To think RE is a big waste of time

[Himalaya]

I don't mean that kids shouldn't come out of school with a basic knowledge of the world's religions and some skills in philosophy and critical thinking, but to have to take RE classes every week for 12+ years seems like overkill, and a waste of their time.

They certainly don't come out at the end of it with twelve years worth of knowledge, so you have to wonder what is the point. The only point seems to me to be to instill in them strongly the idea that religions deserve a special kind of RESPECT.

Most of the stuff in primary and early secondary is just mush content-wise (but with a heavy undertone of respect).

I think the facts on religion they need to know could be covered in a couple of modules of general studies, or under humanities at KS3 and KS4. It would free up time that could be used for critical thinking, philosophy, study skills, economics, public speaking, sport, creative writing etc....

You cannot separate 'the real world' from religion.

Some jewish boys are circumcised - this happens in the real world. It is part of a rational debate - probably a bad example because although it has religious teachings behind it, it is also largely cultural.

It is not irrelevant that Jews think it's a covenant with God - it's a fact. It's an illustration of a point - a point that circumcision has significance for many people far stronger than that of health issues. To discuss circumcision without discussing religious groups and teachings/leaders' proclamations on the subject really limits the discussion.

You may choose between faith or rationality, but to explain that choice you need an awareness of the faith. Without RE teaching you don't have that. You only have a half argument.

CB

I can see why in a class of adolscents, some of whom have had their genitals ritually operated on by parents who love them, you would want to be sensitive about the subject. But it leads you into statements that are downright dishonest.

"Some jewish boys are circumcised" the vast majority of observant jewish households circumcise their boys

"it is also largely cultural" it is a religious ritual!

(really if this is what passes for RE I despair. It's not even accurate. It's codswallop)

"It is not irrelevant that Jews think it's a covenant with God - it's a fact." - yes but it isnt relevant to the question of whether it is right or wrong to allow babies to be circumcised, that is an independent question.

"circumcision has significance for many people far stronger than that of health issues. " yes but not for the people it is done to. They are 5 days old, they have no religious beliefs.

To discuss circumcision without discussing religious groups and teachings/leaders' proclamations on the subject really limits the discussion.

Why? either it is right or wrong to take a knife to a childs genitals. The finer points of religious teaching, or indeed whether it is done because of a you belief in alien abduction, doesnt matter to the ethical question.

The same with slavery either it is right or wrong, that is not changed by the fact that there have been religious pronouncements on either side (but by definition all religious viewpoints are valid and to be respected, as I keep being told...)

I guess studying the practice of ritual circuncision does help you to undestand the horrible dilemma Jewish parents face and how religions make good people do bad things.

But if your starting assumptions are 'religious teachings are morally important' you end up going through the motions of critical thought but sweeping these lessons under the carpet with weasel words like 'some' and 'it's cultural' to avoid facing up to the recognition that a mainstream religious practice is immoral.

Himalaya - obviously I am glossing over details here in order to have a discussion about RE teaching rather than the finer details of circumcision. But it is wrong to say that a boy is jewish/comes from a cultural jewish background = always circumcised.

You cannot, as a teacher, lead children through a lesson which concludes that 'mainstream religious practice is immoral'. And I think that is correct. It is not up to the teacher to tell children what to think. It is not up to the teacher to encourage children to look at religions and proclaim them immoral.

Post-16 the approach is more in the line of your critical thinking, but again it is set in a background of balanced argument.

In history, we don't shout at children that slavery is/was wrong. That is clear in itself. Instead we explain why people took that particular route - we put it into a context. And - more importantly - why abolitionists thought the way they did/do and how they got legislation on their side.

As an educator you have to put forward all points of view. Including in contentious issues such as circumcision.

You cannot ask students to make value judgements without them having all the facts. And thus they need to be taught all aspects of the issue - including religious practice.

RE is not just about looking at all the criticisms against religious practice and telling kids that all religion is immoral. Neither is it 'religious instruction' and telling all kids to follow this or that religion 'because god/the Pope/the Queen says so'. It is empowering students with subject knowledge and understanding to be able to engage in debate. But we cannot lead them towards a specific conclusion other than a moral relativism which you so despise. Likewise I cannot teach kids to never have sex until they are married, or to have as much sex with whoever they want wherever they want - I have to state the facts for both cases and lead students through a discussion so that they can make up their own minds.

Children arrive in a classroom from all sorts of backgrounds. School - and RE lessons - have to acknowledge this. We cannot damn cultures or religions - we can just open their minds up about approaches which are different to theirs.

TBH I think that the biggest danger in RE teaching is not that we produce a class of moral relativists, or children who blindly follow one specific religion (though, obviously, these two standpoints have their problems!) These children will grow and develop into adults and will probably have time then to reappraise what they thought as early teenagers and come to their own conclusions as they go out into the big wide world.

The biggest danger - and it is illustrated in many classrooms and pubs up and down the country - is that children come from families who are utterly ignorant about other religions and cultures and come to conclusions which spread hatred and contempt - without even having any knowledge of such religious practices. Allowing hatred based on what kids read in The Sun or such like is unacceptable.

Having kids studying religion and coming to their own, educated conclusion is one thing. But allowing religious hatred to go unchallenged is wrong. It causes all sorts of problems.

Good RE lessons are about opening minds, not closing them down.

CB you say "I cannot teach children to have as much sex with whoever they want" - whyever not? Should they have more sex than they want with people they don't want to? Or not have a fulfilling sexual relationship because someone else says they shouldn't?

Obviously within the bounds of the law, and the context of relationship with partner(s)this seems like a fairly succinct statement of their human rights. It doesn't mean they can't keep sex within marriage if they want to.

it is mind boggling that you would teach anything else.

I've thought all the way through this discussion that it is generally an Overton Window problem. It is all very well saying that we provide children with information and tell them to make their own minds up, but the viewpoints under consideration are selected by us. The obvious problem with that is that we frame the debate. We choose which opposing view points are to be considered by teaching them.

Also, a lot of our guidance on what is and is not acceptable is taught implicitly rather than explicitly. Of course History teachers teach that slavery and the holocaust are wrong - they just make the message implicit rather than explicit. But they are not genuinely giving pupils two sides of an argument in equal measure. That is as it should be, and I think there needs to be more scrutiny of what the implicit message is in RE.

I also don't think people can 'make their own minds up' about anything unless they have been taught how rational thought works, and how people make rational decisions.

o this is how I imagine an Ethics and Philosophy class topic would be;

'Is it ok/acceptable/right to circumsize male children under the guise of religion'

'Is sex before marriage immoral?'

Discuss..

I would expect the answer to include religious beliefs. But I would make the central question a moral/ethical one.

Of course this one would need an understanding of religion, but not just respect and acceptance of religious beliefs.

I have no problem with children debating these things, but in an Ethics class not a RE one.

I thought of this thread yesterday afternoon when I was round at a friend's house. Her DP appeared half-way through the afternoon, straight from a meeting he had attended with his first wife and their 12 year old daughter. The meeting was at a local Catholic organisation and was an information meeting for parents and pre-teens on sex. The meeting was run by a Catholic priest and involved discussion of sex illustrated with slides of famous works of art (think Renaissance statues and paintings) and oblique references to body parts and sensations... Useful?

CB you say "I cannot teach children to have as much sex with whoever they want" - whyever not? Should they have more sex than they want with people they don't want to? Or not have a fulfilling sexual relationship because someone else says they shouldn't?

You cannot tell children to go off and shag as many people as possible, in the same way you cannot teach them to only have sex after marriage. You have to present cases, let them discuss, listen to them, answer any questions they have as honestly as possible. But it would be foolish to instruct them to follow any particular path, apart from that of self respect and respect for others. It is the same with many of the contentious RE issues.

MillyR - yes, we frame the debate. We cannot claim to be utterly impartial. No school subjects taught by a human are.

Marsha - those questions are very interesting ones, but students cannot debate them thoroughly without an understanding of the subject material. I agree - this would include an understanding of religion and not just an acceptance and tolerance. But you have to teach that knowledge and understanding of religion before you can begin to discuss the ethical issue comprehensively.

Bonsoir - that's a ridiculous question. It bears very little relation to what happens in UK schools. You are debating a totally different subject and just wanting to get a reaction. I don't know of any schools where RE lessons or sex ed lessons are led by a Priest.

Ive not read the thread but from a scottish pov, we have vv little re compared to england, eg i only had 6 lessons throughout my entire schooling. Maybe its coincidental but we are much more tolerant of different religions up here and have no bnp.

Yes I agree CB. I admit there has to be a foundation.

But I want a means to an end. The end being the ability to discuss morality and religion critically. I would restructure the entire curriculum to ensure this could happen when the students were 15 or so.

So at primary start with basics of right/wrong (no religion). Mid-age do religions / history etc

Then back to morality.

It is a subtle shift (that overton window thing), but I would be happier if the driving force is ability to reason / debate and understand.

I think it is so close to what RE classes are like, but a subtle shift.

Then of course it would be easier to do whole topics around disability, leading with rights rather than leading with a passage from the bible.

captainbarnacle - obviously my (real life) example seems extreme in relation to this thread, but that's why it's interesting - it is so clearly black and white and demonstrates why religion has no place in modern education other than as an explanation of our cultural history.

Bonsoir - no, it doesn't illustrate that. It's just one extreme example. You need a more comprehensive argument than 'a friend's daughter had to endure this'.

Marsha - you cannot get a thorough grounding in 2-6+ religions in the time scale you are proposing. Kids cannot spend 7 yrs at primary just studying 'right/wrong' - what is that? What context would that be in? Who decides what is right and wrong?

I think replacing a general RE knowledge with teaching issues of morality is much more dangerous - esp lower down the school. Whose morality? The teachers'? The school? Surely it's better to get a wide spectrum of variations in morality and then narrow down to a moral/ethical discussion in later years. I agree, I would like to see critical thinking etc introduced much earlier. But in order to do that you still need to teach what different cultural groups think about different issues. There isn't just one morality. Even my 4 yr old can sense that.

I really can't agree with leading morality from a religious view point.

Ds' school does do an excellent approach to non-religious acceptable ways of behaviour every week. It is called 'circle time' and they learn how to treat each other with respect, how to be kind, that we all look different etc. God is not mentioned, and it really works to ensure that people get on in a socially acceptable way.

They also learn about God and Jesus and ds makes big statements about 'God being everywhere', and 'he knows what you do' etc. And sometimes, 'I do not believe Jesus'

So the school is already separating it (reception) and it would be very easy to drop the latter.

No Marsha - I agree. You cannot lead morality from a religious viewpoint - unless you are a faith school but that's a whole different matter.

Yes, circle time, PSHE, assemblies, reading books - all these opportunities to discuss moral issues are great. But they are most effective when the child is very young. And they teach nothing about religious practices and teachings etc. Or a pantheon of thoughts and alternatives. It's all 'if this happens then what would/should you do?' rather than 'they think this, you think that - why do we think different things?'

CB -

teaching children to have the sex they want with who they want is not the same thing as telling them to go off and shag as many people as possible. Can you not see that? Their body, their choice.

On the circumscision question to avoid being ignorant of one of the worlds religious traditions you need to know about the legend of Isaac and Abraham, about what the bris signifies etc.. These are questions for a short course on religion.

But knowing this doesn't help you to answer the moral question of whether parents should do this to their children knowing what we know now. If circumcision was to do with Esther, or Moses or warding off the devil, or making a political statement or any deeply held view the moral issues wouldn't change one bit.

You didn't just skim over the details, you misrepresented the facts to avoid talking about an example where many people will view a religious practice as immoral (only some Jews do it, and its really cultural anyway...). intellectual dishonesty has no place in education.

Of course children have to debate and discuss and come to their own conclusions. But the fact is there is no way to weigh up supernatural explanations of morality with rational ones.

"You need a more comprehensive argument than 'a friend's daughter had to endure this'."

I didn't use that argument.

I think I am being more lax than some on here about the extent to which religion is discussed at school.

Himalaya, how would you structure it all? Bonsoir?

CB - 'Yes, circle time, PSHE, assemblies, reading books - all these opportunities to discuss moral issues are great. But they are most effective when the child is very young. And they teach nothing about religious practices and teachings etc.' I know that's why I like it.

I have to go and do homework with ds now...

As I have said earlier in the thread, I want children to learn about religion from a historical and cultural perspective - I think they need the timeline and I think they need to understand to distinguish the misguided thinking and ignorance that led to much bad religious practice from the better thinking that is the precursor of much modern morality.

What I really disagree with is this use of RE as a forum for ethical debate. Ethics need to be divorced from religion and discussed in a standalone manner, with information derived from science.

H would you do a 'is it ok to circumsize' type question...? Or leave religion out of ethics altogether...?

I can't decide if I am being too lax... I was conditioned at a young age!! For a long time I thought morality was religion, I don't agree with that anymore...

I think the conversation about circumcision needs to be framed historically (ie which cultures traditionally circumcised and on what grounds) and scientifically (what are the health advantages and disadvantages) before any discussion of the appropriateness of circumcision in 2011. Graphs showing the percentage of boys circumcised in different societies over a long period of time could be useful.

Sounds good to me.

Abortion, contraception, euthanasia etc - I want children to be given the historical and scientific facts before being asked to debate the ethical merits and their own feelings. Feelings need to be informed, not just gut instinct.

Yes loads to cover before tackling ethics. Perhaps the ethical issues surrounding religion should be left to specialised university courses.