h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

<<Apart from having different degrees of impairment, they will have different personalities & experiences that shape them, as we all do.>>

That's what I keep saying - they *are* different! Just like we all are. Which is what also makes us similar.


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Well, I don't personally know two Christians who are even remotely similar in their beliefs. Which always makes me wonder what being 'Christian' actually means. I would like to see religions taught about in schools within this suggested RPM programme - Religion, Philosophy, Moral education.

az

When is the teacher going to find time for other interesting subjects such as Math, Science, Reading etc.

I can see giving a overveiw of different cultures in social studies, but there is only so much time in the day.

>Religion, Philosophy, Moral education.

British schools do. Although it's "religion, philosphy and ethics".

Well, the following is from the original article dated February 15. I suppose I should do a follow-up to see if these changes have been implemented.

az



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The amount of time spent per week doesn't need to be huge; and the habits of open minded, egalitarian critical enquiry which it should foster have potential benefits across the curriculum, as well as outside the immediate educational environment.

Noggin

While a comprehensive teaching of religion (or absence thereof) would likely take a lot of time away from other subjects, a whistle-stop tour need only take one lesson a week. I would say it would be an idea to cover major world faiths (or schools of atheistic thought) perhaps in less depth than I did at school, but to cover more ground.

By the way, is there still that ridiculous requirement for 'ritual worship' in schools?

'Collective worship of a broadly Christian nature' - I think it depends on the local authority.

Not all schools have the space to gather everyone together at once, many have divided assemblies, may be only once a week. It is of course a useful forum to disseminate information to the whole school & can be a means of delivering a 'thought for the day' message.

I'm not keen on obligatory hymn singing & prayers. My two sons used to get told off for not joining in.

So it's still around then? *sigh*

The more I think about it, the more unacceptable I find the whole compulsory worship thing. When I was at school, of course, it was just the way it was. I'd like to think my antipathy was based on intuition that the situation was wrong, but I suspect it was more due to resenting twenty minutes of sensory deprivation and lack-lustre singing.

I don't remember anything meaningful about it when I was at school. At that time I was a church/Sunday school attender but school assemblies were so boring, I envied the Jewish girls who only came in for the notices.

I think it's definitely time this was dropped.

I echo that...It should *never* be compulsory.

**drags thread up from the depths**

Compulsory worship in schools? An interesting question. My gut reaction would be against, but with my experience of your average teenager, they invariably worship _something_. OK, most of the time it's Blue or WWE wrestlers, but what's better: to worship a divine, ineffable being; or some tit with abnormal upper body growth and lurid lycra swimming trunks?

It can be said in the children's favour that it is a good thing that said children are starting to make their own decisions about who to idolise. However, it most certainly goes against them that they are not fully mature, well-rounded and emotionally balanced human beings and therefore not equipped to make that choice.

I think that there is a lot to be said for compulsory worship in schools, even if it is not of the traditional Christian type.

B

But compulsary worship of a particular item presumes that either the person who chooses the venerated item is always right or else that one can be sure that worshiping this item will do less harm than anything the teenager might choose to worship.

Surely the entire schools system is based around this precept, though.

B

The greater the free will violation, the greater the evidence needed. Especially as adults can't even vaguely agree on what should be worshiped and what must never be worshiped on pain of eternal damnation.

"The greater the free will violation, the greater the evidence needed."

Well, forgive me for sounding more than a little capitalist, but that just sounds like a licence for self-important idiots to run riot. Mind you, some people call that 'politics'.

But again you trace the argument back to religion as we all know it. I'm not endorsing Christianity in schools - far from it: Christianity, like most world religions, is narrow-minded. My argument is merely that worship is inevitable, so why not focus it on something of value?

B

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I don't see the connection, unless you're talking sbout the jstification for school at all.


gtg, e back later

Well I find this to be a truly interesting subject, which of course leaves itself open as great philosphical and moral quandry. As I'm an American, I can't really comment on the politics within the school systems of those abroad, however it does make me think. In the States, we don't have any required RE or even philosphy courses. I've largely been agnostic most of life, dispite my largely Christian family (Catholics, Protestants, and Born-Again New Age Christians), so I've never had any religious "education". As an idea, I think the course alone sounds interesting, but then again it all depends at which age it is taught at and HOW it is taught. Which grade is RE taught in, by the way? However, I can see where it being just required would stir up contraversy. Personally, I think finding out what others believe is a good thing, though in the US we make such classes optional. Yet again, I've been through a different school system, so I wouldn't know much about the subject, but I am intrigued...