Chapel Matters
After so much planning and interruptions due to Covid, it seems hard to believe that my staff scholarship trip to the UK is over and I am already back into the swing of things here at school!
One thing I did on my trip was to visit several schools to see what they do for Religious Education. Their Education Act of 1944 (with a few "tweaks" over time), makes it a requirement for all schools to teach (and assess) Religious Education. This is done in recognition of the importance of learning about this aspect of people's lives in such a multicultural context.
One school I visited was Leicester City High School, which has 1800 students and over 50 languages spoken! Their equivalent of Y12 students were preparing for an upcoming exam on Buddhism and Christianity; not only did they have to know about each religion and be able to compare them, they also needed to be able to discuss their personal views on the main practices and beliefs of these two religions in light of their own beliefs.
One primary school class I visited were looking at different religious symbols as they prepared for a class trip to the local Sikh Temple, while another one was exploring the meaning of various Psalms in the Bible and coming up with metaphors to describe what life is like.
I was very impressed with both the understanding and appreciation of different religions across all the schools I visited. It was taken for granted that a religious aspect of life was important for understanding the world, and that there was a genuine respect for this aspect of life (including valuing non-religious views). Most teachers and students I spoke to also knew about the 2019 Mosque shooting in Christchurch, thought our Prime Minister, Jacinda Adern, had been amazing, and wondered why students in NZ state schools aren’t expected to learn about Islam (for example).
As I drove back to my AirBnB and saw the City Council funded banners celebrating Eid (the end of Ramadan), I knew these experiences would give me lots of food for thought in terms of our own context here in Aotearoa NZ.
