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Museums have experienced a bit of a shake up recently.  They have moved from primarily promoting wider understanding of cultural and historical heritage to exploring in a more profound way the importance of religious culture and tradition and in particular the idea of ‘the sacred’.

In a recent talk in the British Museum entitled ‘Exploring the sacred in museums’, the historian of religion Karen Armstrong defined sacred as what you would be prepared to die; that most fundamental thing which holds true for both the religious and secular person. As a Trustee of the British Museum and therefore in an ideal position to steer things, Karen Armstrong talks of the need to develop the ‘the science of compassion’. By this she means seeing things from the perspective of the other person, being sensitive to their spirituality or secular standpoint and not trying to impose your own perspective, reaching out to the other when learning about the religious traditions and cultures from across the world. For her, getting to know and understand the past of others, however different culturally that may be, helps us understand ourselves better.

This is at the heart of what many museums are aspiring to do right now. All of this has direct benefits to the RE teacher and Religious Education not only in ‘learning about’ but also ‘learning from’. Understanding through the ‘science of compassion’ means that visitors can link sacred objects from a vast array of cultures and ages to their own present concerns and values, to see their place in all of this and understand that place in a deeper way whether from a religious or secular perspective.

British Museum exhibitions over the last couple of years have been packed with sacred objects, leading some to have spiritual experiences themselves: a concept that seems so unlikely in a museum context. One of the most popular of recent years was the ‘Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead’, which explored the idea of spiritual journeys through this ancient text. The Hajj exhibition contained wall hangings from Ka’aba in Mecca, souvenirs brought back by pilgrims from Hajj and belongings of hajis, those who made the pilgrimage of a lifetime. For Muslim visitors, especially those who had been on Hajj, this meant reliving the spiritual experience and journey.

But are responses to sacred objects in exhibitions like this really ‘religious’? Sometimes ‘emotional’ response might be blurred with what we might think of as a spiritual experience in the presence of a sacred object. But take the example of the ‘Treasures of Heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe’ exhibition of 2011, which was packed full of relics and reliquaries many of which were loaned from churches. You will not be surprised that some visitors prayed in front of the exhibits or brought objects to be blessed in the sacred presence, such as the crucifix a young boy brought to take home for future veneration. Other visitors found it possible to re-establish personal links with the lives of the saints represented. Believing in their stories was like a religious experience to them. Karen Armstrong suggests that this exploration of the sacred leads to a sense of ‘wholeness’ or ‘completeness’ and allows us to experience new ‘regions’ within ourselves, allowing ourselves to be changed. In the case of these visitors this was certainly true.

Spiritual or religious experience can include feelings of being relaxed, encouraging contemplation, feeling calm and escaping from the outside world and feeling inspired, particularly for visitors with a religious background. For those with what we may call a secular perspective, it is the stories of the objects and the people who made them that fascinates them and they are more interested in. The British Museum is sensitive to both religious and secular responses and wants to know how visitors might respond to exhibitions and sacred objects. Today its emphasis is on understanding religions rather than comparing them and much less about ‘confuting atheism’ as was the aim in the 18^th c when the museum was founded. Religion and the sacred are acknowledged as being present everywhere in its collections.

All of this change highlights the surge of interest in the role religion plays in museums. It is not just the cultural and historical interest of the objects displayed but also their religious importance. This often spills out to faith groups in the local community who sometimes demand to control ‘their’ objects and for whom museums such as the British Museum lend out on rare occasion sacred objects for worship. The shift from seeing objects mainly for their aesthetic, cultural or historical merits to seeing them also for their religious significance means that those involved in RE and RS can access more information from curators and specialists via online collections, blogs and video clips that often accompany major exhibitions or through books such as ‘The History of the World in 100 Objects’ which contains several sacred objects as seen through the eyes of a wide variety of people, including members of faith communities.

There is now more information out there than ever before to help the visitor learn more and develop the ‘science of compassion’, to understand why there is sometimes a clash of understandings over the sacred and that there can even be ‘sacred secularism’ where sacred values are upheld within a secular worldview.

So what are the key messages here for the RE teacher? I would summarise these as follows:

• Learning about and understanding what people held as sacred in the past can help us understand our own present. This in turn can also combat misunderstandings and widen our appreciation of what sacred means in different contexts and to different people, both religious and secular
• Developing the ‘science of compassion’ means seeing things from the other person’s point of view, letting go of our preconceived ideas. This can lead to a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with others by helping us understand our place in our global community
• Sometimes sacred objects do generate religious or equally emotional responses. It can mean that past memories are revisited or religious beliefs supported as in the case of blessings of relics or prayer in front of a shrine. This needs to be acknowledged as part of any visit to a museum where sacred objects are on display.

So the National Curriculum, that great Shibboleth of the Thatcher revolution, is to be reviewed (or more accurately, dismantled) and soon we will have the proposals for Maths, English and Science. Colleagues of mine have said that Religious Education should thank its lucky stars for the EBacc which keeps us out of this diabolic review, but I’m not so sure.

In fact I think it’s a massive shame that we have not had a Gove review of Religious Education because it could have led to some radical improvements to the shape of British education.  Apparently Nick Gibb was much inspired by E. Hirsch, and passed this genius on to Gove who has sprinkled it all over the text of his proposals.  Hirsch says children must have a basic foundation of a small amount of facts with which to understand the society they grow up in. So, English must have its sonnets and its unadulterated Shakespeare at Key Stage 3.  Toby Young’s West London Free School must have its Latin.

What would the basic foundation for RE look like?  My imagination takes flight. Clearly, the whole framework would be historical (Elizabeth Truss said in a letter of January 2013: ‘RE is important and studying it teaches children to understand the history that has shaped the values and traditions of this country’) and the role of RE would be to place the young person with the factual tools to understand religion in 21^st century Britain. So, I have come up with my ‘10 essential facts for being RE literate in British schools’.

1. The Synod of Whitby, 664.  The beginning of the end for the Celtic church in Britain and the start of the Romanisation of Christianity in these lands. A significant date in the development of the politicisation of religion in Britain. A desire from the mighty that all should believe the same thing in the same way.

2. The Clarendon Code. A series of Acts of parliament which, from 1661-1665, ensured that all public officials were Church of England, no Non-Conformists could gather in public in groups of larger than 5 and any priest who refused to use the Book of Common Prayer would be thrown out.  A further landmark in the autocratic intolerance practised in this country.

3. The Act of Settlement, 1701. Still in place, although slightly adapted recently to allow Camilla to become Queen, it is still the case that the monarch in this country must be a member of the Church of England.  Discrimination or what.

4. Lin Tse-Hsu’s letter of advice to Queen Victoria, 1839.  Not advisable to ignore the contents of a letter that includes phrases like: ‘Our Celestial Dynasty rules over and supervises the myriad states, and surely possesses unfathomable spiritual dignity’. Even more unadvisable to declare war on that country and force their people to take opium.  The Chinese will have long memories.

5. The Indian Mutiny, 1857.  The Victorians were quick to tell the tale of abuses done to the colonial Brits, but why isn’t it common knowledge that the original offence was that the insensitive British army was using pig’s fat to grease their guns, an offense to Hindus and Muslims alike. For Indian children today, the story is about the beginning of a nation washed in the butchered blood of martyrs.

6. Balfour Declaration, 1917. When it comes to Islam, no self-respecting Muslim in the world will not know the history of the foundation of the state of Israel. But how many young British people are taught about the British mandate in Palestine?  It was the pen of an Englishman that wrote that fateful promise.

7. Amritsar Massacre, 1919. Sikhs were among the first to immigrate in large numbers in the 1950’s. Many Sikhs have been loyal to this country, fighting in both world wars, but all Sikhs will have the memory of this atrocious event burnt deep into their consciousness – where is the British memorial to the 1,000 dead, shot on the orders of a British officer ?

8. U Wisara’s death, 1929. A national hero in Burma, this young Buddhist monk died in a British colonial prison cell after a hunger strike of 166 days.  Among the actions of the rulers that he objected to, was the refusal of British officers to take off their shoes when entering pagodas.

9. Helen Duncan, convicted by a British court of witchcraft, 1944. There are many spiritualists in Britain today, living out their lives, contributing to communities along with the next person. About as far from being witches as the Archbishop of Canterbury. But then, what young person really knows what real witchcraft really is?’.

10. George Orwell’s essay Anti-Semitism in Britain, 1945. Before we get smug about not mistreating Jews in World War Two, all young people should read this piece which includes lines like : ‘I can think of passages which if written now would be stigmatised as antisemitism, in the works of Shakespeare, Smollett, Thackeray, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and various others’.

The issue with Gove’s review is not that facts are not important, but that, what facts you choose to focus on as important. You may not think my ‘Top Ten’ are representative (or even remotely close to it), but what would some people like to choose? Combine that with the statement in the Teacher Standards about upholding British values, and you develop a subject that is about social engineering, about serving a practical purpose. I am pleased to see that Toby Young’s school includes Religious Studies as a KS4 option and no doubt the RE taught in his school will be ground-breaking, but I cannot help, when looking at his website and the prospectus, feeling that his aching, and Gove’s, is not to prepare the young people for the Britain of today, but to mirror the outlook and practice of the traditional public schools which, though successful, are fit to mould a young person for the elitism of the imperial Britain of yesterday.

If we are truly honest about exposing the real faces of world religions, and even of British Christianity, we need to expose the raw belly too and let our children see what we should be ashamed of, so that they can engage in meaningful dialogue with others in the world who bear the marks of these events still.  If we could do that, then a Gove RE review would be a knockout.

A new inclusive way of planning for teachers of RE in special schools

Anne Krisman, Little Heath School, London Borough of Redbridge, 2013

This approach was joint first prize winner of the NATRE-Hockerill Award for Innovation in RE Teaching, 2011 http://www.hockerillfoundation.org.uk/Prize2.aspx

During a lesson on ’99 Names for Allah’ an autistic Hindu boy, when asked to give a new name for God, chose ‘The Key’. It became clear that he was choosing a name that linked with himself, and his own sense of being locked away from others. In the same way as the 5Ks of Sikhism define the identity of a Sikh, the 5Ks of RE are the bridge between a child with special needs and a theme in RE. 

In this article, I will explore a new way of planning Religious Education for pupils with special needs in English and Welsh schools, presenting a simple structure that help bonds our pupils’ distinctive life experiences and understandings to the study of religion and human experience.

The distinctive life experiences of pupils with special needs

A visitor to my classroom, within a special school for pupils with autism and general learning difficulties, carried out a guided meditation within my RE lesson. The children had to imagine they were in a huge bubble, floating above the world. At the end of the reflection, they were asked to talk about what they had experienced. All the class shared stories about people they had died who they had loved, about fathers they did not see any more, or family living in Pakistan.

This is reflected by one sixth former with communication difficulties, Miriam, who comes into each RE lesson carrying the loss of her uncle, who died three years ago. Each theme is a springboard for her to talk about her uncle, who she explains, “Is in Heaven….still.”

When a group of pupils with moderate learning difficulties was told the parable of the Prodigal Son and asked to say what was lost in the story, many viewed it as a story about a broken family, as the mother is not mentioned in the text. When asked for the most important person in the story, one pupil stated, “It’s the mother, because she has died and has left her spirit in the heart of her sons.”

In order for pupils with special needs to access Religious Education, we have to understand what is distinctive about their life experiences and to mould what we teach to them. This means that we need to respond to their deep spiritual understanding of love and loss. Jerome Bruner’s work is relevant here; ‘we begin where the learner is, and we create interest in a subject by rendering it ‘worth knowing’ (1977, 31).

Issues in RE for children with special needs

Teachers working with children with special needs within English and Welsh special schools have few tailor-made resources and plans available in RE. There is no clear vision about what should be taught to children working at P (performance) levels, the assessment tool for use with those pupils who make progress both below and within the early levels of the National Curriculum (below level 1 – most seven year olds are expected to achieve level 2).

Schemes such as EQUALS adapt mainstream schemes of work, such as the QCA units, seeing these as their frame of reference. Most Agreed Syllabuses state that RE should be taught in special schools, “as far as is practicable” (1988, Section 71/7), but often just suggest that their units should be differentiated, with few guidelines on how to do this. Other authorities suggest that special schools often teach the content of the curriculum at a Key Stage below the actual age of the learners and that this should apply to the Agreed Syllabus.

As there is no conceptual framework available, it is common for teachers in special schools to attempt wide and varied sensory elements within RE. A Judaism theme could involve spinning a dreidel, touching or eating matzah, and wearing a kippah. These disparate experiences, while offering positive sensory opportunities, do not truly extend understanding of what it means to be a believer in a particular religion, because they are out of context.

Some teachers overlap Personal Social and Health Education ‘caring, loving and sharing’ activities into special needs RE, missing out on the distinctive elements of RE as a subject and the opportunities for spiritual development and the growth in skills that it offers.

A way forward for planning RE

I would like to suggest a new structure for planning Religious Education for children with special needs.

The ‘Five Keys Into RE’ planning grid and materials put the child as central (in the same way as ‘The Gift to the Child’ resources) and create authentic RE learning experiences that spring from the child’s needs. They develop themes in the document ‘Growing in RE’ (2008), recognising that children with special needs work more slowly and may need more time to discover the deeper meaning of RE. Therefore the focus is on the pure essence of what should be taught and experienced, not on differentiating mainstream concepts that may not have meaning for special school pupils. Emphasis is given to sensory and creative activities, but within an authentic RE context and with clear faith markers.

‘Learning about RE’, such as the symbols of beliefs, is not sidelined but given meaning by the 5 Keys structure, so teachers are clear what needs to be taught and how.

What is most important is that the 5 Keys approach gives a simple guiding structure that can be taken by teachers and used to develop their own schemes of work and resources. The aim is to provide a profound form of RE that goes beyond mere access. There should be a relationship between the child and the theme.

The 5 Keys grid takes five Key categories to help the teacher to focus their planning:

1. Connection
2. Knowledge
3. Senses
4. Symbols
5. Values

Each key has a question for the teacher. Here are the keys with clarification in italics.

Connection – What links can we make with our pupils’ lives?

It is important to bond the pupil with the religious theme. Pupils with special needs have faced difficulty, struggle and loss in their lives and achieve often against tremendous odds. These themes are found in religion. To create a bridge, (a concept from the Warwick Religions Project), between the religious theme and the child means that the learning will be deeper. For example, work on the story of Diwali could begin with the idea that ‘sometimes we go away but it is good to be back home’. This Key here would link many pupils’ experience of respite care and their strong daily experience of getting on the school transport to go home with the story of Rama returning from exile.

Knowledge – What is at the burning core of the faith?

Special school pupils can take longer to process information. Rather than over-burdening the child with extraneous information, we need to look right into the heart of the religious theme and see exactly what knowledge what needs to be taught. It could be simply that Jesus loved everyone, especially if they were poor or unhappy, or that Sikhs have special teachers called gurus. This Key states that by cutting out peripheral information, but going straight to the core, we teach what is central and powerful.

Senses – What sensory elements are in the religion?

Special school pupils learn through their senses. This Key encourages teachers to look at a wide range of authentic sensory experiences that link with the theme. This could mean within a theme on Jewish prayer, listening to niggun melody, with repetitive sounds, or wrapping around with a large tallit.

Symbols – What are the symbols that are the most accessible?

Symbols are an important way of conveying the spirituality of the religion studied. They can be held, like a brass ik onkar, made the focus of art work, such as rubbing over a stencil of an om with crayon and adding glitter to make it beautiful, or experienced, such as using a hoop to symbolise a kara, and travelling around it again and again by walking or in a wheelchair. This would show the eternity of God. This Key therefore sees symbols as an encapsulation of the religion itself.

Values – What are the values in the religion that speak to us?

Pupils with special needs may have many difficulties but often like to help. They are aware of others helping them in their lives and the importance of saying thank you. This Key makes values central, so a unit on the life of the Buddha could focus on the importance of patience, using a Jataka story. This links with pupils needing to wait for help with their work, or waiting for the school transport to come at the end of the day. 

The second column is Focus and here the Key question is answered by pointers to activities. Here is the Key question and Focus for ‘How and Why do Hindus Celebrate Diwali?’

Finally, in the third column, teaching and learning experiences are given.

Transforming RE for children within special schools

This way of planning is presented as a way of transforming RE for children within special schools.

• It uses the strengths of children with special needs, for example, their sensory awareness and values, to develop 5 Keys into RE.
• It rejects a deficit model of RE for children with special needs, seeing them as having valuable life experience which enables them to access the themes of ‘real RE’.
• It uses the 5 Keys to develop appropriate creative RE work for the pupils, which is not superficial but gets to the heart of religion and human experience.
• It can be used smoothly across the key stages, with learning experiences varied in their level of difficulty according to pupils’ needs.
• It has been used to give pupils access to Jainism, Humanism and the Baha’i faith, which have been rarely taught within special schools.
• Each key can be used as an assessment opportunity when evaluating the units.
• There are more opportunities for innovation in how to present each section of the unit. Each key could have its own rituals and routines, a particular symbol always shown with a piece of music that connected with it, a values story always told while sitting on a particular rug or piece of material. This would give the unit an internal cohesion and the rituals that autistic pupils, for example, would respond to.
• The structure enables teachers to return to the units, but to set more challenging experiences, where appropriate. For example, in a ‘unity RE curriculum’, all pupils in the school could explore Sikh Gurus, or Easter, or Buddhist beliefs, but with differentiated activities. This would unite the school in common values and create links across age ranges and ability groups.

Some personal reflections on planning a theme using the 5 Keys Approach

The Little Heath School RE teachers initially reflected on the 5 Keys of ‘What Does it Mean to be a Sikh?’ It was clear that to understand a different culture, the pupils first needed to connect with the theme and to realise that they had special objects that were of value to them. In one Year 7 class, a group of pupils with autism and other complex needs, each had their own particular comforts and rituals, whether it was carrying around a dog-eared catalogue, the colour pink, Bollywood music, a special toy to chew, or sitting on a certain chair in the room.

By discussing and identifying these ‘comforts’, the RE teachers realised that they were beginning to understand the pupils more fully as individuals. Some of the pupils’ interests were then photographed, e.g., the very old catalogue that one boy carried around, and the class were shown the photos, with many reacting to the images and showing they linked them to their friends. This made the staff realise how well some pupils noticed each other.

It was only after this that pupils moved on to exploring objects special to Sikhs, such as the kara, carefully passing them around the group. The class also moved around in a circle to Sikh kirtan devotional music, to show the symbol of the kara. While listening to a recitation of Waheguru, the Sikh name for God, the children decorated an Ik Onkar symbol. They were completely hushed. When one pupil was given small Ik Onkar symbols to decorate his large Ik Onkar ‘One God’ symbol, despite his needs, he carefully made sure they were the right way up. Staff were surprised that the pupils concentrated for half an hour on their art work.

Exploring and Responding to Sikhism – What did Guru Gobind Singh teach Sikhs?’

Here, the work was carried out with 14 year old children with general learning difficulties. The aim was to connect the pupils to the life of Guru Gobind Singh by linking them with the 5Ks of Sikhism. Pupils chose their five most important elements in their lives before watching a video about the Sikh symbols. This included family and friends, but also interests and obsessions such as James Bond, wrestling and hats. Children were happy to share their identity and as always, the staff learnt more about them from their simple lists.

After writing the lists, the pupils watched online clips from the BBC about the 5Ks. One boy, after watching the films, said, “Sikhs say their hair is God’s silk”. The teacher and support assistants in the room were surprised at this spiritual comment. We then realised that he had misheard a phrase in the film – that Sikhs believe long hair is God’s will. However, his own extraordinary interpretation showed that he understood the meaning of uncut hair on a symbolic level.

Pupils listened to Guru Gobind Singh’s words about equality, which were at the burning core of the religion, ‘Know Ye the Human Race as One’ and there was a discussion about what this meant. One Somali girl was able to movingly share her own beliefs of everyone being equal and was able to connect her life experience with the difficult lives of the children in a similar school in India.

A more able group heard the story of soldier Bhai Khanayya, who gave water to his enemies on the battlefield. This illustrated Sikh values “None is my enemy, none a stranger. All human beings are my friend.” (Guru Granth Sahib). The class was then asked to create a new guru, using a sheet that tested their own ability to express values and key knowledge.

One 14 year old pupil with moderate learning difficulties, Rowan, chose a male guru. He stated that the guru must care about God and that the guru must never swear.

Given the sentence starter, ‘When the guru meets someone from another religion…..’ Rowan added, “he helps them.”

Asked to give three special words for the guru, Rowan wrote, “God In Us”.

Here Rowan misinterpreted the task, with the teacher expecting three unlinked descriptive words – but through his difficulties in reading, he provided something more spiritual, distilled and pure in terms of Sikh philosophy.

He finally created his guru’s promise to the Sikhs, “I will always be there to help you.”

Rowan, therefore, despite his difficulties in learning, has managed to understand the ‘burning core’ of Sikhism and what Guru Gobind Singh taught. This was helped by the 5 Keys structure.

Summary

I have described here some insights into how the 5 Keys approach has inspired some powerful work and responses from a range of pupils with special needs. The clarity of the approach means that teachers clearly understand what needs to be taught and why. This focus enables pupils to understand the heart of RE – if we know what we are communicating, the message is strong.

It is no accident that the approach also inspires many spiritual moments and insights. This is because the technique – bonding the pupil with the theme – means that we put our pupils at the centre of what we teach in RE. An emphasis on human values and creativity brings out the inner world of our special pupils and helps them to deal with life’s difficulties with hope and resilience.

References

Bruner, J. S. (1977). The Process of Education, Harvard University Press.

Grimmitt, M., Grove, J., Hull, J., Spencer, L. (1991) A Gift to the Child: Religious Education in the Primary School, Simon & Schuster Education.

Krisman, A., (2008) Growing in RE, RE Today Services.

Krisman, A., (1997) Speak from the Heart (Farmington Fellowship dissertation).

Schools Standards and Framework Act (1998).

akrisman@lheath.net

Dave Francis, independent RE adviser and consultant, has written here an excellent response to Christina Odone’s comment on the inclusion of Paganism in RE lesson in Cornwall (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9206178/Its-beyond-belief-to-teach-witchcraft.html). 

Oh how I laughed at Cristina Odone’s comments about Druidry and Paganism in Cornish religious education. She clearly has a great sense of humour, as illustrated in her following piece admiring the ‘wit’ of the Economist when it caricatured an independent Scotland as ‘Scintland’ with its capital ‘Edinborrow’ being twinned with Athens and decrying the lack of a sense of humour of First Minister Alex Salmond when he objected to the Economist’s ‘sneering’ tone.

Clearly, the right reaction to her piece is to have a good laugh at the ‘jokes’ contained in the article. I am counting as Odone ‘humour’ anything that isn’t actually true, even if it doesn’t contain a clever pun. Her cheap shot technique is one of simple exaggeration in the hope of scoring an easy point as she demonstrates her rather odd version of machismo.

So, for example, since she can’t find anything particularly wrong with Druid Emma Orr, she is caricatured as inoffensive and platitudinous. BBC programme makers are mocked because they treat Druidism as a religion rather than a set of barmy superstitions likely to lead to black masses and human sacrifices in the classroom. What wit!

In similar style, parents, like the version of children in Ms Odone’s hilarious fantasy world are unlikely know the difference between a Druid and a nun.

Ms Odone clearly doesn’t know the difference between religious education and religious instruction and can’t have been in an RE classroom in recent decades if she thinks that agreed syllabuses in Cornwall and elsewhere fight shy of encouraging pupils to make judgements.

Her target is of course, ‘liberals’ who apparently think that to give an opinion about something is treading on someone’s values. But these are straw liberals. The truth about RE is not the odd one Odone (poor pun intended) portrays. Teachers of RE are constantly requiring children to consider what might be learnt from as well as about religions. Children are required to make comparisons, to spot differences and similarities, to weigh up evidence and argument in belief and practice, in short, to begin to make their own judgements. And thank goodness for that. I for one wouldn’t want our children growing up believing what they read in the Daily Telegraph!

But it’s only pop journalism isn’t it? Why worry? Ms Odone’s views can surely do no harm…

In similar style

Lifelong learning is a phrase you often hear in education. It rings even truer when training a trainee and you are forced to re-assess and re-formulate what it is that you are doing every day as an RE teacher. You realise that the minutiae of the teaching process that took years to learn and build upon are part of this ongoing process. When you think you understand it all, something comes along that forces you to re-examine your methods, your approaches, what it is you are doing in RE and most importantly why.

The how and why is what I call ‘knowledge of subject’ rather than ‘subject knowledge’, which is something likely to be gained from a degree course, such as Theology or Religious Studies. Knowledge of subject is about delivering a curriculum subject according to the requirements of the school or academy, current legal guidelines and exam standards and being aware of a range of pedagogies that define RE as a distinct subject. It is the main job of the trainer to help the trainee make the transition from having pure ‘subject knowledge’ to gaining a better understanding of this ‘knowledge of subject’.

In our daily lives as teachers, re-evaluation of one’s teaching regularly comes about because of a new government directive or school policy, but it can also be triggered by the arrival of a new trainee in the RE department. As mentor you are confronted with the same questions you asked yourself when you first set foot in the classroom on that cold October morning when the training season really got under way. Having experienced the role of mentor myself, I know only too well the demands of the whole process, the lesson observations and feedback, the careful monitoring of assignments, the all-important Assessment Points and discussions about Reflective Commentaries. Now, as a tutor, I feel that my role is to support the mentor in this process just as much as it is to guide the trainee towards QTS status. There will always be ups and downs along the way, but hopefully towards the end of the training a firmer idea will emerge for the trainee of what it means to be an RE teacher.

Directing trainees through what can initially be seen as the slippery eel of the learning environment requires them to have a combination of self-confidence and the willingness to try new things and go out of their comfort zone, to make mistakes and not to take things personally or get downhearted. Seeing the teacher persona all around them in the established teachers they observe, the trainee will undoubtedly make mental notes of those ways of teaching they may wish to adopt for themselves. As their training progresses, they will begin to feel more comfortable in their role, no longer self-conscious or unsure about how to respond or adapt lessons to go with the flow of learning and bring out the best in both themselves and their students. All of this takes time and a great deal of self-reflection along the way.

The balance of personal and professional is probably the biggest issue a trainee may have to grapple with, mainly in terms of time management and prioritising tasks. Teachers know it as the ‘work-life balance’ in which the goal is to ensure they have a life, particularly with a young family, but at the same time do their job as professionally as they can. It can be a hard lesson to learn that there are simply not enough hours in the day to do all the things a teacher is required to do, however hard one may try. For a trainee, the issues may be far more subtle and unconscious. Moving from the role of support worker such as a Teaching Assistant or Cover Supervisor to teacher, as often happens on the GTP programme, requires a mental shift and the quick acquisition of new skills and responsibilities which some find quite daunting at first.

Lesson preparation is undoubtedly the first main hurdle for the trainee. It takes far longer to plan and structure a lesson, deciding the timings for each part of the lesson. The tendency to try and run before they can walk is one that needs to be reined in at times by the mentor and the tutor, but at the same time the trainee needs to feel confident enough to make mistakes and learn from them. Team planning and teaching, taking parts of lessons initially, trying out different strategies for starters and plenaries, devising schemes of work, finding new resources for the department and even planning trips and arranging visitors slowly gives the trainee the breadth of experience needed to gain a better understanding of the requirements of the job. The RE trainee also needs to learn those attitudes and approaches to the subject that will best foster a respectful learning environment that takes into account the spiritual, moral, social and cultural elements of the curriculum just like any other subject.

Along the way there will always be one aspect of teaching and learning that needs further development. This forms a key element of the Career Entry Development Profile at the end of the training year and feeds into the first year as an NQT. For some trainees this might mean hoping to gain a better understanding of exam requirements, for others it might be developing Assessment for Learning techniques or working on the pastoral side of things. Lifelong learning is seen in a very positive way by future employers who prefer a candidate in a job interview to know what their strengths are, but equally to speak about their aspirations and talk about where they see themselves in five years’ time. Outstanding trainees are usually proactive about their own learning, have potential leadership skills, have started to master the minutiae of teaching and feel comfortable in their new role as a teacher in any classroom situation.  It is the job of the trainer to try and enthuse the trainee to adopt these attitudes and incorporate this kind of ambitious life-long learning into their teacher personas.

Jim Robinson (GTP Tutor for RE for the Oxon-Bucks Partnership), Autumn 2012

As a student of RE, but also someone who has done work experience within several RE departments, I feel as though I have seen something of how learning works from both sides. Though I definitely do not have quite as much experience on the teaching side as I do the student side, I do have one piece of advice that I think could be both a help – and relief – to some teachers: letting students teach themselves.

Now, I don’t by any means suggest giving a specification to a student and telling them to get on with it for the rest of the year. However, something useful to try is to allow students the time to create their own resources. From my perspective as a student, this has certainly proved both effective and enjoyable.  Of course there may be issues relating to lack of lesson time or lack of practical resources (such computer suite availability). That said, I don’t think it would be unfair to set this type of task for homework, giving students the opportunity to work on it in their own time.

So, what sort of task did I have in mind? Within reason, I think the kind of resource that you, as a teacher, would create yourself should be the aim of the activity.  If you had a GCSE class, for example, which has just completed a unit, why not ask the students to create a revision PowerPoint for the end of the unit? Or why not ask them to create a revision guide, which they can customise with images, or colours that will help them to remember quotes or key facts based on their individual learning styles? The process of creating a resource can be an important part of revision, which may highlight misunderstandings or trigger new understandings of concepts that students may have struggled with while in class.

If a PowerPoint isn’t to a student’s style, artistic students may prefer something like creating A3 mind maps or creating YouTube videos may be an option for a media-smart, or ICT savvy pupil. If a student creates a virtual resource that they are willing to upload to sharing websites, their learning could even help out students from other schools in the local area – even nationwide. I myself had experience of this in my school, where we all uploaded a video online to revise for a specific unit, which eventually attracted viewers from other schools. Even if the resources aren’t uploaded online, they are still a huge benefit to the student who makes them. If your school uses a VLE, then online resources could be put into revision courses, so there’s always a hub of revision material available.

To encourage students to truly put effort into the resources there could be prize-incentives, where members of the class vote on whose resource they would find most useful. This resource could then be distributed to the class, or uploaded for students to download it onto their home computers. We did this while we were in year 10 – and the prizes, with some friendly competition, really managed to increase interest in the task!

What’s more, another great benefit of having students create resources for themselves is that, instead of one teacher creating one resource for a class, there will be up to 30 resources being created.  Producing materials with a wider audience in mind and sharing work, can be an invaluable part of collaborative learning. While doing my GCSE, if ever a class member thought of a memory hook to help with a difficult concept, or set of key words, it would be shared so the whole class could benefit. After all, a classroom is the ultimate environment for sharing knowledge.

In this academic year, why not give your students a chance to ‘teach themselves’?

Clare Dempsey

Autumn 2012

Pythagoras may be satisfied with melody as a carrier for spirituality and the soul, but I think that modern music definitely has another string to its bow – lyrics, in all their complex or banal glory. Songs of almost any type can be a goldmine of philosophical stimuli, and some of them may well surprise you. From the sugary chart-toppers to the obscure and pretentious, music and lyrics are just sitting there waiting to be used to excite young minds. I think that there are too many ‘categories’ of lyrical genius to explore all of them here, so I have settled for the four that I think are most useful and that I have used myself in a dedicated scheme of work:

Girls Aloud are looking for God

The epitome of trashy pop music that says nothing at all, Girls Aloud have had a string of hits discussing their (rather varied) love lives. This subject matter is so widely used as to almost fade into the background – so many chart songs are about ‘love’ that the word ceases to mean as much as perhaps it should. The reason I’m going on about love songs is because the theologian Kelton Cobb has asserted that they can act as a ‘call to the divine,’ and I think this brings out some great ideas for use in the classroom. Cobb was specifically talking about Elvis when he wrote about love being a placeholder for an intangible ‘something’, but it can easily be applied to a plethora of other artists. I used this idea at school by first holding a class discussion on the meaning of the word ‘love’, then linking to the passage in Corinthians that directly calls God love and finally delving into some situation ethics to find the most ‘loving’ thing to do in classical ethical dilemmas. Year 8 loved it, although they weren’t so impressed with Cobb, as they thought it was unfair to say someone was singing about God if they weren’t religious.

Brand New are Bonhoeffer in disguise

Perhaps one for high ability GCSE or A-level, Brand New are a particularly sophisticated band whose opinions on theology spill out through their music and lyrics. They come across as particularly Bonhoefferian and may serve as an illustration of how a ‘real’ person’s belief can follow the ideas of an eminent theologian. The song The Archers’ Bows Have Broken is a song about a sort of hollow faith, with the lines “beating with a book everyone the book tells you to love” and “the God I believe in never worked on a campaign trail” getting straight to the heart of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ideas on religiosity and real faith. The song Jesus Christ contain many allusions to the afterlife and a doubting brand of faith that can be used to discuss real engagement with faith, and how an individual’s faith may waver throughout their life – very useful when discussing definitions of the agnostic spectrum!

David Bazan makes a good case for atheism

If we’re discussing disillusioned faith, David Bazan is the poster child for the de-converted – a former Assemblies of God member who led the Christian rock band Pedro The Lion, Bazan turned away from his faith and wrote a solo album that he described as a ‘break-up letter with God.’ As may be expected, it’s full of reasons not to believe and can provide a great stimulus for classes to draw out more nuanced ideas for atheism. I have had a very successful lesson with the song Hard To Be: this song talks primarily about the creation myth and through its language draws parallels with children’s stories which made it a brilliant start to a lesson on the dialogue between religion and science. There is also some mention of his family’s reaction to his atheism, which may be useful for older classes. I found that the students responded really well to having the lyrics on the board and picking through them for themselves, asking questions and arguing against each other’s interpretations. Of course, depending on the group’s ability the amount of teacher input and explanation may vary somewhat, but even my lwoest ability year 8 were able to do this to some degree.

Basshunter and religious language

If Bazan and Brand New are a bit too alternative for the average teenager, then perhaps we should look to the cheesiest of chart music for our theological fix – I have had great success using the Basshunter track Angel in the Night to discuss religious and secular culture (although beware the scantily-clad ladies in the official video…). As a class we discussed who the ‘angel’ in the song was, the actual meaning of the word and then moved on to talking about how religious ideas found their way into secular culture. We finished on the deliberately provocative question “should non-Christians celebrate Christmas?” to bring together all the ideas about the links between religious and secular ways of life. Of course, this can be done with any track containing a word with religious origin – Bryan Adams’ Heaven, Robbie Williams’ Angels, Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer…

Using lyrics as a stimulus may seem like a bit of a risk – what if the students miss the point? What if they can’t interpret them at all? What if the link is too tenuous? – but I think it’s definitely worth it. After all, you can always steer the students towards the ‘correct’ interpretation, although often their own ideas can be very revealing too. A final tip would be to select specific lines to focus on after a general discussion about the lyrics and to put these up on the board. You can keep drawing attention back to the focus, and any other ideas can be written down for another time.

Celia Warrick

Summer 2012

Nick Gibb, Minister of State for Schools, spoke to the AGM of the RE Council on 3 May 2012, and answered questions (see the REC’s website for the full transcript: http://www.recouncil.org.uk/images/stories/word_documents/Nick_Gibb_RE_Council_AGM_Speech_May2012.doc). Here Mark Chater, Director of the Culham Institute, offers his own response.

Dear Mr Gibb

Thank you for coming to address representatives of the RE community on 3 May 2012. Thanks, also, for being willing to answer questions from the floor, unscripted – a refreshing departure from the norm with politicians. I think that most of the 100 or so delegates appreciated this, even though we were baffled by your understanding of RE.

There are three types of discussion we could have about your speech, and I cannot do justice to them all. One is about standards – and your repetition of the flawed and misleading PISA statistics to create a panic about our international position. Even so, any reasonable person in RE would support the need to raise standards in our subject: the questions are how, and with what resources, and what do you think we have been trying to do all these years before you came along? Another discussion we could have is about structures, and the relationship between structural change and raising standards – and on this, your OECD-inspired faith in the academisation process will be tested over time, and may be proved right. It is clear, however, that you are in a muddle about local determination and RE. Apparently, local authorities are not fit to run schools, but it’s OK for RE to remain in local authority control? SACREs and local syllabuses remain statutory but must find their own way in the new educational free market? We’ll need to come back that one later.

You bravely waded in to the importance and value of RE, and it is in this discussion that I think you floundered most catastrophically.

You opened by suggesting that religious education

‘acts as a Rosetta Stone between different subjects: unlocking our ability to make links and understand the great advances in science, politics, commerce, the arts and history.’

In some ways a lovely image – except that it appears to make RE something that has worth because of what it can do for other subjects – a sort of service subject, enriching and illustrating others. You offered three examples:

‘A pupil who understands the religious context can walk into a nation’s great art collections and appreciate the nuanced iconography of paintings by men like Giotto and El Greco.

 

A pupil who understands the restrained faith of the Quakers can appreciate the growth of London today as a financial powerhouse.

 

A pupil who understands the great mathematical advances and discoveries under the Caliphs can appreciate how the first great European explorers navigated to new worlds.’

So we in RE are very glad to know that we can be of service to the cultural, economic, mathematical and geographical understanding of pupils.

But – is that really all? Is that what you think RE is for? If so, it is extremely worrying and suggests that you have not paid attention to the many recorded higher purposes of our subject: its capacity to contribute to pupils’ spiritual and moral development, to human flourishing in individuals and communities; and its claim that religions and beliefs, the questions they pose and the answers they propose, are worthy of study in their own right, and need no justification on loan from other subjects.

The reductionist view of RE that you offered us is just breath-takingly bad. I don’t know how to interpret it: as evidence of a shallow, reactionary mind; as a studied insult; or as the unfortunate outcome of inadequate briefing.

In passing – is the Caliphate and early Islamic culture really only worth studying because of its contribution to western navigation and conquest? But perhaps you didn’t mean that.

Then there is your touching faith in the inspection process, that

‘Ofsted will pick up on schools that are genuinely failing to meet their obligations and we will make absolutely sure that head teachers are held accountable… we have specifically asked Ofsted to make judgements against how well each and every state school meets the spiritual and moral needs of their pupils during their time in education.’

Erm, could we try for a reality check here please? Spiritual and moral development is not the same as RE. It can be offered through every subject of the curriculum, and through collective worship regardless of whether RE is taught well, badly, or even at all. In fact there are schools getting away with neglect of RE right now. We even know where some of them are.  Therefore, I’m afraid your faith in Ofsted is not particularly reassuring for the RE community.

To come back to structures and RE. You clearly believe that local determination of RE is a good idea.

‘We will not make the mistake of prescribing a national programme of study: particularly when we know local determination of the curriculum is hugely important to meeting the specific needs and traditions of local communities.’

This is so wearying, one hardly knows where to start in demolishing it. What makes you think that local determination works in meeting the needs and traditions of local communities? Perhaps you have some vague geopolitical idea that Bradford is full of Baha’is whereas Wiltshire has white Christians, and that they can all have the RE they want, thanks to local agreed syllabuses. But – a point so obvious, I am embarrassed to make it – shouldn’t education be preparing young people for life in a globalised world? And – I am bored nearly to death by the need to repeat this – what makes you confident that local religious communities have either the capacity or the right to determine religious education? In reality, agreed syllabuses do not limit themselves to local religions; they have a substantial homogeneity when it comes to breadth of content – which, by your logic, rather undermines the case for having them.

‘We will not make the mistake of prescribing a national programme of study’ – we all  understand that you don’t want to prescribe; but we think you ought to take responsibility. The weaknesses of RE have structural roots, and you can do something about it. That is a risk you just don’t want to take; and you’ve found a convenient rearguard justification for your pusillanimity: it’s called local determination.

But – to be fair – thank you for the 50 extra places in initial teacher education; thank you for that interesting reference to the ‘maturity of our religious belief’ and the ‘discipline of doubt’; and thank you for your reminder about high standards and rigour.

Your faith is simple; will it change in the face of evidence, I wonder? Cardinal Newman, a man celebrated for his love of learning, is also famous for having remarked that change is a sign of life, and that to be human is to change often. So, exasperated though we are by your failure to ‘get’ RE this time, we hope for the best. Perhaps we shall see you again.

Yours sincerely

Mark Chater

Summer 2012

My subject doesn’t have a great reputation. When I mention my job, I get a range of responses and most of them aren’t all that great. Some people complain that I’m ‘indoctrinating’ children, despite my semi-agnostic take on Anglican Christianity and refusal to tell my pupils about my personal beliefs. Some point out how easy RS is, despite grappling with issues such as euthanasia and nuclear war. Some decry it as not a ‘real’ humanity, despite theology and religious studies being under the humanities faculty in universities and a lot of schools. The EBac hasn’t done much to help my subject’s standing in education, with even the Education Secretary failing to recognise RS as a subject sharing the same academic rigour as its cousins history and geography. But, no matter how many jibes and denigrations I hear, I am resolutely in love with every aspect of religious studies, and here’s why.

It describes the world

I’m sure you’ve heard that saying ‘science tells us how the universe came to be, religion tells us why,’ and my first reason is somewhat rooted in this. Now, I’m not about to sit here and claim that God made the world, but I am going to point out that most people on the planet think that He (or some other Higher Power) had at least a part in it. As such, it would be ridiculous to go through life without learning about as many different ideas and opinions about this emotive subject – we wouldn’t expect to ignore vast swathes of history or geography just because it doesn’t directly affect you, and we should have the same attitude towards religion. Even if you think that all religious belief is fundamentally ridiculous, childish and naïve, then it would still be churlish to ignore it. By understanding religion you understand people’s motivations and values, even the people themselves.

It’s the history of the world

If religion describes why people behave in certain ways, then it can certainly help us to understand history. While there’s usually an underlying political or social concept, it’s no secret that many wars have been fought under the banner of faith. Countries have been conquered with religion, inspiring political radicals influenced by it and revolutions fought against it. America was founded by people looking for freedom of religion and the UK has been a nominally Christian country for centuries (thanks to Henry VIII and his rejection of Papism). It would be incredible to expect children to understand the causes of Hitler’s animosity to Judaism without some kind of understanding of Jewish history. The two are intrinsically linked, and as such we must study both to understand each properly.

It breaks the cycle of ignorant intolerance

I have several students who come to lessons with inherited prejudices. The thing is, to begin with I can’t be angry at them because they simply do not know any better – they are borrowed ideas from parents, opinion placeholders that will eventually be replaced by genuinely considered ones. However, this will only happen if education is allowed to take place. In the wake of 9/11 and 7/7 this has become even more important, to counteract the vitriolic ideas pouring forth from right-wing media. Because these views are often passed on through parents or other adult influences who may not know better themselves, the best way to break this cycle is through education children in what these religions are really about and the nature of extremism as a minority view.

Freedom of curriculum

What a lot of non-specialists often don’t realise is that RS isn’t part of the National Curriculum in the same way as any other subject. We have ‘locally agreed syllabuses’ that set out what the schools in an LEA must cover and how much time they must spend on RS over the year, but the degree of specificity varies widely from place to place. In my LEA, we have a certain minimum time, a directive to study at least 2 religions a year and to cover 6 by the end of KS3 (my school is on the two year KS3, so we’re a little more restricted). This year, I have taught Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism across KS3, but I’ve also been allowed to do a module about religion in the Supernatural, the Philosophy of Religion, Old Norse and Music. This means that you can connect the subject to your students in ways that other subjects may not be able to. I can use video games, films, TV, music, superheroes and even zombies to impart philosophical and theological concepts to my cohorts, and it’s amazing.

Critical Thinking

All subjects require a certain degree of analysis and reasoning, and RS is no different. However, I would argue that RS allows this in far wider scope than any other subject. Because RS can encompass philosophy (and in my classroom always does) then students are given the chance to tackle questions that have no answers and are therefore wide open for discussion. There is no right answer, no wrong answer, so as long as any answer you give is backed up by evidence, and so I insist that every answer given in class can have its reasons explained right from the beginning. This is an excellent foundation in critical thinking, particularly when students are ready to move on to analysing and doing rudimentary evaluations of existing philosophical theories. It’s probably my favourite part of teaching the subject, as approached in the right way even the weakest student can offer their opinion on something and give a simple reason. It makes higher-order thinking accessible for every student, and that’s never something to be ignored.

Religion is fascinating

My last reason isn’t academic, and neither will it persuade anyone who has decided that RS is a waste of time, but it’s the reason that I will always find the subject amazing – it’s bewildering varied and stunningly complex. There is endless fascination to be had with the myriad combinations of beliefs, rules, festivals and philosophies that abound in study of modern religion. From the mystics of Eastern religion to the skeptics and empiricists of Western philosophy there is a constant stream of new ideas and no possibility of being bored. No matter what my students personally believe, there is bound to be one philosopher, theologian or piece of religious wisdom that will resonate with them and help them to define what it is they really hold as true.

It still makes me angry when people are disparaging about the subject that I’m utterly dedicated to, and I know that many will never be swayed by my ideas – like all arguments on anything it only serves to preach to the converted. However, it helps me to remember why I’m doing the job that I’ve chosen. Besides, it’s statutory and that status won’t be going anywhere soon – and that’s awesome.

Celia Warrick

Summer 2012

This year, I completed an AS Level course in Philosophy and Ethics. I found it not only to be personally enriching, but also, something that, when students study, is genuinely a benefit to society. While the lessons were taught in an outstanding way, and students were fascinated with all the lessons had to offer, I am going to spend some time analysing the course itself, and just why I think it’s got so much to offer to the world.

The course ran with separate Philosophy and separate Ethics lessons running simultaneously with two different teachers, so while studying, we were doing one Philosophy and one Ethics topic at the same time. The topics we studied for the Ethics half of the course were Situation Ethics, Utilitarianism, War & Peace, Religion & Morality and Sexual Ethics. For Philosophy, we studied: The Design Argument, The Cosmological Argument, Evil & Suffering, and Miracles.

I think this near 50/50 balance between Philosophy and Ethics is great. While a common misconception of most RE or Philosophy & Ethics courses might be that you merely learn about the existence of God, and what implications that has on the world, you instead look at the perspective of Ethics too, which offers the question “how should I act, and why?” What’s more, the course is by no means entirely theistic, as you thoroughly look at the opinions of non-theistic traditions and atheists, and the scientific perspective is also strongly considered.

In September, we began by running both Situation Ethics and The Design Argument topics at once. Arguably, the two topics don’t have a great deal in common.  However, the contrast was helpful, as it gave a very clear view from the off of the wide range of content in the course. The Design Argument faces much opposition, with many philosophers and particularly scientists offering their own arguments against it – Dawkins, Kant, Hume, just to name a few. However, as Kant wrote, “This proof always deserves to be mentioned with respect.  It is the oldest, the clearest, and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind.” So I find it refreshing that it’s still debated in classrooms and lecture-halls across the world.

Situation Ethics, on the other hand, is very much more of a modern idea.  It thus was something students, frankly, found more personally useful to them. The very fact the idea was devised mostly for a changing world was something we students felt we could personally connect to. Considering this, is it not a value to the world if students are debating different ethical approaches? More than anything, it begs students to think about, not just the consequences of their actions, but, instead, the very root of why they do what they do – their moral fibre. Is this not something young people need to be thinking about today?

In late November, we changed topics, and began to study both Utilitarianism and The Cosmological Argument alongside one another. These were arguably the most stimulating, and highly debated topics that we’d studied throughout the year. Starting with The Cosmological Argument, I found that learning about the various explanations of the origins of the universe – with a mild background knowledge from a GCSE in RE – was something that instilled further curiosity in the class. Soon enough, once a statement such as “Either the universe was made of nothing, or something always existed,” was uttered, there was a flurry of whispers across the class – students wanting to learn more. Utilitarianism had a similar effect, especially seeing as we’d just finished studying Situation Ethics. It was possible to make comparisons between the two as to which ethical approach was better. This further encouraged thought of motives, and what influences people to make the actions they do.  Once more, I feel it’s necessary to ask, is it not good that classrooms are filled with this sort of moral debate and contemplation?

Up next, in the new year through ‘til February, we ran War & Peace simultaneously with Evil & Suffering – these topics evidently go together hand-in-hand, as the nature of war in the modern world is something that leads to suffering, so both these topics can be discussed in relation to each other. In Philosophy, we looked at theodicies that could have been used to justify the apparent unjust evil of war that we were viewing – such as the point that 9 in 10 people who die in wars today are civilians. Suffering, for so many, is a very real thing, and in today’s Globalized society, isn’t it vital to look at what the great minds of the past and present have said of it? No other subject will offer this sort of look at the world, and it’s unique entirely to Philosophy and Ethics.

In March, we were wrapping up the course with our final three topics. While we were studying Miracles in Philosophy, we managed to rattle through the two remaining Ethics topics: Sexual Ethics and Religion and Morality – though I’d like to give Sexual Ethics its own paragraph entirely. In studying Miracles, we mostly were looking at the views of Hume. Who wouldn’t find the works of Hume a marvel? His empirical world-view is something that many students then decided to apply to other areas of the course, such as deciding The Design Argument has no empirical evidence, thus they weren’t willing to accept it. In Religion and Morality, the title is a good indication of the topic. We were further able to analyse what makes something moral, or right. Most famously, we studied the Euthyphro Dilemma – this alone is worth being compulsory for anyone to ponder over.

Finally, comes the Sexual Ethics topic. This overlapped with our Ethics Investigations paper – investigating whether there is equality in the modern world for homosexuals. This in itself is extremely relevant to the ethics and politics of the modern-world at present, particularly with the Coalition wanting to allow homosexuals to exchange vows and have a genuine marriage by the next General Election in 2015, and Barack Obama’s May 9^th statement that states marriage equality “strengthens families”.

Considering how relevant it is to what’s going on in the modern world, why wouldn’t it be a good idea to study Philosophy and Ethics? With social media, there’s a wider platform for individuals to express their views; studying Philosophy and Ethics gives an open-minded attitude towards moral dilemmas, and also to the tolerance of young people in society. As the world becomes more culturally diverse, shouldn’t also the range of issues A Level students today study? This can be achieved through Philosophy and Ethics.

Clare Dempsey

Summer 2012