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3) Open minded religious studies teacher
The only kind that works, you need a religious studies teacher who can take you on the journey of exploring religion. I don't think that any school pupil could say that religion isn't interesting to explore if they had a good religious studies teacher.
Agreed with this. Religious studies needs to be interesting, but I feel the teacher needs to be able to put their own opinion into it - without cramming a particular belief down the students' necks or it ruins it. The students need to be able to make up their own mind as well.
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Religious studies for me, opened up my views of the world, and this is why religious studies should be on the national curriculum and taken seriously.
Again agree, I didn't really know about other religions before doing Religious Studies and it made me realise not everyone had the same beliefs as me, even within the same Religion. So I think it is important.
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So, on to state funded faith schools. I agree with them. The main reason for this is because I believe that education for everybody is very individual, we all have our own learning styles, we all have our own behavioural styles and we all have our own morals and values. Naturally, the best thing to do would be to have your own school and education system tailored to suit you as an individual however this is obviously not plausible, however I think grouping schools on the basis of moral values (particularly secondary school) is probably a good idea and can cater for religious children quite well. The problem I find, is parents sending their children to religious schools purely because it gets good grades. I strongly believe that children should only be sent to faith schools if their family practice that faith, otherwise the faith school is utterly pointless.
Obviously, there's an issue here when you think of faith primary schools as there's the argument that the children aren't old enough to decide whether they want to be religious, however I think it's perfectly acceptable for a religious family to bring up their child as religious and send them to a faith school - however should a child wish to not be part of that faith when they reach adolescence, this should be their choice too.
Faith schools run properly, with pupils that are actually religious run very well and get very good results, however I think they are abused by parents wishing their children to go to faith schools when the family arent religious, because the only reasons they send them is stuff like they will mix with "better" children (in terms of moral values) and may get better grades - this is wrong.
Essentially I agree. Faith run schools do attain good results and they can be the best type of education if you are religious and are going to integrate into the school community. However I think that whether they should be state run or not is another thing. I honestly haven't decided my position on this yet but I think that is it really right to use taxpayer's money - who may not be religious - to pay for religious schools?