| A significant memory of doing RE at school was being occasionally rebellious. I think I was fourteen or fifteen at this point. We were given a lesson about how wrong was slavery, Hull being a centre of the campaign for abolition under William Wilberforce. We were asked to write an essay against slavery. Fed up with being told what to think, I decided to write it in favour of slavery. |
| The essay came back marked with ten out of ten. This was obviously a mark for originality and independence, as well as a thought out effort. I decided, just in case, to check back with the teacher, who not only had a reputation among us for being a bit of a religious nut but furthermore had a similar name to a popular but shady television religious presenter. Did she did realise I had written in favour of slavery? She came over, looked at it, and changed the 10 (full marks) to 0 (zero). I immediately said she had never even read it. |
| Thus, from that point on, RE was revealed as the waste of time and sham of a lesson we had always believed it to be, and it deserved no further thought or attention at all. It was indeed the rest period from real lessons. Whether this was the cause or not, I became known as something of a rebel against the school´s seeming increasingly intense religious output (school assemblies, sixth form), and I have been the same rebel of religion ever since throughout my adult life. |