I have no memories of R.E. except for telling the teacher (who looked the spit of Dungeon Master in that D&D cartoon) to shove R.E., and forever after just sitting doing nothing while he babbled on...
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.
Oh yeah....I remember all our assemblies would have a christian slant. They'd always try and do it in a sneaky way though, like get a guest speaker in to talk about something 'exciting' and then half way through some tenuous connection to Jesus would come in and there would always be an audible groan from about 800 kids lol.
Once we even had a pop group in for assembly that did a cover of Beats International - Dub Be Good To Me, but they changed the lyrics to christian stuff e.g. "youre listening to the boy from Bethlehem city" instead of "big bad city". That became a running joke for ages afterwards. Cringeworthy.
RE/RS/RK or whatever it was called in our school pretty much covered all the major religions (although the teacher usually was a Christian minister). We covered Judaism, Hindu, Islam etc. at least as much as Christianity. This was in the 80s.
It was still as dull as dishwater, and worse still the teacher we had in the first years of senior school (a Christian minister) was a cruel bastard. If he didn't like what you were doing he would grab you by a few strands of hair and pull you around the room - enough hair that the force wouldn't rip it out, but little enough that the force was distributed over small area so it hurt a lot.
Later on it was the school chaplain's wife who did it, she was much kinder, but couldn't control a class of rowdy teenagers.
The only good thing for me to come out of RE is that we also debated moral dilemas. I remember we had a debate on the death penalty. By the end of it I realised how repulsive and barbaric the death penalty actually was - not only that, it made me thing about the difference between justice and revenge. It marked the change between taking juvenile Daily-Mailesque views on justice to having a more adult view of what justice means.
I went to a Catholic school when I was really young, and that's where my idea of religion was beaten out of me on the original "Green Jesus Day" :lol:
I vaguely remember them doing communion in assembly, but it was the older kids who did all the hail Mary b*llocks with the ash on their foreheads and the piece of bread in their gobs, no wine since the oldest out of them was probably about 11. I do remember the priest having a sizeable swig from the large ornate gold cup that got paraded around every time though. I think I got in trouble once for questioning what the priest was saying, they obviously saw the devil in me when I was younger :D
Thankfully my mother got me out of that f**king nut house when we moved house after my granddad died. I then went to a heathen school that still shoved god down your throat but it was full on teachers opinion style Christianity. So in other words was completely irrelevant and usually the subject of much amusement. Sweary hymms in assembly and the like laughing at the crap moralistic stories they would tell us.
Anyway RE in big lads school was a strange bag for me I had the same teacher for the first 3 years (I think there were only 2 humanities teachers who used to teach it tbh? Both insane women and one of them was really really ginger). I think I used to get thrown out of the class on a weekly basis for really stupid things, half the time I wasn't even trying to work myself, but it happened.
One incident that really sticks in my head is I got thrown out of the class for talking about Revenge of Shinobi, I was explaining the second level to somebody, and of course there are enemies on that level that look like nuns and are harmless, but once they walk past you they throw off their habits and attack you. Well I'd said "rip their clothes off", and I got escorted from the classroom by a rather annoying foul breathed over weight ginger woman. She wasn't actually the teacher but she came in to mainly help out with the teaching of the other religions. After leaving me standing outside the classroom for about 15 minutes she came out and yelled at me that that was highly offensive and that the idea of nuns ripping their clothes off was vile and disgusting. To which I couldn't keep a straight face which just made her gingerness redder and redder. She then explained that anybody in that room could've been offended by what I said, to which I said something like "I don't really think anybody in there apart from you actually cares". Then the actual teacher came out to give me a bit of shouting at, but she was really really fat so I just smiled all the more at her chins wobbling about. After that they let me go back to my seat about 3 seconds before the bell rang. Good use of teaching resourses I say :lol:
Another incident when we were doing Judaism I got in trouble as they brought in bread and salted it, and we all ate some. When I got a piece I said something like this isn't Challa it's just a crusty loaf from the co-op up the road. Everybody laughed even though half the spackers in that class probably didn't even know what challa was.
One time I remember getting an hours detention for (which I didn't go to), the reason was repeated disruption of the class. We were doing another thingy where people bring in stuff and you all pretend to take part in some mumbo jumbo. Well they had bread and sparkling grape juice for wine, and something like fish fingers for the fish which had already got the class laughing (we were told the type of fish was irrelevant the symbolism was what was important). Well they portioned it all up and there wasn't enough for everybody to have a piece so I said "If only there was somebody who could multiply the food as if by magic". That sent both her gingerness and Miss Fatty borderline catatonic, Miss fatty actually went redder than the ginge did this time. I remember getting a right b*llocking off the year head, who was actually soft as sh*t, but was a full on Jeebus lover, so I guess I'd actually pushed some buttons with him. I felt kind of bad for riling him up cos' he did actually seem like a genuinely nice man, and obviously I never set out to cause outrage with a one liner (nobody ever does I hear you say ;)).
Christianity actually ended up being one of the other religions in my RE class, as the actual teacher was obsessed with Islam. Turns out she married an Arabian prince or oil baron or something ridiculous. Don't believe a word of it, as she was still teaching RE when I left school, if she'd married someone that rich she wouldn't be doing that job, and from how grotesque she was I really don't think some Sultan type would marry a disgustingly fat white woman from England.
I did PSE in the GCSE years of school it's basically RE but without the RE stuff, you do cover some religious stuff, but it's not the main focus. Instead it kind of focused on things like life skills and personal development. Believe it or not I actually got one of the highest marks in my class, and one of the only classes where I would've got an A, if it was graded with letters. instead you got a certificate with your score on and what that score would be equivalent to if you'd done an exam. The class was 100% coursework I think?
Still all this insanity doesn't compare to my textiles class, think I've told the story on here many moons ago, but me an another kid got banned from Textiles for an entire school year. In third year when we were allowed back the little old biddy who taught the class had long since had a nervous breakdown and left, and we had an almost endless supply of substitute teachers. That was a year of pure entertainment and napping at my desk :D
Well they portioned it all up and there wasn't enough for everybody to have a piece so I said "If only there was somebody who could multiply the food as if by magic".
Watching, "The Prisoner" and seeing local Christian rock band, "Double Check" in the school hall with an escapologist side-act, then a good dose of brain-washing.
latter 1980s GCSE RE:
Nothing but talking about Nelson Mandella
Watching, "Cry Freedom"
Watching Robert Powell in, "'Jesus of Nazareth"
Absolutely awful. I spent the whole time cursing the teachers, knowing that they knew absolutely nothing about religion.
1) Very religious, very sensitive lady who had regular breakdowns when kids said stuff like 'Jesus is a Nazi'.
2) A PE teacher who was just doing RE as his 'proper' subject. Very laid back and didn't really give a stuff.
I can't remember too much about what we did in class but we did look at the major religions and copied stuff out of The Bible. Parables featured strongly.
I'm Catholic and went to a Catholic school we had 2 R.E. teachers and aa load of nuns, we mostly did about lifestyle and what effect your decisions can have others, you lot did bible stuff, that sucks.
1) Very religious, very sensitive lady who had regular breakdowns when kids said stuff like 'Jesus is a Nazi'.
2) A PE teacher who was just doing RE as his 'proper' subject. Very laid back and didn't really give a stuff.
I can't remember too much about what we did in class but we did look at the major religions and copied stuff out of The Bible. Parables featured strongly.
RE sounded fun at your school :D
Although that did remind me, there was actually 3 RE teachers at my school not 2, the 3rd one was a female PE teacher who was a lesbian, can you see something a little off with this picture. She was also a drama teacher, and I think she taught Russian or German as well. Multi-talented, but it must've got on her nerves doing RE what with all the homophobia in organized cultism.
The only memories I have of RE back in the day (would had been early 80's) is the lessons being extremely rowdy and no-one took much notice of the teacher (whose name eludes me). The old-fashioned school desks (y'know, the one with ink pots and desk lid) were the most graffiti ed / etched on throughout the whole school. Then again, a few years after I left, the comprehensive school was demolished....
The old-fashioned school desks (y'know, the one with ink pots and desk lid) were the most graffiti ed / etched on throughout the whole school.
anyone go for "R.E. up and finish the lesson" ? :D
I can remember our 2 RE teachers. one wore so much makeup it was actually a bit freaky. there was a rumour it was because she had a scarred face from a car crash, but I don't think anyone ever found out if that was true. the other was a real boring fat ugly boring woman (perfect for RE).
anyone go for "R.E. up and finish the lesson" ? :D
Funny enough. We all did sit through to end of the lesson. Ended up being like a free period heh heh. Come to think of it, I learnt the art of paper plane making in R.E. so I did achieve something. :lol:
I remember in RE at Secondary School there was a guy in our class who was a bit 'slow' (he was just a dumb **** actually) and he peed himself in the classroom and just sat there staring into space!
The smell was terrible!:grin:
Watching, "The Prisoner" and seeing local Christian rock band, "Double Check" in the school hall with an escapologist side-act, then a good dose of brain-washing.
latter 1980s GCSE RE:
Nothing but talking about Nelson Mandella
Watching, "Cry Freedom"
Watching Robert Powell in, "'Jesus of Nazareth"
Absolutely awful. I spent the whole time cursing the teachers, knowing that they knew absolutely nothing about religion.
Our RE class in the mid 80's were also given the whole series of "Jesus of Nazareth" to watch! I remember the epic-sounding music to this day.
I don't particularly have any memories of RE lessons, but I most certainly remember the RE teacher we had for the first year of secondary school - the loathsome Tony Robinson (nah, not Baldrick). All the lads hated him, he was nothing but a bully towards them, handing out detentions for the slightest thing. And he really sucked up to the girls, a lot of whom found him incredibly creepy, and a couple of years after leaving school we all found out why.
The rumour had spread around the school for years, that one particular girl had given him a blow-job in a classroom, but it was just one of those whispered rumours that went around. Well, in about 1990-ish it came out that he'd been sent down for child abuse, particularly having sex with a minor.
I didn't find out any of this until I went to a school reunion about 5 years ago and the girls there had some stories to tell about him - trapping them alone in classrooms, crouching next to them as they worked at a desk and running his hand up their legs! The school also had a "centre" in Wales, which was basically just a large one storey house that classes were taken to for weekends, and he was always up for being one of the two teachers to take the kids. Apparently his favourite trick was to wait for one of the girls to be in the shower, turn off the light, dash in and have a quick grope!
Like I said, the rumours we're pretty strong at the time but no one did anything about it. And I know for a fact that the teachers had heard the rumours as one of them turned up to the reunion and told us. Apparently the headmaster told the teachers to simply ignore whatever they heard.
Worse than R.E., after GCSEs, those that stayed on to do A-Levels were forced to attend 'General Studies' classes, with the option of taking a completely worthless 'AS' level exam (or, for those who wanted extra studies, a completely worthless 'A' level exam).
And though I can remember several of our RE lessons in detail, all I remember about GS was looking out of the window as several of those who should have been there walked off the premises. I do remember I got a completely worthless 'A' grade.
In high school in the 80's we did R.E in a prefab just outside the main school building,Teacher was quite well to do and uppity with white hair and pear necklace (no not that type of pearl necklace),she didn't stand for much day dreaming or unruliness so she was feared.I heard she once ran out of class upset because napoleon died (?) and in another class one boy was colour blind so she painstakingly labeled each coloured pencil so he still had to colour pictures like the rest of the kids.
In high school in the 80's we did R.E in a prefab just outside the main school building,Teacher was quite well to do and uppity with white hair and pear necklace (no not that type of pearl necklace),she didn't stand for much day dreaming or unruliness so she was feared.I heard she once ran out of class upset because napoleon died (?)
and in another class one boy was colour blind so she painstakingly labeled each coloured pencil so he still had to colour pictures like the rest of the kids.
Our RE lessons were a bunch of crap. Had them for the first 3 years of high school (late 80s - early 90s) then dropped them like a hot brick when we did options for our GCSEs.
We studied a few different religions, but I don't think it went much beyond Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.
We had one OK debate about where everything came from, and we were allowed to argue the counter-point that God doesn't exist and didn't make everything fairly unhindered, which quite surprised me as I was expecting to be quite severely beaten with the God-Hammer in that one as the teacher was very religious, and we knew she was.
I spent most RE lessons sat with my mate reading computer mags. We would usually be given a 10 minute lecture, then be given about 10 questions to answer in groups from a section of the textbook. We ran through those in the space of 5 minutes and then discussed our answers with the class for about 15 minutes at the end.
That teacher didn't care for me and my mate at all, (as we were obviously totally disinterested) and I think it pissed her off when I came 3rd in the class on the final exam, as I think she wanted us to crash and burn so she could hold us up as an example against dossing.. (I think he placed mid-table somewhere.)
Oh yeah, we also got kicked out of the class once for drawing swastikas, acid-house smiley faces and huge knob-heads on religious icons in the textbooks.
Yes indeed but now I think about it she is probably no longer here today as she was old back then but I respect her still along with the other teachers,something lacking at that same school today where kids lock teachers in stationary cupboards :\
at primary school we got taught about all the different major faiths - but that wasn't RE specifically.
At Secondary I ditched the subject as being useless as soon as humanly possible - though we did have a wicked teacher who was brilliant....to be honest I think the RE lessons I got were probably more like debating workshops or philosophy "lite" rather than focused on any religion per say...closest link I can think of would be taking an example of a moral choice type story from one of the religions then discussing it and its relevance in modern society
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Oh yeah....I remember all our assemblies would have a christian slant. They'd always try and do it in a sneaky way though, like get a guest speaker in to talk about something 'exciting' and then half way through some tenuous connection to Jesus would come in and there would always be an audible groan from about 800 kids lol.
Once we even had a pop group in for assembly that did a cover of Beats International - Dub Be Good To Me, but they changed the lyrics to christian stuff e.g. "youre listening to the boy from Bethlehem city" instead of "big bad city". That became a running joke for ages afterwards. Cringeworthy.
It was still as dull as dishwater, and worse still the teacher we had in the first years of senior school (a Christian minister) was a cruel bastard. If he didn't like what you were doing he would grab you by a few strands of hair and pull you around the room - enough hair that the force wouldn't rip it out, but little enough that the force was distributed over small area so it hurt a lot.
Later on it was the school chaplain's wife who did it, she was much kinder, but couldn't control a class of rowdy teenagers.
The only good thing for me to come out of RE is that we also debated moral dilemas. I remember we had a debate on the death penalty. By the end of it I realised how repulsive and barbaric the death penalty actually was - not only that, it made me thing about the difference between justice and revenge. It marked the change between taking juvenile Daily-Mailesque views on justice to having a more adult view of what justice means.
I vaguely remember them doing communion in assembly, but it was the older kids who did all the hail Mary b*llocks with the ash on their foreheads and the piece of bread in their gobs, no wine since the oldest out of them was probably about 11. I do remember the priest having a sizeable swig from the large ornate gold cup that got paraded around every time though. I think I got in trouble once for questioning what the priest was saying, they obviously saw the devil in me when I was younger :D
Thankfully my mother got me out of that f**king nut house when we moved house after my granddad died. I then went to a heathen school that still shoved god down your throat but it was full on teachers opinion style Christianity. So in other words was completely irrelevant and usually the subject of much amusement. Sweary hymms in assembly and the like laughing at the crap moralistic stories they would tell us.
Anyway RE in big lads school was a strange bag for me I had the same teacher for the first 3 years (I think there were only 2 humanities teachers who used to teach it tbh? Both insane women and one of them was really really ginger). I think I used to get thrown out of the class on a weekly basis for really stupid things, half the time I wasn't even trying to work myself, but it happened.
One incident that really sticks in my head is I got thrown out of the class for talking about Revenge of Shinobi, I was explaining the second level to somebody, and of course there are enemies on that level that look like nuns and are harmless, but once they walk past you they throw off their habits and attack you. Well I'd said "rip their clothes off", and I got escorted from the classroom by a rather annoying foul breathed over weight ginger woman. She wasn't actually the teacher but she came in to mainly help out with the teaching of the other religions. After leaving me standing outside the classroom for about 15 minutes she came out and yelled at me that that was highly offensive and that the idea of nuns ripping their clothes off was vile and disgusting. To which I couldn't keep a straight face which just made her gingerness redder and redder. She then explained that anybody in that room could've been offended by what I said, to which I said something like "I don't really think anybody in there apart from you actually cares". Then the actual teacher came out to give me a bit of shouting at, but she was really really fat so I just smiled all the more at her chins wobbling about. After that they let me go back to my seat about 3 seconds before the bell rang. Good use of teaching resourses I say :lol:
Another incident when we were doing Judaism I got in trouble as they brought in bread and salted it, and we all ate some. When I got a piece I said something like this isn't Challa it's just a crusty loaf from the co-op up the road. Everybody laughed even though half the spackers in that class probably didn't even know what challa was.
One time I remember getting an hours detention for (which I didn't go to), the reason was repeated disruption of the class. We were doing another thingy where people bring in stuff and you all pretend to take part in some mumbo jumbo. Well they had bread and sparkling grape juice for wine, and something like fish fingers for the fish which had already got the class laughing (we were told the type of fish was irrelevant the symbolism was what was important). Well they portioned it all up and there wasn't enough for everybody to have a piece so I said "If only there was somebody who could multiply the food as if by magic". That sent both her gingerness and Miss Fatty borderline catatonic, Miss fatty actually went redder than the ginge did this time. I remember getting a right b*llocking off the year head, who was actually soft as sh*t, but was a full on Jeebus lover, so I guess I'd actually pushed some buttons with him. I felt kind of bad for riling him up cos' he did actually seem like a genuinely nice man, and obviously I never set out to cause outrage with a one liner (nobody ever does I hear you say ;)).
Christianity actually ended up being one of the other religions in my RE class, as the actual teacher was obsessed with Islam. Turns out she married an Arabian prince or oil baron or something ridiculous. Don't believe a word of it, as she was still teaching RE when I left school, if she'd married someone that rich she wouldn't be doing that job, and from how grotesque she was I really don't think some Sultan type would marry a disgustingly fat white woman from England.
I did PSE in the GCSE years of school it's basically RE but without the RE stuff, you do cover some religious stuff, but it's not the main focus. Instead it kind of focused on things like life skills and personal development. Believe it or not I actually got one of the highest marks in my class, and one of the only classes where I would've got an A, if it was graded with letters. instead you got a certificate with your score on and what that score would be equivalent to if you'd done an exam. The class was 100% coursework I think?
Still all this insanity doesn't compare to my textiles class, think I've told the story on here many moons ago, but me an another kid got banned from Textiles for an entire school year. In third year when we were allowed back the little old biddy who taught the class had long since had a nervous breakdown and left, and we had an almost endless supply of substitute teachers. That was a year of pure entertainment and napping at my desk :D
erm...one more spacker here! never even seen that word before.
hah, good one :)
I also remember the term we watched Ben Kingsley in Gandhi (over several lessons, as we only had one hour of RE a week).
Our teacher was one of the first people in the country diagnosed with M.E.
Did he let you watch The Omega Man, by any chance. ;)
certainly not the 'reverse evolution' planet of the apes film. :lol:
Watching, "The Prisoner" and seeing local Christian rock band, "Double Check" in the school hall with an escapologist side-act, then a good dose of brain-washing.
latter 1980s GCSE RE:
Nothing but talking about Nelson Mandella
Watching, "Cry Freedom"
Watching Robert Powell in, "'Jesus of Nazareth"
Absolutely awful. I spent the whole time cursing the teachers, knowing that they knew absolutely nothing about religion.
1) Very religious, very sensitive lady who had regular breakdowns when kids said stuff like 'Jesus is a Nazi'.
2) A PE teacher who was just doing RE as his 'proper' subject. Very laid back and didn't really give a stuff.
I can't remember too much about what we did in class but we did look at the major religions and copied stuff out of The Bible. Parables featured strongly.
RE sounded fun at your school :D
Although that did remind me, there was actually 3 RE teachers at my school not 2, the 3rd one was a female PE teacher who was a lesbian, can you see something a little off with this picture. She was also a drama teacher, and I think she taught Russian or German as well. Multi-talented, but it must've got on her nerves doing RE what with all the homophobia in organized cultism.
anyone go for "R.E. up and finish the lesson" ? :D
I can remember our 2 RE teachers. one wore so much makeup it was actually a bit freaky. there was a rumour it was because she had a scarred face from a car crash, but I don't think anyone ever found out if that was true. the other was a real boring fat ugly boring woman (perfect for RE).
The smell was terrible!:grin:
Our RE class in the mid 80's were also given the whole series of "Jesus of Nazareth" to watch! I remember the epic-sounding music to this day.
The rumour had spread around the school for years, that one particular girl had given him a blow-job in a classroom, but it was just one of those whispered rumours that went around. Well, in about 1990-ish it came out that he'd been sent down for child abuse, particularly having sex with a minor.
I didn't find out any of this until I went to a school reunion about 5 years ago and the girls there had some stories to tell about him - trapping them alone in classrooms, crouching next to them as they worked at a desk and running his hand up their legs! The school also had a "centre" in Wales, which was basically just a large one storey house that classes were taken to for weekends, and he was always up for being one of the two teachers to take the kids. Apparently his favourite trick was to wait for one of the girls to be in the shower, turn off the light, dash in and have a quick grope!
Like I said, the rumours we're pretty strong at the time but no one did anything about it. And I know for a fact that the teachers had heard the rumours as one of them turned up to the reunion and told us. Apparently the headmaster told the teachers to simply ignore whatever they heard.
And though I can remember several of our RE lessons in detail, all I remember about GS was looking out of the window as several of those who should have been there walked off the premises. I do remember I got a completely worthless 'A' grade.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
Perhaps Napoleon was her cat?
Man that's dedication :lol:
We studied a few different religions, but I don't think it went much beyond Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.
We had one OK debate about where everything came from, and we were allowed to argue the counter-point that God doesn't exist and didn't make everything fairly unhindered, which quite surprised me as I was expecting to be quite severely beaten with the God-Hammer in that one as the teacher was very religious, and we knew she was.
I spent most RE lessons sat with my mate reading computer mags. We would usually be given a 10 minute lecture, then be given about 10 questions to answer in groups from a section of the textbook. We ran through those in the space of 5 minutes and then discussed our answers with the class for about 15 minutes at the end.
That teacher didn't care for me and my mate at all, (as we were obviously totally disinterested) and I think it pissed her off when I came 3rd in the class on the final exam, as I think she wanted us to crash and burn so she could hold us up as an example against dossing.. (I think he placed mid-table somewhere.)
Oh yeah, we also got kicked out of the class once for drawing swastikas, acid-house smiley faces and huge knob-heads on religious icons in the textbooks.
Yes indeed but now I think about it she is probably no longer here today as she was old back then but I respect her still along with the other teachers,something lacking at that same school today where kids lock teachers in stationary cupboards :\
At Secondary I ditched the subject as being useless as soon as humanly possible - though we did have a wicked teacher who was brilliant....to be honest I think the RE lessons I got were probably more like debating workshops or philosophy "lite" rather than focused on any religion per say...closest link I can think of would be taking an example of a moral choice type story from one of the religions then discussing it and its relevance in modern society