I recently learned that in some countries there are school field trips to different temples and religious places to learn about the culture of other peoples.
Have you ever had this happen? What did you visit?
Was this a problem for anyone? Was this trip mandatory?
Did they force girls to wear a hijab or boys to wear a kippah?
What were your impressions? Did they try to preach to you there?
I am especially interested in those who visit Orthodox churches (in non-Orthodox countries). How do you like it there? Were there any special rules for you?
30 comments
We alternated Christmas and Easter Mass between Catholic and Protestant Churches.
Does this count?
If not, then no.
No. But I want to clarify that in religious education class we study different religions and what they believe from a sociological point of view, there is no “preaching”.
Edit: In the UK at least.
I went to school in a Catholic nunnery ( thankfully the nuns were all under the floor and not doing the teaching!) And as I was privately educated religious education was mandatory, in which we studied Christianity obviously, but also had a focus on Judaism, however we did touch on the Islamic sphere for our topics on extremism, thus we went to a Mosque as there is a high concentration of Muslims in the nearby city, though it was not a particularly good visit as many of the girls started arguing with the Imam over their Sex-specific seating and dress codes!
In regards to formal religion in schooling, my Secondary school had its own rather grandiose Chapel and a pair of In-house priests who gave Eucharist every term and Mass, alongside other Prayer services and other religious assemblies. There were no Muslims in the school, nor any Jews though I did hear rumour of a few having Jewish ancestry ( I promise it wasn’t a ” Wear your armbands” situation ;). We further had lessons in the Second of the School’s graveyard furthermore on Feast days. The Headmaster was very Catholic and thus we had daily prayer, however being an Atheist I neglected to say them, not that the teacher’s minded as despite a Catholic mantra, aside from the Headmaster they were normal educated people
I further studied Catholism and Lutheranism in regards to the English reformation
However in Primary school I went to a Church of England school in which the Catholics were isolated for their own religious lesson, privately taught. And we attended the village church often for services, there were no Muslims, nor Jews nor any of the Oriental religions mentioned in that school.
I remember being taken to a Sikh gudhwara when I was quite young – maybe 7 or 8. My hometown has a relatively large Sikh community so I guess it made the most sense. They definitely didn’t “preach” at us – just showed us around and talked a little about the relevance of different things.
We visited a mosque and a synagogue (and I guess technically a church too, but we went there for the service and not to visit).
It was never a problem for anyone and it was mandatory in the sense that going to school is mandatory and if your class is on an excursion that day then that is where you’re supposed to be too. But if the parents didn’t give their permission you’d just be stuck in some other class. Same like any excursion.
No hijabs or kippahs.
Nobody tried to be preachy, it was just an informative visit. Not that different from doing an excursion to a museum for example.
Not specifically. We did some trips to different cities to visit all of it so we went to Catholic temples because they were the oldest so you know monuments, but not specifically to learn about religion.
We went to the synagogue once. I think the boys were asked to wear a kippah or just leave their caps on, if they had one. My primary school was a private Christian school, so church services were a common occurrence.
We went to the local church, but it hardly counts as it was while we had a state church, and the village church belonged to it. There were no mosques or synagogues anywhere near by.
Not in elementary or secondary school. Schools here are either *openbaar* (“public school”, just to add more ambiguity to that term), or confessional. My village of 6-8000 people had 5 elementary schools; two public and 3 different flavors of protestant. Obviously the confessional schools have religion as a big part of their culture but I went to an openbare. We did have optional classes on either religion or humanism. Religion was provided by a pastor and watched mainly Bible story cartoons, and all the muslim kids and a handful of white kids were in humanism where we learned useful stuff about interpersonal relations. Religion was more popular and though they tried to preach, it was mainly “we get to watch cartoons and goof off”
In Uni, we did have guest lectures inside the church and the synagogue for a segment on medieval and renaissance studies. We were explained the rules observed them.
Not a field trip exactly, but at the end of every semester we would go to the nearby church to celebrate the upcoming break. Most of us hated it since almost none of us were religious, but we still had to sing Christian songs and listen to the priest preach about stuff.
We visited a few synagogues as a part of a school trip, but it was more about history than religion. Nobody was required to wear a kippah, but our guide and one student did wear it. We also went to a concert at a synagogue in Mikulov, I love that place. There are many beautiful synagogues in the Czech republic, so I think a lot of students get to visit them. Most of them are not used for religious purposes anymore, however.
Yes I did. I think it was mandatory. We did have to cover our heads. Nobody preached to us – it was an interesting experience for me and I enjoyed it.
Once in Italy in high school. We went to a cloistered convent. It was a backup option after things happened in our class.
Amazingly and rarely enough, the nun who spoke to us was in our same room and wasn’t veiled or so which is apparently very rare.
Yes, we visited a (protestant) church, synagogue and mosque at age 15 and a buddhist temple, hindu shrine and a catholic church at age 18. I think that was all?
We wore hijabs and kippahs provided for visitors, just like we didn’t wear shoes inside. It’s the respectful thing to do in my opinion.
It was very illuminating. At the time I was sort of cringy atheist bro and wanted to “debate” with the imam, rabbi and preast. I was and still am an atheist but I think it has made me a more open minded person. I’m grateful for the experience.
No. My school did a trip to a cheese factory once, and one to “a castle” which turned out to be Maiden Castle (Google search if you want to know why that was such a crushing disappointment).
Yes. Church (protestant), synagogue, and mosque.
Why would it be a problem for anyone?
I’m not sure the trip to Stockholm itself was mandatory, but everything we did there was mandatory since we moved as a group.
No one was forced, nor offered, to wear anything special. Shoes were taken off.
I was adequately whelmed learning the mosque is a repurposed electrical building, otherwise I honestly found it a little underwhelming. But it was soon after my family had been to Thailand visiting several extravagant temples so my expectations may have been a little inflated. It was not a bad experience in any way.
IIRC there were some people preaching in the mosque when we were there, but not for us.
No, but went to reformed Christian schools, we got teached about most world religions at high school.
Yes, mosque and synagogue (bus trip to Malmö). No head coverings or anything other than taking the shoes off in the mosque. No preaching, just showing the place, explaining the uses and symbolism or different items, telling a bit of the history of the building and talking a bit about their religion. We learned about the major religions in the classroom so the visit was more a chance to see other places of worship than churches irl.
We also visited some nuns, but I don’t remember if that was in school too or a trip arranged by the church during confirmation.
On a sidenote: my muslim ex was surprised and impressed that I knew of things like zakat and part of the shahada. He had no idea that we were taught about different religions in swedish schools. He thought we only learned about christianity or, even more likely considering how common atheism is, no religion at all.
In Wales – at the age of about 10 we visited a Roman Catholic Church, a Protestant Cathedral, a Mosque and a Gurdwara. We also went to the local supermarket and a sewage processing plant. So many fond memories.
I’m a bit older. There weren’t any mosques in my town back then. We had a Q&A and a city tour with an Israeli who was born in our town, who showed us the places where Jewish institutions and shops used to be until 1938.
We went to church… actually the Catholic Church in the Vatican (Saint Peter Cathedral in Rome) while on a school trip in Rome. We visited the Pantheon too though… It was mostly for the art and all and not actually the church.
Otherwise with school we never went to any church. Oh and also Notre Dame when we went to a school trip in Paris almost forgot.
I’m from Italy so a lot (a lot) of catholic churches, but no other places of worship. I’m in my 30s though, so maybe it’s different now.
Well, we usually went once per year to church in grades 1-9, often around Christmas or Easter. Lutheran church. It was basically a normal church service. Non-Lutherans didn’t have to go.
In high school, I remember visiting a Buddhist centre, Orthodox church, Jewish centre and a Jehovah’s Witnesses thing. It was for some optional course in religion, if I remember correctly. I don’t remember all that much to be honest, except that the Jehovah’s guy was really pushing for people to learn more about his cult.
When I was in middle school, we visited the local mosque (recently opened) as part of history-geography class. We were studying the birth of Islam at the time. No hijabs for the girls but only the muslim kids could enter the prayer room.The following year we visited the cathedral of Beauvais. No preaching in either place. I don’t remember visiting the local romanesque and gothic churches for school. I thought the mosque was prettier and warmer than the cold block of concrete that was the neighbourhood catholic church I was already familiar with (sunday school…).
That was the early 1980ies.
I grew up in a small town. There was no orthodox church, mosque or synagogue to visit.
Well, the old Synagogue building survived the November pogrome of 1938 but the Jewish community was almost completely murdered in the holocaust, hence the old synagogue was not open to the public.
We did visit Catholic and Lutheran churches, though.
No. But it wouldn’t have been easy to find a non-Christian one in that bit of the UK at the time, and certainly not an interesting one rather than just some random meeting space.
I think the only Orthodox church I’ve visited in the UK is the one at Brookwood cemetery. I tried to visit a big one in west London, as some friends lived nearby, but there was a service on.
Orthodoxy isn’t very high profile here: I suspect at best people might think of it as just some sort of Russian thing. Even if there is now a rather famous British person of Greek Orthodox heritage.
I did in the US my class toured a bunch of different religious sites and learned about them in 7th grade we took our shoes off and covered our hair in a couple of them out of respect I enjoyed the trip no one religion was put over the other it was not a mandatory trip and was for the students in higher level classes
I did. We went to a small synagogue nearby in primary school and a synagogue in Antwerp, a mosque nearby our school and a few Catholic and Protestant churches in secondary school.
> Was this a problem for anyone?
Not that I can recall, no.
> Was this trip mandatory?
If your parents didn’t want you to go you could get out of them, but we were just happy to not be in a classroom for a change.
> Did they force girls to wear a hijab or boys to wear a kippah?
Nope. I remember I didn’t want to wear a kippah on the first synagogue trip for whatever reason and I was allowed to not wear one (I did decide to wear one on the trip to Antwerp, but it was still not mandatory). Girls were also not forced to wear a hijab on the mosque trip. They did ask us to dress modestly for all the trips though.
> What were your impressions?
I thought all the trips were pretty interesting. I don’t remember a ton of details from all the trips, but I did think the sukkah the synagogue nearby had built for the Sukkot holiday was pretty cool.
> Did they try to preach to you there?
Nah, the guides were mostly just answering questions about the religion and explaining the different things in the buildings, but none of them were preachy.
I studied in a secular, but pretty much of Catholic tradition, school in Spain, so Catholic churches are out of the question – we visited dozens of churches and cathedrals and we had a chapel within the school.
We did however once visit a mosque. It wasn’t mandatory and they only required us (boys and girls) to remove our shoes when going inside. The iman gave us a brief explanation about Islam and the structure of a mosque, and answered some questions. Not what I would consider preaching, really. This was in the 90s btw.
Yeah we had school trips to both a Synagogue and a mosque although the mosque isn’t really what some of you might expect (it was just a regular house from the outside basically) and they explained us all about what happens at those places and how they pray. It was pretty interesting.
We also went to a protestant church to see the differences with the the catholic cathedral. This was in a different field trip in Bruges wich has one of the best preserved middle age city centers. I remember seeing the list of protestants wich were publicly executed from over 500 years ago till the 18th century and the alleged “blood of jezus” wich was brought back from a crusade.
I went to catholic school so we had our own chapel at both my middle and elementary school and went there often.
To be clear it is still alowed to not go to eucharisty and not be Christian in those schools and I remember one kid in elementary school having a Hindu mother although he was raised like a local and actually had his first communion. In secondary school multiple kids I knew where muslim and the mass services we had were much more modern and not really focused on fate as much but we still had them.