I’m constantly amazed by the opposition to educating children about religions in North America (both the USA and Canada).
Learning about multiple religions and philosophies doesn’t mean being indoctrinated into them. It means learning about what other people think about ethics, life, etc. This is a great way for kids to realize that there’s more to life than evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity. And the systems presented would include atheism and humanism.
If you don’t educate young people about religions until they get to college, you’re assuming that all the children who might have learned about religions in school have not already been indoctrinated at home.
If a child has been brought up in a high-control religion at home, they will benefit massively from learning about other religions in a neutral setting (and remember we are just talking about learning about them, not being inculcated with them). If you leave it till college age, the kids’ ideas might be fixed on whatever they were indoctrinated with as a kid.
This isn’t hypothetical: in the UK we learn about multiple religions in religious education. I was extremely fortunate to have an atheist RE teacher and learned about Judaism, Islam, and polytheism. Nowadays with the national curriculum, kids learn about the big six religions of the world. In some regions they learn about Paganism as well. Britain is a far more secular country than the USA or Canada.
I benefited from learning about other religions as a child because it made me aware that there are other worldviews available, and that millions of people hold those views. Learning about other religions helped me to move away from toxic Christianity.
Dowsing for Divinity 
Great post. Overall, I agree with you. I also think that this is in part due to the tendency to conflate “religion” with “Christianity,” and a particular brand of Christianity at that. There’s a reason one of my favorite people on social media is a Jewish man who goes by the handle “JustSayXtian” because he talked about this conflation so often.
I’ll also note that I also appreciated a thread Jessica Price, a Jewish woman, did talking about how many comparative religion classes tend to be problematic because they try to define and evaluate other religions based on how they compare to Christianity. So if we ever do start educating students about education, I hope those designing the courses keep that in mind and avoid such pitfalls.
Here’s a link to Jessica’s thread for anyone interested. Sorry it’s on the hellsite formally called Twitter.
https://x.com/Delafina777/status/1507125338307850251
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, the good news is that the model of educating people about religion which I described already exists in many, perhaps most, British schools, colleges, and all universities with a Study of Religions department.
You’re quite correct that the “comparative religion” approach compared all other religions to Christianity as some sort of standard. That’s why secular schools, which are the majority of schools in the UK, do not teach comparative religion. They teach the study of religions.
Of course conservative Christians are always trying to drag us back to only teaching Christianity or doing comparative religion: but the way that the study of religions is managed in British schools is through SACREs (standing advisory committees on religious education) which are made up of the big six religions plus Pagans and humanists.
I was one of the first Pagans on a SACRE and I am pretty sure I was not the last.
SACREs and the National Curriculum exist to ensure that religious education is fair and balanced. If you’re interested you can find it online.
My masters degree in study of religions was a proper modern course, no comparative religion bollocks, it was proper sociological study of religions.
LikeLiked by 1 person