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Books Related to GCSE Religious Studies for Edexcel Ina Taylor, Lord Reid - ISBN: 0435302280
Good enough, but deficient in important ways. - Rated
Designed to prepare students for the Edexcel syllabus. A good summary of the material required, it follows the syllabus exactly, with book sections corresponding to the sections of the exam. I have taught GCSE classes using this book for the last 2 years, and write from that perspective.
Material covered is sufficiently detailed for students to achieve the highest grades if they learn it all. The presentation is somewhat unimaginative, and to my mind fails to capture students' interest by not capitalising on the controversy inherent in many of the topics studied: the author's aim appears to be to transmit a body of knowledge, with only a little expectation that students will want to engage with or debate it. (To be fair, this is a criticism that could equally be made of the Edexcel syllabus, so the book is perhaps very good exam preparation!)
More problematic are a few serious errors of fact. For instance, Taylor conflates "arranged" and "forced" marriages: she asserts that an annulment of a marriage will be given by the Catholic Church in the case of an "arranged marriage", which is absolutely not the case. Arranged marriages (unlike forced ones) are not without consent, so no annulment would be given on those grounds.
Similarly she says that "voluntary euthanasia [is] also known as assisted suicide". Again, there are fundamental moral differences here: in an assisted suicide the person takes their own life, whereas in euthanasia it is taken for them. This difference is of the greatest importance when assessing the moral acceptability of these practices, whether from a Christian or any other point of view.
Hopefully these errors will be amended in future editions. For the time being, the book remains a very useful tool, though not an outstandingly good one, for the classroom teacher.
