ZOROASTRIANISM is the 'sign of Zorro'. Islam is when 'their marriages take place in the void deck'. Buddhism is 'about filial piety'.

These were some comments made by youth here on various religions, as found in a study by former Aware president and educator Phyllis Chew.

Shocked by the results, she states unequivocally that Singapore needs to review the teaching of religion in school.

'A lack of knowledge of different faiths is a potentially unstable situation and it might be productive here to rethink what we could do for youth,' says Dr Chew, 55, an English language and literature lecturer at the National Institute of Education.

It was not the only disturbing finding from her study, which involved 2,801 students aged 12 to 18 from six secondary schools. Its aim: To find out the nature of religious switching by adolescents, and how much they know about religions.

While 76 per cent said they were 'tolerant' of other religions, their idea of tolerance was 'not talking about it'.

And while a whopping 92 per cent expressed desire to find out more about other religions, the majority said they would do so from the Internet.

At the same time, Dr Chew found that they switched religions through an emotional process. 'They will usually say things like, 'I've a good feeling (about this religion)' or 'My friends influenced me'.

'So it's not a very rational decision, like what are the pros, what are the cons. It's not very cognitive. The switching process is usually an emotional one.'

This is particularly so as adolescence is a period when self-esteem issues come into play, she adds. 'This is a time when they are trying to find out who they are. They are questioning the values their parents taught them, they are trying to find their place in society.'

What all this shows is the urgent need for a more systematic way for religion to be taught, says Dr Chew.

'What I hope to see is a course on comparative religion studied by all regardless of religious affiliation,' she says.

'This course must be taught by trained, knowledgeable and sympathetic teachers of comparative religion.'

This, she notes, is being done in Britain, where students study a book of all its main faiths, and do a comparative study of their histories, practices and beliefs.

At the same time, Singapore has to learn from its lessons of the 1980s, when Religious Knowledge was introduced in schools in 1984. It was terminated five years later.

Under it, students chose to study only one of the religions offered - which 'leads to polarisation along ethno-religious lines', says Dr Chew.

At the same time, teachers were 'not adequately trained and, in fact, some were overzealous and used it as a springboard to promote their own faiths'.

Today, aspects of religions and cultures are taught informally as part of civics education classes.

But more has to be done, says Dr Chew. 'We don't want youth to feel that the meaning of being tolerant is not to talk about it. And therefore feel that evif I want to find out about religion, I can't even ask my friend, I go to the Internet.

'Now, I don't know whether youths have the skill to sieve through the Internet as to what is factually correct and what is factually wrong.'

Dr Chew was herself a 'switcher' during her adolescence.

While her grandparents were Taoist, her parents converted to Christianity after her mother recovered from an illness.

'But I got very, very disturbed in my teenage years, because my grandmother is Taoist and the Christian priest said my grandmother was not going to heaven,' she recounts.

So the young Phyllis searched for answers. In university, she joined the Buddhist society, the Baha'i society and even checked out the Tamil society to understand more about Hinduism.

In the end, she became a Baha'i as 'it was unequivocal in accepting that all religions worship the same god and so my perennial question - what will happen to my beloved grandmother - was solved.'

But while she made the effort to educate herself about various religions, she is concerned that today's teenagers are not doing the same. This, she worries, may lead to a 'potentially unstable situation in the future because of ignorance'.

'We can be tolerant only if we know what other religions are about, otherwise we are operating in a vacuum. We are like frogs in a well.

'People guard their turf because they are defensive. It's a lack of knowledge, actually.

'If you have knowledge of all the religions, then you can be really more confident and less defensive and this really is what the world needs now.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sept 12, 2008.

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