My thoughts on religion in schools were shaped by my own experiences. My dear Mum was a working mother who taught me all I know about feminism. She was staunch, focused on equality and wouldn’t have a bar of religion being rammed down my throat. When she found out that our public school was forcing me to participate in Bible classes, she rang the principle and demanded that I be withdrawn from such brainwashing.
This was a big deal for a rural school that didn’t believe in evolution or electricity and resulted in me being sent out to pick up rubbish during this glorified Teacher smoko break, which of course enraged my dear Mother even further and I think she may have come down to the school and slapped the teacher, (it was 1980s NZ and punches to the head were encouraged). After that I was placed on my own in the library for 30minutes every Thursday and I responded by putting every religious text I could find into the fiction section.
So understandably I’m no big fan of religion in school. If you want to personally believe in a magical flying invisible wizard for your day to day moral decision making, knock yourself out, but it has no place, zero place, nothing at all to do with education. You want to learn all about the teachings of your aforementioned magical flying invisible wizard friend, then, like every other hobby, you do it in your own spare time.
Don’t mistake this for an anti-Christian thing, I have that view on ALL religions. What you want to believe in is your absolute right and privilege, extending the public purse to subsidize that however is an obscenity that should be napalmed at every single opportunity.
Fast forward to the now, and today’s story about a religious education class that managed to slut shame a teenage woman who had an abortion beggars belief…
Teacher disciplined for calling student a ‘S-L-U-T’
A high school teacher has been disciplined for calling a Year 10 student a “S-L-U-T” and referring to her having an abortion in front of classmates.
The female teacher, whose name has been withheld, resigned after the incident during a religious education class in September 2011.
A Teacher’s Council Disciplinary Tribunal decision said the Year 10 student was avoiding work and disrupting other students during the lesson on Pope John Paul II’s stance on abortion.
She spoke to the teacher about moving to another school and said she didn’t like the college, the name of which has been withheld.
The teacher said words similar to “stop acting like a S-L-U-T”, to which the student replied “why don’t you just say the word – I don’t care”.
After the student was asked to stand on a chair as a punishment, the two had a verbal exchange, in which the student repeated all the teacher’s questions, belittling her in front of the class.
The teacher then referred to the girl being pregnant and said words to the effect of “if you think having an abortion makes you an adult then it doesn’t”.
The girl, who had fallen pregnant and had an abortion earlier that year, left the class in tears.…
…where to begin? There are just so many parts of this that seem absolutely insane.
1: Calling a student a slut???
2: Trying to punish a student by having them stand on a chair???
3: Teasing a student about an abortion???
4: ‘Teaching’ Pope John Paul II’s stance on abortion as education???
There are just too many ‘you’re kidding me right’ moments in this story. Religious education should be like model trains, something you do in the privacy of your own home.
I wish I was surprised.
Hah, how “Christian” is that, calling a student a “slut”?
I wonder whether the so called “Christ” (Jesus) in the New Testament was ever quoted as doing something similar to a vulnerable, perhaps also a little foolish, or taken advantage of young woman. People may make mistakes, but to berate them like this, that shows that some (I guess many) to profess to be Christians – or faithful to certain other religions – are nothing but total idiots and bigots.
I agree, keep religious classes out of schools. Those that want their kids indoctrinated or “taught” about religion, try to let them do it on Sundays, or at other times outside school hours.
My impression is that even today churches and other religious groups have still too much power within New Zealand society.
Teach kids “ethics” and social and cultural skills, but keep the bible-bashers and the likes from other denominations out of schools, thanks.
saddened, all round.
Most teachers are incredibly sane, intelligent and thoughtful. Occasionally, you get one that… isn’t.
It doesn’t seem like just co-incidence that the abusive ones are more often than not (in my experience) highly religious.
there is “religion”, and there is ‘spirituality’; carry on in your ignorance, maybe even write some more ‘vengeance’.
It beggars belief.
Obviously that “Christian” teacher hadn’t read the story about Jesus and the woman accused of adultery (“let he who is without sin cast the first stone”). Just awful. Religious education does not belong in state schools. If you want to indoctrinate your kids send them to a religious school.
Haaaaha ! That was very funny . I loved that you put all the religious books in the fiction section . Brilliant .
Silly , jealous , old-lady-pants teacher .
Isn’t it odd that virtually all religious teachings have an underlying stupidity and cruelty about them ? Is that because all religious teachers are stupid and cruelty is a means to an ends . And that is to control .
My rural Southland primary school teachers were sadists but for the last one and we had a new one every year . He was a charming gentleman and I became a good friend of his son .
One , A complete cunt of a woman beat me with a thick pointer stick once which left dark bruises across my back for weeks . Another would stand me up and berate me for what seemed like the length of an entire series of Payton Place then strapped me hard , three times on each hand and I would have been seven years old . No wonder I have a very strong opinion about ‘ authority figures ‘ . And never being hit at home , it all came as a bit of a shock to be honest . It took a long , long time to rationalize their behaviour from the perspective of an adult . And of course that’s the nature of abuse .
The offspring of the stunted cultural development of our white , historical New Zealand is a dying breed I’m glad to report . And if there wasn’t a law against it , I’d do my bit to speed up that process .
If you like irony ; God help any Jesus Freak who knocks on my fucking door .
“Peyton” ; the “knock” shall come.
We seem to get a lot of door knockers. I have keep religion out of schools pamphlets ready to hand to them as I politely ask for their opinion on Religious Instruction in schools. A surprisingly large number of them don’t let their own children attend because it disagrees with their own brand of Christianity.
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~edmin/Pamphlets/Pamphlet%2009%20-%20Keep%20Religion%20Out%20Of%20Schools%20(NZ).pdf
At my grammar school in the UK religious instruction was called “Divinity.” The Divinity teacher used to beat the crap out of us at every opportunity. So my main takeaway from religious instruction was anger. Decades later I felt a familiar rage when I was working in a Gulf state, and a poor little Filipina maid was jailed for a month for drinking water in the street during Ramadam… at 50 Celsius. Bloody religion.
The main debt I owe my sister is that she threw up in church, and I never had to go again. It was a embarrassed parent that had taken us at someone’s behest (although being a lapsed Catholic’s only attendance under duress to get their daughters churchified). All religions belong in the fiction section, or in the ignorance, cruelty, and war-initiating section.
I vividly remember religious study at my rural school. It wouldn’t exactly call it “indoctrination”, since in my experience is if your parents don’t sow the seeds and stimulate “belief” it is unlikely that you’ll get turned at school. I know that my religious study teacher despised me, because I was constantly questioning everything he said, and pointing out the countless contradictions in the very tome he was reading from. Eventually I was excused from further teaching. Indeed, I was put in charge of burning the school’s 50 odd old bibles (when I was on incineration duty), because the library had been gifted new ones. Shame really, because I had made numerous annotations in the bibles I had, to help future kids “see the light” ;-). Wonder why they chose me to do it?
There is a place for religion education in schools if it is taught as a critical subject. As an educator who teaches religion at university level, I think it would benefit our society in a number of ways (cultural awareness, people thinking more critically about religion/beliefs/values, and so on) for it to be included in the public school curriculum.
The problem is that the only form of so-called religious education that exists these days seems to be this proselytizing brand of indoctrination. The case is not helped by the fact that many religious schools hire ‘religious studies’ teachers who have no tertiary education in relevant subjects, and often use it as an opportunity to promote their own pious agendas.
But ‘religious studies’ and ‘theology’ exist as critical, academic subjects, and excluding this from the curriculum actually fosters the idea that Martin espouses here: that religious belief is a private affair, that people are free to believe in crazy horse-shit so long as it doesn’t impinge on others. Well, actually, if you educate people to think critically about religion, you will undoubtedly find less people subscribing to incredible nonsense.
I swore in religious instruction class when I was fourteen years old. OK it was by accident but I’m still proud.
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