Religious freedom or ...?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... procedurally it must be wrong for teachers to have access to exam papers which are to be taken by students before the exam sittings, and any exam board which believes this to be acceptable can hardly deserve to be taken very seriously.

AFAIK, all Exam. Boards allow Centres time to check papers a half-hour before the Exam is due to start to ensure the correct papers have been included with the correct questions (by which I mean that a cover sheet for a History Exam doesn't contain the questions for the Biology Exam) and that quotations and references match precisely with set texts ... and [as has happened] that questions for next year's syllabus haven't been accidentally set. (Exam Boards devise "specimen" questions when they change syllabus content, and such questions can go into the wrong secretary's tray.) It's not cheating - it's to enable Exam Boards can be contacted to get the questions that they meant to supply.

An entirely different case here, of course, and I completely agree with the sheer good sense of your

Perhaps those involved should simply agree not to participate in exams, the contents of which they disagree with.

[JimD]

This

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-26482599

is a rather different issue, but I do wonder if Mr Gove gives any thought to the possible uses of his policies by those who see no difference between education and indoctrination.

[Flosshilde]

I would like to see a state of affairs in which state education would be completely secular,

Which is, more or less, the situation in the USA. It doesn't prevent, though, religious interference in what is taught in science and in the books pupils can read.

[Dave2002]

Which is, more or less, the situation in the USA. It doesn't prevent, though, religious interference in what is taught in science and in the books pupils can read.

It does mean that teachers have to be more careful about terminology. Christmas holidays do not exist - similarly Easter and other holidays. Easter, for example becomes Spring Break. Actually wikipedia - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_..._United_States does mention Christmas - but I believe this to be incorrect. In many school districts using terminology related to any religion would be improper.

There are also some problems with very specific religions, where teachers might try to put material into context which students might understand.
Religions which don't have significant festive occasions (there are some), or which don't accept representations of physical objects or impose other restrictions on allowed thought or practices by their observers, can cause severe headaches for teachers. Multi-culturalism is not such a big problem - many kids of different religions are aware of some of the practices in other religions, and are tolerant of these, so can generalise across different festive holidays, and different concepts, but religions which are very limited in allowed practices can present big problems for teachers. Analogic reasoning can break down completely.

[jean]

...Easter, for example becomes Spring Break....

Are you sure that's not at least partly because they've standardised the date - I note the article says the Spring Break is usually around Easter.

We did the same with out Spring Bank Holiday some years back, and we no longer refer to it as Whitsun because it isn't, necessarily.

[Dave2002]

Mrs D taught maths in a school in California for a couple of years. There was a lot of kerfuffle if she mentioned Christian calendar dates - Christmas, Easter etc. The teachers were told to stick with non religious terminology. It seemed to be very deliberate - not accidental at all. Religion is a no-no in US public schools. On the other hand patriotism/nationalism, saluting the flag and swearing allegiance each day is OK.

[amateur51]

Mrs D taught maths in a school in California for a couple of years. There was a lot of kerfuffle if she mentioned Christian calendar dates - Christmas, Easter etc. The teachers were told to stick with non religious terminology. It seemed to be very deliberate - not accidental at all. Religion is a no-no in US public schools. On the other hand patriotism/nationalism, saluting the flag and swearing allegiance each day is OK.

I understand this to be following the constitutional separation between religions and the secular US state.

[Dave2002]

I understand this to be following the constitutional separation between religions and the secular US state.

That's pretty much as I understand it, too.

[Dave2002]

fhg msg 16

Of course teachers and schools should have access to papers a few minutes - perhaps up to 30 minutes before an exam for various checking purposes. This is normally part of the procedure. Sometimes corrections and amendments do have to be noted, but the intention is not that schools should be allowed to doctor exam papers to suit their own purposes.

I don't know what "accidents" have happened with national or regional exams, but I am aware of exams where the students were presented with answers to the questions in error! As they say "stuff happens!"

[MrGongGong]

fhg msg 16

Of course teachers and schools should have access to papers a few minutes - perhaps up to 30 minutes before an exam for various checking purposes. This is normally part of the procedure. Sometimes corrections and amendments do have to be noted, but the intention is not that schools should be allowed to doctor exam papers to suit their own purposes.

I don't know what "accidents" have happened with national or regional exams, but I am aware of exams where the students were presented with answers to the questions in error! As they say "stuff happens!"

Erm WHY ?

The people who write exam papers are, or should be, experts and the papers should have been proof read. Having teachers allowed to open them in advance and "check" them undermines the independence of the exam board IMV

Yes "Stuff happens", I once worked at a school where the music teacher had taught his A level students the wrong set works completely but it's not the place of individual schools to judge the exams in advance. If they don't trust them they will switch boards.

This is clearly out of order though.
Once we de-establish the church and stop having sky fairy believers deciding on what should be taught then things will be much better IMV.

[Pabmusic]

I understand this to be following the constitutional separation between religions and the secular US state.

It's the First Amendment to the Constitution: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...' This has been interpreted as forbidding government support or sanctioning of religion, which includes religious activities, services, prayers, etc on government property. Surprisingly, there's a body of (mainly Southern) Republicans who argue that it really means that Christianity is exempted from the First Amendment, since the Founding Fathers assumed that it would be a Christian society (odd, since many of them, like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, were decidedly not Christians).