How was Religion in school for you?

pauliebdub

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

A lot of the religious people (Catholic priests, nuns, Protestant ministers, lay Christians) I came across in education in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s were very decent, compassionate, open-minded people who genuinely loved engaging in discussions with atheist kids like myself.

The priests I encountered were mostly fine too, a couple had issues with anger and used to fly into a rage, I'd regard most of them.as reasonable people but I wouldn't say open minded at all. The nuns were a different matter, usually very hard, tough women Difficult to like.

lazybones32

"Jesus sat down in the shade of a tree and said to the children come sit by me" - a song we learned as kids and the only thing I remember of religion from school.

sunbabe08

every day between 12-12:30 at least we didn't have exams. we learned songs and prayers.

AppleBottle

I remember having "confession" when I was in primary school. The priest would come in once, maybe twice a year and we would give three times when "we didn't show love" and the priest would forgive us for our sins. We also had religion books and studied them often enough.

I did Religion as a subject for my junior cert, we had to do it. I got an A In 5th we had one religion teacher for 5/6 weeks and we would do different topics with them. The only one I remember was sex education and being told about safe sex. In 6th year, it wasn't a subject, instead we did a weekly two hour class on current issues and we would have many different visitors for the Simon Community, Gardai, nurses, St Michael's house etc. That was always a great two hours each week.

catallus

Einhard wrote: »

Zacchaeus was a greedy little man.

Ha! Flashbacks! :eek:

We had a teacher who made us sing that song, she beat us all indiscriminately.

"I don't give a damn about God, just get in fúcking tune, ye little bastards!"

The_Valeyard

AppleBottle wrote: »

I remember having "confession" when I was in primary school. The priest would come in once, maybe twice a year and we would give three times when "we didn't show love" and the priest would forgive us for our sins. We also had religion books and studied them often enough.

I did Religion as a subject for my junior cert, we had to do it. I got an A In 5th we had one religion teacher for 5/6 weeks and we would do different topics with them. The only one I remember was sex education and being told about safe sex. In 6th year, it wasn't a subject, instead we did a weekly two hour class on current issues and we would have many different visitors for the Simon Community, Gardai, nurses, St Michael's house etc. That was always a great two hours each week.

We also had the guest speakers in 6th year. Some of them were pretty cool.

UpCork

Convent school. Had a nun for religion for a few years in secondary. In primary it was a lay teacher but they were still very much under the religious thumb of the nuns who were patrons of the school. They liked me a I came from a religious household.
Very closed minded. You learned about Catholicism only - no reference to or education about other religions. You also weren't allowed to question anything or to disagree. I was taught religion before it became an examinable subject, so there was no structure to the classes really. I preferred the lay teachers in secondary school as they allowed a bit more debate, but not the nun.

zcorpian88

In primary it involved the usual religion class every day, revising prayers for particular religious shindigs, saying the angelus when the bell was rang by a student out in the hallway at 12pm, saying the grace before meals prayer and 12:40 at lunchtime sometimes we were made sing it by one particular teacher and he'd even conduct the class by waving his hands about like an eejit, then saying the grace after meals prayer when we were queuing to come in off the school yard at 1:20.

Being forced to choose Patrick for my confirmation name by my mother, both my Grandad's names are in my middle name and my father's name is Patrick so my ma was like your name will be really neat then, I thought she was bonkers because I wanted to pick my own, plus Patrick is just not original and I was the only one in the class that had Patrick as a f**king confirmation name. Also my teacher during my confirmation was an absolute wreck the head, the whole class had to make this artwork about the Saint we choose and we had to write a few paragraphs on our Saint to go in the middle of the artwork and they had to be hung in the church on the day, the teacher made me write out the long paragraphs 3 different times because she was nitpicking about my handwriting, by the 3 third time I wanted to shove the whole artwork down her throat.

Religion wasn't anywhere near as bad in secondary, was treated kind of like a free class, there was no exam in it, at least for us there wasn't so nobody was really bothered with it. We had a priest try to teach us it in like 3rd year I think it was and the whole class pretty much shot him down over it, mainly because there was no exam for it, I didn't mind him trying to teach it, he could please himself for all I cared, but the rest of the class just hindered any of his progress and he kind of gave up on it.

cloud493

I was so good at it. They used to do quizzes every week, and special ones at the end of the month and term and school year, and you won prizes for it, and I won every time.

whisky_galore

A waste of time.

The Backwards Man

I didn't do RE so I spent the time reading encyclopediae and, funnily enough, the bible. Not a bad read actually, better than Moby Dick anyway.

tomwaterford

The Backwards Man wrote: »

I didn't do RE so I spent the time reading encyclopediae and, funnily enough, the bible. Not a bad read actually, better than Moby Dick anyway.

Some twist at the end of it.....Dallas would have been proud

spud82

A waste of time. In second year we had a nun give us sex education. I am not joking!! We all had to right questions on a piece of paper and she pulled them out of a box and she answered them. Highlights of that experience including us getting a class detention because noone would admit who had written what is a 69, and when she told us we got get pregnant by giving a BJ if we swallowed, and how when we got married we had to have sex whenever our hubbie asked.

KingBrian2

In preparation for my communion they gave us white chocolate buttons to practise on so not bad.

Duke O Smiley

For a Marist Brothers school, it's pretty tame. There was one loon of a religion teacher but she left a few years back; now the RE teachers are a hot twenty-something year old and some guy of about 30. Younger than the usual anyway. On the whole, the ethos is pretty religious though.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

UpCork

KingBrian2 wrote: »

In preparation for my communion they gave us white chocolate buttons to practise on so not bad.

Lucky you - we only got wafers that tasted stale. I''d say I was about 12/13 before I could look at a wafer again.

Mint Sauce

Primary school, it was all about Catholicism, and the new/old testament. Secondary school it was compulsory, considering it was an RC school, in addition to the above also covered social issues, and touching on other religions. Sixth form, whilst not compulsory (there was no exam), it was recorded that you attended, and you recived an award. Subject content did not cover the testaments at all, but again was on social issues, politics, sexuality, morals, etc. Also covered other religions, including talks from Jewish and Islam minister's, and their book. Also visited a synagogue, and the communal area of a mosque.

Canis Lupus

Religion class was a time to catch up on homework for other classes.

Cen taurus

Whatever we learned in national school for the sacraments, in secondary school the teaching was either non existent, poor quality, and often totally incorrect. I still can't tell if this was due to deliberate misinformation by the teachers, or down to ignorance. From what I've heard not much has changed in the secondary schools.

I left the faith for many years, but came back to it after re-learning it all for myself.

No wonder so many people who were brought up Catholic still have so little real understanding of it, and its not their fault.

vertmann

Nothing that scarred me for life. Primary school was the bog standard sacraments/bible stories/preparing for first holy communion and confirmation. In secondary, the first religion teacher I had was the Home Ec one who clearly was only going through the motions and giving the class under sufferance. The other years I had a nun who was dead sound. She knew better, I think, than to try and talk too much about religion to us. So she mainly used to chat to us in the class about everyday stuff.

Donkey Oaty

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

A lot of the religious people (Catholic priests, nuns, Protestant ministers, lay Christians) I came across in education in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s were very decent, compassionate, open-minded people who genuinely loved engaging in discussions with atheist kids like myself.

wow, My sarcasm meter just went off the scale.;)

TrustedApple

Primary school for me was a proper out and out catholic boys school where the head of the school was the parish priest and i think still is to this day.

Every morning and evening where the daily prayers and i even think before our lunches as well we had to say prayers. The Priest used to come in fairly often and we had to do confections with him when he came in.

Secondary School was the doss class of the week in witch you would get 2 classes a week of Religion and would watch videos, talk about homeless people, drugs, people in care and find out about world Religions coming to think about its nearly like basic social care we where doing. Was grand and all the teachers who done it where good.

To make it funnier the school even had its own catholic Priest and it wasint a catholic school at all witch i still find quite odd. But we still had to go to 3 or 4 masses a year and met the Priest twice a year

But come 5th and 6th year as i was in the class that didn't do Irish as i have dyslexia all the Irish classes where turned into Religion classes so i think i had like 7 classes a week of Religion in witch was basically just a huge chat with my neighbour who was my teacher and we watched the odd video or dvd. Must days you where left to go and see can you get into the woodwork room to do your project if you wonted to.

BlaasForRafa

Went to a cbs. In primary school it was mostly rote learning prayers and creeds off by heart and being taught the story of jesus or parables or whatever.

In secondary school religion was half an hour or so every day. For the first 3 years it was a normal teacher and it was like a civics class as other posters have described. In 5th year religion was done by a brother who had a speech defect which made him sound like he was hissing on certain words, naturally we called him lizard when his back was turned which drove him mad. I got put out of class one day for laughing at the parish priest when he was visiting the class.

In 6th year we had a different brother as the teacher, the class was held in the room the brass band would practice in after school and we'd be made sit in a circle and talk about this or that or sometimes just sit quietly and think, in practice what would actually happen is that people would start making faces at the person opposite them and try to get them to burst laughing, there was one chap who could wiggle his ears who was impossible to keep a straight face at.

From time to time, usually once a month iirc, groups of kids would be brought to the "prayer room" on the top floor of the school for a time of contemplation with Brother Barty. This room had purple carpet on the floor and on the walls and the room was always fairly dark because the purple curtains were always drawn, it was pretty weird looking back on it tbh.

To Elland Back

T'was a pain in the hole

Paramite Pie

KingBrian2 wrote: »

In preparation for my communion they gave us white chocolate buttons to practise on so not bad.

we practiced on real communion when the teacher ran out of wafers and we're told not to tell anyone!!:pac:

bnt

For comparison: I went to school in South Africa, where I had a few religion classes in primary school, nothing serious. By the time I hit secondary school, they had stopped altogether. That bible quote about growing up and putting away "childish things" was a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose.

c_man

It was pretty bad to be honest. Very dogmatic Catholicism was the order of the day. One teacher seemed pretty cool but he was an ardent pro-lifer. We spent half of religion in fifth year focusing on abortion. It was a bad class to have first after lunch. We watched videos of abortions being carried out, "The Scream", interviews conducted with women who regretted it, had picture books passed around full of pictures of aborted foetuses and associated news stories (e.g. abortion clinic in NY deposes of the dead babies in the trash), various anti-abortion groups coming in to give talks. That guy is now principal of the school btw.

He wasn't a bad guy and got on extremely well with the lads. But looking back now, it just seems like utter indoctrination (I did my LC in 2002).

It was pretty "doss" in our school too. I went to 2ndry in Raheny and our "religion" teacher was a lay man to the subject. At best. They nicknamed him "fag". And strangely it was not because of his obvious homosexuality. But because he was tall and thin and pale and had a crop of reddish hair. Making him look like a lit ciggie.

It was a strange school for religion that one. The people teaching religion had no interest in it.

The school had two actual "priests" working there - who never seemed to have any presence or input into the religion class.

One of them was so up his own rear end he built his office so his seat was JUST inside the door and was BIG and any student visiting him had to sit on a TINY seat on the other side of the desk. Thus leaving the student looking UP at him and PAST him to a huge room behind him - while themselves sitting low down in a tiny tight corner of the room. He clearly built the entire room layout up on the concept of making him look big and powerful.

And the other priest almost spoke nothing of religion EVER - and spent most of his time teaching french - and he spent a disproportionate amount of his French Classes showing Monty Python videos and cracking up inordinately at the scenes with the French guys in "the holy grail".

In fact thinking back on it that was a weird school with little going for it except a VERY passionate Maths teacher bearing a weird resemblance to Billy Crystal - and an inwardly passionate Physics Teacher who looked like Captain Cave Man - who I am reliably informed rose to be School Principal sometime after I left.

I really must start a thread soon on "Did you ever meet your teachers years after leaving school - and if so what did you say to them". Could be a good one.

StudentDad

In national school religion was something to be tolerated. It had little or no meaning for me. In my case the nuns/teachers took an authoritarian attitude towards the whole thing, without any cogent justification. I think that's what irritated me most. If I asked any questions I was given the stock answer of, 'that's the way it is.'

When you add in the clatter I received from a nun during rehearsals prior to the whole communion thing, (I was a standard 8 year old who had the temerity to smile during rehearsals) it clarified alot of things for me.

When secondary school rolled around religion was something to be tolerated and what passed for religion class was essentially a study class.

When the abuse scandals hit the fan and the tales of hypocrisy surrounding Mr. Casey from Galway etc etc I pretty much turned my back on 'organised religion.'

SD