Yes, we need better religious education at school

Inspired by this article[At school I must confess I never really paid attention, nor interest into religious studies.We witness increased unhappiness with multiculturalism, but how are people meant to learn to accept one another when we don't understand one another? For children, the only exposure they are receiving is the news painting certain religions as bad, or parents being racist and distorting their views from the off?It's about time schools teach our children why we need to accept one another, and this needs to be done with more religious education. 13-year-old me would have hated that but I think it is now essential. Do you think we should have more religious education?

Yeah I think spirituality is really under-emphasized in the classroom - teaching religion not only promotes diversity but can help with stress and countless other things......Brace yourself for the Dawkins and Hitchens worshippers....who want to stop all children from being indoctrinated into a system of fear and credulity. lol.

I highly doubt anybody who likes Dawkins or Hitchens would have a problem with better religious education.

Would you be quite so open to having atheism also taught alongside religion in RE classes?

my school made it compulsory to do a short course gcse in re of which i got an A in, as an atheist i dont feel like i learnt anything from the lessons and we were being taught the answers to the exams, didnt really teach us to have an appreciation for diversity or religious beliefs.

Isn't atheism though usually taught within RE as well?

Posted from TSR Mobile

I have often said on TSR that religious education is important but needs to be monitored closely. There needs to be breadth as well as depth and nuanced, balanced teaching. I heard something about the new RE GCSE or some revised/new RE qualification that you have to study two traditions and at least ONE of those has to not be your own, e.g. Catholic schools can't pick both Christianity AND Catholicism to study. That sounds good to me and I think needs to be a general theme in religious education across the board.

(As an aside, I have also often said on here, religious education, PSHE and sciences need to be monitored in faith schools.)

I'm not sure. I went to a religious school. For me, religious education comprised of Catholicism, and a little Judaism. Atheism was not mentioned once, ever.

I went to a faith school and we covered all the main religions including atheism and agnosticism.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Do you also feel that all the topics were cover impartially?

What type of faith school was it, if you don't mind me asking?

On the contrary I think religious education at school gave me a good understand of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Humanism. Our teachers were fair and impartial, being in a non-religious state school. We also went over moral and ethical issues such as abortion, euthanasia and environmentalism. I enjoyed it, and gave up the chance for extra Maths classes to continue with my GCSE short course in Religious Education.

The problem primarily was that no one was interested in it, and people were disruptive. People were openly hostile to the class, treating it as some sort of Bible bashing exercise, claiming that because they weren't religious there was no need for them to be in class to have religion 'forced' on them. It never was, we were simply taught about different religions, including Christianity, so we could better understand them. Ironic given that our teacher was an agnostic atheist, who taught us to be critical and open to ideas but always respectful