Buddhism in daily life: teaching about Buddhist teenagers in Britain today

One member of the September 9 REChat on research raised the issue of ‘official’ versions of religions contrasting with how they are lived by individuals in Britain today. Research on religion gives up-to-date detail on the latter. I’ll look at one example of this and draw out some classroom applications.

The research looked at the importance of home shrines. [i] It was a survey of 417 Buddhist teenagers of different traditions. The main findings were:

• 70% of British Buddhist teenagers had a shrine in their homes.
• Having a home shrine corresponded with heightened religiosity.
• Those with a shrine at home were significantly more likely to have a daily religious practice (22%) than those without a shrine (7%). Those with a shrine were also significantly more likely to bow to their parents (66%) than those without shrines (36%). Those with a shrine were significantly less likely to attend a temple on a weekly basis (41%) than those without (74%).
• Home shrines were significantly linked with Buddhist religiosity in female, heritage Buddhists in their late teens.
• For female, heritage Buddhists in particular, the shrine helped remind them about the Buddha and Buddhist clergy as symbols of their religion. This included feeling that life has a sense of purpose, considering oneself a ‘proper’ Buddhist, and thinking that Buddhist monks do a good job.
• For male, convert, and early teen Buddhists particularly, the presence of the shrine had more to do with identity than religiosity.

How can these data be used in teaching? Within a topic on Buddhism, you could plan a lesson on home shrines, perhaps following a more traditional one on places of worship. In the first part of the lesson, pupils could use e.g. https://www.thedhammalife.com/how-to-set-up-buddhist-altar-or-shrine-at-home/ to research what is involved in setting up a home shrine and why the different objects (and their placings) are important to Buddhists. Next, as a bridge, different pupils could feed back their findings to the class. In the second part of the lesson, groups or pairs of pupils could be given sets of the research findings, cut into individual strips, and asked to arrange these in order of interest or significance. They may wish to ask about vocabulary such as ‘heritage’, ‘convert’, or ‘religiosity’, developing religious literacy. They should note their reasons and any further questions they want to raise. The plenary would involve different pupils giving their findings and questions to the class, with the teacher also contributing questions for discussion: e.g. why might female and heritage Buddhists relate to home shrines more ‘religiously’? Why might male and convert Buddhists relate to home shrines more in terms of personal identity? Future lessons on gender in different religions might interleave back to this lesson.

[i] We have reported it at Does it matter whether Buddhists have home shrines?