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....

'As for what people study at A level, that is their choice.

hardly!

My school didn't run GCSE RE (showing my age), so no access to A Level in it either: had a lot of catch up to do.

I know you are addressing Fennel, Coalition, but the problem in not post modernism but the misunderstanding. Same could be said of anything.

ST, I think the idea of having qualified adherents of different religions teaching pupils RE is a very good idea. I would have them as visiting specialist teachers as a minor part of the new subject that replaced RE. It could be run in a similar way to the school music service sending in a violin teacher to a school once a week.

It is one of the things that I dislike about Primary school RE (just my own experience though, as a parent). An Anglican priest comes in, who will have been postgraduate training including the topic of teaching religion to children. Then the school will teach buddhism by having some hippy parent come in with no real knowledge of Buddhism or teaching.

I should possibly also say that despite me not liking DS having to do so much RE, his secondary schools does teach it really well.

Marsha - That doesn't change the fact that post modernism is load of old bollocks ;)

Milly that's certainly how my degree ran: core well qualified Lecturers with visitors from the main faiths- we even managed to get a Jain Nun in which ST will know is pretty amazing!

It's absolutely how it should be: living people telling about their culture and beliefs. But as a part of the whole.

ST, I think abortion should be taught within a much wider context, and I think that is only possible if pupils are taught a subject that covers a much wider context so that before they even get to the issue of abortion they are well versed in an understanding of human rights, feminism, ethics and other areas of philosophy, disability rights and so on.

But I have to go, because I must get stuff done and because all this talk of postmodernism is making me very angry.

. I still think it's great. To the extent that even in everday life people could use a good dose of it. Start with reading Six Characters... (Pirandello) and go on from there. It is good for people to consider their reality is not the only one.. you only have to look at mn to see that

MarshaBrady - Yes, but "People have different points of view" doesn't seem to be an idea that requires an entire intellectual movement.

I don't think it is though Milly, as we are not allowed to indoctrinate or preach, but we teach the nuts and bolts of belief, ritual, practice etc and what we teach is (or should be) measured and balanced. An adherent of a religion may not be able to balance x against y, and may proselytise which RE teachers are not allowed to do.

I liked RE at school ( but wasn't allowed to do it for options as it was only CSE, so did O level Chemistry and got ungraded!) but in the 80s it wasn't well taught. I can see a huge improvement now.

scaryteacher

Your points:

1: We teach, we don't preach - proselytizing is not acceptable for any RE teacher > not relevant to the question of whether RE is a waste of time.-It was raised, so I answered it and?

2: Students need some degree of religious literacy - this is NOT covered in Citizenship > OK. How much?Is 12 years worth really warranted?---on an hour a week at secondary, you need the time, especially depending where you teach. I taught in Cornwall where the only religion practised at the school I taught at was Christianity, and normally Methodism. Students who think crossing the border to Devon is an adventure need a huge degree of religious literacy if one assumes that they may some day go to Uni, or work elsewhere; and they will inevitable come across religious beliefs and practices that they haven't before. The pitfalls they could encounter are huge.

3: RE is the only subject taught by law in England. It is base curriculum. The Sec of State can vary the teaching of any of the others by an SI - it takes an act of Parliament to take RE off the curriculum.> Just because its the law doesn't mean its not a waste of time though.-- I think Citizenshit is a waste of time, but I still had to teach it.

4: It is academic at A level - Kant, Mill etc, Philosophy of Religion. It is also quite academic at GCSE, at least for the more able, and as someone said earlier, this may be the only chance they get to discuss abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, just war etc.> But if they didn't have to spend so much time studying RE perhaps they could introduce a subject that allows them to discuss ethical issues without recourse to ancient mythology? As for what people study at A level, that is their choice.----when? Citizenship doesn't cover it, it's all rights and responsibilities etc, and in PSHE you don't get the space after you've done diet, bullying, finance, sex ed.

5: You can do a lot to 'debunk' myths about people as well. I was teaching a unit on Islam on 09/11, having watched the footage of the planes. That was a very interesting time to be an RE teacher.> So far so mushy, what is was the content of the insights from RE on the motivations of the 911 bombers? ---- we looked at the make up of those killed in the Twin Towers once the information was out, and concluded that the bombers didn't care who they had killed, and that extremism isn't just confined to Islam (trying to do more with Year 8 in that school and that catchment was difficult).

Oh well I enjoyed the permutations while getting there. At least it stretches the mind. I enjoyed statistics and economics too for the same reason.

I haven't read the whole thread as I have spring cleaning to do (Hurrah), but wanted to put my thoughts down. I'm in my early twenties so studies gcse RE not long ago. I was at a Church school so it was compulsary and it was only about Christianity. It do though cover ethics and issues such as amimal testing, abortion, environmental issues, designer babies. TBH I think that I would have benefited from learning about other religions as well as Christianity but otherwise I think my RE education was good and useful. We did learn about other religions in years 7-9 but not a gsce level. We certainly covered critical thinking, philosphy, study skills and to an extent public speaking in gcse RE. I think I also gained from learning to argue in written work and this helped me in my degree although it was in an unrelated subject.

ok so my writing skills are terrible, think I need to go back to Secondary school

I've just saved this thread to use in a lesson, thanks very much!

practically imperfect and others have beaten me to it but as an atheist RS teacher (who also teaches philosophy and history) I am pretty horrified at some of the comments on here. Whether you personally are religous or not, you cannot avoid the fact that it DOES motivate a large section of the population to behave in certain ways and believe certain things, rightly or wrongly and if young people are not taught about this, how on earth are they supposed to understand it, support it, or counter it? My head of Dept is the school chaplain and he manages to teach all religions not just Christianity and he had no problem hiring an atheist. Its usually an exam subject for purely pragmatic reasons - by law kids have to study it up to 16 so that might as well get a short course GCSE in it and it helps to motivate them to work - otherwise you try teaching 32 stroppy 15 year olds in a mixed ability set in a classroom built for 30 when some of them are coming from homes where the parents (as someone on here has said) have told them they don't care if they pass. Thanks for that! Should we not be showing them that there are many things in life we might prefer not to do but have to anyway and so might as well do it well?

scaryteacher - "Students who think crossing the border to Devon is an adventure need a huge degree of religious literacy if one assumes that they may some day go to Uni, or work elsewhere; and they will inevitable come across religious beliefs and practices that they haven't before. The pitfalls they could encounter are huge."

It may well be useful to know a little about other people's religious beliefs before setting out into the world, but there is so much more that it important to know about other cultures and beliefs than religious aspects. Personally I think history, geography, economics and MFL (just to start with) are all a lot more important than RE when it comes to broaching the modern world in all its variety!

Scaryteacher

ok fair enough on point 1, I thought it was trying to answer my AIBU point.

But otherwise you haven't really answered the question.Are the

'"Students who think crossing the border to Devon is an adventure need a huge degree of religious literacy if one assumes that they may some day go to Uni, or work elsewhere; and they will inevitable come across religious beliefs and practices that they haven't before. The pitfalls they could encounter are huge."

'

Actually I grew up close to the area- Somerset- and aboslutely see where St is coming from.

And of course we did geog, history, MFL as well.... but when like me your grow in a palce where there is no mosque, no temple or Synagogue: where you can go a whole lilfetime without meetinga Jewish eprson then it is extra (just IMO) imposrtant to ahve those chances facilliatated for you. I doubt my aprents ever met a Jewish person or a Muslim one, they're not racist by any emans but there just are not any about- why woudl there be, when the basics of their culture and faith are absent? It's changing of course but then that brings with it other issues: like the wally (am feeling polite) who sat on the town square for weeks protesting about immigrants stealing a home from his and his family (real reason? not allowed to see kids due to armed robbery conviction)....

I've moved away now ( a little) but we go back most weeks to Devon or Somerset and the absence of people from any other race or culture is still noticeable, certainly within my social group. Thehobby I have onjvolves over a thousand people yet I cannot think of anyone off the top of my ehad that isn't white British Athrist / Christian tradition. I didn't really notice sadly until I asked my Indian friend to come along and she said she woudln't as she felt very obvious there. She moved out of the UK in the end as she felt very unwelcome here (despite being born here). I ahve had to dispose of friends becuase of teh BNP crap they were converted to.... there are many, many kind and informed people back home but absolutely fear and ignorance breeds yet more fear and intolerance.

My kids are lucky: they're now in a school with a mix of kids and I am glad of it. But we will go back to the SW one day and I hope by giving the kids a mix of childhood friends we've taught them a lesson that they'd have been unlikely to get in our bit of Somerset: acceptance.

There is something very wrong with a school system where the only opportunity pupils have to learn about issues like abortion and euthanasia is within the context of an RE lesson.

Where else would they have the planned opportunity to give a few weeks over to these important issues? English? Citizenship? They should be put in some sort of an ethical context - not just a religious one - but religions have opinions on these issues which students can challenge.

Going to RE lessons will not make children naturally more tolerant, no. But I have taught dozens of islamophobic and racist children over the years, and at least RE lessons provided a platform to challenge the ignorance behind these opinions so that the children didn't just rely on their parents and peers for their attitudes.

It is a legitimate part of education to get kids thinking about whether Bishops should be in the HOL (Citizenship, politics) but not to get them to seriously have to take into account supernatural considerations in thinking about whether the law should allow someone their wish to avoid a slow, painful death (anymore than they should be told to take seriously the idea that disability is a punishment for spiritual misdeeds in a past life)

You might think they are supernatural considerations, but thousands of others do hold these beliefs. To defeat their arguments, you need to know their arguments.

I don't think you can have no RE lessons at primary school. Primary school age children are curious. They will have questions about religion and cultures. Schools shouldn't just answer these questions, but they should be pre-empting them.

There are two questions here: 1. were your RE lessons a waste of time (about 60% of you seem to agree) and 2. should RE be taught at all in schools. I think that RE could be reformed, but I don't think it should be swallowed by another subject or have its subject matter split up and farmed out to other subjects. That will not improve the knowledge and understanding of our kids.

Have to agree with Scram.

RE is a fabulous subject!

"That will not improve the knowledge and understanding of our kids."

I don't want my DC to have knowledge and understanding of religion. I want them to have healthy disrespect for all religious belief. A brief grounding in the history of the world's main religions is fine by me; I want them to learn facts and to argue rationally, not fill their heads with hocus pocus.

'Surely the big point that jumps out about religion and 9/11 is how religions can be a very powerful force to convince people do bad things in the name of god/good (which doesn't sit with the RE ethos that religion is to be respected..).'

IMO it is important that the reaction covered learning about all faith (and indeed other ) extremisms - becuase whilst absolutely it is right to be able to stand up and say these people were extreme members of the Islamic faith, we also need to be able to have kids who understand that they are not representative of all Muslims, and the truth about extremism around the world- whether it's a Hindu, Jewish, Christian or whatever faith they follow.

A good lesson after all doesn't teach about only one thing; it should lead to a wider look at the world and enable the children to be able to extrapolate info to other events. So that if they see the news and watch about a Hindu extremist group in india they have enough questioning ability to ask themselves whetehr that means the group represents all of the faith, or just one particular aspect. Likewise then to student protests, and whatever group is being publicly damned this month- a person who can read the Daily Mail and grasp that the Benefit Fraudster Of The Week doesn't mean all benefit claimants are fraudsters is a pretty good aim after all.

My RE lessons were a complete waste of time, but I'm ancient. They were entirely about Christianity, mainly nothing more than retelling Bible stories. I don't remember any meaningful discussions of morals or ethics. IIRC we didn't do any in the 4th and 5th forms even though legally we should have.

I don't think my DDs RE lessons are a complete waste of time, but I think it could be covered much better in the sort of framework MillyR detailed earlier.

Himalaya - often they have little or no RE when they get to secondary (at least in some of the feeder primaries we dealt with), and as most secondary school teachers will tell you, you have to go over some things again to ensure that you are all starting from the same base point. When we had the Year 6s in for an acquaint week, some didn't know (and fair enough I suppose) that Jesus had anything to do with Christianity, that the Bible was the holy book of Christianity, or that the Cross was the symbol of Christianity. From that point of view I would rather that the basics were well taught rather than whatever they had been taught.

'Fair enough but it doesn't follow that therefore the best way to discuss feminism, capitalism, poverty, abortion, euthanasia etc...is from a comparative religions angle.' No it doesn't - but it might be the only space within the curriculum in which to discuss these issues. I only introduce the comparative religions angle after we have covered some of the historic, political and legal bases. You don't have to be a believer to know that religion has had an effect on the legislation on abortion and euthanasia, on the law of the land, and the founding of the welfare state.

'Teaching it as a lesson that 'extremism isn't just confined to Islam' seems to be trying to distract from the point that in this case it was.' I didn't teach that as a lesson - and yes, we had had the discussion about religion being a driver of actions and how you square the circle about respecting others whilst blowing them out of the ether. We were more concerned about combatting the fear and dislike of Islam and Muslims that came from this.

Sorry to make you teeth itch; it's not religious PR as I am not religious!

Bonsoir - you may live in the centre of the sophisticated known universe in Paris, but for a lot of the students I taught, going over the border to Devon is about as far as they will get. In the short term, if they were going to go to Uni out of the West Country, it wouldn't be abroad, but maybe to a place where there was more than one religion practised and more than one skin colour could be seen. Therefore it seems appropriate to point out that an practising Jewish lad/lass may not want a bacon sandwich, and to invite your Muslim classmates out on the piss may also be inappropriate.

Practical guidelines on how to avoid getting a fist in your face by not insulting your fellow students seems a bit more useful than economics or an MFL in such an example.

I don't want my DC to have knowledge and understanding of religion. I want them to have healthy disrespect for all religious belief.

Then you are almost as narrowminded as the islamophobic parents I have encountered, sadly. You want a very narrow religious education for your children. You sound almost afraid of what your children would do with the religious education they might get at school?

By all means engender a healthy disrespect for religion in your family. It is your prerogative. But RE as a subject is taught deeper than 'Christians go to a church, jews go to a synagogue' - it looks at what these religions believe and what their teachings are based on.

Good RE teaching is not religious instruction. It opens up children's minds, not closes them.