Angel
New Member
Pamela Torrington. PHOTO/SAM TATTERSFIELD
SAM TATTERSFIELD
Sam.tattersfield@age.co.nz
Fourteen years ago, Pamela Torrington’s job was to advise the Bristol City Council in England on how schools should teach faith.
Now she lives in Masterton and believes New Zealand could learn a thing or two about accommodating religions in New Zealand.
She was part of Bristol’s Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education when they produced a publication called Matters of Faith – A Journey to Understanding, aimed at helping schools understand and accommodate students practising different religions.
In light of the debate prompted by the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, she believes more could be done in New Zealand on the subject.
Torrington says there are six major faiths with worshippers around the globe – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, and Judaism – and children should have a basic level of understanding of all of them by the time they reach adulthood.
“After the Christchurch terror attacks, Muslims were amazed that people were interested in going in to their mosque,” she said.
“They said nobody’s ever asked before, they’ve never shown interest in their faith.
“I’m sure the same is the case with Sikhs, of which there are loads in New Zealand, and I bet most people have never gone in to a Sikh temple or shown interest in it at all, which makes them separate groups.”
In Masterton, there was a large Indian community, Torrington said, but not much understanding or even awareness of Hindu festivals like Diwali.
“I don’t think people here would know about it.”
Nor was there understanding of Muslim festivals like Eid to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
“Christmas is a statutory day off here – do they allow pupils to have a day off for Eid? Do they even know what it is?
“If a child came up to them and said, ‘It’s Eid next week, I need to have a day off’, I’m not sure teachers would know what they’re talking about.”
Matters of Faith contains information about festivals so teachers can work out when to allow holidays.
The book contains information about the origins, core beliefs, implications for schools, and places of worship in the area for the major religions, which could be put in a New Zealand context, and with minor tweaks, she thinks, could be useful to councils and corporations.
It would help them understand how, when, and why devotees practise their religions, so a Muslim pupil in a school, for example, could have exemption to leave class for Friday prayers just after noon.
She thinks it’s a shame our secular education system paints factual education on all major religions with the same brush as proselytising – attempting to convert people to one religion.
“It’s about understanding,” she said.
Britain’s religious education system wasn’t perfect, she said, but it tried harder to understand religions than New Zealand’s did
The changes began in the 1940s in response to the horrors of the Holocaust only a few years before, she said.
In New Zealand, especially in a place like Masterton, there were often few followers of religions other than Christianity, and they could easily feel isolated and separate from mainstream society.
Torrington said she was shocked that a new building for Canterbury’s regional council, built after the earthquakes, didn’t have a prayer room for Muslims, despite having Muslim employees, and guessed Masterton District Council wouldn’t either.
Council spokeswoman Shanna Crispin confirmed the council didn’t have a dedicated prayer room.
She said staff could book meeting rooms, and many staff would soon move to Waiata House, where the council was “looking at what we can design to cater to the well-being needs of our employees such as prayer, breast-feeding and meditation”.
“It is likely to be one room available for these uses.”
Thank you
https://times-age.co.nz/teaching-is-not-preaching/