Shap Journal 2001/2002

Living Community

Reflections on Community from a Classroom
Grounded in a Community of Communities.

Elizabeth Wayne
and Year 8 students at Soar Valley
Community College, Leicester

My community is important to me because
I have a lot of relatives in this part of the
community. There are schools nearby,
and a lot of shops. I like it because I have
a lot of friends ... they live nearby.... I like my neigh-
bourhood, unlike the one I lived in before.'

'I live in a mixed community where there are Muslims and
Hindus. There are mosques and temples nearby. My friends
are Hindus and Muslims.'

These Year 8 (12+ year old) students are developing in
their writing an understanding of community based
around their sense of belonging. They belong to a local
area geographically, in an identifiable neighbourhood
and also experience belonging based on faith and often
ethnic identity. There is an assumption of a presence of
faith implicit in many of their responses.

Their particular locality within Leicester is an area
where there are people and places of faith from many
traditions including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Muslims
and Jains. In the city as a whole there are also Jewish
people, Buddhists and Baha'i as well as many other
people.

'My community is very important to me. The local area that
I live in is very friendly and we all are friendly towards each
other, no matter what their religion is. I have friends of
many backgrounds, but we never ever fight about religious
matters. I believe that living that as a community is very
important because it is a part of our lives. My family is
friends with the families on our streets- I have never ever
seen them fight over religions, - this is because we live as a
community.'

'Community shows more unity towards God, also it is
important as it shows care for each other and praises God...'

Where young people are trying to understand who they
are and what their own background is, it appears to
help their commitment to the local area. Community
leaders, police, education and youth leaders need to be
both supportive and understanding of each other for the
common good.

Or as one year 8 pupil explained it
'The people in my community are very special because we all
share the same rules, we all eat and drink (sufficient) and we
have freedom. In Leicester I have learned to accept all the
communities and to know that we are all a community
together. My friends understand that too, my family has told
me to accept anybody from any community the way they
are. At school we have different communities and I have
friends from different backgrounds.
...I understand that communities are better together all
together. I am proud to be who I am and (to learn) where my
community came from. I have learnt that communities are
very important.'

And another more briefly said:

'An area with many faiths in it... I consider myself quite
lucky!'

Issues for education...

Resources

In school we need to remember communities are not
fixed units; they change and develop for many
reasons. This raises important issues as to how they are
represented in textbooks and other resources used in the
classroom, and questions concerning how the internal
diversity of faiths is approached in a fair and meaningful
way. Our department has been heavily influenced by the
value of the interpretive approach, particularly using
ideas from the work at the University of Warwick. As
part of a repertoire of ideas it has helped sensitise us to
such issues and questions, not just when using
commercially produced resources, but in evaluating
some of our own as well. The recently transmitted
(2000) BBC television series Belief File programmes on
Sikhism and in particular that on Commitment
(programme 2), led to a piece of Year 9 (13 year old)
work where students had to consider how the
interviewees who had been initiated into the Khalsa and
those who were not ready to make that decision differed
in their thinking; thus the students were becoming
aware of internal differences in a very practical way.
Another example was when interviews with a person
who had undertaken confirmation were used alongside
the experience of the believer's baptism of a friend; in
this students met forms of Christian commitment in two
differing ways and had to consider where there were
similarities within the faith as well as identifying
significant differences.

The children

Attempting to reflect a 'true' picture of the faith is also
vital as the feeling of inclusion and identification for the
child in the faith will be sadly lacking if the only
representations they see are remote from their own
experiences in their faith community.  For example,
what is the effect for

•   the young Christian child who only hears about
infant baptism and nothing of dedication and
believer's baptism?

•   the Sikh who is from a family where few have
taken amrit and have not joined the Khalsa?

•   and for the Hindu who does not use images as much
as the teacher might be emphasising in class?

In a school community where there are many children
who identify with a faith tradition, we also recognise
that we need to be especially aware of how we help
young people with no faith tradition and those who
have dual faith traditions in their family so that they do
not feel disenfranchised. In other schools the child with
a faith tradition may be in a reverse position.

The teacher

If the teacher is part of a faith community, decisions
have to be made about how much of the community she
belongs to or her own commitments and feelings are
shared with the pupils. Pupils' questions - 'Miss, were
you confirmed?' 'Have you got godchildren?'  may mean
that they realise something about the promises and,
therefore, beliefs you hold personally. 'What did it feel like
when you visited...?' Do you tell them it was the tingle
factor and a deeply significant place (in this case the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem) or explain
always in a depersonalised way? One may be a member
of a community professionally at school, but that does
not negate many other communities including that of
faith tradition. If one is a member of a SACRE as a faith
representative, rather than a teacher, this will become
obvious to other adults. Ultimately it will be down to
professionalism, the local situation, the awareness of the
power relationship in the classroom and many other
factors as to what and when it is appropriate to divulge,
but this is something that needs to be recognised,
perhaps particularly where community identities are
strong.

Sensitivity and awareness

Where there are communities in tension, perhaps in
another country or in another part of Britain, teachers
should have an awareness of this; they then need - with
the school leadership - a shared understanding of how
to address these issues in the school. There is no room
for the conflicts of another country, or area, to overflow
as conflict into school life - but it is often necessary to
address them. Recognition of the conflict in another
place is necessary but we, who may be of the same faiths
or cultural origins, should be trying to work together for
the common good. This would seem to be a basic
premise for all discussion in school.

Disasters such as floods or earthquakes are all the more
poignant when students or their families and friends are
involved. It may bring the institution together in a
shared way, as was evident in the experiences after the
Gujarat earthquake in India in January 2001, where
students from differing backgrounds, not just those most
closely linked to the area hit, wanted to respond
immediately with financial contributions in our college.

Returning to the young people, who are part of the
present community, not just the community of the
future, they raise some of the issues that are important
for all ages:

What is the community you come from? Is it........

•   The place you or your forebears come from or
identify with?

•   The place you geographically live, and the people
there - whatever their backgrounds?

•   The people you worship with or share a faith and
sense of belonging with?

•   People with a shared history and experience?

And perhaps - community is a variety of these and the
journey into the future together.

Endnotes

Jackson, R. (1997) Religious Education: an interpretive
approach (London: Hodder and Stoughton)

Nesbitt, E. 'Ethnographic Research at Warwick; Some
Methodological Issues' British Journal of Religious
Education 23: 3, 144-155.