kids as Hindus go to temples, Muslims go to mosques. Weren’t the blood sheds till date not enough?
At age of six, why is it important that they should learn about religions? They have years of their lives ahead to differentiate each other in the name of religion or may be fight over it. But why now? Why does a competitive exam for kids ask them about religion?
My son who has never bothered about his friends’ religion started asking me why we are going to churches when we are Hindus! With the undue inclusion of religion in academics, even the kids who never bothered about the religions started thinking of it.
Am I reading too much into it, is what I was wondering. Share your opinions too. I will maybe get a different perspective on this.
Leave a Reply