Christian faith and religious education in schools. Are there neutral schools or not?

I sent the following article to Etelä-Suomen Sanomat magazine. The topic is the neutrality of schools or, in fact, the impossibility of it, because we cannot be completely neutral

Are there neutral schools or not?

ESS reported on school morning openings under the title "Many schools only organize morning openings suitable for everyone" (September 10). This raised the question of whether schools are politically and ideologically neutral spaces or not, as the principal of one school stated in the newspaper. I think it's impossible. If you bow in one direction, you turn your back in the other direction at the same time. That is, if you support some other worldview, you reject another worldview at the same time. Yes, each of us leans in a certain direction, including school principals, teachers, students and their parents. Nobody is neutral.

So what is the current trend in society? There is no doubt about this: the trend over the years has been that more and more people want God and the Christian faith out of society and their lives, including schools. That's the main trend.

But where or through whom did this trend start? The most important factors in Finland have been free thinkers and non-religious opponents of the Christian faith. They consider it a freedom of religion and a right that Christianity should no longer be recognized, taught and mentioned among children in schools or in other contexts. Other things should be treated with acceptance and approval, but not God and Jesus Christ. School principals and others strive to comply with this requirement.

I ask, however, what is so bad about Jesus that he and the teaching about him must be opposed? Isn't Jesus good and perfect, so why do freethinkers and others oppose him? They follow the same model as in the former communist countries. This is hard for me to understand.

I also ask why free thinkers do not interfere with atheistic and religious concepts in schools, such as the big bang, the self-creation of life or the gradual development from the primordial cell? They are religious views, not science-based views. It is impossible that "nothing exploded" and gave birth to the universe, and the self-creation has not been proven. In addition, several well-known paleontologists such as Stephen Jay Gould have admitted that gradual development is not visible in fossils (The Panda's Thumb, 1988, pp. 182,183). I ask, why don't free thinkers interfere with these religious views, which I personally consider to be myths? Why have they allowed these religious views to be allowed in schools while opposing Jesus and the Christian faith?

Jari Iivanainen