Religion classes

Marshy

How many people have as many as 3 religion classes in a school week. What a waste it is of not only our time but that of teachers.
Just to clarify Im not referring to religion as a subject, just as an extra class in the timetable. All we do is either watch dvds or talk about the problems of teens without actually doing that if you get me.
Admittedly I think there is a place in school for such issues but not done in such a crass fashion. Any thoughts?
By the way I write this thread in one of my so-called religion classes.

Spank

Yes they are a waste of time really, but personally I like the chill out of that class during the day, just discussing a topic and not having to worry about doing an exam on it.

madgal

Can I just clarify that its NOT religion. Religion is generally discussion of people's race/ethenic beliefs, The Bible and all that jazz. (btw Im not Catholic), but It seems that its more a moral discussion. I mean so far this year we've discussed drugs, boy racers (watched a video on them), and last year we watched pirate DVDs. Is this religion? I don't think so.
Plus they introduced this new stuff that we're supposed to take notes in religion class in case an inspector comes around. What benefit does taking notes do? We're not having an exam on it.. we don't care. Although sometimes the debates in our class get pretty heated and end up spilling out after class! LOL! But no unless your actually gonna teach us religion ... scrap it. Fine have it up to J.Cert - but after that .. no thanks.

ZorbaTehZ

If your doing your Leaving Cert. then I don't see how they could say no to you doing your own work in religion class. Personally I always do school work in that class, and they never have a problem.

OctavarIan

The very notion of having a religion class in school is dumb because they can't possibly cater for every religion. For my first two years in secondary school I didn't have it with the rest of my class because I wasn't catholic (suited me fine I got to do my hw before I got home). For LC we just dossed and watched pirated movies including Forest Gump and The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. I think it should be scrapped altogether in schools, religion isn't part of your formal education, it's something personal you figure out for yourself. (I'm now pretty much an atheist)

madgal

Thats the thing, the world is becoming more atheist as well. And yes, you figure it out for yourself.. but can they not work out that Catholism is dieing in Ireland. Its so multicultural now, why should we have to go into a school and see crucifixes everywhere? Why should there be a mass for every flipping occasion?

cookiemonst3r

they get around the havin a mass thing by calling it a 'service' in our school. even thought it is blatantly a mass.
o ya and we have 4 religion classes a week! wat a waste of time. like we could have an extra class of somethin else.

madgal

We have a double on a Friday. But most people use it to get help from teachers like extra classes and stuff.

cookiemonst3r

were not allowed to do that. 'its against the school ethos'. apparently the school ethos is about watchin dvds.

madgal

What type of school do you go to?!!
Do the teachers in your school pray and say the zillion hail marys and cross themselves before class?
I mean that should be gone by now.

Mushy

Yeah we do it, but our teacher encourages us to some work in it. Good chance to get that small bit ofhomework that I always have done. On the double class of it, the second one of these is extra French. And after Mocks, doing extra history in the first one. So my timetable on tuesday will now go: History X2, French, Irish, French:eek:. It'll be annoying though, cos I need some time to relax aswell, and the extra history isnt exactly necesssary.

cson

The religion thing isn't that big an issue in our school, personally i like chilling out in those classes, watching a dvd or just chatting, we do our homework in one class a week too.

Its not strictly speaking religion either, its more kind of a morality/current affairs kinda class.

And on the topic of catholicism dying, every religion is in decline in this country for the simple fact that people have not got time for religion in Ireland today due to jobs and commutes and hence it isn't being passed onto their children. Its undergoing a bit of a renaissance in England though, mainly due to the Immigrants, a lot of devout catholics.

Sorry for going a bit off topic there...

philologos

I think that even if you don't do it for Leaving Cert, its good to learn about other faiths to be more tolerant, and secondly for one to find out ones spirituality themselves.

Insect Overlord

We get three "religion" classes a week in my school. The school ethos says that as a Christian Brothers School we have to have it that way. To be fair, the R.E. department in my school does a great job. The teachers are extremely dedicated and they help out a lot with fund-raising and charity projects and stuff like that.

The problem is, a number of teachers do still insist on saying a Hail Mary or an Our Father before class (and I mean Irish class, not Religion). The R.E. class itself is extremely varied, and the only time the idea of faith is brought into things is in the whole Cults section. As cson already said, it's about morality rather than religion. This would suit me perfectly if I didn't have to listen to a teacher who insists on questioning every point of view but her own. She insists on implementing the Christian Brothers ethos at all times which leaves little room for alternative ideas.

Finally, in the past week and a half we've had 6 classes on S.T.Is. This falls under the heading of Sex and Relationships education, and I admit it's of paramount importance to educate teenagers about the risks. However, I do not think it's fair to be told that anything sexual done outside the confines of a Catholic marriage is wrong.

Steve01

I have religion three times a week as well. Maybe it is a waste of time but at least its a decent opportunity to relax. Not to mention that its so much better than Junior Cert religion. What were the department thinking when they made that an exam subject.

madgal

An Fhile wrote:

However, I do not think it's fair to be told that anything sexual done outside the confines of a Catholic marriage is wrong.

Can they not see that young people don't care about Catholism? Honestly... But yeah, the catholic Church should not have a say on anything.

md99

Our school does religion thrice a week, its only real purpose to let the students unwind a little between classes.

Agreed - waste for students and teachers, especially when they could be studying/working during this time or having a class of one of the longer subjects eg history, biology, S&S...


That said, I am a religious person myself. But religion is school has nothing to do with it!

yurmothrintites

In a way religion is handy to deal with issues concerning young people. We have two classes a week but we also have 5 study classes and 2 careers classes. IMO Religion helps you not get too stressed about the LC.

Taking in mind my school is a convent and there are 2 or 3 nuns teaching there. We cant really say we have a problem with the classes.

Marshy

yurmothrintites wrote:

In a way religion is handy to deal with issues concerning young people. We have two classes a week but we also have 5 study classes and 2 careers classes. IMO Religion helps you not get too stressed about the LC.

The trouble is these religion teachers, in my school anyway, are in many cases not qualified. If they are going to discuss issues such as sex, alcohol etc. surely they should know what they're on about. Otherwise its pointless.
I aprreciate that having time to unwind is an integral part of the leaving year. What annoys me more than anything tho is the stubborness of the schools to persist in calling such classes 'religion'. They're only deceiving themselves when they say that. We all know there is precious little reference to religion in these classes.

Mysteron

Steve01 wrote:

I have religion three times a week as well. Maybe it is a waste of time but at least its a decent opportunity to relax. Not to mention that its so much better than Junior Cert religion. What were the department thinking when they made that an exam subject.

Damn right!
I had to take 9 subjects for the j.c. which i think is ridiculous. Then the year after i did it they brought in religion as an official j.c. subject, what a huge step backwards in an already crap education system. I consider myself lucky to have dodged it, even if it is regarded as an easy exam, it's still an unnecessary additional burden.
I had a few different religion teachers at my school, ironically the worst ones were the priests,one of whom lived in a complete time-warp, teaching us about limbo and all sorts of crap which the catholic church has since taken back and admitted is wrong but try tellin him that. The other priest was sooooooo boring it was almost intolerable. He would just stand at the top of the class and give an extended sermon/homily for 45 minutes and god help you if you fell asleep or tried to do homework (which i did many times) cos he had one hell of a temper.
The non priest teachers were much more laid back but i still hated it, i used to fail it all the time cos i had no interest. I think religion and school should be kept seperate and sex education should DEFINITELY be dealt with independently of religion class. I mean serously, what does a priest know about sex! Why not just have a morality class and leave religious rules out of it, let people make up their own minds on whether they wanna have sex outside of marriage or not. Sorry for rambling on a bit!

Lia_lia

I have two classes a week.

We watch awful films that are suppose to have a massive impact on us. But they are just boring.

We talk about religion sometimes. That is pretty boring too as we did the same thing in Junior Cert.

Oh and we talk about "teenage problems". Which is helpful to some people I guess. But most of the time the teacher has no idea what she is talking about.

ninty9er

Schools can't schedule religion anymore, they schedule religious education...In our school we did a bit of the bible in 1st year, Christianity and Judaism, 2nd Year was Islam and Buddhism, 3rd Year very much charitibly and morally aimed, TY also, 5th Year we did cults drugs and alcohol and 6th year was a bit on capital punishment and moral decisions around it, it did cater for all religions

@ OP: mass attendance is on the up in Catholic Churches and vocations haven't declined this year....Ireland is still constitutionally a Christian State where freedom of religious practice is a right of all...

If you have a problem with the Hail Mary and Ár nAthatir then I suggest you look at how hard it is to swallow for kids in America (and more likely their non American parents) to have to pledge aliegence to the union every morning, especially those from the Middle East!!!

You don't have to participate and RE is not Catholicism based anymore...It teaches tolerance, but there will always be those who won't become tolerant anyway, just the same as many immigrants don't like the fact that IRELAND IS A CHRISTIAN NATION, so build a bridge and get over it!!

The time could be spent on any number of things and in 6th year we got quite a few free RE classes to study/do homework...We had 3 religion and an SPHE (basically a designated study class) every week.

fonpokno

yeah we have 3religion classes as week! its so irritating! we've been watchin some film on backstreet abortions or somethin for the last like 5weeks! at the beinning of the year they tried to force us to buy some book for like 30quid that was twice the size of our irish books but we managed to argue our way out of it! every other class in our year was forced to buy it but they gave up on us!

we're forced to write stuff about how we feel about stuff... its ridiculous! we've been tryin to convince them to teach us stuff that they've been promising to teach us for like 3years. we've been beggin to learn about cults like stuff we're actually interested in and we're tryin to convince them to actually give us some decent sex education but they insist that we'll get it eventually, there's only4months left in school and its not goin any slower! it drives me mad that we waste 3classes a week like doin nothing when we could actually be learning somethin useful!

JC 2K3

Well I'm not in the Institute and I don't think school should be soley focused on the LC.

We have two religion calsses a week. They vary between learning about random religions, laughing at the shockingly conservative propoganda in the "Alive" newspaper, watching DVDs etc.

It's a nice break, and it's not a Catholic indoctrination class, so it's grand.

Nehpets

We have to do morals and crap. It's a waste of time imo

Corruptedmorals

We have three a week as well, all 40 minutes. We usually sit in a circle and discuss stuff in the news, or Face Up or something. The Friday one is especially great, as it's right after double english. We get tea and biscuits in that class. Watch DVDs sometimes.

I think it's grand to have 3 religion classes, it's nice to relax in it. It's not as if we need more of the other classes, I have 5 classes a week for options, and 6 for compulsory subjects. Enough, I'd say.

It's a whole lot better than the "guidance" class we have. Omg, she is such a useless bitch. Can't handle actually talking to a class for 40 minutes, so she let's us talk for the last 10 minutes. The actual class consists of her telling us how the CAO works, AGAIN or else reading aloud a load of information about some obscure course no-one is interested in. Either that or we all go on the computers and hack our way around the filters into bebo. Fun.

philologos

Steve01 wrote:

I have religion three times a week as well. Maybe it is a waste of time but at least its a decent opportunity to relax. Not to mention that its so much better than Junior Cert religion. What were the department thinking when they made that an exam subject.

LC Religion is actually a decent course that involves philosophy and humanism as well as the traditional methods of worship. It's not comparable to JC Religion as its actually a subject that you need to study for to do well. The Dept made a good choice making it an exam subject imo. Some people have a genuine interest in faith and the religions of others also, giving us a good choice should we want to answer on it for points etc.

Steve01

Jakkass wrote:

LC Religion is actually a decent course that involves philosophy and humanism as well as the traditional methods of worship. It's not comparable to JC Religion as its actually a subject that you need to study for to do well. The Dept made a good choice making it an exam subject imo. Some people have a genuine interest in faith and the religions of others also, giving us a good choice should we want to answer on it for points etc.

I'm well aware, and I would have done Religion for the Leaving Cert were it an option in my school. A few friends of mine did it last year and they enjoyed the course. I like the way it focuses on philosophy and humanism as you say. Definitely a huge step up from JC religion, which I still maintain was a festering crock of sh*t. Having a teacher who couldn't care less about the subject didn't help either.

Marshy

ninty9er wrote:

Ireland is still constitutionally a Christian State where freedom of religious practice is a right of all.
You don't have to participate and RE is not Catholicism based anymore...It teaches tolerance, but there will always be those who won't become tolerant anyway, just the same as many immigrants don't like the fact that IRELAND IS A CHRISTIAN NATION, so build a bridge and get over it!!

I'm afraid to say you're mistaken on that one; Ireland is constitutionally secular ie. not a Christian nation.

WildCardDoW

Meh, I go to a public school like most, I would imagine, here. They gave us in depth sex education, including dangers. But they did not try to teach us Christian values, but for those going to CBS schools you can't complain TBH, if that is the school you go to...

Others that complain aobut it being a waste, have you not considered it is a chance to relax? Of course if you want to take extra classes request it, ask your teachers, don't just sit there wathcing a movie and then complain about it.

philologos

Marshy wrote:

I'm afraid to say you're mistaken on that one; Ireland is constitutionally secular ie. not a Christian nation.

Amen, I believe our nation is better as a secular one, and I'm a Christian.