What is it like
teaching religion in the schools?

What’s in a name?

By Paul Reed

Religious Education Coordinator Catholic Regional College

It was the look of disdain on an otherwise attractive face that awoke me to the fact that the school year had begun, and that I had once again unwittingly consented to go into battle on behalf of the forces of wisdom and insight against youthful ignorance and certitude. As the religious education coordinator of a seniour Catholic secondary college, I had held out the optimistic, almost naïve, belief that this year would be different. That my students would come rushing to class thirsting for information and knowledge, and respecting me in the process as the guru, the master, the teacher.

It took five minutes to burst the bubble.

Of course I should have been prepared. It’s happened every year to me since I took on teaching religious education as a vocation. My passion versus juvenile ignorance. Wise heads (all of them more experienced teachers or parents of teenagers) would already be nodding with fatalistic consolation. Good on you for trying, but you never really had a hope.

For months I’d been planning the subject. I’d even changed the name. Don’t call it Texts and Traditions, Narrative Texts, whatever the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority had named it. They’ll know it’s a study of the Bible straight away. Boring! So I’d called it Religion Through Story. I liked the name, and I thought I could deceive the unsuspecting, immature Catholic student to enter the subject with at least a modicum of interest until I could seduce them with the power and poetry of the biblical narrative along with my own magnetic charm.

So I ask you, who really is the ignorant one in the classroom? They say everyone makes mistakes. The fool makes the same one twice. So what do you call a passionate religion teacher who begins each year enthused by the content of the Christian scriptures as the basis for an academic study believing it will excite and enliven?

And then came the withering look. A sixteen year old girl who I’d just met looking at me as if I personified Brussels sprouts, the ABC news and her parents daggy pictures from the seventies, all mixed together and prepared for a force feeding. She didn’t even give me a chance to connect, to bond. I was reminded of Frank Burns from the TV program MASH, asking, “Why do people take an instant dislike to me?” The response, a caustic, “It saves them time.” My subject, the one I loved, and the students who were compelled to be in my class, had some serious connection problems. They weren’t going to even give my stories a chance. Especially as I present them in the traditional declamatory fashion; coloured board markers my one condescension to modern communication methods.

Like any self-respecting teacher in a difficult position, I pulled out the authoritarian card and got them working. Had I been too busy preparing for the minutiae to actually stop and prepare for the bigger battle? In this moment’s respite, I figured I needed to gain control and so tried to match obscure names on my class list with indiscriminate faces seated in rows before me. My biblical knowledge had taught me that knowing the name brings power. Years of teaching had confirmed this. Get their names and you’ll have control.

“What are you doing?”

It was she again. When I wanted her attention I got distain. Now I wanted her occupied and she was watching me like a hawk as I married names to faces.

“Whose that?”

“What?”

“What’s her name?”

“Antoinette” I replied, more with bravado than confidence.

“And her?”

“Brooke.”

“Him?”

“Don’t know” I despairingly admitted. After all, it was still early in the first class.

“Fair enough” and she got on with her work.

My first story for the year: The girl not interested in any story other than whether I was interested in her and her fellow classmate’s stories. Did I care enough to know them first before I tried to impart my theoretical knowledge. Wasn’t that Jesus’ message? Love them personally, unconditionally, unilaterally. And this story always, everywhere, begins with a name. The name. My name. It holds the hidden story.

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