deutsche Version

Information about the religion and ethics department

In the two subjects religion and ethics the pupils learn the basic skills of religious education. In line with the school’s UNESCO profile, the interreligious dialogue is an obligation and its goal is international understanding. 
The pupils get to know their religious roots and discuss a variety of other religious beliefs and ideologies, which enables them to develop their own identity. To help them deal with existential experiences, the pupils are offered religious possibilities of interpretation in the lessons, which are then checked for plausibility.

Some examples from lessons:

The pupils visit the various churches of Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians and the Muslims’ mosque in the direct neighbourhood of the school. There are also contacts to the Jewish community through the interreligious working group "Abraham’s Round Table" in Hildesheim and to the Buddhist monastery in Hanover through visits of the Chùa Pagoda.

This way the pupils learn to engage with other religious beliefs and to communicate and cooperate with members of other religious denominations in a respectful way.

In the unit “Holidays and Celebrations in Our Culture and in Other Cultures“ the pupils learn to have tolerance and respect for other cultures. On holidays like the Reformation Day or the Penance Day, our pupils have the possibility of attending a service at the Martin Luther Church. This way the pupils can explore the religious praxis, try to organize it themselves, and reflect its use. They also learn to recognize and interpret the basic forms of religious speech, like prayer or denominations, and they learn to distinguish between the two.

In grade 6 we celebrate an “International Celebration for Children“ as a conclusion of the unit “Come to Africa“, in which the pupils get to know a foreign culture and realize that justice, solidarity, and the protection of nature are the tasks every human being has to fulfill in this world. The proceeds of this celebration go to our partner school in Ihanja, Tanzania.

Social learning is promoted in the unit “Diakonie“ (=charitable work of the church), through contacts to local social institutions such as nursing homes, kindergartens, homes for the handicapped, or homeless shelters. This way the pupils can experience basic religious thoughts like charity, human dignity, and justice as basic values and they can recognize them as arguments in social conflicts and discussions, for example, discussions like abortion, active euthanasia, etc.

Wherever it is sensible, we try to work interdisciplinary: in grade 9, for example, when we talk about the topic “Jewry and National Socialism”, the subjects German and social studies interlace. When they compare the Sabbath to the German Sundays, where all shops in Germany are closed and hardly anybody has to work, the pupils can recognize the religious background of social traditions and social structures. They learn how to identify religious motifs and elements in the culture, and they learn how to explain their meaning and see them critically.

In 2007 the tenth grade worked together with the Association for Suicide Prevention and created a "Crisis" Labyrinth.

All these contents make up an important part of the mandatory school goals, such as national understanding, peace education, and the responsible handling of the natural environment.