Strathallan Department of Religious Studies

4th Form GCSE RS and Higher RMPS Getting to know more about Jewish life and worship at Giffnock Shul, Mark's Deli and Glasgow Reform Synagogue - lots of lovely people helped make our day a special one!

Suddenly fancy a GCSE class trip to New Jersey - never imagined a store with so much Judaica!

@futz80 Blind luck!

@RsStrath Good timing!

For GCSE RS students looking at examples of pilgrimage in Christianity ...

@futz80 Final week for this year's cohort and I am at topic 63!

@RsStrath That’s a lot of content!

@futz80 I used to love using extended media resources to support teaching at GCSE, but sadly a lot of that has had to go by the wayside since the new specification was introduced in 2016. Nowadays it is a race to tear through 64 topics before the exam!

@RsStrath Do you use the various programmes on BBC on pilgrimage? Or David Suchet’s programmes in search of Jesus, Peter and Paul?

I hadn't heard of Hatzola ambulances before, but they can be used in GCSE Judaism as examples of the belief in pikuach nefesh and the Jewish community meeting the needs of the family. These ambulances are manned by Jews but can be used by anyone who requests one.

@WeeRascal Thought I was descended from the Bo'ness Sneddons, like your dad. Mum (from Maddiston) was horrified - sure we are POLMONT Sneddons! Distance between Bo'ness and Polmont = 5 miles! BTW it's a brave woman who declares her interest first - what a lovely sense of humour.

When Mum and Dad passed away last year, I found this letter in their bedroom. I’m pretty sure it kick-started their 60 year relationship - Mum was clearly besotted.

“Practice any art… no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.” - McKellen reciting Vonnegut

On the Equinox day, like today, everyone visiting the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in the capital city of Kerala, will see the setting sun aligning through each of the window openings in almost five-minute intervals.

"Do you teach in the cafe?" "Er, yes, sometimes, if I've got a small class and we need a change of scene." "My dad hears you speak in there. He says you're a very interesting teacher" "Okay, well that's kind of him" (No idea who he is!) "Anyway, I'm doing GCSE RS."

Wide-ranging debate on abortion with 4 GCSE, looking at the implications of the amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill. It will stop the criminalisation of vulnerable women, but should the unborn foetus have rights too? Forthright discussion from all points of view. 👏👍

Wilberforce got the statue. This man got the mud. Thirty-five thousand miles of it. His name was Thomas Clarkson. Born in England. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Cambridgeshire. 1760. He was twenty-four years old when Cambridge set him an essay question. "Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?" He knew nothing about slavery. So he started reading. Two months later he couldn't stop. He won the prize and rode home to London with something nobody had given him. A conscience he couldn't put down. Halfway there, on a quiet country road, he stopped his horse. Sat in the silence of the English countryside. The trade was real. He had just proved it. And somebody had to stop it. So he gave up the church and got to work. Bristol. Liverpool. Every slave port in Britain. Into the taverns, the back rooms, the ships. Asking sailors what they had seen below decks. Men who had been there. Who knew what happened on the Middle Passage. Some refused. Some were threatened. Some were bought. Clarkson kept riding. Thirty-five thousand miles. Ten years. Every testimony written down in longhand on the road. All of it handed to a young MP named William Wilberforce. Wilberforce went to Parliament and gave the speeches. Clarkson saddled up and went back out. In 1792 they put a petition together. Not from London. Not from the powerful. From ordinary men and women. Market towns, village squares, chapel steps across England. Four hundred thousand signatures. The largest petition in British parliamentary history. Parliament voted it down. So they went again. And again. Eighteen years of going again. 25 March 1807. The Slave Trade Act passed. Britain outlawed the trade and turned the Royal Navy loose to hunt the ships. History gave Wilberforce the statue. Coleridge called Clarkson the moral steam engine of the abolition movement. Clarkson lived to see slavery abolished completely in 1833. An old man of seventy-three, who had started this at twenty-four. He died in 1846. The last surviving founder of the original committee. He never held office. Never gave the famous speeches. He just got back on the horse. For sixty years. Did they teach you his name? Together we keep our history alive. proudofus.co.uk/support Be part of us. Be Proud Of Us. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

Britain locked up 10,000 Quakers. 450 died in prison. 🇬🇧 Their crime, under the Quaker Act 1662, was refusing to swear an oath. Because they told the truth all the time. Barclays Bank: founded 1690 by Quakers John Freame and Thomas Gould. Lloyds Bank: founded 1765 by Quaker Sampson Lloyd. Cadbury: founded 1824 by Quaker John Cadbury in Birmingham. Clarks shoes: founded 1825 by Quakers in Somerset. They were the first organised religious body in the world to formally condemn slavery. The Germantown Petition, 1688. London Yearly Meeting followed in 1761. Decades before Wilberforce. Elizabeth Fry walked into Newgate Prison in 1813. The Gaols Act passed in 1823. At their peak they were 0.2% of the population. One in five hundred people. They changed everything. Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

Members of the Scottish Parliament vote 69 to 57 AGAINST legalising assisted dying. Before this evening, the vote was considered too close to call. In the end, a far wider margin than anyone envisaged and a complete reversal from the last stage bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx2g…

"This is not sabotage, this is scrutiny." Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley responds to Esther Rantzen's criticism that the House of Lords is blocking the assisted dying bill. #Newsnight

“I am Stephen Fry and I am a Jew.”

My technique for removing a hot cross bun from the toaster is to pierce its side, and I'd like to think that Jesus would appreciate the symbolism involved.

Welcome aboard!

Quaker, of course.

A former pupil, now studying dentistry abroad, writes: I think back to your RE classes and how much I loved them. It's the only subject from school I have retained the information from ... It's still my favourite subject and it's all down to your classes and way of teaching. 🥲