Our Other Faiths Curriculum
Teaching of other faiths
In his life on earth Jesus showed a respect for those within and outside his own faith community.
Children today live in a fast changing global world, where communication and travel opens children to diversity and challenge. It is important that we prepare them for this.
The Church calls us to be committed to respecting people from other religions and to recognise that God is at work in them. The Church teaches that, whilst living out our Catholic faith, we are called to dialogue and be ready to learn from those of other faiths, are our neighbours.
Pupils are encouraged not simply to learn facts about other religions but to also reflect upon them and gain insights from them.
At St. Patrick’s, we teach other faiths separately in order to avoid confusion. Comparison can lead to inaccurate teaching and does not do justice to the integrity of each religion. Comparisons may be noted by the pupils, but that will not be the starting point of teaching.
Teaching of Judaism needs special attention because of the intrinsic relationships between Christianity and Judaism - our very roots lie in Judaism. However, while it is important to teach about Jesus' Jewish background this should be taught separately from modern Judaism as a world faith.
At St. Patrick’s, we spend two weeks each term focusing on one of three major religions - the final week and the first week of each half term: Sikhism in Autumn, Judaism in Spring and Islam in Summer.