The sum total of my religious education.
Our secondary school was a rather 'traditional' one. It was stern and austere, and did not have time for silliness and frippery. The general feeling seemed to be that any form of religious education counted as silliness, and as such, despite it being a mandatory part of schooling, we were given no lessons or any kind.

As the school was a grammar school, it clearly felt itself above government guidelines on such things, and felt it could provide oxbridge fodder... I mean, well-rounded individuals... using the school's own tried-and tested method for RE provision, the 'RE project'.

Essentially, we were given a full school term (outside school, no lesson time) and told to produce something 'religious' or to do with religion. As our school was populated with vast numbers of brown-nosed, pugnacious little squits, who always did everything they were asked of and more, the results of these projects were usually fairly impressive. One year, a couple of kids collaborated and coded up the "Encyclopedia Judaica", a CD-rom resource of all things Jewish and Jew-related. One kid brought in a scale matchstick replica of a hindu temple, and so on and so forth.

Coming from a fairly anti-religious family, this project was resented in the Serotonicity household, and whilst diligent work was encouraged and insisted-upon in other subjects, the RE projects (we had to do one a year for 3 years as I remember) were always left until the last minute. The weekend before the deadline arrives, and some project has to be completed. A flash of inspiration, and a busy weekend of industrious work, including much by my long-suffering father, for the project required some not inconsiderable woodworking skills, and the thing was finished.

It is to my immense sorrow that I do not possess a picture of the finished article; the action man crucifiction. Three crosses, expertly crafted, sitting proudly out of a rolling papier-mache hillside. Each cross replete with its own action man figure, clad in an elegant loincloth. The central, and Messianic, figure was also equipped with a crown of thorns (made of tangled wire-wool if memory serves) and a realistic-looking flesh-wound to his side.

It was, quite simply, magnificent.

Length? Biblical proportions...
(Serotonicity was a naughty boy on..., Fri 14 Aug 2009, 19:15, Reply)