Christian children?

Richard Dawkins argues that children ought not to be labeled with their parents' faith until they are old enough to decide for themselves whether they want to be a part of that faith. Dawkins objects to a child, for example, being called a

Muslim boy
Muslim girl
Christian boy
Christian girl
Jewish boy
Jewish girl
Catholic boy
Catholic girl
Anglican boy
Anglican girl
Protestant boy
Protestant girl

It's fair enough, I'd say, when it comes to issues of belief. How can you tell a child, "because you are born into this family, you must believe that a man can come back from the dead." A reasonable person wouldn't say such a thing, but I'd have to say I don't necessarily object to it. I can see Dawkins' point here though. We are an enlightened society, and we privilege reason, empiricism, logic, and science. So it doesn't matter what our parents tell us in the course of the stories they read to us out of the Bible. Until they are tested scientifically, it is essentially meaningless to say "I believe this" or "I don't believe that."

So what we're left with, is children who say they believe something because it's a part of their identity, not because they have examined it and found it to be true or false.

It reminds me of the debate teams we had in school. Here's how my grade 11 English teacher handled the topic (in a British Columbia state secondary school). We would be given a controversial topic to debate; in one case it was abortion. Before the teacher split the class into two groups, he would ask for the class to put up their hands if they thought abortion was wrong.

"Put up your hand if you think abortion is wrong, and leave your hand up for a minute," he said. I don't know how it worked out so well, but just about exactly half the class was pro-life, and half the class was pro-choice. (30 kids in the class, 15 pro-life and 15 pro-choice or undecided.) My teacher then pointed to each student in turn, while the pro-lifers had their hands raised, and placed them into team 1 or team 2. He didn't say which team would be debating which side, but it became clear at the end of this exercise that most of the pro-lifers were in one group, while the other group was mostly pro-choicers. There was evidently some cross-over, which I assume was also deliberate. I think maybe you can see where I'm going with this, so you won't be surprised to learn that the teacher then assigned a side of the debate to each team. The pro-lifers were assigned the side of the debate that argued in favor of a mother's right to choose. The pro-choicers were assigned to argue that human life begins at conception and thus has rights that ought to be protected. As far as I know, no student protested. We all performed our assignments according to our academic proficiency or lack thereof. None of the students took the opportunity to parody the other side; everyone took the assignment seriously.

Now, we were probably old enough by that time to be considered adults, and those of us who were Christians could probably call ourselves Christians and not be objectionable to Richard Dawkins. But what this illustrates is the difference between being able to hold a belief and being able to evaluate it from an objective point of reference.

That covers the issue of belief, I think. By analogy, I'd say that calling a child a Christian child is the equivalent of putting them on the Christian side of the debate team before they have learned all the facts. Just like my teacher put half the class on the pro-choice side even though they might not have been informed of all the facts surrounding the issue, and they would have to do some reading in order to perform their debating duties. People can change their mind when they get older, and children can decide that they don't like the label they've been given, and change it.

It's not always the easiest thing for a person to do, to change their label and deny some of the things their parents believe, but it's pretty much always been a part of growing up, and even if it doesn't happen with regard to religion, it will at least happen with regard to some other facet of a person's life, which could include sexuality, politics, choice of career, or anything else.

Now, about Richard Dawkins' objection, the other thing I think he fails to mention are the rituals and prohibitions of religion. For one example, what about the Jewish or Muslim student in a school in Europe or America, who doesn't eat pork? How is this supposed to be explained? If children cannot be labeled as Christian or Muslim, then how does one go about explaining to the other students that little Muhammed can't have bacon? Or how does Muhammed explain it? If his parents have been good Muslim parents, then they have explained to him that "you are a Muslim, and we Muslims do not eat pork, and we pray five times a day . . ." etc. Any normal kid is going to say to his classmates "I am a Muslim, so I don't eat ham." And a typical teacher in the modern West is going to understand that Muslims and Jews don't eat pork, and that that's okay. Just don't give that particular kid a ham sandwich.

Problems will naturally arise if either the Muslims or the Christians start using terms like "filthy" to describe the others' eating habits. However, the solution is reasoned explanation and intervention by the teacher, who should explain to the students that "here at school, we don't call each other filthy, dirty, or smelly. Children of different religions have different habits."

Is my picture of the world too rosy? Is this too much to ask of teachers? Or is this too much to ask of teachers to ask of students?

See, I'm not in agreement with Richard Dawkins on his idea that children should not be labeled. I don't believe that it is possible to extinguish labels, and they're going to come up whether you want them to or not. And how hard is it to accept that children of different faiths have different customs and beliefs?

I guess in a way, I am nearer to Dawkins' ideal world. The world he rails against is a world in which even the teachers are complicit in the denigration of minority children. The world Dawkins wants to change is the world in which Christian prayer is mandated every morning, and children pray to Jesus, sing songs about Jesus, and are taught that the Bible is the best and only true book.

I'd actually agree with the latter statement, but I believe that what needs to be taught in schools is that there are other people in the world who have their own scriptures. And maybe the teacher believes that the Bible is the best one, but as a teacher, shklis job is to present the alternatives. After all, you can't know that the Bible is the best and most true book unless you are able to compare it to other examples. And anyways, school is not necessarily in the business of telling you what is best and most true, but of teaching you how to think and communicate using examples drawn from literature, religion, and culture, including both what is thought best and most true, and what is thought poor of, and why does there need to be a value judgment anyways, on a piece meant to illustrate a concept?