I went to a semi-religious primary school in the UK. By that I mean we'd have a morning assembly, sing hymns from a book (we hated it) and generally had one teacher or another talk about life stuff, recount a story laced with positivity and how to look at a situation etc. Look up to your elders, be nice to your peers, treat others as you'd like to be treated.
That will probably sound familiar to some people here...and generally speaking I don't have any problem with it.
What is a problem is religions facing off against each other. War in the name of one god or another, treating those of another religion as "lesser" than your own, the usual human trash element coming through in a religious way.
The most vocal religion since 9/11 has to be Islam, for all the problems it causes. The "religion of peace" hasn't really done anything positive in the west but try to work it's way into the fabric of societies, denounce anyone who argues against it and promotes backward values of gender separation, sharia law and a strong bias towards its own teachings and a closed mind to anything outside of it.
Right now in the UK we have a real fracture in society along religious lines. I'd call it muslims self separating. The growth of muslim schools, one particular recently was found to have
$600,000 cash and weapons in.
Religion today (at least in the UK) is a tool of division, not overall cohesion or coming together of the local community. Some shady shit goes on inside those buildings, and I'm not just talking about mosques...we've all seen in the news what priests get up to with kids.
I think you can bring kids up with positive values and leave religion out of it. They'll be more open minded, which isn't bad... or is it?