Religion today is seen as a very touchy topic because it questions most of what people stand for. There are different views as to when to teach a child about religion. some people believe that a child below the age of 5 is too young to be exposed to the issue of religion. While some people follow the “train them among” movement. You’ll see situations where it is mandatory for children as young as 1 to be present for every religious activity.
There are very few parents who would not allow their children to receive religious and moral education at the appropriate level. Some would, quite reasonably, want this to be at the appropriate time and the “right age” on the basis of free discussion in full confrontation with the other main positions held in a democratic society freely and objectively presented.
As children grow up, the emphasis should gradually change from the giving of information to the examination of presuppositions and examination in which they and their ideas are treated with respect and the teacher’s conviction are exposed to their criticism so that he is seen to stand with his pupils.
Religious education teachers are caught here in the tension between their desire that their pupils should develop an independent insight into their religious faith, make the faith their own, in some way and an anxiety that in doing this, their pupils may not finally share the insight of the traditional religious community (be it Christian or Muslim) in which he lives.
Too much independence is feared by the teachers because it may lead to religious anarchy but an authoritarian attitude, however benevolent and paternalistic, can just as easily lead to religious tyranny. And if teachers really believe that the faith which they, as individuals, known to be true authenticates itself, they will respect the intellectual integrity of their pupils and will not attempt to tie them down to the acceptance of absolute authority in faith or morals which cannot be demonstrated.
They will, however, try to show their children the value of the religious and moral insights which have come down from the past and will encourage them to test these insights in their own experience until they can either honestly make them their own or arrive at something better.
Obviously to reject religious faiths and values out of hand may amount to cutting oneself off from one’s religious community as irrational a decision as to swallow hook, line, and sinker religious dogmas without submitting them to one’s reason. But all that is represented, for example, by the Bible, creeds, church, and the moral system with the insights of other faiths and ideologies, should be regarded as material for incorporation by the individual, not as authorities outside and over against the individual, forbidding his growth.
Religious education teachers must somehow reconcile their desire for the perpetuation of a common belief with a child’s freedom to develop new and independent insights that may lead to change; Otherwise, there could no progress.
This freedom, however, depends not on the neutrality of the teacher, but on his respect for the integrity of his children’s personality. The continual tension between freedom and authority in educational theory finds its reconciliation in its reverence for human personality