An interview with Martin Green, Teacher
Please introduce yourself and tell us something about your involvement with Carpenters School.
I’m Martin Green. I’ve been at Carpenters only a short while. I’m an NQT. The school is an inner city school in London. It’s in one of the poorer areas of the country but it’s a great school. It’s got a very friendly atmosphere: both the children and the staff are very positive. We’ve got some good facilities: big classrooms and outstanding IT equipment. I get to do a lot of the things I enjoy such as music and football. I love the banter with the children and it’s a great job.
RE is something that you have to teach. Do you enjoy that or do you approach it with dread?
You can opt not to teach RE but that’s probably very rare. When I first started teaching RE it was a little bit daunting. The first religion we were focussing on was Islam. It’s not something I knew a lot about other than what you can hear on the news – often not good news due to political problems. But I’ve got five or six Muslim children in my class who were very happy to share their knowledge with the rest of us. It was really good actually because one or two of those children are very quiet but they became the focus of the class and they enjoyed the opportunity to shine and be the information givers.
What do you think constitutes good teaching of RE?
I think I can present the facts and promote positive understanding of other religions. We have a society in which there are many different types of religions so it’s important they we have an understanding of each other so that we can get on well together.
RE can be a touchy subject for some people because it touches on faith and beliefs. How do you deal with the need to be aware of these sensitivities?
I’ll always be careful. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that would offend anyone though on one occasion I asked a child to bring in a prayer mat so we could have a look at it. Then one of the other children said that Christians shouldn’t touch a person’s prayer mat which surprised me because I knew the mats are important but I didn’t realise they might be considered sacred or sacrosanct. However, to be careful, I checked with the child who brought in the mat if it was okay for me to touch it and show it to everyone and actually there was no problem with that because it wasn’t her personal prayer mat, so it wasn’t a big deal. It’s a matter of being as sensitive as you can be. I’d be ready to apologise if I did something wrong. The children are very sensible and would explain things to me if I was about to make a mistake.
I do keep my eyes and ears open for intolerance. We have to remember that some of these children’s parents have profound religious beliefs and the children can be very passionate about their religion, which is only natural. The children study their religion outside of this school and sometimes there can be a problem with other children who have been taught slightly different things and there might be a slight conflict. I observed a quite heated debate between two children about what God was really like and they had slightly differing ideas on that subject which neither of them was willing to back down from. It’s easily dealt with - by actively promoting tolerance and acceptance.
Do you have any hang-ups about teaching Christianity?
Teaching Christianity is totally new to me, though, because of my background, I know much more about Christianity than any of the other religions. My subject knowledge of Christianity is sound, no problems with that. My own personal worry is that because I know more about it, I might subconsciously make Christianity more important than the other religions.
According to the law, Christianity is supposed to get about 60% of RE time.
I don’t think that’s appropriate for this school where so many of the children are not Christians. I think the teaching of religion should reflect the balance of the school. Teaching 60% Christianity would be inappropriate and wouldn’t add to our work towards tolerance.
And tolerance is more important to you?
The children are interested in other people’s religions and if, very occasionally, they have problems with other religions it’s primarily because of what they bring into the school from outside the school. There are many influences on a child’s mind: their parents, religious instructors, friends, television, etc,. I prefer to see a tolerant attitude towards all religions. The children are basically very tolerant and I believe that tolerance needs support in order to remain uppermost in their minds.