Religion-Anybody here doing it? Help..:?

KatCookie

I'm in 5th year and have been doing religion all during since 1st yr (we do work in trans year too) and i'm really concerned that we havent been doing any work yet.. he photocopied like half a book during 4th year(telling us that we wouldnt need a book..?) but this year we were given Faith Seeking Understanding and so far we are on page 20...
I really like religion, did it for the J.C, got a C (which i was understandably disappointed with cos we didnt even touch half the course)
Basically my teacher is fairly useless, there are too many people in the class that are only there because they arent allowed to take a free line, and those who want to learn can't, people turn up late, listen to iPods during class, generally mess and talk. He wont/cant contol them All we do is watch videos "cos its relevant" but i'd much prefer to read from the book at this stage- we've watched about 5 videos thihs year..
basically i want to know if its a subject i could teach myself from books-i dont think theres a revisewise or such for religion. or maybe somebody has good notes that want to give/sell to me. All my friends want to DO the subject but its such a pain when theres those annoying people whop dont
I think its better to drop the subject after Chirstmas or to do it myself
I also wanted my parents to tell my teacher that they are concerned that we havent been doing any work, but suprise suprise.. he wasnt there!

Any suggestions?

Fad

Not the best solution, but better than nothing=Teach Yourself.

Download the syllabus, get the books, (Pop into Veritas, [Never thought id ever advise anyone to go in there :S] and check out the LC text books) and work through as efficiently as you can.

Piste

Yeah religino is pretty easy to do on your own, except for the project which will need a bit of guidance from the teacher, but all he really has to do is oversee it. I'd recommend moving ahead with the books and doing past exam questions from the papers.

philologos

I did it last year, but there is nothing I can recommend to you more than actually getting some scriptural texts from the religions you are doing. The Bible will be invaluable to you even if you get a basic jist of the text, and know about the Torah, Prophets and Gospels. I would also advise you to get a copy of the Qur'an (as cheap as €6 in Easons). Flick through, and find out about some Islamic beliefs and compare them with either one of the other more familiar Abrahamic faiths namely Christianity and Judaism. That is if you are doing them for world religions. I think you can get the Sutra (Buddhism), and the Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism), Vedas (Hinduism) in Easons also. I don't know as much about these faiths though. I'd also recommend Sophies World by Jostein Gardner (think that's the name anyway) if you want a relatively easy way to study for section A on the Search for Meaning and Values.

The Religious Education support site is also very useful: http://www.ress.ie it has a checklist of all you need to learn for the LC exam and all that can possibly come up.

aliqueenb

im doing religion in 5th year atm too,
we only have 4 classes a week(one class less than other subjects) buts its ok
we do 2 classes a week on searh for meaning section and other 2 on morality section with other teacher
we are doing a pratice journal atm too

lorna100

am in 6th year doing religion - go onto www.ress.ie and download the syllabus - do through each section of it and find the info in the book - thats how i make notes. you wont miss out on anything that way.

its an easy subject to teach yourself - no explaining in it really.

TheCardHolder

Im thinking of taking on RE now as an extra subject,i got an A in it for the junior cert and would be highly interested in doing it

Fad

Speaking of Religious texts I found a copy of The Satanic Bible (However it's The Church Of Satan one so no hardcore black mass ) in Dubarry Books, was like WTF Ive been looking(Not very hard obviously) for a copy for YEAR and promptly bought it.

KatCookie

thanks for the help guys! its looking up!

Whats the Satanic Bible? sounds like an interesting read.. not for religion class obviously!

Fad

KatCookie wrote: »

Whats the Satanic Bible? sounds like an interesting read.. not for religion class obviously!

TBH honest i was more Dubarry Books WTF!

Wouldnt mind if i found it in temple bar or something but Blackrock Shopping Centre is not my general stop for Occult Paraphenalia (Not that i have have a stop at all but ya know)

We cover cults in some form dont we?

KatCookie

Cool! i'll skip right to that chapter then!

philologos

Fad wrote: »

TBH honest i was more Dubarry Books WTF!

Wouldnt mind if i found it in temple bar or something but Blackrock Shopping Centre is not my general stop for Occult Paraphenalia (Not that i have have a stop at all but ya know)

We cover cults in some form dont we?

The politically correct term is now "New World Religions" instead of cults.

However, I personally welcome the fact that more bookshops are putting out materials from different belief systems. Obviously I don't subscribe to anything other than Christianity, but it's useful for educational purposes.

Fad

Jakkass wrote: »

The politically correct term is now "New World Religions" instead of cults.

However, I personally welcome the fact that more bookshops are putting out materials from different belief systems. Obviously I don't subscribe to anything other than Christianity, but it's useful for educational purposes.

Interestingly they lumped Scientific Religions (Wonder who theyre refering to there :pac:) Hare Krishnas and The Moonies all in one section

I was in Veritas (I'm an athiest but i went in with my granny, as while i only subscribe to Xtianity to keep the peace, i do have an interest Catholicism and its Dogma etc) but anyway, i was looking at the other world religion section, and it was all like What a Catholic needs to know about Islam etc, evil grandmother gave out to me when i said 'They might be a bit biased' when she offered to buy me one.

philologos

If you want to know about Islam I'd recommend going straight for the Qur'an, Sunnah and Hadith. That's the best way you will ever know about Islam, also talking to members of Islamic communities if possible is intriguing.

Fad

Jakkass wrote: »

If you want to know about Islam I'd recommend going straight for the Qur'an, Sunnah and Hadith. That's the best way you will ever know about Islam, also talking to members of Islamic communities if possible is intriguing.

Not studying Islam, so not a problem, wouldnt mind reading them though.

Muslim guy in my year called me heathen once (nothing disrespectful.racist involved in the conversation) and he was being serious :eek:

Then he proceeded to tell me how much Saffron is in his house, a character that one :pac: (That was when he had just moved to the school, he acts a bit more "Normal" now)

KatCookie

.. We arent even doing any other religion outside Christianity.. (!!!)
so i'm going to do that bit by myself.. have an interest in Buddhism, learnt Judaism pretty well back in second year and i have a Muslim Friend(not really practicing but i learnt today that she did the whole fasting for Ramadam thing once!!)

philologos

KatCookie: if you are doing World Religions you have to do at least one other. I think it's very bad of your school not to open your mind up to other faiths, and I'm saying this as a Christian myself. Even if you are faithful I think you should be able to know what to expect from others such as in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and so on. The people who have made this course have made it very open, however it depends on how open the school want it.

Fionnanc

This is an LC subject now?
Hopefully it doesn't count towards points

philologos

It has been on the LC since 2004. As for points yes it does count. Why shouldn't it. Religion has never been so important on a global scale, I think many people will agree with that. We also studied atheism, agnosticism, reductionism, and secular humanism.

Fad

Fionnanc wrote: »

This is an LC subject now?
Hopefully it doesn't count towards points

If you dont have a reason to back up why you dont think it should be a subject that is counted evenly with other subjects then dont bother posting.

I'm strongly tempted to take the whole dont feed the Troll attitude but I've had enough of this dismissing religion as a joke subject thing.

I cant really name any one thing that has had an impact on the culture of the world as religion, so why not have it as a subject. It's by no means a the easiest subject, theres a good bit of learning involved.

So please dont bother making such vague statements in future.

KatCookie

Nicely said Fad..

Jakkass, my teacher thinks that we could get away with not doing any of the others, just learning some of the basics in other religions, -like for the JC questions there might be a picture of a Menorah and we'd be able to recognise it as a jewish "thing" but he wouldnt have told us that it is used in Hanukkah.
and any of the long questions we'd have to write about would be on Christianity
Bit hit and miss really.. (i'm pretty sure that i wrote about a religion other than Christianity myself)

philologos

Yes, but if you do section C in the LC exam though, you will be expected to compare two world faiths. As for your teacher, I'm highly critical of such an attitude. Education should be about educating, not in telling people what they can or cannot get away with.

KatCookie

Oh? comparison of two faiths? didnt know that, maybe he will "prepeare us an essay" or something, this is desperate altogether!
Within two weeks of coming back this year he gives us a big worksheet type thing and he says that if we can fill it all in we'd have a huge amount done! .. but he hasnt taught us anything!
We read a couple of pages in class the other day .. i couldnt even keep my attention on it (and im quite attentive) so i went through what we'd done in class, i read the pages and highlighted the important bits and i now have retained most of the information! DIY job there!

Yusuf Mirza

Hay if you want to learn about Islam then I know an Irish Imam who coverted from Christianity to Islam and he can help you.