Religious Education

Discussion in 'The War Zone' started by thomas234, Jan 25, 2007.

  1. thomas234

    thomas234 Big Geek

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    After my recent mock R.E test, in which no doubt I will have done crap because I was ranting about how Christianity (and all other religions) are a waste of time and money, I was searching for an excuse not to be taught R.E.

    I could get my parents to write a letter asking me not to participate in R.E lessons, which apparently (according to my Uncle), would get me out of them. However, I have no evidence to back this up. So, I've decided to stay in R.E lessons, but next time I'm asked what I think of "Having children before marriage" in a test or by the teacher, I will tell them about Pastafarians. The people who believe that the flying spagetti monster created the world. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

    If anyone does know of a site which gives the Education Act of 1944 (which apparently states I don't have to do R.E lessons), I would be very grateful, as I cannot find it.

    Isn't religion a waste of time?

    Thomas
     
  2. RHochstenbach

    RHochstenbach Administrator

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    At this time all types of religions are mixed up with each other. So you don't know which religion to teach. If someone is interested in a religion, then he or she has to study a bible or something. It would better to replace R.E. with lessons that are useful. Like mathermatics, physics, etc. Because you go to school to get educated for your future work. And you won't need any religion for your future work, except if you want to become a priest or so. But in that case you'll get R.E. teached in church, and you won't need it at school.
     
  3. Addis

    Addis The King

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    In year 9, I wrote stupid answers on my RE exam. I wrote things like "How the hell should I know?" at the "What is a [obscure foreign word]".

    RE is a waste of time at later years, but I think it should be taught to children at a young age, not in high school. Ignorance of religions isn't good you know.
     
  4. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    I think it's good to know, depending on the context. In a public education system, then, yes, it shouldn't be part of the required curriculum in the sense that it's asserting a particular view. However, in a private school, this should remain optional. Now, I do think that having those as an optional course as part of social studies or history have their place in putting things in context. Something like the Crusades loose their context without the religious background. Trying to avoid mere mention of religion is silly as it takes away the context, much like removing the fact that the people Hitler murdered were largely Jews would have less of an impact.
    I'm not asking people to believe or follow a particular religion, but ignorance of such things does not benefit someone. I went to a Christian school, and we did go over Islam, Buddism, Confuscionism, Taoism, etc. during my high school years. Regardless of your agreement of religion, it is a significan part of all cultures, and therefore must not be ignored. Sure, not everybody follows it, but you can make that argument for a lot of things.
     
  5. yorkkev28

    yorkkev28 HWF Minion

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    Religious education is a waste of space to people who are completely unreligious. In Britain we have the lowest number of religious people anywhere in the world apart from Russia. Why teach a nation about religion when its population isnt interested at all in the ramblings of religion. Religion just causes war and Religion is just made up anyway.

    Over 100,000 documented types of religious factions throughout history of the world, so either there are alot of prophets about or someone is telling porky pies.

    What people gain from religion is beyond me, is it a feeling of being part of a group or something or just that they wanna believe that there is something after you die. If some dude suddenly came out and said look, here are the facts, you live, you die and there is nothing else after then how would that affect peoples perceptions of life.

    Im a non believer, i was forced to go to church by my parents until aged 11 when i told them i thought it were complete crap and so i didnt have to go anymore.

    If you wanna get out of RE, just say your an athiest and that you dont believe in the teachings of religion.

    Worked for me, my mum wrote a letter to the school saying she didnt want me learning a foreign language. so i dint do french. I got to sit in the study library instead.

    Instead of religious education they should be concentrating on things that matter to people once they leave school:- How to fill out a tax form, family values, banking and finance,

    Maybe teach the lesser perfoming individuals at school or those with an eye for practical aspects, such things as plumbing, engineering, electrical wiring so that when they leave school they have a role which they can fufill.

    To much of the state education is based on achieveing examination results and not on how different people learn things in different ways.
     
  6. thomas234

    thomas234 Big Geek

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    [RANT]

    This is exactly what I mean. I spend an hour after school every Tuesday doing a statistics GCSE. If they cancelled RE, I wouldn't have to go after school and instead could go to the science club after school on Tuesday (as boring as it sounds), and get a better grade in science.

    RE seems almost (but not quite) as useless as the IT GCSE I'm doing. I've been asked to make an e-portfolio containing all the work I'm doing. However, it has to be made in M$ Publisher!!! I asked if I could use Notepad to do HTML, but my teacher didn't know what I was talking about, and said "No". I know it's not the schools fault, nor the IT Teacher (dumb as she may be), but wouldn't I do better in life learning how to fix the problems with Microsoft software, rather than making an E-portfolio completely out of M$ Software. They may aswell call it the Microsoft GCSE.

    [/RANT]
     
  7. Vaipa

    Vaipa Geek Trainee

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    I personlly think RE sucks ass big-time with our crap teacher who is so blind kids can walk out the door for 30 minutes then walk back in without her noticing. Today i learnt about filming her telling off a kid cos that's all she did last lesson :D
     
  8. yorkkev28

    yorkkev28 HWF Minion

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    The trouble with IT G.C.S.E is that quite often the pupil knows more about the subject than the person teaching them. Due largely in part nowadays (yes i know i sound old) to people having access to a computer from a very early age.

    My Brother has just finished a networking degree, but he said he found the experience of talking to people on his dodgy warez sites to have given him more experience with regards to networking than the course ever could of.

    The IT G.C.S.E should be dropped or modified to include either more practical aspects of IT or taught by someone who knows how the IT is relavent to a workplace and adapted accordingly.
     
  9. Vaipa

    Vaipa Geek Trainee

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    HAHA you actually talk sense. Our teacher knows how to do word/excel..All of microsofts programs but fails at making websites ect.
     
  10. yorkkev28

    yorkkev28 HWF Minion

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    My RE teacher was like sheila off Shameless. She were really friendly but mad as a hatter. RE was like the lesson you looked forward to when i was at school cause you got to doss around for an hour.
     
  11. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    To be a little bit of a pain:

    How would you know you think religion is bunk if you don't know anything about it? You couldn't have come up with your arguments against religion if you didn't know anything about it. Now, I'm just advocating a general overview, not opening the Bible, Quaran, Torah, or othe holy book as part of social studies or history to give the topic context. Wether you like it or not, religion influences cultures, for good or bad, and to ignore that is to have poor education. Again, I'm not saying that they need to have you going through the Bible in a public school, but I think it's a disservice to throw out parts of history that someone doesn't like. You don't dump parts of education just because you disagree with them.

    Now, from what I'm picking up, you UK'ers RE curriculum seems to be an attempt to force morality classes. You can't force people to a certain religion, it doesn't work because people only do it out of fear. How many times has this been tried in England alone between the Protestants and Catholics?

    My perspective is this: if I end up being wrong about my Christian beliefs and they are all bunk, I'm worm food. However, if I'm right and that there is an afterlife, there will be people in hell. Obviously, one of us is right, and it's not on the basis of belief, but of the facts. Belief doesn't make something exist or not exist, otherwise you end up with something existing and not existing simutaneously---which I'm pretty sure is impossible. And I've gone off on a tangent, again...
     
  12. yorkkev28

    yorkkev28 HWF Minion

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    Far to deep for me to comprehend Big B :). I'll stick to my guns, I'll either see you in heaven or hell or be worm food too.

    How do you teach religious education to a nation of unreligious people? People just either switch off from what someone is trying to tell them or it goes in one ear and out the other.

    Although Britain is touted as a place where all cultures can mingle together, there is a large undercurrent of unrest which has seen pockets of uprisings in recent times mainly up here in the north of the country.

    For me personally if people want to believe in religion then its up to them, as long as it doesnt interfere with my way of life.

    The christian fraternity here in York hardly warm the souls of York's populous with their shouting in York city centre on a saturday about the word of God. Normally they end up getting pelted with stones, burgers and anything else that comes to hand.
    In modern society in Britain they are seen as slightly demented, and then they wonder why noone wants to go to church.

    P.S on the bible front, we were given a bible at school by some churchy types. and the bible did come in very handy at college as its exaxtly the same thickness as Rizlas, so at least i ingested the so called word of God even if it were smoked.
     
  13. thomas234

    thomas234 Big Geek

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    Do you believe in Darwins Theory of evolution? If not, what do you believe? The Intelligent Design Theory? Do you believe that Jesus was real? If I told people I was the son of God, they'd think I was a looney (and rightly so). We're learning about evolution in bioligy, so I'd be interested to know your opinion on it, I only know one person who is christian and believes Darwins theory is incorrect.

    With great difficulty. People only really learn about things when they are interested in them. For this reason, I believe R.E should be optional, the only downside is that the R.E teacher would be out of a job.

    Really??? I've never noticed that before when I'm in York. I'll look out though (and maybe join in) next time. People should keep their beliefs to themselves IMO.
     
  14. Karanislove

    Karanislove It's D Grav80 Of Luv

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    [ot]Just wondering, how many subjects do u guys have to do in your school...
    When I was in 10th..I had English, History, Geo, Eco, Physics, Chemistry, Bio, Maths, Sanskrit/Hindi(Optional)....After that class, in the 10+1 class we have to choose from
    Medical - Bio, Physics, CHemistry, English, Physical Edu and Maths optional
    Non-Medical - Physics, Chemistry, Maths, English and PE
    Commerce - Accounts, Business, English, PE and Option between Maths and Eco
    Arts - History nd all, I dnt know all the subs here...

    Its like we have this religion thing upto 10. Also it gets hard to pass 8,9,10 where all the subjects get saperated like Science get divided into Physics, Chem, Bio.....
    These religious things were always good for me to get the good marks..
    [/ot]
     
  15. thomas234

    thomas234 Big Geek

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    In Year 10 at our school you do all the compulsary subjects which are:

    Maths
    English
    Bioligy
    Chemistry
    Physics
    P.E (No GCSE)
    R.E
    Citizenship (Dos lesson - No GCSE)

    You then get to choose upto 4 subjects (People with lower intelligence got to choose 3 or even 2 - but this is rare). I'll list all the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

    Art, Food Technology, Home Economics, Resistant Materials, Graphics, Systems & Control, ICT, Business Studies, P.E (GCSE Level), Drama, Music, History, Geography, Psycology, Sociology, Media Studies, French, Spanish, German (not running due to lack of interest), Statistics (after school only).

    I chose, French, I.T, Systems and Control, Geography and Statistics. That works out at 12 subjects over a 2 week timetable, 25 lessons a week. 11/50 hours are filled doing science!!
     
  16. Addis

    Addis The King

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    I agree with Big B on this one. Having experienced the RE system in school not long ago, I can say that they don't force any certain religion upon you. Au contraire, we were taught more about the Sikh faith, Judaism and Islam than Christianity. While I don't agree that it should be compulsory, it should not be dropped as a subject. A lot of world events happen because of religion, and being ignorant of religions and the differences between them can even be dangerous. As B said, we can't choose to leave out huge parts of our history because we refuse to learn about religion (not follow, just learn about it).

    My mother studied in Russia for 5 years, doing her degree in Musicology. In that time, even as university student, she still had to study Communist history and Marxism, as well as Atheism very strictly. In Soviet Russia, it was not anyone's choice whether to study these subjects or not, it was forced upon by the state. She absolutely hated it, her passion was music, not the life of Karl Marx. I would guess that this is the reason why Russia has the lowest number of religious people.

    What a coincidence. I did GCSE statistics as well, on tuesdays after school. My teacher was great, not like my normal maths one. (There are many, many stories I could tell you titled "What we did today in maths". You won't believe the stuff our class got up to over the years.) I got an A* in it, after doing about 12-15 lessons. It's definitely worth the small amount of time.

    As for GCSE IT, the curriculum is utter crap. I did GCSE IT, and it was all Microsoft Office. Nothing but Office and "Annotating printouts". IT was my speciality, yet I hated it. History on the other hand was a great subject. I learned far more in history than I did in IT, Science and maths put together, and I'm glad I took it.


    Interesting. I think I mentioned this once before somewhere. Imagine this scenario:
    You put a cat into a completely isolated box, in which nothing can come out or go in once closed. With the cat, you put a device which has some nuclear-radioactive sources, and connected to that is a device which will release poison if it receives nuclear radiation. E.g. A uranium atom will randomly decompose and release an alpha particle, this particle is trapped by the detector and triggers the poison which kills the cat.

    Now, according to quantum theory, if we as spectators view the box from the outside, it is not possible to say the cat is dead or alive. Actually, until we look inside the box and make a measurement, the cat is simultaneously dead and alive at the same time. This is known as a superposition of states; when me make a measurement, the superposition of states collapse into a single defined state. It sounds very crazy, but I believe that there are some aspects which do support this from a philosophical perspective.

    This scenario which I've just made is actually called [google]Schrodinger's cat[/google], a paradoxical thought experiment. I really have gone off on a tangent here, but oh well :).
     
  17. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    Darwin's observation that evolution does happen is true, as there have been changes within a species. Now, I'd be hard pressed to say that I buy the argument that we've evolved from a chimp. That's a major leap in genetics and chromosomes. IIRC, our chromosomes are closer to a pig than a chimp. I do believe that we were created by God, i.e. Intelligent Design. Why? Look at the complexities of single-cell organisms. Those are pretty neat in and of themselves. How many zillion cells make up the human body? How is it that humans (and I think a select few animals) have sex not just for procreation but enjoyment? I'm not sure where something like artistic enjoyment contributes to the advancement of the species. Basically, I think there's a good case for both, but maybe not to the full extent they're pimped by both sides. I've run across both, but it's been awhile since I've reviewed the arguments. Given some of the religiously conservative viewpoints I've been exposed to and the reading I've done, Darwin is not nearly as off kilter as what I was lead to believe. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called 'Christians' are annoyingly ignorant to arguments on both sides as well as their own faith. Seeing your arguments against religion, yeah, I don't blame you at all.

    I certainly believe that Jesus was real and walked this earth. Historian Josephus documented this in his writings...basically, you can't debate wether or not Jesus was alive on this Earth. He also died without any charges that would require execution. Lastly, he was stone dead and resurrected 3 days later. To expand on that, his tomb was being guarded by Roman Centurions...trained soldiers, and from what I understand, similar in some respects to our Marines. It's pretty hard to imagine that 11 cowardly men (who split when Jesus was arrested), with no formal combat training are going to take on several highly trained soldiers--guarding Jesus tomb under penalty of death if the body was taken, then move a honkin' big stone and swipe the body. Also, nobody was able to prove Jesus disciples, or anyone else, swiped to body. The religious leaders would've been all over that, yet, instead, they branded Jesus followers as heretics. All they had to do was produce the body and the show was over. They never did, and the religious leaders hated Jesus at least as much as John Kerry hates George W. Bush...if not more.

    My only question would be to what extent? I'll agree that for a public school a class or set of classes specifically for RE that are required is pushing it. As an elective? Sure. Brushing on it through history or social studies? Yes, in order to give context. I know I keep saying this, but I want to make it clear where I stand.
     
  18. yorkkev28

    yorkkev28 HWF Minion

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    In what context is the word god. im sorry but if some superior being made us then my money is on Aliens. Now it stands to reason that maybe we didnt evolve from Ape's but to have some bloke called jesus who saved the world from itself is just complete shit.

    If i proclaimed i was jesus and that i could do all this magical healing and stuff. cure blind pps and run through a temple turning over merchants tables and the like then surely i would be locked up for being a complete nutter.

    Jesus if at all the same person who has been scripted by 2nd, 3rd or even 4th hand accounts of a person, was little more than a modern day anachist who rightly died for his part in an uprising, which it sounds very much like it is.

    Ever played the game called chinese whispers or even maybe boasted to friends about something which might be slightly more appealing than if you just told it like it is.

    Folk stories and Mythology is where jesus and the word of God belong.

    Weird though how alot of americans believe in god and stuff and the english think its crap.

    I could talk for days on this subject but i'll leave it at this for now.
     
  19. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    God is the exclusive and only diety without limit in the context I'm using here.

    Okay. What's your reasoning that, if we didn't evolve from a 'lower' animal and that aliens did plant us?

    Okay, this needs some context interjected here. For sacrifices, an animal like a goat or ox was used. The key was that it couldn't just be any one they wanted, but the best, not lame, have wounds, be sick, etc. The problem here was that poor people would bring their best, but the priests would tell them that the animal wasn't worthy for sacrificing to God and that they had to purchase one of the animals that they certified were pure. It wasn't that the priests weren't supposed to make sure of this, but it was the fact that they went ahead and charged exhorbant prices for the animals. They were screwing people who were trying to obey God, and that's why Jesus flipped out. It was a just anger, like when a child rapist gets off the hook with a slap on the wrist. It wasn't like 'you insulted my momma, lemme bust a cap in yo' face' type anger.

    As far as miracles, Jesus made the claim of being God, so he's either got a bunch of liars backing him up (which would be pretty hard, since the stories don't contradict the character of Jesus) or they're telling the truth. Additionally, if someone is God, wouldn't you expect them to be able to prove it.

    Jesus did not start a revolt. There were a lot of people that thought he was going to come and overthrow the Roman empire, but that was not the goal. The religious leaders didn't like Jesus because he was infringing in their territory. Both King Herod and Roman governor Potius Pilate did not find any reason to condemn Jesus, neither of which was exactly interested in helping Jesus out.

    Nope.

    But they're not myths. They're facts, documented by people, like Jewish secular historian Josephus, who didn't recieve mention in the Bible. Additionally, how is that 4 men in the Bible with first-hand accounts all corroborate each others story? They're certainly picking up on different observations, but they're not in conflict with each other.

    So, the argument is that whatever the English say in an argument is true and the American point is false?

    The Americanized Christianity isn't what I believe. The Americanized version centers around themselves, how Jesus was a good example, how you can make the Bible work for you, how to be a better person. It's more pop-psychology than about Jesus. I think that view is rubbish.

    The Bible and the core of Christianity centers around Jesus and what He did.
    The starting point is that everyone has not only sinned, meriting a one-way ticket to Hell, but we are damned, due to Adam's sin. We are credited as sinners from the start. Jesus comes along, lives a perfect life in thought, word, and deed, every micro-second of his time on earth and then is executed and his life poured out to cover everyone sins. God credits everyone He calls to himself as perfect, even though, as I'm sure you've noticed, they fail, i.e sin. That doesn't mean Hell doesn't exist and that nobody will end up there, but as far as salvation goes, it is nothing you do. There is a 'personal' relationship, but it's created and maintained by Jesus.

    That's the only thing that's promised. You're not promised a hunky-dory life, nice neighbors, feeling happy all the time...I'm convinced a lot of Americanized Christianity must involve drug use with the beliefs used.

    Of course, I know I can't make you accept this or believe it, but it is my duty to offer an intelligent argument for this faith. It's God's show, not mine.
     
  20. yorkkev28

    yorkkev28 HWF Minion

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    In my defence i was drunk as hell lastnight and just thought id make a few points after i'd had 10 pints, which probably merits the points i have raised and the lack of reasoning behind them.

    Chinese Whispers: A game of passing a phrase, sentence or such like around a large group of people by whispering what the last person whispered you to another person. After going round about 20 people the last person says out loud what they hear. The phrase or sentence is normally completely different from what was initially said.

    With this is mind, as time has passed and so the stories have been passed from one to another they have most probably been changed and so the picture which we see today could possibly be nothing at all like it was originally.

    I think this all boils down to being a believer or a sceptic. A believer believes even if they don't neccesarily have the evidence to back it up where as the sceptic doesnt believe unless it can be proven without doubt and have all the evidence presented to them.
     

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