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Originally Posted by bhutocracy
I would say no, mainly because of the reality of the implementation.
In an ideal world you'd have an impartial history & literature teacher going over the historical relevance and influence of both the bible and the koran (as the global culture war of this century is looking like being framed this way.)
However anyone with experience of religion classes in public schools would know that they simply bring in a few guys from the local church group to "teach the bible" and it ends up being nothing more than a slightly more advanced sunday school. It would take a great deal of organisation and will for this not to be the case and I don't really see it happening.
I also believe that this is far down the list of educational needs. There are FAR more important things for kids to learn than the titles of gospels. And simply put, I think only a minority of students would really get anything out of even an ideal comparative religion class. Most kids in highscool just aren't that interested in how these books have defined and shaped humanity. they're more worried about what happened on the OC.
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I agree with much of what you say here bhutocracy. The problem with biblical studies is that those that generally do the teaching do so from a biased perspective and often carry their own subtle agenda's into the classroom. However I would say that because religion plays such an important role in everyone's lives whether they realise it or not, it should be covered as part of a cirriculum but from a more neutraly academic perspective more factualy focused than dogmatic so a student would be given a more rounded insight into the so often bizzare world of religion from the outset.
Sadly with religious groups still weilding quite scary amounts of influence within the educational system as a whole I can't see it happening anytime soon
