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What are the challenges of teaching religious education

What are the challenges of teaching religious education?

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Teaching religious education is a very challenging task. Because religion is always a very sensitive topic because people are so emotionally associated with their religion. Even, it is a very big debate whether it is right to teach religious education in school or not. And usually, we see that there are numerous schools where religious education is not part of their curriculum. This more often happens in school where students from diverse religions come because heterogeneity in religion can become an issue, and it is more challenging to teach religious education when you have students from different religions in your classroom.

Challenges of teaching religious education:

One of the reasons religious education is difficult is that it has numerous cons or, we may say, negative impacts of teaching religious education in schools when there is a heterogeneous religious population. Even though Law assignment writing offer help in almost every subject, this subject is complicated because of much diversity. Here are the challenges that a teacher can face while teaching religious education.

 Misuse of religion

Religion is one of the biggest uniting people and make the world peaceful. That is why religious education is also considered one of the important parts of education. But this religious education becomes a challenge for teachers because of fundamentalists. These fundamentalists are the people who misuse religion and try to spread extremism and use religion to spread revolutionary movements and to disrupt the system, people, and society. Even in the worst cases, this misuse of religion can cause the death of a person. A lot of these kinds of events has taken place all around the globe. These are the people who make it a challenge for a teacher to teach religious education, as they are always ready for disruption.

Discrimination with religious

The most indispensable factor about which teachers of religious education have to take care about the most is the discrimination and inappropriate behaviour with the religious minorities. Teachers face the most challenging situation while teaching religious education when they have students from the religious minority in class. It is very common in school and educational institutions that students from religious minorities face discrimination, bullying and insulting behaviour from the other students. They are left alone and isolated. And this situation starts affecting their mental health and academic progress. So the religious education teachers’ responsibility increases as they have to maintain peace in the classroom as well as have to play a vital role to make a friendly environment in the class by teaching students to respect others’ beliefs and religion as this is the tolerance that we required most as a society.

Dealing with the religious arguments

Religious education teachers have to deal with more arguments than any other teacher. Because religion is the thing on which even the people who have the same religion have a different opinion about different matters. So whenever teachers try to explain such a topic, they have to deal with the arguments. And if there are students from any other religion, then usually, the argument in the class is based on it. In this situation, the teacher has to work intelligently and have to give critical replies that will resolve or finish the argument instead of giving birth to any new argument.

It is not easy to understand holy writings.

Different religions have their holy books for the guidance of people, and these sacred books provide people with a code of conduct about their lives and other matters and events of life. Still, the main challenge for the religious education teacher is that all these books are so old, and their language is different from the language that we use today. So it is very hard to understand it, and people typically rely on the translations. This spread confusion among people that either it is the right translation they are reading or it is incorrect, as incorrect translation may mislead people. So the challenge of teaching religious education is to provide the right teaching to students, guide them with the right sources and provide them with an accurate translation. For this, it is necessary that teachers have religious education from any institution, and they are able to understand the holy book.

Teaching the tolerance

While teaching students, religious education is very important and vital to teaching students tolerance. Because when it comes to religion, we see how people start arguing and fighting with each other. It is this lack of confidence that leads to extremism. So as a religious teacher, it is very indispensable to make sure that you are not upbringing extremists. The biggest challenge for teachers is to teach tolerance to the students for the people or students who have different beliefs and to respect the religion of other people. Because the world has seen so many events in which lack of religious tolerance has led to the riot.

Can contradict with scientific teachings

Another challenge of teaching religious education is that, usually, religious education contradicts scientific knowledge and teachings. Dealing with the topic or lessons that contradict science is challenging for religious education teachers because these contradictions turn religious education classes into debate classes. And many times, religious education classes turn into debate classes because while teaching and learning religion, there are so many topics that lead to the debate. So the challenge for the teacher is to make sure that all the debate are informative and ends up with a conclusion that increases the knowledge of the students and clears their concept instead of creating religious conflict among the students.

Dealing with the cultural diversity

Not all the students in the class belong to the same class, background, culture, and religion. A classroom is a place that is full of diversity. Teaching these children is not a big deal unless you start teaching religious education. While teaching religious education, you also have to deal with cultural diversity too because the students who belong to cultural minority mat feel attacked or uncomfortable, which can disturb the discipline of the class. So, religious education teachers have to make sure that these differences should not disturb the discipline of the classroom.