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Yesterday I had a discussion about religion and teaching. The question was whether a Muslim woman could be a teacher and choose to wear a burqa in her life, which meant wearing burqa in the classroom. Having worked for years on Human Rights, the answer was obvious: yes! (1/7)
The other part was saying no, they had to be neutral at teaching, so that they could not pass their religious statement to their students. Their argument was that teachers need to be impartial and avoid passing on personal and biased information. (2/7)
Ideally this would be how it is supposed to be, if religions and societies have evolved so far. But unfortunately we're not there yet, ofc this is too idealistic. Reality is that teachers are really biased in what they teach. (3/7)
For instance, for many years and still today History teachers teach the Portuguese expansion in the XIV-XVI centuries as great advances for humanity, disregarding the bad things done, as colonialism (for some even colonialism was a good thing for the native people)... (4/7)
One thing we need to consider is to understand where the other side is coming from: they lived in Belgium, one of the countries where integration of foreigners from the Middle East failed for several years and the raise of criminality seems to be related to Muslims. (5/7)
In 2010 France approved a ban on face-covering items, such as Burqas, and it was seen as discriminatory and Islamophobic by some. Fact: it led to more segregation of the Muslim community in France. For that reason their view is influenced by what they experienced. (6/7)
Wearing a burqa can be seen as oppressive for some, but it can also be a choice. It is not up to others to define who or what someone chooses to be, and their religion should not be a limitation. (7/7)
Just adding up: the world today is messed up. We have extremism/far-right, segregation of other cultures, so it's even more important to educate our children in a comprehensive and intercultural way. I believe that you should educate kids without any religion but let them learn.
Funny fact: one of the arguments for banning face-covering items was the difficulty of identification of persons. Now it's mandatory to wear face masks.
