to be outraged that RE is a compulsory subject at GCSE level and History or a language aren't?

[seeker]

Well am I? I thought it was just my dd's very old fashioned school that insisted they study RE even if they aren't doing the exam, but I find out that it's a statutory requirement. So they can drop Modern Languages, History, Citizenship......but they have to do RE. And religious people say that thier faith doesn't impose on my life at all.

ANd I undersstand that it consits of reallly intersting discussion about issues of the day, and is really all about morality and philosophy and is mportant stuff, but why call it RE?

DD, you said this:

'but practically it is more relevant to understand what faiths are about and the ethics that surround some religious issues that impact on the world we live in, than to know how to calculate x=[-b+...'

Which is rather strange, and okay you are not saying RE is more important but you are saying RE is more relevant and/or practical. Obviously it is not more practical for society as a whole to understand faith than maths. Society would collapse if nobody could do mathematical calculations.

Anyway, I am going to start a new thread because RE is not going to be replaced and there is no point me being annoyed about it. So will post about other realistic options, rather than hijacking this thread.

I'd argue that the results are irrelevant Scaryteacher. The fact that you had a chance to learn about how plants make their own food; how our intestines our designed to maximise the surface area for absorbing food; that equations exist that show you how a physical object will behave before you set it in motion; how we can see the evidence of recessive genes in our eyes etc is the prize.

Learning should be the end in itself, and how the world around us works is surely worth studying.

Gcses are an exam designed to produce passes and I'm sure that schools get better A-C pass grades by teaching less challenging subjects but would you really rather have a child pass leisure and tourism gcse than know how our bodies work?

RE should not be compulsary, but definitley has a part in the school curriculum. I think it would be an interesting subject to study acedemically though, and i've often thought of studying it myself, even though i am not religious.
My dd, loves re in school, and finds it really interesting learning about different faiths and beliefs. She is in a school with children from many different religious backrounds,- or none at all, and this makes for really interesting discussions sometimes.
Language however, should be compulsary. There is a real dearth of language skills in this country, and it absoloutly should be compulsary to study a modern european language,- i would say up to A level actually.

What controversial statements? I screwed up my science O levels in 1982 and got ungradeds in biology and chemistry. Interestingly, when invigilating a GCSE physics paper in the summer, I could answer 25% of the questions, and I haven't done physics since I was 13.

I am not teaching the scientific background to cloning and the environment, but looking at the moral issues, and what Christianity and Judaism teach about these issues, and if it was needed, I got a science teacher friend to come in and do that bit and to join in with the ethics as well when these were taught after school.

I am somewhat older now than when I failed my science O levels at 16, and in the ensuing 28 years, I have done reading around for when I teach specific topics that need it.

[stamps feet]

The solution is GCSE Humanities

wrt science expertise - don't teachers seek assistance form colleagues in a specialism that isn't theirs, if need be? And what about biology graduates teaching Physics A Level?

x-posted there with scaryteacher!

Leisure and Tourism is usually a BTec and can be a good subject, depending where you live and want to work. Sciences are still compulsory.

I'm not that sure that GCSE level MFL would make you multilingual tbh, not if your studies of a language stop there. I don't remember anything of French and German.

I'm so confused. I did my GCSEs 9 years ago and when we chose our options we HAD to do English, Maths and Science, gaining a double, single and double grade for our trouble. In addition we had to choose one course from different catergories, i.e. History instead of Geography, or Art instead of Drama or Music, or Food Technology instead of Graphic Design or Textiles etc.
We also had to choose between German or French.

Ok so things have probably changed in nearly a decade, but the above clearly shows that we HAD to choose one language, one humanities lesson, one creative lesson and one design and tech lesson. Isnt that still the case? If not then I can sort of understand why people are annoyed; we want our children to get a well-rounded education after all.

We also studied 1 lesson a week for RS (got a half a GCSE, easiest B I ever got without trying) one lesson in ICT and 1 lesson on something I can't remember what it was called, but it was basically on sex education and stuff like that.

Hang on a tic. From looking at the directgov website it doesn't look as though RE GSCE is compulsory.

You have to study RE (along with things like citizenship and sex education) during your GSCE years, but you don't have to take an exam in those things.

So it sounds to me like RE would be covered in PSHE classes (anyone remember them?) rather than a full blown GSCE.

In which case, it's a bit of a non-issue...

No, they have to do RE as a separate subject. i said i my OP that they don't actually have to do the exam - but they do have to do the subject.

'that equations exist that show you how a physical object will behave before you set it in motion;' that's where I get lost you see, I cannot visualise that at all, or get my head around the equations.

'Learning should be the end in itself, and how the world around us works is surely worth studying' agree entirely with the first bit; for me other things (religion/history/politics for example)are part of how the world around us works and are the bits that interest me.

Curry - it is hard for some native speakers students to grasp English, even if they can speak it, they can't always read or write it, and to make them do an MFL is unreasonable imo. Just as I don't have bent for science, many don't have a bent for languages. Compulsory up to GCSE sure, but not beyond. You also have to look at which language - is it more worthwhile doing Spanish than French?

I think- could well be wrong- that Seeker's DD's school is teaching it as a gcse and saying that those RS lessons are compusory rather than the one lesson a week for legal requirements that a lot of schools do. We hsd half a term of meditation as RS right before gcses and it was lovely.

JMHPG, the teaching of Physics by Biology graduates is a far greater outrage than anything on this thread.

Scaryteacher, I don't think you can separate the ethics from the scientific understanding. They both hugely inform each other. But I am stopping now, as I feel as if I am singling you out for which I apologise.

There is a general lack of interdisciplinary work throughout all of the education system, and you as an RE teacher are no more responsible for that than people working in other academic disciplines.

It is compulsory for my DS to do a half GCSE in RE. There wasn't a local school where children didn't have to do a full or half GCSE. The teaching of RE is very good though, and I was impressed by it before sending him. So I think that as he has to do it, he should try and get the most out of it.

Minipie - as explained earlier - many schools put the students in for GCSE as they have to do RE anyway, so they may as well get a qualification out of it.

No, RE cannot be covered in PSHE, as at KS4 PSHE you are busy doing ROAs, personal finance, setting targets, sex ed, sorting out work experience etc etc.

Did you never do pendulum experiments? I've never been great at that side off phsyics/maths but the fact that there are relationships that can be expressed as equations ie understanding that there are certain rules is enough.

Agree with history, politics and religion (at a lower level). Actually History of religion would be an interesting option.

ds came home after his first gcse Re lesson non compulsary option and said ok this is more intresting were discussing the grass roots and the ethics of relgion and how it can influence peoples everyday thoughts and how it affected history and where people lived

Ds Does not believe in any Religion his choice but is genuinles intrested in it the morals ethics and the beliefs

At his school the core subjects are MAths ,English , pshe,and Pe

He has chosen Re, Georgraphy , history triple science as his extras , has done passed maths already

Scaryteacher, i take your point about languages not being everybody's thing, but i think sometimes we have to be forced outside of our comfort zone, and to do things that we find difficult. i did french in school and at uni, and so my bias is towards learning french as a language. However, i'd love to be able to speak spanish as well.

Don't worry Milly, I'm an RE teacher, so used to it!

Interesting comment about needing science to understand ethics - I sometimes think the scientists need ethics to think about what they do before they do it; it sometimes seems that pushing back the boundaries of science overrides everything else. It's a tad like medicine, keeping people alive because they can, even when it would be kinder not to.

Forced out of our comfort zones yes...I studied two years of Flemish recently., and that was well beyond mine; but I have O level German and French and A level French as well, so knew I could do it; but for students who struggle with English as their first language, the onus has to be on getting them up to speed there, not making them take an MFL. Bloody useful for the grammar though. I've learned more grammar doing languages than I ever did in English.

scaryteacher - your argument is flawed - learning another language, in particular one that is quite close to your mother tongue (eg French, Italian, Spanish or German for native English speakers) greatly enhances your ability to speak, read and write your mother-tongue.