quote:Brian White: I think it is the same with religion. You get religion drilled into you when you are young and then all the evidence to the contrary in the world doesn't make a difference.

You might want to elaborate a bit more on this. The way I see it, children are vulnerable to the McDonald's advertising because their mental and physical development is incomplete. They are more accepting of anything that adults say to them. As I quoted above ...

quote:For children to critically process ads, they must be able to discriminate between commercial and noncommercial content and identify advertising's persuasive intent, the report notes.

But the critical mental skills are exactly what is lacking with children. So they are sitting ducks. And whether it is McDonald's sugar and fat rich "foods" or religious propaganda really makes no difference. They're still sitting ducks.

Thing is, not all religious education for kids is the same. Religious education that revolves around developing ethical, social and moral skills could be very useful and helpful for kids. My own church teaches a sexuality course for kids called "Our Whole Lives" which is age-appropriate, is also offered to adults, and provides the youngsters with information to help them make intelligent decisions about their lives. But, of course, there are lots of horror stories about the spirit literally beaten out of children in the name of religion, or an antagonistic attitude towards higher learning inculcated, or a Xenophobic attitude imposed, etc.

However, non-religious education can be just as harmful to kids as the most harmful religious education if the aim and result is to teach unthinking obedience, thoughtlessness, etc. Children are "ideal" recruits for military brainwashing, for example, because of their mental underdevelopment. Military 'education" around the world, e.g., the U.S. military is a great example, makes use of deep psychological understanding to "break down" adults, much less children, and turn them into efficient killers who will do what is expected of them.

In an ideal world, children would not have views foisted onto them as "fact" when they don't have the mental equipment (yet) to evaluate the merit of something as important as religious views, for example. It seems like child abuse to me. But that ideal world is a long way off. Parents, or the guardians of children, and not society as a whole, for the time being, decide what sort of "education" kids get and children's rights are still an unrealized dream.

It is highly instructive to note that even in Canada, for example, adults are protected by law from assault on their person ... but children do not have the same kind of protection. Too many adults believe that hitting children is a good thing and they are (partially) protected by the law if they do so. Swedish law provides a glimpse of a more humane treatment of children and their rights. It might be useful to have a look at the status of religious education for children in Sweden and see how that might be different from Canada as well.