Thursday 20 March 2014

Instilling Religious Open-mindedness and Tolerance


In my classroom, we offer a short prayer every morning as a routine. There used to be one Sanskrit prayer that we used to say for a very long time without even realizing that we had left it at that! Then one day it occurred to me to ask students if they could say a prayer that they offer in their homes. Instantly there was much interest in this proposition. So now every morning any one student in my class is free to come up and offer her/his own prayer and everyone else stands in respect for it. I am so glad we follow this- it sends the message across that all religions are valued. And I can see that the students are getting more comfortable and confident saying the prayer out loud in their own dialect.   

2 comments:

  1. Inclusion and tolerance is a great lesson, and best learned early. Maybe talking about what these prayers mean might allow students to explore the common elements across all religions.

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