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The teaching of matters related to religion and spirituality is a sensitive one. When I was at school, there was very little impartiality. We were taught by a clergyman, so inevitably there was going to be some bias there! It was also a Protestant school, so we got taught that God was real, that the only God was the Christian God and that he was very definitely a Protestant God! We were told nothing of the Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu religions.

These days, in the UK at any rate, such indoctrination has I believe been reduced. The national curriculum requires schools (even faith schools thankfully) to provide kids with information about a range of religions. This can only be a good thing in a world where so much racial and religious intolerance exists. If we can at least start to understand each others beliefs and cultures, then hopefully this will lead to a more peaceful society.

A vital part of this new more enlightened teaching approach should be to ensure that kids are also told that there are some people that don't believe in gods and the reasons why. It should then be left to children to make their own minds up on what they believe or don't believe.

However, I imagine that it is often still priests, clergymen, rabbis, etc, who are the Religious Education teachers in schools so there must be doubts over how fairly the atheist option is presented.

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