Quora Question - What do teachers tell students when they (the kids) ask about their religious beliefs?

My Answer.

As a rule of thumb I do not answer questions about my personal life when students ask me. It really is none of their business and it also interferes with the important teacher-student boundary that I believe is necessary for effective pedagogy. However I do sometimes wax into the philosophical when teaching Physics or Astronomy/Earth Science. This largely occurs when discussing the nature of materialism, the origin of life, determinism and causality etc. In this case I make my position clear as a Deist (of Jewish origin). I will outline the atheistic and theistic position but I think its only fair that they should know where my bias comes from if the topic ventures into the arena of the subjective. Having said that, this is an extremely small part of the curricula that I cover and my conscious attempt as a Science teacher is to focus on the objective (99%+ of the courses) where such beliefs play a negligible role.