Should a 9 year old (year 5) know who Adam and Eve are?

[wubwubwub]

Is this general knowledge for this age? My niece doesn't know who they are and I'm sure I did at that age. But maybe I'm old LOL.

Would I expect them to know?

Right yeah. When teaching my kids good and evil and resisting temptation, I'm not going to root it in a story that has given half the world their justification for rampant misogyny for two thousand years.

Let's learn about good and evil children, and how a weak willed woman is the cause of all that is bad on earth. Nope.

They can hear about this myth a little later when their reasoning and cognitive faculties have been fed by a few other myths.....Icarus, Daedalus, Midas, Chronos, Theseus, Helion. All great messages and none rooted in the evil of women.

Why do you think any religion needs to be referred to when talking about good abd evil??

I returned to my book after reading this thread, and the very first line I read was “Being outside was like being exiled from Eden.” This is in a novel published last year. So yes, essential cultural knowledge which is constantly referred to in different contexts! I wouldn’t want to put a definitive age on when anyone should know something but surprised you could get to nine without having heard of Adam and Eve at all.

DD learnt about it in Year 4

I would have thought they would. Even if not religious, it's much more of a cultural reference now.

@wonkywardrobes

For example, the Apple logo is likely a reference to the forbidden fruit and garden of Eden.

You could easily have looked your 'likely' theory up

@wubwubwub
I was brought up Catholic but am now atheist, but I greatly value some of the lessons from the Bible. I find you can use them just like Shakespeare or 'the boy who cried wolf' as parables to navigate life. You don't have to adhere to the whole creationist thing.

My DCs seemed to spend far more time on other religions at primary. Christianity involved Christmas and Easter stories only.

In my school, in Year 5 RE we teach the Christian creation story, Adam and Eve and then also The Big Bang Theory and Evolution as alternatives!

Ok so if adam and eve is taught in primary school, fine. Bit if it’s not, i wouldn’t be bothered of a kid didn’t know of them.

Off the top of my head, religious beliefs are part of the curriculum for ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Vikings. Definitely the stories about Valhalla, the journey taken by Egyptians after death, various different Gods that were worshipped. So yes, through the history curriculum as well as RE.

Do you think they know about the rainbow and Noah's Ark?

I'm just saying there's morals perhaps from the story.

Take away the religious aspect. You have good/evil, temptation, consequences of not following rules etc.

Probably the "main" ones, yes.
It's not as if they don't know about things like Noah's Ark as a story from a small age, loads of toys and books and stuff reference it. So I was genuinely surprised that they hadn't heard of Adam and Eve.

I was assuming it was almost like general knowledge, nothing to do with religious teaching, a bit like... knowing what the capital of England is, or knowing that that the King is called Charles.

DD went to a non-denomiated school but had RE from Reception and they went over the main bits in the bible, Adam and Eve, Noah's Arc, Moses etc. In addition to several points in the Jewish, Hindu and Islam teaching.

But, she also had a children bible we got her. We are atheist but think that as we live in a Christian influenced society DD should know about various religions and how the stories shaped the history.

@Milange

Do please continue with your all caps shouting if you’re enjoying it though.

Do please continue to talk about your child as if he's a genius and the rest of all us spawned plebs.

I just asked my nearly 9yo DD. She knew who they were and said she learned about them from YouTube. In school they seem to learn about Easter every year, but not much old testament stuff.

DD did follow it up with "but Adam didn't have a chest". So obviously YouTube isn't the best place to get your religious education.

He isn’t anything like a genius, and neither did I imply he is. He has special needs! (Severe adhd, asd with pda, dyslexia, dyspraxia, sensory processing disorder and a speech disorder). That’s why I have to home educate him.

If knowing about Adam and Eve makes him a genius, then considering it’s on the primary curriculum, and 60 odd percent of people on here think that it’s a normal thing for a 9 year old to know about, there must be a lot of 9 year old geniuses about.

Mine just lives in a normal house where people watch the news and talk about stuff.

Kids ask questions- who is that man on the tv? . Why are you talking about a war? What’s Palestine? Ellie is going to Jamaica, can we go? (Couldn’t afford it even if we weren’t illegal there!)

They’ll struggle to understand much of Western culture and history without a basic knowledge of Christianity. The Adam and Eve story is also part of the creation myth of Islam and Judaism, so pretty important. Within Christianity, the Fall is the foundation of the whole story- how sin and suffering entered the world and why Jesus had to redeem mankind. Not much else will make sense without it.

So I am a bit surprised that a 9yo doesn’t know about Adam and Eve and even more surprised to hear that people would deliberately deprive their children of an understanding of the culture they live in. It’s nothing to do with teaching it as true (in any event, few Christians in the UK take the story to be true in a historical sense).

That said, I read a statistic to my mum the other day, that some enormous percentage of adults can’t name the four Gospels, and discovered that my mum couldn’t name the Gospels and she’s a practising Christian. I think some people just aren’t very interested in knowing things.

I think some people just aren’t very interested in knowing things.

I think you are right. Some people go as far as being proud of not knowing things, and want to pass that quality on to their children. It’s reverse snobbery.

You don’t have to be at all religious to know the story. IMO it’s just part of general knowledge for anyone born in a country that was for many hundreds of years Christian, and whose history is bound up with Christianity. So pretty much all of Europe, just for starters.

Mine favour science, physics, space. They have learnt about the horrific scourge the churches and religions have caused throughout history.

They learn high level information about the six main religions. I allow them to decide after that what if any further dept they go into.

What do you mean by ‘high level’?

I knew from about 5 because I went to Sunday school. I don't suppose a DC would know unless they heard the story.

They don't go into the details. They learn about the number of followers, the core beliefs, so ten commandments, the influences in today's society, the similarities and differences to other religions.

Some context of origins of when it became a religion, where they gained power influences in politics etc.

So I suppose I would describe it as taking an objective look from a distance.