Were you taught Religious Studies at school?

[EeveeElectro]

Yeah, mine sounds like yours. Except in Secondary school we focused on the other religions too. I can't remember much of what we studied because it was nearly 5 years ago... I think we read up on how different religions celebrate things and such.
We covered racism too which confused me because I assumed race and religion were different. Our teacher was Asian and I remember her saying "Racism is discriminating against people who aren't white."
Pretty sure it works both ways. Maybe hiring her to teach it was a bad idea xD

 

[MurderousToaster]

I had RMPSE (Religious, Moral and Philosophical Education) up until my fifth year of secondary school in Scotland. Which would be, uh, my thirteenth year of education total when you include primary school.

Some (ignorant) people kept saying that it was worthless unless you were going to become a priest or a preacher, which is ridiculous considering that the vast, vast majority of the time was spent on either philosophy or the other world religions. All in all, I'd say it was fairly worth it. You really do need a functional knowledge of the major religions in order to not become some sort of raving asshole in such a metropolitan society. I mean, seriously, most of the racists you see complaining about various concessions afforded to Muslims in the UK could very easily be stopped if someone would sign them up for a fucking RE course.

Most of the teachers I got for it were actually totally neutral on religion, which I'm somewhat happy about. Regardless of what they are, I really just can't stand people pushing their own beliefs on others.

 

[LadyTiamat]

Yep, it was one of my fav classes as we had a really good teacher that challenged and nurture out critical thinking skills.

and he was funny, genisis story = class laughing at incest in bible (i think hw was an atheist lol)

 

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

Yes, i think i'm free of it after the summer. In primary school we had christian assembly every tuesday afternoon, i didn't believe a word of it even at that age as i was a massive science nerd when i was little, i just thought of it as storytime and we never did actual work so i enjoyed it.

 

[doggy go 7]

well, as you're probably aware, in the UK you HAVE to have RE BY LAW up untill the school leaving age. my RE lessons nowadays (year 11) are mostly philosophy types, but we did lukes gospel in year 9, world religions in 7, a varity of things.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I am from Ireland and in my Primary school which is equivalent to grade school in America for the 8 years we spend there we just learned about Christianity and Bible stories which is understandable as a massive chunk of the Primary schools in Ireland are actually funded mostly by the Catholic Church.

Then in Secondary Education(equivalent to High School in America) I was in a Christian Brother's School so Religious Education was mandatory so for the Junior Cert(similar to GCSEs in England) we did do it for three years and sat a State Exam in it. We looked at the world's major religions but we have to pick one and specifically learn more about it we had Islam. We also learned more about Christianity in general and the various schisms and denominations in it like Orthodox and the many Protestant ones along with Catholicism.

Then for Fourth Year or Transition Year we just learned about random stuff to do with Religion and Philosophy like Morality and stuff to do with sexism as this is a bit of a piss take year.

For the last 2 years of Secondary School for the Leaving Cert(A levels in England) we did have three one hour classes of religion a week but did not sit a State Exam or any exam. Well lets just say we spent more time watching that tunnel scene in the Dark Knight than we did watching Green Mile in those 2 year. We did do a bit of work in Religion and Philosophies(Different views like Pantheism among other non theistic views like we did watch Religulous[forget how it is spelt]) but it was similar to Transition Year if we had of had enough people who wanted to sit it as a Leaving Cert subject we would have done it for real realz and not for play play.

 

[Bvenged]

I personally think of myself as the Anti-Christ to all religions, but not the bad kind. I had to do Religious Studies as a short-course GCSE and it was one of if not the most hated subject of mine.

The funny thing? I got 1A*, 5B's, 4C's a D and an E grade for my GCSE's, can you guess which one was the Religious Studies grade? Yeap, it was the A*.

I was so convincing that religions were all too similar; that morals are not tied to just the religious, that winning the lottery had no implications on how the money's spent whether you're Atheist or religious; and that I was so compassionate and opinionated when it came to discussing a situation for a Sikh and Jew stating that both were wrong ethically and then explaining what my personal opinion was, that I got an A*.

Basically, I tore religion right down to it's bare bones and picked away at it's individual overarching elements whilst proving Atheists are technically more free in life, so much that the Welsh Joint Education Committee's Religious examiner had to ace me for showing extreme understanding in the subject. I hardly ever paid attention in class either. I don't do it because I hate the religious, I do it because I hate the ignorant, the fundamentalists and the churches.

 

[Thomas Eshuis]

From the Netherlands.
Had a choice between 'Religion' and Humanism in the last two years of primary school.
'Religion' actually being an overview of the big religions: Abrahamic, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism.

My parents told me to take 'Religion', which I did.
The second time (last year of primary school) I chose it again, since humanism was to limited imo and we had a great and enthusiastic teacher (who was an atheist btw, which I found out later.)

'Religion' was interesting for me as I'm a history fan. It also reaffirmed my suspicion that religion is inherently a human invention.

Edit: Public primary school.

 

[Soxafloppin]

Yea, I went to an integrated school though, so it was Genuine religious studies and not brainwashing that gets taught in Catholic schools here

 

[thom_cat_]

No; Melbourne, Australia.
Fucking glad.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

UK, and yes we were taught about many of the worlds religeons in PSRE(Personal Social Religeous Education) and we learnt about the History of Islam in lower school history Classes (Pre-GCSE years).

 

[Rodney Jackson]

USA near DC -Highschool 10th grade

Nope ~ well sorta

Unless you count history class which he had in spades, it was no where to be found, and I can't say it was really an issue for anyone. There "used to" be a big separation of beliefs vs school thing. You went to school for the standard stuff and stuff pertaining to scripture and all of that was delegated to outside the classroom.

In AP world history though they wove that stuff strait into the curriculum. We technically spent 3 months on Islam, Zoroastrianism, ect. and whatever the Sumerians were up to, because the history book started at the fertile crescent.

 

[LordFisheh]

Yep. As a regular school in the UK, the teachers were strictly forbidden from preaching and such. Most of what we did was Christian-focused, but I guess that makes sense since it's the dominant religion of the country. But yeah, it's not all overzealous preachers trying to convert their schools, thankfully.

Honestly, I think it's good that we did, since we learned how each of the main religions actually worked, rather than being left to work with assumption. And since we were 80% atheist, it'd probably be religions-are-all-evil-even-though-I-know-nothing-about-them assumption, given standard teenage angst against the Man.

 

[Prince Regent]

In elementary school the local minister came every two weeks I think to teach us something about all sorts of religions. (He couldn't keep any order in class at all though)

I went to a public High school so obviously I wasn't teached about any religon after that.

 

[Floggo]

When I went to primary school, I was taught Christian Religious studies. but I'd rarely pay attention (not cause I hate religion, I'm in fact Anglica, but because I had no need to learn it) and I'd just draw lots anyway.

 

[MetaKnight19]

I went to a Church of England primary school, so there was lots of religion. In secondary school we studied all the major religions, but for some reason our teacher got the sack and the school didn't bother to find a replacement, so we had a supply teacher who just put on Lord of the Rings every lesson. I somehow didn't fail the GCSE exam for RE although with exams now its almost impossible to fail them...

 

[thespyisdead]

i live in finland, and we HAD religion every year from 1-9. me being orthodox did not help abit, as finnish main religion is lutheran, which meant our lessons were outside of normal school hours. in upper secondary we were forced to take 2 courses(1 cource, 38 hours of classroom study), but seeing as i did not want to have school from 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening, i opted to take lutheran religion, as opposed to orthodox


and both options sucked just as much, cos the teachers were rather boring anyway

 

[int boom]

Yes, we learned about all kinds of different religions and how to compare their ideologies. It rocked, I was good at it and my teacher was epic. However I decided to do maths and sciences in my A-Levels because everyone kept asking what kind of job a humanities grade would get me and I had no clue at 15-18.

Life kind of went a bit skewiff and I've been struggling a bit more than I should have done ever since.