300
Studies syllabus does because ɪ think it con-
fuses the children. From talking to children
about things by teaching world religions and
then going back to Christianity and the
teaching
in
some
all other religions you are basically
ways drawing from an idea of a moral
society because you are showing so much dif-
ference in the Society and unless you are very
careful to be very positive the children won’t
learn that there are different viewpoints
and that people adhere to. I think they’ll
just become very confused and feel that the
world has
so
different moral attitudes
and so many different standards that religion
wasn’t the place to gain a moral standard.
I think it’s a very difficult thing in the
fact that it’s dealing with a belief and I
111
yself
feel
that I am not always capable of
teaching religion fairly in a sense that in
University I studied all the world religions
andnow I’m very knowledgeable on certain ones
- like Chinese religions - but I found when
I was teaching things like Islam I felt in
some ways it was too soon for the children
because I did have children who were Moslems
in the class and I think the difficulty is
that you hurt them in some way because when-
ever we look at Muslim religion something
like
we look at it through Western
eyes
think
in a lot of ways
we harm
we spoil them because we look at them
from our own point of view and I don’t really
know whether we should teach children religion
in that sense. I think it might be better
to teach world religions in the sense of
perhaps looking say sociologically or geogra-
phically even - looking at societies and the
way other people live, seeing religion as
an integral part of society rather than on
its own. I mean that’s the way I’ve thought
about
as
I ,ve
more
confused
about
treading on children’s toes and I’m also aware
of having a religious conviction that however
I teach them I’m teaching it my way.
It’s such a personal thing isn’t it.
Yes and I know often my viewpoints are slightly
different to Head of Department’s and I think
as the children get to know us they see that
we, not disagree, but that the way we approach
things is different -
that perhaps needs a
I think it’s a subject
lot more thinking about
than some others - whether it really has a
place - perhaps in the classroom when children
had to learn catechism, various religious
tracts
and moral viewpoints from the Bible
then it was serving a purpose but now I think
it is very much just confusing.