Three good ideas from humanist Margaret Nelson at Suffolk SACRE (BHA Private Forum February 2010)
1) Our county RE advisor invites a different RE teacher to every SACRE meeting, to talk about his or her approach to the subject.
2) send every high school in the county a copy of Humanist Perspectives 2 with a covering letter
3) Humanists join Inter-Faith group
Margaret says:-
'Although there was no problem about including humanism and secular world views in the Suffolk RE syllabus, there's still a problem about ensuring that they're being properly taught.
Our county RE advisor invites a different RE teacher to every SACRE meeting, to talk about his or her approach to the subject.
On several occasions, one has spoken for 10 or 15 minutes without mentioning humanism, and I have asked why not. The reasons they gave varied a little, but all seemed to boil down to ignorance; one teacher said that he didn't know enough about humanism, another said she hadn't got around to it yet.
Several schools have tried to get round the problem of covering humanism and some of the religions they don't know about by inviting me and/or a group of speakers from Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource to a half-day or all day session - I've got one in a couple of weeks. This is all very well, but not something that the advisor approves of. It means that the teachers are saved the bother of actually doing any research, while allowing them to tick a box.
Last September, thanks to a generous donation from one of our members, Suffolk Humanists & Secularists sent every high school in the county a copy of Humanist Perspectives 2 with a covering letter, as follows:
_________
Dear RE teacher,
I’m a member of Suffolk’s Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE). I helped to devise the RE syllabus that was introduced in September 2007.
I’m also a Humanist speaker who visits schools to talk about Humanism and related subjects in RE and at school conferences and assemblies, sometimes through Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource – I’m a SIFRE tutor.
I’ve heard some RE teachers say that they haven’t got around to including Humanism and atheistic, non-theistic or naturalistic world views in their lessons (described in the syllabus as “secular world views”) because they don’t know much about them.
I hope that this copy of Humanist Perspectives from the British Humanist Association, a gift from Suffolk Humanists & Secularists, will help RE teachers.
The population of Suffolk is about 668,500. We know from various research projects that about a third of the population isn’t religious and that a majority of secondary school students would describe themselves as atheist or agnostic, while an Ipsos MORI poll conducted for the British Humanist Association in 2006 showed that about 10% of the population is broadly Humanist in outlook. We estimate that about 66,800 people in Suffolk – the largest group, in terms of beliefs – could be described as Humanist in outlook. This means that a significant proportion of your students won’t have a religious faith and are less likely to have one than their parents or grandparents. In my experience, these young people are no less moral in their outlook than their peers, or less interested in the big questions in life than religious people might be. In fact, I’ve found that many of these young people are passionately concerned about the sort of issues that you might cover in RE lessons. It’s important that they have an opportunity to explore alternatives to religion.
I’m enclosing an information sheet with some useful URLs. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. My phone number is xx, or you can email me – xxx
Wishing you a successful and interesting new term,
Yours sincerely,
Margaret Nelson'
On several occasions, one has spoken for 10 or 15 minutes without mentioning humanism, and I have asked why not. The reasons they gave varied a little, but all seemed to boil down to ignorance; one teacher said that he didn't know enough about humanism, another said she hadn't got around to it yet.
Several schools have tried to get round the problem of covering humanism and some of the religions they don't know about by inviting me and/or a group of speakers from Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource to a half-day or all day session - I've got one in a couple of weeks. This is all very well, but not something that the advisor approves of. It means that the teachers are saved the bother of actually doing any research, while allowing them to tick a box.
Last September, thanks to a generous donation from one of our members, Suffolk Humanists & Secularists sent every high school in the county a copy of Humanist Perspectives 2 with a covering letter, as follows:
_________
Dear RE teacher,
I’m a member of Suffolk’s Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE). I helped to devise the RE syllabus that was introduced in September 2007.
I’m also a Humanist speaker who visits schools to talk about Humanism and related subjects in RE and at school conferences and assemblies, sometimes through Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource – I’m a SIFRE tutor.
I’ve heard some RE teachers say that they haven’t got around to including Humanism and atheistic, non-theistic or naturalistic world views in their lessons (described in the syllabus as “secular world views”) because they don’t know much about them.
I hope that this copy of Humanist Perspectives from the British Humanist Association, a gift from Suffolk Humanists & Secularists, will help RE teachers.
The population of Suffolk is about 668,500. We know from various research projects that about a third of the population isn’t religious and that a majority of secondary school students would describe themselves as atheist or agnostic, while an Ipsos MORI poll conducted for the British Humanist Association in 2006 showed that about 10% of the population is broadly Humanist in outlook. We estimate that about 66,800 people in Suffolk – the largest group, in terms of beliefs – could be described as Humanist in outlook. This means that a significant proportion of your students won’t have a religious faith and are less likely to have one than their parents or grandparents. In my experience, these young people are no less moral in their outlook than their peers, or less interested in the big questions in life than religious people might be. In fact, I’ve found that many of these young people are passionately concerned about the sort of issues that you might cover in RE lessons. It’s important that they have an opportunity to explore alternatives to religion.
I’m enclosing an information sheet with some useful URLs. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. My phone number is xx, or you can email me – xxx
Wishing you a successful and interesting new term,
Yours sincerely,
Margaret Nelson'
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