...to expect students and parents to take my subject seriously?

[TeacherAnonymous123]

Issue coming from another thread I posted, so thought I would ask for people's opinions.

I teach Religious Studies at a Catholic Secondary School. As it is my subject, I am clearly biased, but I believe that students learning about other religions and cultures is extremely important for their development and attitude towards the world and other people.

As it is a Catholic school, students must take RS at GCSE. Their first exam in it is tomorrow morning and some of them are still apathetic, telling me that parents have said not to bother trying as it isn't an important subject and it doesn't matter if they fail.

Obviously this leads to a battle in lesson which I cannot win as I do not have support from parents.

So parents - do you think RS is an important and relevant subject? If not, why not?

I went to a non-denominational school but many of my friends also went to catholic schools, in Scotland too, and I cannot think of anyone who did RE qualifications tbh. Fine as a pastoral/guidance subject, but not as an actual core subject.

A lot of RE nowadays would presumably come under the heading of ‘general knowledge’ - not that such ‘knowledge’ is very often generally known, or anything like it, and as such IMO the subject deserves respect.

Personally I don’t agree with the parents’ stance - a good pass in any GCSE has to be a plus. And they did after all choose to send their dcs to a Catholic school.

OK, so yes it is a fact of Islamic belief. A fact that is unpalatable to me and makes me think less of this religion, whereas before I didn't know about this. It may be fact but still is made up, as it can't conceivably be true and I prefer my DCs not to have to take a compulsory GCSE in what is mostly fiction.

@DataColour so you don't like compulsory English Literature either?
Because that's analysing novels, figuring out what the author meant, people having different interpretations of the novels.....
A lot like religion.

Christianity is not all happiness and light. They have the same view (or very very similar) which is one of the 10 commandments. Something like you shall not have other gods, which in theory would be blasphemy, which is a sin.

The things that have been done in the name of Christianity are awful and just as bad as any other 'bad' teachings from other religions.

Many Muslims I know respect other religions.

My Dd went to a school where it was compulsory. She hated it and did no revision for it at all.

I taught in a school where it was compulsory. The kids all said ‘it didn’t count’ and it was bottom of the list or ignored in terms of revision.

I could see all GCSE grades every year. RE were always the worst.

Yanbu

Its a really important subject but also very interesting. It's booming at our schools, everyone's taking it just about as an option. I think it's the quality of the teaching, they go above and beyond to support our students.

We aren't really a religious family but DC have chosen it, one has gone on to A level in it as they've enjoyed it far more than other subjects.

@Needmorelego good point! I'm a big reader and lover of literature and I think kids should be doing MORE literature at school! So far, in RE in year 9 and 10, it seems to be more about learning facts rather than interpreting and debating the facts. But I appreciate the fact that in order to debate you need to know the basics. Hopefully this will come later on in the GCSE course....fingers crossed! At the moment it's pretty dry. I'm all for learning RE up until the end of year 9 and do agree that it's good to learn about different religions, but it's the compulsory gcse I'm against and the fact that it is taking away one of my DCs options.

Yes, I think it is an important subject. I just think most other school subjects are more important than this in the way it is currently taught.

Sending DC to a school which required this to GCSE would have been a big negative for us and added to the list of why I would never use a catholic school. But, if it was compulsory, I would encourage DC to do their best, I don't agree at all with the stance some of your parents have taken in telling their dc not to bother. My own DC is academic and studious but finds RE deathly dull, as did I at school, although I am more interested in aspects of it and have learned a lot more in adulthood. It is taught by the only really uninspiring and volatile teacher we've come across in the school which doesn't help. Whether the mood of the teacher matches the class or the class is matching the teacher you'll probably have better insight into. They can drop it at the end of the year and can't wait to do so along with most of the year group, I can't imagine many top set kids choosing it above other things.

@DataColour the whole options thing in most schools is laughable anyway as so much is compulsory and you can often only do one type of subject (ie only one art).
Back in ancient times when I did my GCSEs you couldn't do both Dance and Drama - 2 very connected subjects.
Apparently 30 years on that's still the same in most schools. It's sad really.

Yes, DC1 is still annoyed about not being able to do music AND drama. I don't know whether they would have chosen to (probably would though) or how I would have advised, but the annoyance is over the lack of option.

@Needmorelego luckily at our school you can take any option after the compulsory ones. So you can do music and drama for example. No dance offered however! All students can take triple science if they want to. One of my friends DDs school everyone HAS to take triple science, which I thought was bonkers.

Learning about religion is not really a valid subject is it?

They may as well learn about the Fairy Godmother or the the Three Little Pigs.

I can see the parents point of view. At least other subjects are based on something useful.

Not downing your career choice, but how exactly is religious studies going to help in the real world?

Not everyone has a choice.

It is not practical for everyone to home school, and many parents would not consider this in their children's best interests anyway. Not everyone can afford private. And not everyone has other state school options available to them.

It's not just about religion though.

It's ethics - things like abortion and women's rights.
Crime and punishment. Social justice. Human rights. Peace and conflict. Family relationships.

To be honest if people has more understanding of religion and the above it may help avoid situations like what we have at the moment in the middle east.

@Hereyoume The 3 Little Pigs is actually quite an educational story. It's a lesson in choosing the correct materials for building a safe and secure house 😂

I'm an atheist, and I think this is a pretty ignorant response tbh.

The "real world" is very heavily influenced by religious issues, and we need to understand different perspectives in order to be able to navigate the complex problems that the world is facing.

I don't agree with faith schools or with RS curricula that prioritise specific faiths, but learning about faiths in general is a valuable exercise. You don't have to agree with someone's beliefs in order to try to understand them.

For centuries so much of history has been bound up with different religious factions, even an atheist like me can see the point of being aware of it. It’s not remotely on the same level as nursery rhymes or fairy stories, though TBH I see much of those as a part of a rounded general knowledge, too.

Half of the paper is about pure religious facts. I just looked up the curriculum.

At DDs school it was listed as ethics on the options list....but they are sitting the RS exam.
It's one of the smallest subject groups in the year.

Not everyone chose a religious school. Where we live the Catholic and CofE schools are not the most popular or best performing...they are often under subscribed, in the less affluent areas and the school you get if you don't get any of your first choices.

And kids now get more subjects to choose from, but fewer option spaces than we did. DD got to choose just 2 subjects after her core subjects set by school, but the list to choose from was about 30 subjects long. I don't think RS is more important than either geography or history but they can only choose one of those.

@DataColour what's the other half?

It's just arrogance, isn't it? The belief that you are so right that other people's beliefs aren't even worth thinking about.

Funnily enough, children do get taught about the fairy godmother and the three little pigs (and Oberon and Macbeth and Atticus Finch) in schools because things don't have to be true to be culturally important.

Funnily enough I don't think history gets treated with quite the same derision. People can accept the importance of understanding people who lived hundreds of years ago more easily than they can accept understanding people who might live on the same street!

That said my school RE experience (up to Y9) was largely rubbish, focusing on a seemingly random set of facts rather than meaningful understanding of religions. (The ethics stuff was better but that was divorced from any religious context.)

Of course they can't cover everything. But the syllabus shouldn't allow them to focus in on such a narrow range of religions either.

Perhaps they could choose some specific areas to focus on, e.g. creation stories, views about death/life after death, beliefs about salvation/enlightenment, faith vs good works, why bad things happen to good people etc. And they could look at how the chosen issues are dealt with across a range of different faiths. This would be far more interesting and balanced, in my view, than zoning in on a couple of specific religions.

@Needmorelego Religious, Philosophical and Ethical Studies in the Modern World - Issues of Relationships - Issues of Life and Death - Issues of Good and Evil - Issues of Human Rights
Sounds better than the other half which is Christianity and Islam studies. They've already done 3 yrs of that by the time they get to year 10 so more of the first half would have been better in my opinion and rebranded as Philosophy and Ethics.

I didn't say it wasn't religion, I just said it's not just religion. It's not just facts, it's about understanding and how religion relates to our lives and the ethics regarding all the above subjects I've mentioned.

I can only speak as I find. I had a preconceived idea about it too but having watched DC and how much they've learnt I must admit I was well off the mark. Dd particularly enjoyed studying about women, things like honour crimes, circumcision etc..it piqued an interest in feminism that she will carry throughout her life now.

I'm so pleased they discovered it.