Religious education promoted

Religious education must be taught in schools to positively impact the lives of students, a religious education coordinator says.
Sr Mary McCarthy, the national Catholic religious education coordinator, told The National that religious education teachers had found that this subject could be the most rewarding and also a challenging experience of their lives.
“The teaching of religious education in secondary schools is not meant to be a time for the teachers to be answering questions. It is a time for questioning personal values, ideas and concepts of God and life,” she said.
“Lessons should raise questions in the minds and hearts of students, questions that will encourage them to look closely at themselves and the world around them. These questions will be answered after time of silence and reflection,” she added.
“The syllabus at all levels promotes Christian living skills. Example, how to bring faith and life together, how to apply this process to any life situation, to making moral decisions and to social justice issues and others.”
The Christian living skills are the key outcome of the religious education programme in Catholic education agency schools.
Content areas for religious education include God, Jesus, church, prayer, sacraments, Bible, Christian living, religion and society.
Methods used aim for quality teaching and learning and a variety of teaching methods including shared Christian reflection.
The religious education curriculum includes assessment tasks, reporting by teachers to students and parents and the evaluation of the programme.