R.E. in school.
I was thinking about this the other day. In RE in secondary school in the 90's the curriculum over the 5 years consisted of.
1st day: discussion on what hats different religions wear.
Every other lesson till i left: just Bible related stuff.
I noticed on one of Ricky Gervias' tweets that he's part of a module on Atheism. I don't remember Atheism ever coming up in RE when i was at school so i can also assume they teach more about other religions nowadays.
I know a lot of you are older than me and i was wondering what you remembered of RE lessons when you were at school. Was every other major religion ignored while whatever religious denomination your school was was hammered home every lesson.
1st day: discussion on what hats different religions wear.
Every other lesson till i left: just Bible related stuff.
I noticed on one of Ricky Gervias' tweets that he's part of a module on Atheism. I don't remember Atheism ever coming up in RE when i was at school so i can also assume they teach more about other religions nowadays.
I know a lot of you are older than me and i was wondering what you remembered of RE lessons when you were at school. Was every other major religion ignored while whatever religious denomination your school was was hammered home every lesson.
Post edited by festershinetop on
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Not much Christian stuff at all really but if you want to know about that sort of thing there's a big book you can read. It's a bit /meh
What is a holy house?
A house with holes in.
I used to remember more, but thats what happens when you left school over 15 years ago, your school memories get fuzzy!
Nowadays I tolerate religion, but when it's forced in my face they get a lecture from me of how during the crusades the Roman's when bringing cristanity to europe went on a mass killing spree to kill of the pagan's and non believers. Shove that in a Jehova witnessess face and they soon scurry on. lol.
Religion is a man made creation and used to control. It's a crutch for the weak to lean on. One reason I not follow it. lol.
Very few people at my school had any obvious religious leanings, it was just in the "weird stuff you have to do in school" category. The R.E. classes were always a bit of a doss. They could've potentially been a lot more useful than they were, tbh.
Hercules' story about having to bow in front of a Buddha is very funny. Teachers could get away with being a lot more mental back then. That'd be a sacking offence and probably an article in a national newspaper now!
They should of sacked him from teaching based on appearance alone... Full beard, long hair, pieced ears and a beer gut... I doubt if his buddha effigy saved him in the end. lol.
But yes, I teach now I know that RE is very diverse and lives up to the label of 'Religious Education'. Many different religions and cultures are studied, and there is also lots of overlap into PSHCE.
It seems a lot less dull than it was when I was at school.
At later ks3 (I dropped it at ks4) it was learning about the beliefs of the different religions, their traditions and names for things. Quite interesting.
I still don't believe a word of it, but I'm familiar with a bunch of the texts simply as general knowledge. I've even used snippets in some of my games :)
The rules are simple :-
The aim of the game:
Insult their religion as many times as possible while still keeping them talking.
How to score:
Score 1 point for each solid hit. Attempt to beat your previous score to win.
Strategy:
Be subtle, but cutting. Only you can know how well you score. Don't just go for "God's a Dick" or anything like that. Apart for anything else, it's counter productive as they would be likely to leave at that point and you'll get a low score :). Also, NEVER swear. External politeness while making solid criticism that tells them to their face how ill informed and just basically wrong they are is the key.
Why I do this:
2 reasons really.
1) While I'm usually polite and don't ram my atheism down other people's throats, these people have come to my door. They're going to take turns at trying to convince me to believe what they believe. They've already outnumbered me on my own door step. Some of them may genuinely care for saving me, but many are there simply because they want to bring on The Rapture and apparently that can't happen until everybody has heard the word of God and had the opportunity to be saved. That's pretty selfish on their part. Basically, as long as they tell everybody, they can go off to Heaven and condemn the rest of us to Hell. However, I don't believe in all that so what the hey, I just have my own fun at their expense :)
2) There are two of them and one of me. As long as I keep them talking I'm keeping twice as many Christians from converting somebody else :). Good value as far as I'm concerned.
You may think this is bad of me, but I don't go knocking on their doors to play my game.
I just remembered. I once had a man come to my door and start spouting off about the bad seed being discarded. Basically, he assumed I wasn't Christian, and hence a 'bad seed' that God would throw away. He didn't know me, he didn't know about my 'mock the witnesses' game. So that's just plain rude!
The fun thing with the Bible though is that it's quite happy to state things both ways "An eye for an eye" and "Turn the other cheek". All good fodder for a bit of fun with those who claim it's the literal word of God and that we should all live by it. Ok, which bit?
pretty sure only one of those is an actual quote from the bible :)
edit - maybe not, I've googled it and it seems they both are, woops
problem with the bible is no one really knows how much the text has been tampered with since the first edition (if we assume the first ever 'finished' version is the 'correct' one). also factor in possible translation inaccuracies, and there's a chance that some stuff in there could be worded to mean the direct opposite of what was intended.
I think having an understanding of religion and religious ideas (including a good understanding of the various different ones) is important because, however misguided I think that viewpoint is, there are still a surprisingly large number of people out there who believe.
It helps to understand people and their motivations and in amongst the rituals, superstition and frankly, in some cases, organisationally induced OCD, there are often some quite good guiding principles.
Edit: What I actually disliked more was school assembly, where we were made to sing hymns and pray to the sky fairy :(. In my opinion there's no more place for that in schools than there should be any place for representatives of the Church of England in the House of Lords. The Church has plenty enough influence over us as it is without giving them a free opportunity to indoctrinate children or vote on government legislation.
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I think it still has a part to play in school, but it needs to be done right and if it is maybe it will teach the kids of today to have some respect for what they have in their lives and not to act like total assh*les.
In primary school, I remember we had a teacher who taught us about religion BUT he also believed in dinosaurs etc on the sly (thats a tip if you ever get a witness buggin ya, ask em about them :D )
secondary school (the very same place featured in the hank marvin advert) was a funny one.. it gradually got worse over the years and got renamed recently.
about 11, we had some really old woman (I'm guessing she passed away or is very old now) teach us about judism , and the box they have with the thing to tie it on ? the guy who she got to demonstrate it was half danish, well known for bacon.. his nickname in later years was "streaky".
she also taught us sex ed, which we skimmed in the last year of primary school.. funny bit the 2 girls that laughed / got chucked out , but ended up as 16 y/o single mums, when it wasn't so much the norm.
then we had a young scottish teacher, Lorraine Kelly reminds me of her..
we had someone who would cuss students back when "your mum" cusses were in vogue.
oh and we had a really really welsh wales teacher "how many books in the bible" and he made some comment about some bloke in the class called murphy who he said was sea warrior.
a few people I know of have got their kids christened as catholic because of getting them into certain schools..but they have to go mass etc. one of my c of e mates, tried to blag not getting married.. told him there was a very slim chance of him not getting married to a catholic he had kids with. His wife is nice anyway, but maybe has latin anger mood, dunno.
Plus there are about 50 religions from various times and places (including a Roman one and others that predate Christianity) where there is a virgin birth involved.
And various powers, including the Romans, the early Catholic Church and even King James had their chance to fiddle with The Bible and tweak it to suit their political ends.
Basically, the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) have all been corrupted by Kings, Sultans and Politicians etc and while a few groups and individuals try to stay true to the underlying principles, most people are going along with outdated revisions of the original works.
There are some great stories in the Hindu tradition. The Mahabharata is a cracking read, highly recommended :). I always quite liked the imagery of Ganesha, the Elephant God and Krishna, the blue God. Still doesn't mean I believe in ANY Gods though :)
Buddhism and Taoism are worth having a look at if you're looking for something that is more flexible than top down dogma.
And there's always Paganism or Shamanism if you like to 'roll you own'. Personally though I find most versions of those to be a bit on the flaky side.
Good on you for standing up to the wrong sort of RE lesson
I agree. Comparative religion and introduction of the ideas behind them vs the consumerist society is a very good thing. Every child should be introduced to the idea that they don't need so many things and that service to others and generosity of spirit are valuable attributes to cultivate.
It only really goes wrong when the teacher has an axe to grind and wants to convert their pupils to a particular brand of belief.
But, as I mentioned earlier. I think being made to (or being expected to) sing the praises of and praying to any God, Gods or Spaghetti Monsters in school assembly is unacceptable.
But the more extremists and literalists I meet the more I'm put off the whole thing.
I think one of the sickest things I've encountered was to answer the door to a little kid in a suit spouting the usual JW rubbish. I'm not having that discussion with a kid. I'm not going to dispute how his parents have raised him, and it really winds me up that they would set up either of us in that position.
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bit more informative than trying to learn the keyboard in music class anyway.
Not at all!
I once opened the door to the JW's and standing in front of me was a bloke I worked with. We just laughed it off and he went on his merry way. He later admitted at work that he hated doing it, but it was basically forced upon him. I later heard he converted away from it when his daughter was involved in a car accident and needed blood.
As for R.E., IIRC we did cover many religions. One term we had to do a large composition on a religion of our choosing. I chose Sikhism. Well, actually I didn't - I copied word for word a mate's version from the year before (he was a year older). He was most pissed off that I got an A for it whilst he got a B :-)
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I remember that as a small kid I was told that good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell. Then when I got older I found out that it's people who believe in Jesus go to Heaven and those who don't, go to Hell.
Given that I know loads of fine upstanding moral people who have zero belief in Jesus and that I've met some self righteous bigots and overall bad people who do (*2), I'm not particularly sold on the idea of Heaven even if I believed in it.
*1 - Nobody can prove there isn't some sort of continued existence, but knowing enough about the history of the Christian Churches and other religions that hold out the hope of it to their believers, I have an astonishingly high degree of confidence that obeying the rules of any particular religion will make absolutely no difference to me in regard to any sort of continued existence I may be in for after death.
*2 - Not for a second claiming they're all bad, just the minority that ruin it for the rest. Plus there are plenty of bad people (religious and otherwise) who justify their lives and truly believe they are good and moral.
This is a common tactic. I think you should pick their parents' religious teachings apart. This is the point where their brains are plastic and can be encouraged to think about it. You'll not "convert" them, but you may sow a seed of though that eventually breaks through their programming when they're older.
They have been sent to your door because their parents expect you to let them off lighter that you would if a JW was stood there. (They'll be stood 'round the corner to swoop in and call you a heathen if you start to do any "damage" to their special little weapon anyway)
I have 2 main memories of RE really. The first was being on course for a silver certificate at the end of the 5th year (we didn't take an exam unless you chose RE as a subject) but only getting a bronze because I got mixed up with my best mate who couldn't be arsed and was on course to get nothing, but walked away with my silver (my Mum complained and I got my silver in the end, but I wasn't bothered!)
And my other main memory was squeezing out what I thought would be a quite fart, only for it to bounce off all 4 walls and rip me a new one so to speak, then getting a right bollocking off the teacher for "making a rude noise!" Those wooden school chairs were awesome for farting on :lol: