religion
Should Religion Be Taught in Schools?
LNAT Section B · Model essay
The essay prompt
Some argue that schools should keep clear of religion altogether, leaving belief to families and places of worship. Discuss whether religion should be taught in schools.
The stance
Religion should be taught in schools, but the whole case turns on one distinction: pupils should be taught about religion, comparatively and critically, not into it. A liberal democracy needs citizens who can read the moral languages of their neighbours; that is served by pluralistic religious literacy and actively undermined by both confessional indoctrination and a frightened silence. The defensible claim is therefore for objective, critical, pluralistic teaching of religion, not for any school catechising children in a single faith.
The case for
Religious literacy is civic and intellectual infrastructure
Citizens who cannot read the moral languages of their neighbours cannot deliberate honestly with them. Mill's argument in On Liberty is that truth is sharpened by contesting error, not by suppressing whole categories of thought; a school that simply omits religion deprives pupils of the very ideas a plural public square is built on. Teaching religion comparatively trains pupils to evaluate competing worldviews, which strengthens rather than weakens rational judgement, and it equips them to understand history, art, law and conflict that are unintelligible without it.
The case against
Religious teaching can slide into indoctrination and breach neutrality
The strongest objection is not to comparison but to what schools actually do. In JR87 (2025) the UK Supreme Court held that exclusively Christian religious education and collective worship in Northern Ireland schools breached the Convention because they were not delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner. This is the real risk: 'teaching religion' in practice often means privileging one faith, embedding worship, and presenting doctrine as truth, which is exactly what a neutral state should not fund.
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