Teaching RE in a non-catholic school

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Marcin_L

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I have recently started working as an elementary school teacher. One of the subjects I am going to teach is Religious Education (RE). Obviously, I had been asked whether or not I was willing to teach this subject before. I said ‘yes’ mainly because I believe it could be one of the ways to influence children in the positive way.
However, the curriculum involves teaching not only about Christianity but also about Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. It is supposed to be taught in an informative way, excluding worship of any kind.

Being a devoted catholic, I am not too sure how to go about teaching about other religions. It is not the case of not having sufficient knowledge about them; I just don’t know how to position it all.

Any hints will be greatly appreciated 🙂
 
Marcin_L said:
I have recently started working as an elementary school teacher. One of the subjects I am going to teach is Religious Education (RE). Obviously, I had been asked whether or not I was willing to teach this subject before. I said ‘yes’ mainly because I believe it could be one of the ways to influence children in the positive way.
However, the curriculum involves teaching not only about Christianity but also about Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. It is supposed to be taught in an informative way, excluding worship of any kind.

Being a devoted catholic, I am not too sure how to go about teaching about other religions. It is not the case of not having sufficient knowledge about them; I just don’t know how to position it all.

Any hints will be greatly appreciated 🙂
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So this is a Comparative Religions Course? That would be different than RE.
 
IMHO, you should approach the school and see what course materials you are required to use and for the rubrics for successful class and student assessments. You will then be in a better position to determine if the course materials are such that you cannot teach the class and I would certainly discuss the materials with your local Pastor.

Even if the materials are not in-line with what you can teach, you may be able to adapt parts of the materials and develop a theology course that you can teach.

Now the following is just my Opinion
I will not answer any posts nor argue any point in the following it is my opinion and my opinion only:

It is one thing to teach theology and cultural anthropology… for example the history of each of the major religions highlighting culturally significant events and time frames. This is the approach I would take in teaching such a course. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhist, and even Atheists need to be aware of the other major religions and belief systems of the world. We are an increasingly global community and such knowledge can help us to progress towards a productive global society - without compromising our individual faiths.

It is another thing to teach religion such as the prayers of the faith, having children hold a mock pass-over meal, or as we do the Family Faith Formation Program.

It is a very fine line to walk and in the public schools you are really very tightly bound by the law and can run afoul of that much more easily than something within the Catholic Faith.
 
There is a great old clip of Archbishop Sheen on YouTube about how to compare religions. It is a nice way to remind yourself that you can discuss other faiths while holding fast to your own. Of course, the good archbishop, in his very special and touching way, leads gradually to an amazing, touching, conclusion about our Lord at the end of the segment; but he does a great job discussing that any good in the other faiths comes from God and that, essentially, all the mistruth in them are human errors, a lack of ability to see the real Truth. Give it a watch…it’s about 22 minutes. youtube.com/watch?v=XA6aIhHzXkw

I teach comparative religions in a course I conduct, so I can relate to your feelings.
 
Marcin_L said:
I have recently started working as an elementary school teacher. One of the subjects I am going to teach is Religious Education (RE). Obviously, I had been asked whether or not I was willing to teach this subject before. I said ‘yes’ mainly because I believe it could be one of the ways to influence children in the positive way.
However, the curriculum involves teaching not only about Christianity but also about Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. It is supposed to be taught in an informative way, excluding worship of any kind.

Being a devoted catholic, I am not too sure how to go about teaching about other religions. It is not the case of not having sufficient knowledge about them; I just don’t know how to position it all.

Any hints will be greatly appreciated 🙂
Click to expand...
Religious history is pretty straight forward, since its history. If it is more of a comparative religion class, keep it factual and straightforward. ‘Hindus believe X, Y, and Z. Islam teaches that you have to do A, B, and C. Protestants disagree with Catholics on D, T, and W.’
 
Religious Education (RE) is the general term that has been used in UK schools for teaching about religions. It was certainly the term used in the 1970s and -80s in secondary schools (age 11-17) and I expect it still is. Clearly ‘RE’ may be used differently in the US.
 
Religious Education within UK State Schools is usually fact based. Any attempts to compare two groups within a single religious branch (i.e: Protestants and Catholics) are usually avoided. They’ll cover the basics they share like Baptism, Communion, Christs role as redeemer and they may point out differences in the layout of a church but they won’t talk about number of sacraments or deeper Theology. Mostly because it is irrelevant to non-believers, and it’s thought to be to deep for the short amount of time allocated to the subject. They’ve got to go through Christianity, Sikhism, Islam and Hinduism and they barely touch the tip of the iceberg.

Children may host “mock” services like a passover meal, attend a Gurdwara as observers and the like but it is made explicitly clear this is a renactment to better explain ritual and not the real deal.
 
Unlike in the US there is not a separation between church (or any other religion) and state in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and other European countries. In RE (Religious Education) class 70 years ago it may have been purely Christian but it would still be biased toward the Church of England or other Protestant denominations unless you were in a Catholic school. The vast majority of Catholic schools in the UK are public (state) schools and as such must teach the National Curriculum. As the UK is a multi-faith nation (and majority secular/atheist) all faiths and none are given equal attention and weight. A teacher cannot teach from a purely Catholic perspective. However she can at least teach accurately what the Catholic church teaches and believes - most people are very ignorant of the Catholic faith in the UK.
 
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