Editorial

My excellent former colleague at RE Today, infant teacher Paul Newbould, showed me how to help 6-year-olds to see that RE is about big ideas and big questions. He asked his class to think about a red plastic chair he was...

The saying ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ is commonly attributed to Isaac Newton, though he borrowed the imagery from earlier writers. Its meaning is usually said to be that, if we can see further than former...

So there we were, some 30 or so years ago: the Gent family (me, my wife and two small children), our heads covered, bare-footed, standing on the cold roof of a newly built two-storey Sikh gurdwara in West Bromwich. As a...

My friend and ex-colleague John Rudge often referred to RE as being like Halley’s Comet: it shoots into view every 75 years, making it possible for each of us to see it twice in his or her lifetime. The comet was last...

As the legendary comedians Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett didn’t say, this edition’s editorial is really a hello from me and a goodbye from him. In truth, Bill Gent said goodbye in his last editorial (September...

While we were preparing this issue I came across the story of a dog in a dog collar. A chaplain who every week visited a home for people living with dementia told how he made no contribution until one day from...

We are all aware, I’m sure, of the disappointment felt in RE circles about the seeming lack of enthusiasm by government to implement much of what is recommended in the Commission on RE Report. There are, of course, the...

‘It’s the economy, stupid’ was coined by James Carville, campaign strategist of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against sitting president George H.W. Bush. If we were preparing a...

This is a report of a new initiative by Leicestershire SACRE, which used some of its surplus from its Agreed Syllabus launch events last year toprovide a walking tour for infants in Loughborough.

What are worldviews? The term ‘worldviews’ is often employed, and has been since Kant’s first use of ‘weltanschauung’ in 1790, but with a myriad of definitions (Naugle 2002). The RE Commission Report...

REtoday is honoured to feature this interview with Dr Hany El Banna, founder of the major international relief and development charity Islamic Relief. We suggest the interview and his life story is a great way to...

When reading the contributions to this edition of Professional REflection, two quotations came to mind. The first was from the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (1905): ‘Those who cannot remember the...

As everyone is aware, the Commission on Religious Education – which was established to review the legal, education and policy frameworks for RE in schools in England, with the ultimate aim of improving its quality and...

Most of us who have been professionally involved in RE must realise, I think, that constant reference to the ways and wisdom of the various religious traditions does rub off on us. So, when I decided to relinquish the...

Ninian Smart (1927–2001), that doyen of phenomenological religious studies, had a reputation as a raconteur. One tale that he told related to travelling in compartmentalised trains when a young university lecturer. As...

In the USA, it is impossible to get elected without praising religion. But in the UK, as the election is showing us, you are pretty well electorally doomed if you admit to being religious. Media crucifixion is a painful...

It was reported that the sixteenth-century French writer and inventor of the essay form – Montaigne – inscribed favourite sayings and quotations on his study ceiling. But there were others, too, who collected notable...

Everybody sang. The original musical instrument is the human voice.

Welcome to this issue of REtoday. The theme is wisdom. Scriptures from many traditions can be seen as collections of wisdom passed down the centuries, and if RE has an offer to pupils beyond the merely academic, then...