How to Unlock the Prison #3
At the start of a new academic year, Richard Coton, CVE Scotland Trustee and former headteacher, writes in a series of four blogs on the way in which CVE Scotland is helping schools and churches in Scotland work together:-
It’s not inevitable that children and young people must be imprisoned by stereotypes like “Science has disproved religion”, “Only old people now believe in God” or “Christians are all bigots”. And it’s not just Christian teachers and chaplains who can help them break out from this prison.
Providing resources for the whole school to help share the truth (and unmask fake news) is our third key:
Key #3: Children and young people urgently need classroom resources on what our faith is all about. Find the right “ready to use” materials, and they’ll be taken up by 1000s of teachers who are not necessarily Christians – to help pupils develop their own curiosity and understanding about Christianity.
cve-scotland.org.uk is already the go-to site for hundreds of these resources, linked to every part of Curriculum for Excellence. But there is a pressing need for new classroom resources, particularly for RME, which will explain Biblical truth and can be used “off the shelf” in nondenominational schools. RC schools already have the excellent This Is Our Faith curriculum developed by our friends in SCES. But there is no equivalent for the majority of children and young people in the other Scottish schools.
The national launch of Ten Must Know Bible Stories, a new website 
with approx 60 fully developed lessons for Primary School RME takes place at the CVE Scotland/SU Scotland Aberdeen conference on Saturday 7th September. Throughout 2019, we have been working alongside the Scottish Bible Society to support Sue Thomson, an inspirational schools worker in the Aberdeen area. Sue has been delivering versions of these materials in Aberdeen schools for several years, and now they have been developed for off-the-shelf use by primary school teachers across Scotland.
We are also co-ordinating the Better Story Project, bringing together SU Scotland, the Evangelical Alliance, SOLAS, and the Scottish Catholic Education Service to support Christian young people in finding a voice in the areas of identity and gender issues.
[All blogs on our website are the personal view of the writer and do not necessarily represent a position taken by CVE Scotland.]
