Our Young Ambassadors for RE team at Venerable Bede Church of England Academy wanted to try to expand the idea of promoting RE beyond our school to the local area. We were amazed when the Sunderland Echo agreed to run an article with a response email. Our article generated a varied response from some of the 75,000 daily readers. Some of the responses are located below.
We should learn about other people’s beliefs and values because everyone believes there is a meaning to something. The more people you know and learn about, the more knowledge you have of the meanings for many other different things. It is better to find out about others beliefs and values because they may help you in the future. It is also better to be able to appreciate the other beliefs and values others worship, by doing this it also helps expand your knowledge of other people around the world.
I think that we should learn about each other’s beliefs and values because everyone’s different, everyone has different beliefs, opinions about certain things and different values therefore you should be open to learn about what others think and believe, you can learn things, you don’t hold the answer to everything.
You can’t just ‘turn a blind eye’ to others because they’re different to you i.e. a different coloured skin, different beliefs etc. Everyone is different. You can look and learn from others, and see how they look at life.
I think learning about other people’s beliefs and values helps some people understand other cultures and religions a bit better. For example some Muslims get a lot of racial comments because some Muslims have been convicted of terrorism, not all Muslims are terrorists so I think a lot of them are misunderstood. I understand that some people do not like to learn about other people’s religions but it will help give them a bit more insight as to what people from other religions and with other beliefs are like and what they believe in. They don’t have to like what they hear but giving them the time of day will make them feel appreciated and humbled at the fact someone is willing to listen. Too many people nowadays are small minded and don’t want to know about anyone but themselves.
We feel these responses are very encouraging as Sunderland is not always accepting with other cultures although it is becoming a more multicultural city and to have this article in the local newspaper is a great step in the right direction to encourage the city to be more tolerant to people’s different beliefs and values.
We will let you know about more of our projects soon.
Venerable Bede RE Ambassadors