To think in this day and age more importance should be placed on religious education in schools?

[cannotthinkofanorginialname]

I teach in a secondary school in an ex-mining village location where the overwhelming majority of students are from white, working class, Christian (mostly on-practising from what I can tell) backgrounds. Whilst I really love working with the kids I teach, sometimes their views on the world and those we share it with really depress me.

Over the years I've found students becoming generally less tolerant on issues like religion and immigration and I wonder whether the way in which my school pays lip-service to 'Religious Education' is one of the reasons why. We have one qualified RE teacher (and over 1K students on roll). In lower school, students don't have any fixed RE or citizenship lessons. To show that the students are getting some sort of guidance, a day once per year is given over to RE and they get a few citizenship lessons at the end of the year (which are pretty rubbish as they are thrown together last minute by someone who has no interest in the topic!) At GCSE level, RE is optional and not taken up by many. Generally RE is seen as a waste of time by the vast majority of students I teach.

AIBU to think that actually RE is a really important subject? The way I see it, a lot of the trouble in the world is caused by religion or namely a lack of understanding between people of different religions and if we were all a bit better educated about the different religions of the world, we might be able to encourage more tolerance and cooperation between people of different faiths?

Some of the things I hear from the students I think must have come from their parents or the media and if they have no other access to fact-based information about different religions and cultures, how are they ever going to be able to make reasonable, informed views and opinions about the world around them? I try my best to foster an environment of understanding and tolerance in my classroom but I think this needs to be looked at on a larger scale. I'd be interested to hear other people's views.

DS has to take a full RS GCSE. He's not impressed.

Religious observance is completely different from religious education.
PSHE is taught by anyone with an interest/a timetable gap. Bringing RE into that area would be the staff were not degree-educated in the subject. This would be a big dilution of knowledge and effectively dumb it down.

More religious knowledge and less religious observance would be my preference, as a Christian. We have issues with our teenagers at church saying "X says Christians believe Y but I don't believe it" and having to explain that not all Christians have the extreme views you see in the media. It must be so much harder for Muslim teenagers.

Everyone should know stuff like the 5 pillars of Islam, thre main Christian views on homosexuality and why Muslim women do/don't wear hijab. Branding all religious people as ignorant extremists just heightens the "them and us" mentality. Basic religious knowledge is much more important than Shakespeare.

unfashionable fact is that the fundamentalists have a better understanding of religion than the moderate ones.

NeoNeoClassical Why? If we created religion it can be whatever the individual wants it to be, we could even all make up our own.

Look at some of the neo-pagan belief systems, in some a literal belief in a god/ess isn't necessary.

Fundamentalists having a better understanding of religion is entirely unsupported. They wil ltake what ever slice of scriptures support their POV and exclude everything else. They will be remarkably ill-informed about religion.

mirime & Pannn

Religions are based on their book. The books are scary as fuck to anyone who takes the time to read them properly. Scary to me of course, a bigoted misogynist who refutes provable science could find comfort in them.

Slicing of scriptures is what the moderates do. Looking to find evil in the abrahamic scriptures is the work of seconds and the only way to argue against it is with the tired and boring refrain of "that part is a metaphor". At least when a fundamentalist muslim tells me that apostasy should result in death or a christian says that a man who lies with a other man should be stone to death, they have the courage of their convictions.

I would rather argue with a strong person who is wrong than a weak person who doesn't have the intellect to align themselves to a position.

I am pretty sure you are looking at things through the wrong end of the pipe, imho
Being an extremist or fundamental doesn't mean you are 'strong' or live by your convictions. It really does mean you slice off anything you don't like eg forgiveness and peace and whatnot and find an excuse to practice violence for example.
and looking at the scriptures there are many other analyses than just the metaphor thing eg problems in translation, time-specificness, clashes with other parts of the scriptures.

Pannnn

Nope. Christians believe that he bible is the word of god. Any proclamation finding a clash with another part just serves to make me think it's all shit. Trying to resolve it makes me wonder how anyone with half a brain could think it isn't all shit. Being 'religious' but only believing in some parts of the bible makes me think you're weak and confused. Believing in all of the bible means I think you're evil and indoctrinated but at lest have the courage of your convictions.

You're either weak and confused and pick and choose from your scripture or you're strong and well read and truly evil. Religion is a corrupter.

yes I thought we were cloaking your true views.

Glad we sorted that out and thanks for explaining why I was incorrect.

You're welcome.

I'm with those who think more or better PSHE/cultural studies/citizenship would do more good than more RE.

While I agree that widening and exposure to worldviews would do good, I think that's better done through a wider range of literature, poetry, history, and discussion of current events. Does understanding the tenets of Islam explain the issues in the news or help anyone see the issues of extremists? Does knowing basics of Christianity help people understand why Protestants in the US are different to ones in the UK? Will knowing about modern neo-European paganism explain why so many neo-nazi groups attach such important to it?

Religion is a piece often changed by the cultures that adopt them, separating it from the whole misses a lot and knowing about it textbook-style won't challenge bigoted opinions from elsewhere or tackle extremism. Knowing about them is good but for wider goals they need to be placed in wider context.

Does knowing basics of Christianity help people understand why Protestants in the US are different to ones in the UK?
I don't disagree with this, but there is no way any teacher who wasn't interested enough to go to uni to study religion or philosophy would touch such a lesson with a barge pole.

I think there should ge no RE taught, no relgious schools at all.

Philosophy and Ethics as a taught, compulsory subject - yes, definitely.
Debating - yes, definitely. Starting in primary, preferably.

I have taught RE at secondary school. The majority of local area curriculum for it are very restricting. They're often about religious practice (very divisive as it creates a very imperialistic comparitive religion that is massively patronising). It also gives the illusion that all adherents to a faith have similar views, you' also cover hundreds of years of a complex religion in 10 hours with any thing approaching genuine cultual sensitivity.
It's also difficult that students will arrive at secondary already indoctrinated into a particular opinion of lifestyles different to their own.

Cultural sensitivity and debate should start at nursery. Not the "ooo lets make chinese lanterns" cultual piss taking that passes for RE on the early years syllabus.