A religion lesson from a Godless man

The Godless man of the title being yours truly. Yesterday, I was asked to cover a Religious education lesson. Somebody else was supposed to do it, the task was to basically get info from the Bible, but she did not know much about Bible stories. Looking through the exercises with the other colleagues, one turned to me and said "Guillaume, you are quite knowledgeable, why don't you cover this one?" So I did. It was an interesting experience. On Fridays, the children are not into work that much so getting them to actually do the exercises was difficult. I was amazed to see how little they know about Christianity. I expected the Muslim pupils to have difficulties, but I could not believe how the Christian ones have no religious culture whatsoever, or barely any. I don' think they retained much of it. I told them some basic stuff, always stressing that this was according to the Bible and therefore not necessarily acurate. A colleague told me at the end of the class that their tutor does not believe in God, therefore does not teach them much RE. I said I am an atheist myself, but I still knew about the Bible, thanks to years of Catholic brainswash (I said "of being educated in a Catholic school system", but that is what I meant). I do think the kids should learn about religions, but they should definitely be critical towards them. The way the educational system is organised in England, with the Church of England being anything but separate from the state, keeping the pupils critical is difficult.

Nevertheless, there are reasons for secularists like myself to be happy. It seems that there are less and less religious young people in the UK. I got this info from the Atheist Experience blog.