ID victory? To be taught in religious classes...

Intelligent design to feature in school RE lessons

Alexandra Smith
Tuesday January 23, 2007
EducationGuardian.co.uk

Teenagers will be asked to debate intelligent design (ID) in their religious education classes and read texts by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins under new government guidelines.
In a move that is likely to spark controversy, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has for the first time recommended that pupils be taught about atheism and creationism in RE classes.

ID, which argues that the creation of the world was so complex that an intelligent - religious - force must have directed it, has become a contentious issue that has divided scientists and Christians in Britain.

Some of the world's top scientists have expressed outrage over the teaching of creationism and ID in school science classes, which they say is an attempt to smuggle fundamentalist Christianity into science teaching. They argue that it should be made clear to pupils that science backs the theory of evolution.

education.guardian.co.uk...

OK, to place a counterweight to madness' ID is dodo-dead thread. Here's a hollow victory for ID.

It will now be taught in RE classes in the UK. Recently, the misnamed 'Truth in Science' group have been campaigning to have iD taught in science classrooms across the UK.

Well, the department of education responded. It will be covered in RE classes. Also, atheism will also get a place in explaining the position of people who hold no belief in gods.

Originally posted by melatonin
Intelligent design to feature in school RE lessons

[snip]

It will now be taught in RE classes in the UK. Recently, the misnamed 'Truth in Science' group have been campaigning to have iD taught in science classrooms across the UK.

Well, the department of education responded. It will be covered in RE classes. Also, atheism will also get a place in explaining the position of people who hold no belief in gods.

I wouldn't describe this as a victory for the ID movement. For a movement that is seeking to distance its association with religion and pursuing what they allege to be a 'science' perspective, being taught in a religious class is not a step forward.

What is perhaps more interesting is that atheism will be taught in religious classes. Perhaps the trend will be towards classifying atheism as a 'religion... who knows?

[edit on 23-1-2007 by kallikak]

[edit on 23-1-2007 by kallikak]

Fascinating. Students in a religion class will now be reading Dawkin's.
[boogle]mind[/boggle]

Originally posted by kallikak

Originally posted by melatonin

Intelligent design to feature in school RE lessons

[snip]

It will now be taught in RE classes in the UK. Recently, the misnamed 'Truth in Science' group have been campaigning to have iD taught in science classrooms across the UK.

Well, the department of education responded. It will be covered in RE classes. Also, atheism will also get a place in explaining the position of people who hold no belief in gods.

I wouldn't describe this as a victory for the ID movement. For a movement that is seeking to distance its association with religion and pursuing what they allege to be a 'science' perspective, being taught in a religious class is not a step forward.

What is perhaps more interesting is that atheism will be taught in religious classes. Perhaps the trend will be towards classifying atheism as a 'religion... who knows?

They have wrongly named RE, it was recently (at least in Scotland) changed to RME or Religious and Moral Education because RE never did just teach about religions. Atheism could come under the moral part I guess or the education part but it could also come under religion even if it isn't one simply because the definition of religion is so broad that it cant be defined as something specific.

Funnily enough this is what I have been saying all along, ID or whatever you want to call it is simply not scientific and should be taught in religious classes not science classes if taught at all.

Originally posted by Nygdan
Fascinating. Students in a religion class will now be reading Dawkin's.
[boogle]mind[/boggle]

I would think Dawkins is quite happy.

He has been in discussion with the UK DofE and has said before that teaching comparative religion and important views on faith and belief are important. The new component will focus on the relationship between relgion and science, so I think Dawkins would be applicable. The religious classes here are not meant to be instruction on faith, just education on different faiths. It's quite a faith killer when done properly, but in many cases I don't think it is. Only around 10% of the population make it to a church each week in the UK.

RE should really be under a more broad heading of Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy. I think basic philosophy should also be taught in schools. It may help develop a more critical mind.

Or maybe someone was taking the common faith-based view of him as a fundamentalist a little bit too seriously...

you know, even though they'll be reading dawkins, i bet many of the teachers will treat dawkins as they would treat anything else they think is bunk...

some of these kids will get good teachers that actually allow for a discussion
many won't

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
some of these kids will get good teachers that actually allow for a discussion
many won't

I did, I loved RE. We had two teachers, one who explored numerous religions around the world (which eventually lead me to Buddhism) and one who believed in aliens

Best class ever.

btw, i've never actually found out, does the US have similar classes? I always assumed they must but i've never been sure.

The US has separation of Church & State which, from what it seems, RE would fall under. I know in Pennsylvania that no form of religion is taught at all in the public school system. I believe this to be true throughout the US.

I do think it's a good idea though. Instead of teaching our kids all of the US propaganda that is shoved down their throats, they should be given the opportunity to think for themselves, especially on religion, which is a very important issue as most kids only know about the religion that their parents follow.

I think this type of class should be offered as an elective and not a requirement.

Originally posted by Edn
Best class ever.

Yeah, my son loves it as well. He's probably more atheistic than me, but he also has a soft spot for buddhism and Hinduism - he thinks the hindu gods are cool.

It was over 20 years ago when I had them, they were pretty drab then and basically just focused on the OT & NT. Snore-a-rama.

I think things must have been different in the US when I was young. It was... well a long time ago now since I was in elementary school, but I distinctly remember being taught about the world's religions... not in an endorsing kind of way, more like 'this is what they are.'

In any case, I remember it so well, because the story my fifth grade teacher told me about Mohammed scared the crap out of me. She told us that a couple of angels... perhaps she was more descriptive, but I wasn't really paying close attention until she mentioned that these angels ripped open Mohammed's chest and extracted a drop of black liquid from his heart... maybe it was something solid... at this point, I remember being horrified at the thought of this poor Arab child having his chest ripped open by a couple of angels.

Little boys can be very... graphic in their thought processes.

I distinctly remember thinking to myself, if that's what it takes to be a prophet or God's messenger... I don't want any part of it.

Anyway... it scarred me, but I remember more-or-less the rest of this "world's religions" section of study including the Buddhist and Hindu stuff they taught.

well, typically in public schools they don't have a seperate class for religions
they just talk about them and their relations to historical events

in my world history classes we went over what were called the "big 3" (aka the abrahamic faiths of christianity, islam, and judaism)
i remember getting a detention for claiming the hinduism, being the 3rd largest religion, should take the place of judaism in the big 3 because it had 90x as many adherents
my teacher disagreed, saying that hinduism had very few followers compared to judaism, and claimed i was being anti-semetic (being of ethnic semitic descent, i found the claim quite funny)
i only ended up getting out of detention when i showed her t he world statistics

what i'm trying to say is
teachers need to go through some kind of religious literacy test before they teach these types of classes

I believe that RE should be left to parents or churches and not be taking place in public schools.

My church has RE classes for school aged kids and my son attends them. If they start teaching RE in his public school, I'll sign my son out and home school him again.

I can see informing students of other religions (including atheism) if it is a small part of a well rounded social studies class. Anything outside of that will have me writing letters, organizing a protest, and removing my son from the school.

Originally posted by wellwhatnow
I believe that RE should be left to parents or churches and not be taking place in public schools.

Anything outside of that will have me writing letters, organizing a protest, and removing my son from the school.

Even if it was just comparative religion?

That's all they are here in the UK. They just teach the basic beliefs and rituals of different faiths. It aims to foster multicultural understanding.

It's not meant to be schooling in a particular faith, but that can happen in faith schools here (we have a proportion of catholic, CofE, muslim etc).

They should be banned, as they separate rather than integrate.

Originally posted by wellwhatnow
I can see informing students of other religions (including atheism) if it is a small part of a well rounded social studies class.

Perhaps comparative religion would fit into a well rounded social studies class. If there were an entire class devoted only to comparitive religion, I would strongly disapprove.

The quality of education in the area where I live is already questionable at best. For example, the band / orchestra only practices for 45 minutes 2 days a week. GT classes (accelerated classes for Gifted and Talented students) only meet one day per week. Typing is mastered by the 5th grade (10 to 11 years old) while grammar, spelling, and handwriting are almost completely neglected. The only history books my son has read this year are historical fiction. Geography is not taught at all.

If this same school found time to teach an entire class on comparative religion I would really blow a gasket. Hopefully the schools in UK are doing much better, I know they couldn't do worse.

Originally posted by wellwhatnow
The only history books my son has read this year are historical fiction.

Fiction!? What kinda fiction?

I mean.. how are they fiction?

Please give me names and such of the books.

RE in the UK(Scotland) is usually taught once a week (50 minutes) in 3rd and 4th year (i think) and option after that. The reason theres an entire class for RE is because there so many religions in the world you would never fit it into a social studies class which in the UK has to much in it already.

Here in East Anglia (south east England) RE as a subject is compulsory up to the end of year 11, and there is the option to take a GCSE in it. We never covered atheism, hinduism, or anything like that. Needless to say it was rather dull.

Originally posted by Jugg
Fiction!? What kinda fiction?

I mean.. how are they fiction?

Please give me names and such of the books.

The book he is working on right now is called The Root Cellar. It is about a girl from modern times who goes into her cellar and passes through some sort of time warp. She wakes up during the Civil War and is thought to be a boy because of her short hair and pants. She travels by train on a grand adventure through war torn USA, etc.

www.amazon.com...

Editorial Review
Book Description
It looked like an ordinary root cellar--And if twelve-year-old Rose hadn't been so unhappy in her new home, where she'd been sent to live with unknown relatives, she probably would never have fled down the stairs to the root cellar in the first place. And if she hadn't, she never would have climbed up into another century, the world of the 1860s, and the chaos of Civil War--

Scott Cameron's remarkable illustrations bring the past and a whole cast of delightful characters to life in this magnificent book.

Historical fiction is just a fiction book that may contain elements of actual historical events. He is reading this for his history class, not a reading class, not a literature class - a history class. No standard history books have been issued this year.