I teach at a Catholic School this year. I would not say I have an agenda, but I also don’t hide the fact from students that not everyone believes the same thing they do. And there are certain things I simply don’t teach. I recuse myself and the principal comes to the class for 40 minutes and teaches religion that day. I’m amazed at how many 8th graders really think there are only Catholics, Muslims and Jews in the world.
At least you are honest!
Things have changed so much when I was in school (1955-67) and Catholic faith permeated our lives. I doubt the kids you teach are as sheltered as we were, but I think it’s good that you let them know there’s a bigger world out there.
Our textbooks were Catholic-- music book was called To God Through Music, the stories in the readers had priests and Catholic families as characters, Geography class had stories of a boy and his father traveling around the world and going to Mass where, “it was the same Latin Mass in every country!”
So it wasn’t just a religion class. It was a Catholic “culture”.
I also remember being called a “Cat-licker” at the schoolbus stop, across from the “pup-licker” kids’ schoolbus stop. It was done in fun.
We weren’t told much about other religions until the higher grades.
We had nuns as teachers, or lay teachers who were Catholic.
Most of the students at the school where my parish is located are not Catholic. They have to wear the uniforms, and their parents are happy that they are getting a good education, and learning some self discipline, but we have no nuns.
Two of our Catholic schools will be charter schools starting this fall. They have to remove all the religious articles, pictures, etc. There will be no religion classes. In fact it almost sounds like it has be “godless” in order to get the $$$. Kind of sad, I think.