Editorial

For many of us, a new year – more than any other time - is a time for reflection and introspection, bringing opportunities for personal and professional renewal. For teachers, the Winter break from school may have...

This term’s magazine explores the place of personal worldviews in RE.

Famously, J.R.R. Tolkien has a poem that includes the line ‘Not all those who
wander are lost.’¹ In many religions, to wander is to wonder. Pilgrims travel to
places they have imagined all their...

‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’ says the Psalmist in Psalm 34. Sacred words for 3,000 years to Jewish people, Christians and (slightly differently) Muslims. That might add up to 55 per cent of the world’s...

Martin Buber (1878–1965), a great Jewish philosopher of personhood, says in his book I and Thou (Touchstone 1970): ‘Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.’ Perhaps a part of his...

RE trainees began their RE journey across the country. It is also 50 years since I began my RE journey in Worcestershire. In fact, the current group of excellent trainees at Exeter will be the last group of either...

This term’s REtoday magazine will arrive on thousands of desks across the UK and the world in the most extraordinary times. As I write, schools are closing, examinations being cancelled, children worrying, young people...

In this edition we go ‘beyond words’ in practical and philosophical terms. In the last edition we introduced Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan through her poetry. In this edition we explore more of her work, which addresses...

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a 1989 American science fiction comedy buddy film in which a pair of wild young men meet characters from history with, as they say, ‘hilarious results’. Switching contexts,...

Are the scriptures of different religions just for the members of each religion, or are they in some sense for humanity in total? The question gets near the heart of RE’s purposes. Many PhDs have been written by those...

Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on Man’ (1734) is a brilliant reflection on what it means to be human: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of Mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle...

The opening sentence of my favourite Buddhist scripture, the Dhammapada, says: ‘All that we are is the result of what we have thought: we are formed and moulded by our thoughts.’ The emphasis on the place of the...

Pope Francis spoke recently about: … the contradiction of those who want to defend Christianity in the West, and, on the other hand, are against refugees and other religions … The sickness or, you can say the sin,...

Worldviews, said the recent English Commission on RE, are ubiquitous. Everyone has one, and like a thumbprint they all look very similar but are actually unique. Everyone sees the world from where they stand, and so we...

As most of you will be aware, a central purpose of Professional REflection in REtoday is to enable teachers to engage with research from academics working in the field, translated from academic journal writing into a...

Matthew Arnold (1822–88), poet, headmaster of Rugby and essayist, gave this idea to the educational world. Perhaps his best-known book is Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he argues for the role of reading ‘the...

In this edition we are thinking about ‘stories’: the stories we tell children, the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that challenge and inspire us.

Which subject of the curriculum does these kinds of things and sets these kinds of purposes and intentions? • The learning provides the foundations for understanding the world. • Pupils seek answers to questions...

‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’ Soren Kierkegaard, Danish existentialist philosopher, 1813–1855. If philosophers talked like that more often, would they be more popular? I...