Summit

[mirrille]

Yes. As long as a certain segment of the population believes in religion, it has a place in schools. In that we need to understand how it influences us and the way we have ordered our society. As Anduril says. (Not, of course, as indoctrination, because not everyone believes it and that kind of thing causes problems. I had hoped it had gone the way of residential schools. But exposure and education, yes.) Just don't hijack science class to do it. It doesn't want to fit and you can't force it to. If fits much better in social studies. It feels happier there, and consequently, makes more sense in that context. If you really want to teach religion and science in parallel, then I suggest a comparative philosophy class, because they are different philosophies, and a discussion of comparison/contrast could be good for students.

if you're going to allow Christianity into schools you better also let in Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Paganism, etc

That can also be done without much problem. That is what my high school did. A quick survey course in the major world religions. We went over Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Wicca, and a few others. Just enough to get the history (how it all began), the basic tenets, and explore some of the special quirks and/or rituals. Since there are so many religions and only a limited amount of time, we then got a list of religions we missed and got to pick one to research and present to the class. I did my project on Taoism. I think that worked quite well and I learned alot that I didn't know before. For your information, my high school was a private, non-denominal school with historical ties to the Anglican Church that have been sort of kept up for traditional reasons. I believe the foundresses were Scottish and that's why. If a private school with religious ties can incorporate this material into a curriculum with no problems, I fail to see how a public school, which is supposed to have no religious ties to any one faith, can't. Also, prior to that I was in a Catholic school (yes, nuns, cute little kilts, and all that) and they had no problem teaching evolution in science class, then having us trot over to religion class and discuss creationism. Again, I see no reason why a supposedly non-denominal school can't do even that. Unless they are too lazy to think or stupid.
Sometimes, it's not that hard to work things out.