An Interesting Tutorial

This morning, I headed to my old high school where I now work as an AVID tutor.  If you are interested in cool public education programs, research AVID more.  Basically, it is a class that would be first-generation college students take all 4 years of high school that teaches them how to take notes, stay organized, ask questions to further their learning, and work as a group to arrive at answers together.  Each week, the students have to come to tutorials, armed with two upper-level questions having to do with something they are learning in one of their classes.  The tutors split up these questions (written down on forms called TRFs) by subject, then lead the tutorials that are really supposed to be run by the students working together to arrive at the answers.  It's truly a good program, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Usually, when we (the tutors) divide the TRFs, I take the math group.  I am licensed to teach middle school math... I wanted to get this religious equation figured out before I began teaching (since it's all consuming, especially in the dreaded first year) and work on some other things, but anyway, I have the background to help students understand math concepts, so I usually volunteer to be in the math group. 

For whatever reason, this morning, I said, "I'll do history!"  There was another math nerd tutor around, so he was glad to get math.

Because most of the students in my group were studying the time just before the Renaissance, religion was a common theme in the questions they asked.  There was the posting of Luther's 95 Thesis, the fighting between Protestants and Catholics, the selling of indulgences...

After getting through a couple of questions relating more to government and philosophy, one girl (side note- this girl has the coolest hand-writing I've ever seen.  It's unreal) stood up, walked to the white board, and wrote her question out of the group to copy: What would it be like if everyone in the world was either Christian [she meant Protestant- we corrected this together] or Catholic?  Which would you be and why?

When I read that last part, I decided it would be best to just dodge that.  We started out with a discussion on the difference in beliefs between Protestants and Catholics.  We got a little side-tracked on the issue of marrying someone of another belief system (I explained the Biblical concept of "equally yoked" and another tutor jumped in and explained how if you wish to be married by a priest, both the husband and the wife need to be confirmed Catholics).  We discussed baptism and salvation.  We then got to imagining what the world would be like if everyone was Christian.

It became apparent to me that in the group of six students, one was Catholic, two were Protestant, one (the presenter) was not religious, and two were pretty quiet about their beliefs.  You could just see these kids having to think twice about why they were labeled the way they were- Catholic, Baptist... what they had to do with coming to those labels.

Interesting questions/ comments brought up during the discussion:
"Do people ever change religions, or get rid of their religions?" 
"What if your dad was a Protestant minister and you really wanted to marry a Catholic.  You'd have to become Catholic, but wouldn't you feel bad?"
"I was baptized as a baby, and I understand that, but it's not like I made that decision myself.  My parents chose my religion for me."
"So, if you don't get baptized, what happens to you?  I mean, where do you go?"
"How do you think poor people who couldn't afford indulgences felt?"

My favorite comment came in written form on the reflection each student has to fill out at the end of the class.  The girl who asked the question (which, of course, wasn't really answered as much as discussed) wrote "I just wonder why religions have to exist at all."  One can view them as absolute truth, another a strange human phenomenon that just divides people.  I sat in a group of 14 year-olds who maybe for the first time, got an idea of what it was like to view them in a different way.  How I love education.