To remove dd from RS

[MossandRoy]

The lack of balance is annoying. There is an assumption that there is a god. There is an assumption that everyone believes in that god. I can remove her. Has anyone done this successfully? I'm concerned she'll be given a hard time...

Well, like I say, religion is banned in schools where I live. People still appreciate art and music . If you want your kids to learn religion, it should be your job to teach them, not the school’s.

@KeflavikAirport

Well, like I say, religion is banned in schools where I live. People still appreciate art and music . If you want your kids to learn religion, it should be your job to teach them, not the school’s.

How does that work to encourage understanding and respect for other religions though?

Lead a child’s beliefs should come from the home when young of course. But educating about the beliefs and traditions of others is in my view vital because otherwise negative messages from home become even more endemic.

My DS goes to a Catholic school and we accept their teaching. However, they accept that some pupils have different faith or no faith. It's balanced in my opinion

I presume Tommy Robinson had compulsory RE at school. Didn’t do much good teaching him tolerance did it?

@KeflavikAirport

I presume Tommy Robinson had compulsory RE at school. Didn’t do much good teaching him tolerance did it?

I very much doubt when he was at school RE focused on teaching about all religions though. Things change over time!

@KeflavikAirport

Well, like I say, religion is banned in schools where I live. People still appreciate art and music . If you want your kids to learn religion, it should be your job to teach them, not the school’s.

I'm not making it up that it really hinders people in understanding most art and literature that isn't very recent if they have no religious education. I'm a historian of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe and I've had to start every university level course I've ever taught with a basic primer on Christianity because the period is completely inaccessible without it. My colleagues in English lit found it even more problematic - they had so many bright students who were really interested in medieval and early modern literature but really struggled because religious themes are such a huge part of the period and students often couldn't even recognise them.

People still appreciate art and music

They may well do but so much of it contains religious references their appreciation is limited without that knowledge.

I have to come across an re syllabus that doesn’t teach about all faiths. Every re lesson that I teach and I know others teach starts with -Christian’s believe, Muslims believe and so on. To not let your dd hear the views of world faiths is worrying. Any good teacher would not say that nobody except .... is a good person. It all sounds very odd to me.

Try understanding Swift and Voltaire without a basic grasp of philosophy. Why not teach that in schools instead?

Perhaps if more people learned from others, had discussions without disrespecting their beliefs and were more tolerant, then the world wouldn’t be in such a mess...

KeflavikAirport: Perhaps the world wouldn’t be in such a mess if it were secular.

You must be completely missing the point as I can’t believe you would genuinely think teaching understanding, respect and tolerance is a bad thing.

I got annoyed at dds teacher the other day. They were.doing RE and watched a film and the teacher was going on about how it was such a joy to watch and so emotional etc. Clearly she was Christian, which is fine, but it shouldn't be so obvious to the children, it should be neutral.

I very much doubt when he was at school RE focused on teaching about all religions though. Things change over time!

He's younger than me. And I had studied Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism & Hinduism by the age of 14. RE has been a compulsory subject (even if not a compulsory examination) since 1944, albeit with the right for parents to remove their children from it.

Some things don't change over time. The requirement to provide Religious Education in State Schools is one of those things.

My DC loves his RS lessons, he goes to a faith school, my DC has no religion that he has chosen to follow yet, but he enjoys learning about the different religions that his friends are part of, he had just done Hinduism, he enjoyed it, he doesn't believe it to be fact, but knows that his hindu friends do, and can respect that.

Id never remove him from a subject he didn't like, rather teach him how to expand his knowledge and stay respectful of differing opinions.

Ha ha Voltaire? He was one the biggest fans for religious tolerance!!

What kind of message are you sending to a yr7 if you allow her not to engage in this subject...theres a lot of religion in history also..you cant refuse to learn something just because you dont believe it...seems your own beliefs have greatly impacted your dd's views..

Hardbackwriter so your students who have chosen to study history are able to follow your course after a brief intro on Christianity? Surely that demonstrates my point, that you can pick this stuff up if you’re interested rather than an argument for it being compulsory for people who are going on to study, I don’t know, dentistry?

@MossandRoy

"By removing her from the subject you are teaching her that if she doesn't enjoy something, or doesn't agree with it, she can remove herself from it all together."

I thought I was teaching her that she has choices. And if she doesn't have to do something she disagrees with, she doesn't have to. I've worked with nurses who have refused to assist with terminations of pregnancy, that's their choice.

That's very different to how a lesson is taught. You both sound very entitled.

As PP said, it is not her independent thought given you have told us you have disagreed for years.

Yes, a belief rooted in his philosophy

My friend at school got A* 100% on his GCSE RE. He was an atheist and was encouraged to write about this in the exam because the subject is about what people believe. He always wrote his answers "Christians believe this, however, as an atheist, I believe this and here are the problems/inconsistencies with the Christian world view..."
If you don't know what people believe, you can't spot the inconsistencies in their logic.
Additionally, there are 6 major religions on the curriculum, if this is very important to you, are you in an area where you could send your child to another school that focuses more on one of the other religions? Some schools for example cover more Buddhism or Islam and cover the curriculum from these viewpoints. I think you have to weigh up how important this is to you and whether or not this is the hill you die on with the school.

Why don't you ask what happened from the teachers point of view? It's often very different from the child's. Sometimes people (both adults and children) take home a very different message from the same lesson. Sometimes we only tune in to part of the talk or have our own views influence what we hear.
I think you should keep her in. She hears one side of the argument from you - she should hear the other side too, so she can make up her own mind.

@ToffeePennie
I’m so sorry for the awful experience you had with a batshit teacher. Idk if you have school aged children yourself. I am not a teacher. However, please be assured if a teacher acted like that nowadays and a parent complained, it would be considered bullying and taken very seriously.

From my experience at DD’s school op, religion is very much treated as Christians believe x, Buddhists believe y etc. She is in yr8. Last year she was given tons of material to cover in RE and she asked for more help to go through it. Dd would say to me when doing the work things like “and I believe god doesn’t exist”.

I can see the teacher is approaching this as “we believe”. Half the 11/ 12 yos at least in her class will be rolling their eyes, getting frustrated and saying the same things as your dd and mine. Personally I wouldn’t pull her from these classes for as others have said, they give important information about different cultures, countries and belief systems. And as others have said, it’s another gcse.

I went to a non-religious secondary school and was repeatedly told off and sent out of RE for expressing atheist views/questioning Christianity. I genuinely wasn't being a knobhead teenager, it was just made clear that there was absolutely no room for debate or deviation from 'god is real'. This was in the early 2000's too, not even that long ago.

I asked to be excused from singing hymns as an atheist, after seeing that my Muslim and Jehovah's Witness peers were excused, and was swiftly told to shut up and get to assembly 😄 I don't think that atheism holds much respect in terms of a persons identity.

I wouldn’t. We’re staunch atheists but our children went to a C of E primary school. It was a compromise but because we could redress the balance at home. And not just we our take on it but giving them insight into other religions too.

We felt teaching them tolerance, understanding and questioning could be done alongside RE at school.

@KeflavikAirport

Hardbackwriter so your students who have chosen to study history are able to follow your course after a brief intro on Christianity? Surely that demonstrates my point, that you can pick this stuff up if you’re interested rather than an argument for it being compulsory for people who are going on to study, I don’t know, dentistry?

Even dentists can appreciate the arts, all the more so if they have the cultural knowledge to have a greater insight into its meaning.

I have to come across an re syllabus that doesn’t teach about all faiths. Every re lesson that I teach and I know others teach starts with -Christian’s believe, Muslims believe and so on.

I agree with this. The RS curriculum, being described by the OP, doesn’t sound like the LA programmes of study that I’ve seen.

My kids go to a CE school and they get taught a balance. There are kids from other faiths and without faith in their classes. They learn about their own faith, at home and church.