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The huge issue with that is there is a lot of peoples lives based on the belief that their religious teachings are true. We are also often taught to hold tightly to our beliefs from a young age.
I am an atheist and a scientist / engineer, but to expect people to 'convert' to atheism / logical thought to by atheists basically saying to believers; 'your beliefs are nonsense' will never work for lots of reasons; cognitive dissonance being a major factor.
What I think we need is to raise the next generation to understand how to discern good information from bad, evaluate sources dispassionately and actively embrace cognitive dissonance. Basically teach kids (and maybe adults) to think critically and embrace being wrong.
I must say from trying to apply this to parts of my life and work, it is a tiring approach, it is far easier to rely on my beliefs than to constantly question them and far easier to ignore others poor judgements than to challenge them.
Sorry I'm rambling now....
mi7rennie-
This should diminish if schools are banned from joining in this indoctrination.
As Richard Dawkins says there is no such thing as a 'muslim child' or a 'christian child'. Just children with minds full of questions, and they don't believe in gods (or santa, or fairies at the bottom of the garden) until someone else puts those ideas into their heads.If converting people to atheism is almost impossible, then preventing them from becoming believers in the first place is easier. Teaching that mere faith is insufficient might be a start.
bq
I am against faith schools on the principle that state money should not be used to indoctrinate and brainwash children to believe ridiculous and harmful superstitions. I am, however, cognisant of the theory that it is the very integration of the CofE into the mainstream British state that makes it such a wishy-washy and fairly harmless religion these days, and that when private money pays for religious teaching extremism flourishes (see American bible belt Christianity or Salafist/Whahabi Islam).
I am all for state funded schools teaching children about religions, as long as (at the very minimum) no attempt is made to teach the pupils that any of it is true. Preferably it should be made clear that these are just stories made up to control the populace and none of them are actually true.
The solution may be to take the money out of the system by abolishing their charitable status and taxing religions. Imagine how much richer the country would be if all that religious wealth was taxed at 40%. And how much less likely foreign cash would be to flood into this country's religious institutions, schools and businesses.