Does your school use BC/AD or BCE/CE

[AnyoneButAndre]

Just curious really? DS's new secondary school seems to be going with Before Christ and Anno Domini as the "house style" rather than Before Common Era and Common Era which slightly surprises me because they're normally quite modern in style and it has a significant Muslim minority.

What's the norm in British secondaries at the moment? Obviously you'd need to teach the DC to understand both formats anyway, because they'll see both in books and museums, but what would be the format expected in essays?

DD (Y7) has just done this as part of a lesson about chronology and timelines. They learned both formats.

I don't know about the school.

But in my (highly limited and quite possibly unrepresentative) experience, Muslims have no difficulty with BC/AD as Christ pbuh is a major prophet. They may personally be living in 1436 AH, though.

I have never heard of the BCE/CE Thing.What marks the start of teh common era and when was it?

It's literally the same numbers as AD/BC, acknowledging that most of the world works from 0BC/AD (not the birth of Jesus anyway of course) but without privileging the Christian perspective within the name - I think it was originally started by Jewish historians. I don't have a strong feeling either way, I was just curious what schools were using.

Can you explain that some more Andre? I thought the whole point of BC/AD is that it centres round the birth of christ?

Yes the midpoint of BC/AD is nominally the birth of Christ, but BCE/CE allows you to use the numbering system that will be most familiar to most people whilst not actually declaring that Jesus is Our Lord. Essentially it's short for "According to the Western numbering system, about whose theological status I am neutral". Inevitably it has political connotations.......

I used to use BCE and CE in RS but the school certainly didn't have a policy. Usually up to the individual tutors and would depend on their educational background I imagine!

Their Religious Studies teachers should be using BCE/CE ( ready for prepping pupils for exams) but the rest of the school would go with what they thought most parents would understand.

I've never heard of BCE/CE. I know that BC stands for Before Christ and AD is afterwards, but no idea on the Latin or what it means. Couldn't give a stuff either. In the same way that the lyrics to the national anthem don't bother me.

works from 0BC/AD

There is a 0BC or 0AD. 1BC/1BCD is followed by 1AD/1CE.

There isn't, that is.

Yes sorry, I meant, but forgot to say it pivots around the hypothetical non-existent 0AD/BC.

I think I screwed up. I suggested my son use BC/AD in RS work and BCE/CE everywhere else. Oops.

AD = anno domini, 'the year of Our Lord'. So AnyoneButAndre has explained the reasoning perfectly.

They use BC/AD in our school but are told that BCE/CE exists and are told that it is the same thing. In some of the booklets and textbooks they use, it says BC/AD and in others, it's BCE/CE.