As a principal teacher of many years' experience and an ex-minister in the Church of Scotland, I disagree utterly with Andrea Steele and her views on the veto over jobs issue. Once again, we have separate issues being lumped together and considered as a whole. The different slant to religion found in non-denominational schools, it seems, is inferior by inference. This seems to be because it takes account of all religions; surely this is not bad but to be commended. If members of the Roman Catholic faith wish to recognise important parts of their religious calendar with the appropriate leader of that faith, it should be possible to accommodate this within any school. This could also include the celebration of such days as the Buddhist Wesak festival; there are not so many as to make this impossible.
Religious education is another matter and is separate from worship of a particular denomination. Religious, moral and philosophical education is recognised to be an academic study on a par with all other subjects and examined on a par with all other subjects. It is not about indoctrination and requires a teacher capable of separating their own views and opinions from such academic study. It may well be the case that such a study makes worship more meaningful, but that would be a consequence of a study that has challenged pupils to question their own moral and religious stances. I know many RMPS teachers of many faiths and none who day in and day out achieve just this with their pupils and enable them to enter society with an understanding of other faiths and cultures.
The time has come for us to treat all people equally in all respects, and this includes all within the teaching profession. The place for faith leaders is conducting worship for members of their community, not saying who should be involved in the teaching within schools.
Rev T R Taylor JP, 79 Struan Place, Inverkeithing.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article