Religious Freedom

There is a lot of talk about religious freedom on Facebook lately and I thought I would share what is happening in our International school that epitomizes what I think religious freedom should look like.  Below are two assignments sent home from school over the last two month. I underlined or circled the parts that struck me the most.  

The first assignment is for my son who is in 7th grade. This is the slip sent home for a field trip.  

The field trip sounded wonderful to me.  The children went to each place of worship and talked to a leader in the religion.  They arrived at the Mosque just before prayers so a Muslim boy went inside for the prayer while the other children patiently waited for the prayers to end to go inside.  The children were each given an English copy of the Quran. N read part of it on the way home and thought it was quite interesting.  I was surprised the church did not give everyone a bible but each religious establishment was allowed to give a book if they wanted.  The project for the unit is each student must research a lesser known religion (not their own) and present it to the class.  N was deciding between Unitarian and Mormon and decided on Unitarian.  This is what I call religious freedom.  Each religion is allowed to be discussed and studied and everyone is given respect.  This unit of study would be denounced in many places in the USA.  

Next is the unit of study for the 5th grade child. 

In this unit they covered Big Bang Theory, Christian, Greek, Hindu, Native American, Norse and more.  They covered them all as creation stories from different cultures.  Then each student made their own creation story.  B's favorite story was the Greek creation story.  I don't know that many places in the USA would allow these discussions to take place. Teachers get sued for even talking about the creation of the universe from different points of view.  I much prefer my child understand opposing views and trust that I have raised them well.   This is one of the things I truly love about the school my children attend.