by HomerJay wrote:Nora_Leonard wrote:When I was finished I asked an RE teacher friend who also happens to be Christian to have a look at it. One of the things that she thought I'd got 'right' was emphasising how Easter is by far the more important festival to a Christian than Christmas.
Anyway, I'm really reluctant to spend much time discussing it here, because I just expect anything I say on the subject to be ripped to shreds.
This is one of the problems when discussing 'Christianity' with children. How do you express disparate views across the community?
Do you end up parroting orthodoxy or even just currents views, as with Easter, which was never really viewed as the most important festival but has become more fashionable recently as a sort of anti Christmas thing.
In the UK the figures say that Cathedral attendance at Christmas is 3 times that at Easter, so the casual Christians don't seem to view it in that manner. These days the casual Chrsitians are in the vast majority too.
I would not say that this was Neutral fact 'about' Christianity. It could easily make children who identify as coming from a Christian tradition feel that they're not doing it right.
http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2012/eastert ... ican-news/
Oh, I definitely agree with you that casual/cultural Christians celebrate Christmas more. I imagine most of the people on this forum celebrate it to some extent (I would have thought, unless they are in a country where it is not a national holiday).
In fact I suspect that is why my Christian friend said what she did, i.e. to highlight the difference. This would be important to her as she is a Jew converted to Christianity.
And as regards diversity within a tradition, it is hoped that most teachers will acknowledge that, for instance saying "most Christians" or, as totally surprised me, "some humanists believe in some kind of survival of consciousness after death".
As you can well imagine, you're never going to please absolutely everybody. For instance, you might expect that 'nativity plays' were anathema to Muslims. In fact, in our borough, I was told by a group of heads that their Muslim kids/parents would be highly insulted if their children weren't asked to be in the nativity play (not that all schools have them).
Also, a head in one of our schools was telling me about a local Baptist church that had to suddenly adapt their summer Bible class when about half the kids that were enrolled by their parents turned out to be Muslim. (Guess the parents thought that would be a safe place to park their kids.) Apparently it went very well.
I'm not sure I see your point? In a unit on the beliefs and practices of Christianity would you expect to learn about what it important to...Buddhists?