...Some of the report's conclusions will provoke controversy. Instead of accepting the 10 Commandments, children should be taught to question the plausibility of events and teachings in the bible, it says. Rather than referring to God, they should be taught that there is a divine being whose moral judgments are significantly more reliable than ours.

From the age of five, children should learn that there are people who do not believe in God, the afterlife or the power of prayer or that the Universe was created, the report says. They should also be told from an early age of the alternatives to marriage and that there are non-religious ways of marking momentous experiences. A heavy emphasis would also be given to educating children about Islam to guard against what the think-tank regards as a growing phobia in schools towards Muslims.

Children with strong religious beliefs would be encouraged to question them and to ask what grounds there are for holding them. Pupils would be actively encouraged to question the religious beliefs they bring with them into the classroom, not so they are better able to defend or rationalise them, but so they are genuinely free to adopt whatever position on religious matters they judge to be best supported by the evidence.

The loony fundies are already out for blood over the report. If they can't brainwash people as children, how will they get people to believe their drivel as adults.

Children should learn more about atheism and less about Jesus, says Labour think-tank—Telegraph, 15th February 2004.