Posted on 05/28/2013 9:26:39 PM PDT by nickcarraway
With graduation only days away, students at a high school in Gothenburg are outraged after learning they must complete a required course in religion that the school somehow neglected to teach them.
"This is really the worst thing you can imagine," student Aryan Roozy Talab told the Metro newspaper.
Another student, Patricia Kjellby, is sceptical she and her classmates will be able to don their traditional white caps next week to celebrate the completion of their upper secondary school education.
"We're supposed to graduate in four days and I'm meant to complete a course that is actually supposed to last the whole year. That's impossible," she told the Expressen newspaper.
"To be honest, I'm extremely pissed off; that they figured this out now, just a few days before graduation."
The students' frustration stems from the shocking news delivered by officials at the Aniaragymnasiet high school that they neglected to teach the students a required course in religion.
According to the school's principal, the mix-up stems from a misinterpretation of the curriculum laid out by Swedish law.
"When you read the law, it can be interpreted that you can switch religion with social science," Christel Berver, principal at the publicly-funded, privately-managed free school, told Metro.
But such a change isn't, in fact, allowed.
Students had raised the issue previously with their teachers, expressing suspicions that the school had left something out, but to no avail.
"The last two years I've wondered, 'Aren't we supposed to have religion?'" said Kjellby.
"They said that we had social science instead so I thought that stuff about Buddhism and everything would come then, but it never did."
Now students have less than a week to complete the entire course in religion to avoid finishing high school with incomplete marks.
Alternatively, the students can accept a failing mark for the course and then make up the course in the autumn, the Göteborgs-Posten (GP) newspaper reported.
It took YEARS after college for the recurring nightmare of having skipped a required class the entire last semester and trying to make up the work in a couple of days. I would wake up in cold sweats from that.
This is a new nightmare I never contemplated...the SCHOOL forgot to teach the course.
I’ll probably have the new nightmare tonight.
Maybe they forgot to teach the course on purpose.
Same dream. Decades later. Apparently it’s associated with high-IQ, Type-A Personalities. If so, it’s an awful way to flatter oneself.
Sorry to do that to you.
Unless it was some type of comparative religions course, which is my guess. They could then frame all of the “incorrect” ones however they want.
Sounds like a major mess up. I’m sure they have tons of administrators like we do and somebody just dropped the ball.
I don’t know what the laws are like there in Sweden, but I would be contemplating some kind of lawsuit. Learning it all in 4 days (and likely not being able to pass), or accept a FAILING grade and come back in the fall? As if that won’t affect GPA’s across the board, and as if it wouldn’t affect the students’ abilities to get into the colleges they’ve likely already applied and been accepted to?
There is no excuse for this “oversight”. I also can’t believe they are truly punishing these students for what was an incredibly obscene “mistake” on the part of faculty. Especially as it was apparently noticed by students over a year previous.
I honestly can’t comprehend how they are going to make this OK for the students in any way. How many administrators are getting fired over this? IMO it should be ALL who were responsible.
Why do we all have this dream. Sometimes I look back and it doesn’t feel real that I have a degree, and that I’m back sweating out those courses again.
I lived in Germany for eighteen years, and my son attended the German school system....so I’m familiar with these religious class requirements.
The way this works....is that each school runs it’s own schedule and class requirements. There might be a requirement in one year for two semesters and 16 different classes. But it’s broke down into segments. I might get 45 minutes of religion in one month, three hours in the second month, and 45 minutes in the sixth month....to complete the yearly requirement of religion. Typically, the school doesn’t provide the instructor for religion, it comes from the local community. That’s another odd thing about how this works.
Tests? There’s virtually none...you just show up and attend.
In this case, I imagine that they were going to call up the regular guy...maybe he retired....and they just skipped the topic when no one could show up. The chief administrator is responsible for the screw-up, and has to fix this. The easiest fix is just to have one single class on a Saturday...for eight hours, and they probably wrap up the state requirement.
Oh, and the value of this religious class? Zero. It’s more of a moral discussion and supposed to make you understand moral character.
So now they can’t graduate until they spend an entire year learning about the greatness of Islam...
I wonder what percentage of those students can actually spell the name of their school?
lol
I have had a similar dream; being contacted by my undergraduate school and being told I have to return to high school to complete a course. The dream persisted for years. Very troubling for such a stupid scenario.
They should not be having religion courses in the private public funded school....basically public school with a special name. My parents sent us to Catholic School and my kids go to Catholic School too. If I sent my kids to public school, I would NOT want them taking a religion class. I can just imagine the crap they would be trying to sell....NO thanks! The school was right to forget about this class. Public Schools have no business teaching a religion class.
I do remember when students thought they were going to graduate; but found out they always needed one more course to do so near the end. Sounds like a new way for with schools to scam with a political twist against religion.
After much web searching, my earlier guess of the course being comparative religions was correct. Leftist don’t have a problem with that as they can sell the more flavor of the moment socialist friendly ones and play up the shortcomings of others.
Sweden Reinforces Ban on Religious Schools
http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2007/10/16/sweden-reinforces-ban-on-relig/
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