Is Religious Education a Rights Violation?

Many years ago, I heard my colleague Michael Tooley advance the thesis that religious education is a violation of the rights of children. There was a fairly persuasive argument for this, which I took to be something like the following.

1. Children have a natural right to an education of at least some minimum level of quality.

2. Religious education falls below that level.

3. So religious education is a rights violation.

1. The Right to a Decent Education

Some might hold that children have a right to an education from the state (I assume this is probably Tooley’s view). However, this is doubtful since all goods provided by the state require stealing money from people who don’t want to buy those goods.

However, it is still plausible that parents have an obligation to provide some minimum level of education for their children. Compare the fact that parents have an obligation to provide food and shelter for their children, to protect them from physical dangers, and to provide needed medical care. But those things are not enough for a person to have a decent chance at a flourishing life. A person also needs education to develop their mental abilities. This is necessary in part to succeed economically and socially, but also in part just to be able to think clearly and rationally, which are intrinsic parts of human flourishing. Children generally won’t develop those abilities without help from adults.

Consider an extreme case: say you raise your child in a closet for the first ten years. The child gets food and basic medical care, but never leaves the closet. That child would probably suffer permanent cognitive and emotional damage (compare the case of Genie the feral child). Everyone would agree that this would be severe child abuse.

2. What’s Wrong with Religious ‘Education’?

By “religious education”, I mean teaching a child the doctrines of a particular religion as fact. Of course, there is nothing wrong with teaching a child (truthfully) that various people in the world hold various doctrines. Nor is it wrong, in my view, to teach a child about the arguments that can be given for and against these doctrines. What’s wrong is teaching the child one of these sets of doctrines as dogma. Particularly problematic is teaching the child that it is wrong to question them, that they should accept these things on “faith”, etc.

What is wrong with that? Empirically, such instruction often has a serious, long-term negative impact on a person’s ability to think critically, particularly about religious questions. Many people are permanently intellectually stunted, i.e., they are never able to rationally reflect on such issues and they go to their graves still clinging to ideas that they were taught as children, without ever seriously entertaining alternatives.

Since these are among the most important questions that humans can think about, this is a particularly serious stunting of one’s intellectual abilities. It’s not as bad as the child raised in a closet, of course, but it is the same kind of abuse.

Not to be neglected either is the potential harm to society. People with dogmatic religious beliefs are highly likely to be mistaken about many questions on which those religious beliefs touch, particularly moral and political questions. Empirically, they are likely to cause harm to others because of those false beliefs. For instance, they might oppose equal rights for gays, or for women. In the worst cases, religious believers have been known to engage in actual violence to promote their religion (wars, terrorist attacks). Looking at people like Hamas or ISIS, it appears that their religious beliefs help motivate their acts of violence, since they expect to be rewarded by God.

You might agree that it’s wrong to teach children an extreme, fundamentalist version of religion, but you might think moderate religious doctrines are okay. However, even moderate religious doctrines carry a risk. There’s a risk that your child will look at the religious texts that you told him were the word of God and, perfectly reasonably, interpret them differently (and much less liberally) from you. This is not a mere theoretical possibility; this has happened many times.

3. Objections

What if religion is true?

In that case, by teaching your children your religion, you might be saving their souls. Obviously, this would be justified.

However, you can’t know what religion, if any, is true, merely on the basis of what you were taught, given that there are many other, incompatible teachings. To know what religion is true, if this is possible at all, would require critical thinking. And the best bet for your children to know the true religion is for them to learn to think clearly and rationally, to examine the arguments for and against religious claims.

Of course, some will claim that they know the true religion (somehow) and that it’s more important for their kids to believe that religion (whether or not they would count as knowing it) than it is for them to develop their reasoning capacities. If you think that, there’s probably nothing I could do to persuade you otherwise.

However, the rest of us should not find that convincing. Most people (who aren’t dogmatic believers) should probably agree that the best way to promote true beliefs as well as solid reasoning abilities is for all children to be taught to think critically about religious and philosophical questions, not for children to be indoctrinated into whatever their parents believe.

What if the children waive their rights?

If you’ve met any children, you probably realize that most of them would be happy to waive their right to be educated. At least, they would if the education could be substituted with playing. They might even waive their right to be taught critical thinking skills in favor of receiving dogmatic instruction; they might not see why critical thinking was good, and they might not care one way or the other about how they were to be taught, as long as the total teaching time was limited.

However, it’s plausible that children should not be able to waive this right. Compare their right to medical care. Suppose a child doesn’t want the MMR vaccine because he doesn’t like needles and he doesn’t understand what’s so bad about measles. It’s plausible that the parents would be obligated to vaccinate the kid anyway. Similarly, it’s plausible that you have to educate your children with some minimum level of quality even if they don’t want it.

Everything is risky.

I mentioned the risk of your child growing up to be a religious fanatic. However, any time you have a child, there is a risk of that child growing up to be a criminal or some other kind of harmful person (like a politician, or even a humanities professor). Furthermore, there is no education that eliminates this risk. So is it wrong to have kids at all?

Presumably not. So the problem can’t be merely imposing any risk on society. The problem is imposing an unreasonable risk. In the case of dogmatic religious teachings, one is imposing a significantly greater risk than would otherwise obtain, and one is doing this for no good reason. (Of course, the parents are presumably doing this because they think their religion is true. But almost always, they have no good reason for believing that, and hence, they have no good reason for their action.) So that makes it an unreasonable risk.

What about parental rights?

Don’t parents have the right to decide what’s best for their children?

No, not if they’re deciding something that is objectively unreasonable. For instance, you don’t have the right to decide that the best diet for your child consists entirely of sticks and stones. Children are not pieces of property. They are human beings. Parents’ role is that of guardians who must act for the child’s interests – they don’t have the right to do whatever they want for whatever reason.

4. Should it Be Outlawed?

So there’s a prima facie case that it should actually be illegal to teach children religious doctrines as dogmas. This would be especially true for extreme, fundamentalist doctrines.

However, a complication in the United States is that this would probably be found in court to conflict with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Thus, to outlaw religious indoctrination would probably require repealing or modifying the First Amendment. I don’t think we should do that, partly because I think it could lead to other erosions of freedom, and partly because I think it would lead to massive civil unrest and disobedience, given the power of religion in America.

However, it could be reasonable for some countries to outlaw religious indoctrination for children. These would be countries that lack a First Amendment and that have overall weaker religious sentiment, like most countries in Europe. These laws would need to be carefully crafted to avoid punishing parents for trivial reasons; they would want to target formal instruction in schools and churches, not informal remarks by parents. Again, the aim wouldn’t be to stop children from knowing about religion; it would be to prevent them from being dogmatically taught a single religion as the one truth.

Of course, once you come of age, people can “teach” each other anything they want. You can even join a cult and get brainwashed if you want. The cult leader can say whatever nonsense he wants to you (short of telling you to commit crimes). But children need to be protected, because they haven’t developed their reasoning abilities, and certain kinds of indoctrination prevent them from developing those abilities.