Religion classes in school - Megathread

Robert Rodriguez9 said:If they did it that way, the classes would be set right at enrollment, which would prevent all this messy reshuffling later on.

Spot on.

Lawrence Torres56 said:Have you even checked with the administration at your school, just to confirm that things aren't actually happening exactly the way you're assuming?😁

Look, I really don't want to step on any toes by commenting on how things go down at your specific school since I don't know the local vibe there, but from what I've seen at mine (and the other two nearby), the staff goes absolutely overboard trying to play ball with whatever parents want...
For instance, we have two kids in our class who skip the religion lessons, but it wasn't because the school was trying to pad out some teacher's hourly quota; it happened because it was the only way to satisfy their parents' specific demands.

I'm not "guessing,"🙂
just using some basic common sense here...
As a parent, this stuff doesn't really get under my skin enough to start a massive protest, but honestly, I think the teachers and even the kids would have a much easier time if things were handled the way I'm describing.

When we were doing enrollment, nobody bothered to ask me about my personal preferences or anything like that.😕 So, I have no clue what the "traditions" are like in other school districts out there.
The only thing they asked was whether my kid was doing religious studies or after-school care, and that was pretty much the end of it.

P.S. Mods, sorry for the delay—I'm reading these in chunks so I can reply to everyone individually.🙂

They asked us if we had any specific preferences when it comes to arranging the kids' schedules

redridge13 said:Look, I'm talking about what's actually happening on the ground at our school.
During enrollment, everyone knew exactly how many kids weren't doing the religious studies, yet they still stuck to the class groupings they did.
Why? Because some administrator refuses to let their precious master schedule get messed up.

They’d rather screw over five elementary teachers by leaving massive gaps in their schedules just so one religious studies teacher can keep a perfect, uninterrupted block. Pure nonsense.

Have you considered that maybe enough kids signed up for a non-religious track, but there are still too many other students to simply merge or shrink the existing classes?
To make everyone happy, the Department of Education would have to create an entirely new classroom, which would automatically blow up the weekly schedule for every single teacher, not just the one teaching religion.

rowdypanther12 said:They asked us if we had any specific preferences when it comes to arranging the kids' schedules

Not for us. Not even close. They basically scattered them just to make sure the little religious groups get totally broken up.

Donna Taylor5 said:Have you considered that maybe enough kids signed up for a non-religious track, but there are still too many other students to simply merge or shrink the existing classes?
To make everyone happy, the Department of Education would have to create an entirely new classroom, which would automatically blow up the weekly schedule for every single teacher, not just the one teaching religion.

Oh, for crying out loud...
🙄 Look,
the smallest class—and yeah, the class sizes aren't all equal—has fewer kids in it than there are non-religious students in the whole grade level. The number of "lost sheep" is exactly enough to fill one single class.
Every single first grader takes the exact SAME curriculum except for that one subject; there isn't some other variable in this equation.
What kind of "extra classes" are you even talking about?
I don't get what part of my posts isn't making sense.
Or are you just playing dumb?
🤷

redridge13 said:Not for us. Not even close. They basically scattered them just to make sure the little religious groups get totally broken up.

Oh, for crying out loud...
🙄 Look,
the smallest class—and yeah, the class sizes aren't all equal—has fewer kids in it than there are non-religious students in the whole grade level. The number of "lost sheep" is exactly enough to fill one single class.
Every single first grader takes the exact SAME curriculum except for that one subject; there isn't some other variable in this equation.
What kind of "extra classes" are you even talking about?
I don't get what part of my posts isn't making sense.
Or are you just playing dumb?
🤷

So, those little pseudo-intellectual first graders sitting in their own special classes today will eventually become the arrogant snobs of tomorrow, right?

I get the feeling you throw around theories a little too recklessly.
You clearly have no clue about the actual number of first graders or how many special education requirements dictate class sizes, yet you’re already jumping to conclusions. You think this is all just a scheme to protect some colleague's schedule? Please. It's not that simple.

Donna Taylor5 said:So, those little pseudo-intellectual first graders sitting in their own special classes today will eventually become the arrogant snobs of tomorrow, right?

I get the feeling you throw around theories a little too recklessly.
You clearly have no clue about the actual number of first graders or how many special education requirements dictate class sizes, yet you’re already jumping to conclusions. You think this is all just a scheme to protect some colleague's schedule? Please. It's not that simple.

Yeah, and?

edit: obviously I know exactly how many freshmen there are and which specific classes they're in.
As for the kids with special accommodations—I don't know. Maybe that's why they didn't pull them into a separate group.
Or maybe it isn't... ☕

redridge13 said:Yeah, and?

edit: obviously I know exactly how many freshmen there are and which specific classes they're in.
As for the kids with special accommodations—I don't know. Maybe that's why they didn't pull them into a separate group.
Or maybe it isn't... ☕

Then comes the scheduling phase where teachers get slapped with extra hours automatically—because instead of having two classes, they’ve added a third one filled with non-religious kids.
Someone has to foot the bill for those hours.
And the people in charge? They won't pay unless their hands are tied.

They’d rather let kids wander the halls than pay for an extra 11 or 12 specialized instructors.

Look, we can agree to disagree, but you already pointed out that for this debate to work, we need the exact headcount of students wanting religious studies versus those needing accommodations. That’s how classes are formed—if you have more than three students requiring special accommodations, the district has to split the class.
Right now, I’m teaching two classes that both have four students requiring accommodations.
It shouldn't be allowed, but it happens because splitting a class requires budget for extra teaching hours (which, in my case, would mean 4 extra hours of pay).

Anyway, take a breath and stop getting worked up 🙂!

🙂 🙂 🙂

I'm officially throwing in the towel 👋

Lawrence Torres56 said:Nah, I don't see it that way at all—to me, it doesn't feel like segregation, it just feels like respecting what different groups actually want.
Personally, I think it's a way better option than forcing one side to swallow something they have absolutely no interest in.

But isn't forcing someone to participate in an election they have no interest in—right in the middle of their scheduled time—just another way of being disrespectful to the other group?

In our future school model, we won't have a set number of grades per year. Some spots will just have one grade, some two, and others three. It’s not about religious studies or anything, but it's definitely an option. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that if a school is short on hours, they could just make up the difference at another location. 🤔

Robert Rodriguez9 said:In our future school model, we won't have a set number of grades per year. Some spots will just have one grade, some two, and others three. It’s not about religious studies or anything, but it's definitely an option. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that if a school is short on hours, they could just make up the difference at another location. 🤔

Both of my colleagues work at two different schools simultaneously.
And once you lose those guaranteed hours, you instantly become redundant—leaving the Department of Education or the Diocese (in their case) 🤔 to scramble for available hours across the state.

a) I haven't actually heard of a situation where a kid gets enrolled right off the bat with an adapted curriculum. Usually, it works like this—they start first grade, the school does some observations, then they send you off for specialist evaluations, and at the very earliest, maybe during the second semester, you finally get a decision on an adapted program. So, yeah, that’s just one of those things I can't really have figured out right at the moment of enrollment.

b) Sarah Hall53, I don't think you're quite catching my drift here. Nobody is suggesting we take two existing classes and split them into two religious ones and one non-religious one—that's not the point. What people are actually asking is why, in a situation where there are three mixed classes containing about 17 or 18 non-religious kids total, they didn't just set up two dedicated religious classes with maybe twenty students each, plus one separate class for the non-religious kids.
I mean, if they can manage to make two after-school care classes and one regular class—and it's not like student numbers or their abilities are stopping them from doing that—then the real reason they aren't forming a non-religious class might just be a) protecting the religious instructor's teaching hours, or b) basically putting indirect pressure on parents to sign their kids up for religious studies just so they don't end up with a massive gap in their child's daily schedule.

wanderingbadger44 said:

I haven't heard from you in a while, SOHO_. wanderingbadger44 says: What would a religion teacher actually lose if the rest of the class decided they’d rather opt out of the course entirely? It feels like a bit of a hollow victory for those who choose to skip, almost like a coach losing their entire roster right before the big game—you’re left standing on the field with nothing to coach and no one to guide. The whole issue really traces back to the Department of Education and how they authorize the formation of new classroom sections. It’s a bit like a domino effect; once you increase the number of classes, you’re essentially forced to expand the weekly schedules for every teacher—take history teachers, for instance, who would see an extra couple of hours added to their load. And of course, as those teaching hours climb, the school is then obligated to bump up the teachers' salaries accordingly. It feels like everything you look at lately, even when it comes to stuff like HBO, just points toward some kind of grand conspiracy. 🙄.

Let's try it this way:
With a hundred first graders enrolling this year, the school ended up splitting them into five separate classrooms.
Out of those hundred kids, twenty of them aren't even stepping foot in religion class.
I could potentially set up four religious studies departments along with one secular one.

The schedule stays exactly the same for all the teachers, even those handling specialized subjects in the upper grades. Whether we shuffle things around or not, the number of classrooms doesn't change—it’s five sections regardless of how you slice it. So, everyone ends up with the same workload, with one exception: the religion teacher, who has one fewer section, which works out to two fewer hours on their plate.

Yeah, one of the main reasons is that they’re just squeezing every last cent out of teachers through their hourly rates. It lines up perfectly with the other issue, which is basically just legalized segregation. Honestly, I’d take outright discrimination over this kind of systemic segregation any day. 👋

I find myself constantly coming back to this one rather bittersweet mathematical truth: for every single physicist we produce, there were four teachers who paved the way. For every chemist, there are four teachers behind them. For every biologist, you can count on four teachers. And when it comes to a musician, you’re looking at at least six dedicated educators who helped shape that talent.

It feels like we only get a tiny glimpse of physics, chemistry, and biology during those two years in middle school—just a couple of hours a week—yet religious studies gets four times the attention, staying on the schedule for all eight years of elementary and middle school. It’s a bit like spending all your time studying the history of a hobby while barely scratching the surface of how the actual tools work.

If we assume that religion classes are being taught with the same frequency across almost all high schools, then the math gets even more unsettling when you realize there are schools out there that don't even offer biology, chemistry, or physics.

wanderingbadger44 said:wanderingbadger44 said:

I haven't heard from you in a while, SOHO_. wanderingbadger44 says: What would a religion teacher actually lose if the rest of the class decided they’d rather opt out of the course entirely? It feels like a bit of a hollow victory for those who choose to skip, almost like a coach losing their entire roster right before the big game—you’re left standing on the field with nothing to coach and no one to guide. The whole issue really traces back to the Department of Education and how they authorize the formation of new classroom sections. It’s a bit like a domino effect; once you increase the number of classes, you’re essentially forced to expand the weekly schedules for every teacher—take history teachers, for instance, who would see an extra couple of hours added to their load. And of course, as those teaching hours climb, the school is then obligated to bump up the teachers' salaries accordingly. It feels like everything you look at lately, even when it comes to stuff like HBO, just points toward some kind of grand conspiracy. 🙄.

Let's try it this way:
With a hundred first graders enrolling this year, the school ended up splitting them into five separate classrooms.
Out of those hundred kids, twenty of them aren't even stepping foot in religion class.
I could potentially set up four religious studies departments along with one secular one.

The schedule stays exactly the same for all the teachers, even those handling specialized subjects in the upper grades. Whether we shuffle things around or not, the number of classrooms doesn't change—it’s five sections regardless of how you slice it. So, everyone ends up with the same workload, with one exception: the religion teacher, who has one fewer section, which works out to two fewer hours on their plate.

Yeah, one of the main reasons is that they’re just squeezing every last cent out of teachers through their hourly rates. It lines up perfectly with the other issue, which is basically just legalized segregation. Honestly, I’d take outright discrimination over this kind of systemic segregation any day. 👋

I find myself constantly coming back to this one rather bittersweet mathematical truth: for every single physicist we produce, there were four teachers who paved the way. For every chemist, there are four teachers behind them. For every biologist, you can count on four teachers. And when it comes to a musician, you’re looking at at least six dedicated educators who helped shape that talent.

It feels like we only get a tiny glimpse of physics, chemistry, and biology during those two years in middle school—just a couple of hours a week—yet religious studies gets four times the attention, staying on the schedule for all eight years of elementary and middle school. It’s a bit like spending all your time studying the history of a hobby while barely scratching the surface of how the actual tools work.

If we assume that religion classes are being taught with the same frequency across almost all high schools, then the math gets even more unsettling when you realize there are schools out there that don't even offer biology, chemistry, or physics.

That is just awful 😢

Yesterday, a colleague managed to get under my skin so badly during our ten-minute drive from work to school that I went out of my way to avoid her entirely today.
She seems to think all first graders should start their education with the exact same schedule and subjects, without any gaps or being separated from their main teacher. She believes they need to establish a routine of arriving and leaving school, and she argues that having religious studies as the first or last period makes that impossible. Her logic is that because it's offered, every child should take it just to maintain that structure.
She actually suggested that I’m doing my child a disservice because she’ll spend two extra hours bonding with her teacher. She implied that if the teacher gets to know her and these two other kids better than the rest of the class, it would be "unfair" to everyone else, and that as an expert working with other children, I should have been more mindful of the whole class instead of my own kid. 🤮 🤮

Since I'm a devout believer heading toward retirement and I sing in the church choir, I didn't feel like getting into a debate about Vatican agreements or my personal views on God and the meaning of faith. I just told her that it’s an elective, and as long as it’s an elective, I am perfectly free to choose whether or not we participate.
I did agree with her regarding the routine part; I think it is helpful for kids to have one primary teacher at the start of school—maybe two if they stay for after-school programs—rather than having one main teacher, one for after-school care, one for religious studies, one for English, and one for PE or art. If you have specialists with reduced hours, a child enters the world facing a massive crowd of people with a mountain of demands (not to mention all the extracurricular activities).

Then, as I was leaving today, she tells me she’s been thinking about what I said. She actually thinks it’s silly that we added religious studies to the curriculum for the little ones, claiming it’s too "adult" for them anyway, and that they aren't learning anything in those lower-grade classes that they couldn't learn at home or that practicing Christians don't already know.

Looking at your statistics now, I think I'll bring that up to her on Monday.
Who knows, maybe she'll spread the word through the whole church. 🤣 🙂
(Maybe then they'll drop foreign languages in the lower grades and just move the religious studies teacher to the after-school program 🧐 so the kids don't end up with too many different teachers. 🙂)

silentraven6 said:But isn't forcing someone to participate in an election they have no interest in—right in the middle of their scheduled time—just another way of being disrespectful to the other group?

Well, I guess it all depends on your perspective, doesn't it?
Personally speaking, I feel like my own choices are mine and mine alone—they shouldn't be treated like some kind of universal rule that everyone else is suddenly obligated to pivot around just to suit me...

Is it even right to judge someone's faith?

It’s not about judging someone's faith, but rather their understanding of it.🤷

Larry Walker24 said:Is it even right to judge someone's faith?

Of course not. It’s just like trying to measure how much someone loves their hometown; you can't really put a number on it, which is why everyone ends up getting an A. 👏

wanderingbadger44 said:Of course not. It’s just like trying to measure how much someone loves their hometown; you can't really put a number on it, which is why everyone ends up getting an A. 👏

It’s funny, I actually heard a few parents complaining that religion class shouldn't even count as a real subject, and they can't wrap their heads around someone getting a 4 😁
My goodness, I’m literally quoting one parent here: "Instead of raising her GPA, she's getting a 4! Now she's dragging the average down, this is insane!" 😁