I went to Catholic school, and my exposure to religion was more fair than what I hear in public schools. Religion was ONLY discussed in religion classes. Yes, it was mandatory to take religion classes at my school, but religious principles were not discussed anywhere else, with the very rare exception similar to your experiences - when religion of the region was important/influential of the culture of that region in history/social-studies/literature.
We had 8 semesters of religion class and one of them was a mandatory World Religion class, in which we briefly touched upon all the other major religions around the world. We also had an elective upper-class English course that studied world literature, which, of course, touched upon that culture's religious beliefs. All lessons in religion were in the vein of "this is the philosophy we are studying", not "this is the belief system you should have".
I had 7 years of Health Ed, which included sexual biology, from 6th grade up through senior year, each year being age-appropriate and progressively more complex. Never once was it abstinence-only. We discussed it in pure biological terms and completely removed religious opinion on the matter. In biology, we were taught that Evolution was *the* theory with no mention of "alternative theories" since, y'know, there *are* no alternative theories being bandied about the scientific community (not that they wouldn't accept one, if one somehow managed to be better than Evolution, which currently has *all* evidence supporting it).
Attending the various religious ceremonies was mandatory, but participation in them was not. I could sleep during the Christmas mass if I wanted to and did not have to accept communion, but I did have to go. The main reason was that all the teachers were attending and there wasn't anywhere else for us to go that was supervised.
The only time I ever encountered any resistence was when I had to do an oral report on any world religion and was denied the opportunity to do my report on Satanism and during my religion class, each student was expected to participate by leading a "prayer" at the beginning of class. The "prayer" could be about anything and on the student's own religion. Since I was atheist, I was not allowed to skip the prayer entirely because it was graded under "participation", but I was offered the alternative of playing soothing music and leading a "meditation" instead, which I did even though I disagreed with the principle of allowing paganism but not allowing atheism. Upon reflection, I wish it had occurred to me to use the time to explain atheism, perhaps using something like Greta Christina's post about Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God, but my atheism was not well-formed and I had virtually no philosophical resources to guide me back then.
I'm shocked and appalled that I got a more fair and unbiased education in a private Catholic school than our children do in public schools.
no subject
We had 8 semesters of religion class and one of them was a mandatory World Religion class, in which we briefly touched upon all the other major religions around the world. We also had an elective upper-class English course that studied world literature, which, of course, touched upon that culture's religious beliefs. All lessons in religion were in the vein of "this is the philosophy we are studying", not "this is the belief system you should have".
I had 7 years of Health Ed, which included sexual biology, from 6th grade up through senior year, each year being age-appropriate and progressively more complex. Never once was it abstinence-only. We discussed it in pure biological terms and completely removed religious opinion on the matter. In biology, we were taught that Evolution was *the* theory with no mention of "alternative theories" since, y'know, there *are* no alternative theories being bandied about the scientific community (not that they wouldn't accept one, if one somehow managed to be better than Evolution, which currently has *all* evidence supporting it).
Attending the various religious ceremonies was mandatory, but participation in them was not. I could sleep during the Christmas mass if I wanted to and did not have to accept communion, but I did have to go. The main reason was that all the teachers were attending and there wasn't anywhere else for us to go that was supervised.
The only time I ever encountered any resistence was when I had to do an oral report on any world religion and was denied the opportunity to do my report on Satanism and during my religion class, each student was expected to participate by leading a "prayer" at the beginning of class. The "prayer" could be about anything and on the student's own religion. Since I was atheist, I was not allowed to skip the prayer entirely because it was graded under "participation", but I was offered the alternative of playing soothing music and leading a "meditation" instead, which I did even though I disagreed with the principle of allowing paganism but not allowing atheism. Upon reflection, I wish it had occurred to me to use the time to explain atheism, perhaps using something like Greta Christina's post about Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God, but my atheism was not well-formed and I had virtually no philosophical resources to guide me back then.
I'm shocked and appalled that I got a more fair and unbiased education in a private Catholic school than our children do in public schools.