Religious Education

Philosophical Perspectives

John Sealey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138695290
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000639407
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The majority of books on religious education are written by those who are themselves adherents of particular religious beliefs and such books almost invariably reflect their authors' religious inclinations. Therefore a critical look at certain key aspects in religious education from a secular point of view was long overview when this title was f

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A Philosophical Approach to Problems in Religious Education

An inspector visiting a school in the midlands in 1888 reported to the governing church authorities that the children ought to have 'more varied occupations' than the usual bible readings, writing and counting. When the vicar read the inspector's report he said: 'Anything which teaches the tinys to use their funny little fingers must be useful to them, though I can't help thinking that knitting and sewing and writing on a slate is good enough' (Sealey, 1970, pp. 16-17). The vicar seems not to have studied philosophy of education. Had he seriously asked himself whether it was indeed appropriate for the school to teach anything that was useful? There were many things that could be 'usefully' learnt by the fingers of the poor in 1888 but I doubt if the vicar would have approved them all. Did the vicar have his reasons for thinking that 'knitting and sewing and writing on a slate' were 'good enough'? And if he did, what were they 'good enough' for?

Whatever we think of this vicar's views, and the assumptions and prejudices that may have underlain them, we cannot escape the issue that there is no difference in kind between the vicar and teachers of today if we, too, do not ask ourselves relevant questions and supply rational answers concerning educational situations. The subject matter in a school curriculum, like the date, may have changed; attitudes do not always change so easily. In questioning what we think we know, what we think ought to be taught; in asking what objectives there might reasonably be for education, and so on, we have already begun to philosophize.

'Philosophy' is sometimes a frightening word. It need not be so. Put it this way: we tend to feel 'safe' with a curriculum subject once we know the facts and have a fair degree of competence within the area. In religion, for instance, an RE teacher schooled in a Christian tradition will have no bother in putting together material for a lesson on the parables of Jesus or the idea of Christian baptism. A Muslim will be quite at home in preparing lessons on the life of Mohammed or the early expansion of Islam. For most of the major religious groups represented in Britain today - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu - there exist hundreds of books and much published material to help the RE teacher plan the available information, for his lessons, systematize his themes and organize his teaching techniques. Similarly there is a wide literature on the psychological, sociological and historical aspects of teaching religion to children. It might seem on the face of it that all this readily available material poses for the RE teacher only the problem of choice. What items of information or what topical issues shall I use for this particular theme and how shall I proceed?

Unfortunately for this apparently idyllic state of affairs, there are problems in RE that find no clear answer in textbooks, official syllabuses and teaching guides. There are problems that cannot be resolved by the production of new information or procedures for teaching. They are problems that arise from the facts; problems of meaning and of justification. It is this area that constitutes the philosophy of RE. For example, what do we mean when we speak of religious 'knowledge'? Does it matter what is taught in RE? What sort of thing would I be doing if I were indoctrinating? If we are to take RE seriously then the uncertainty produced by these philosophical questions has to be faced. And to face them squarely requires a shift in our approach; not a more difficult approach, but a different one. The first startling thing about philosophy, it might be discovered, is that there are usually no final answers. An unnerving experience, perhaps, but the joy in that particular realization is a significant step forward in our knowledge: for at least we shall know that we don't know.

I shall attempt, first, to direct attention to some of those areas in RE that seem to be 'safe'. That is to say, I shall question some things that often go unquestioned because they appear to have plenty of backing in fact and opinion. Secondly, I shall attempt to open fresh avenues of inquiry into areas already disputed. It is one thing to be confused or made undecided as to how we are to proceed in RE by the proliferation of published classroom texts, by syllabuses and by teaching aids. It is quite another, and more disturbing, matter to find ourselves in the dark about the grounds, the reasons, for our decisions. For example, given a choice of teaching material for fourth form RE studies between, say, that concerned with encouraging 'pupils to identify with problems of human need and deprivation' (Dudley, 1979, p. 39) and material concerned with getting pupils to 'understand the meaning of particular religious beliefs' (Hampshire, 1978, p. 27), are we sure of our grounds in thinking that both schemes of study are in fact religious studies, as opposed to, say, economics, politics, ethics, or sociology? In a word, can we honestly say we know what does and what does not constitute an area of study in RE? To get clear on this issue is to raise philosophical questions directly related to RE, This is why, in more general terms, we may doubt that the vicar in the midlands school had studied philosophy of education, for we may question his understanding of the educational enterprise, his competence to judge what was 'good enough' for children, and so on.

Philosophical problems in RE, then, arise as a result of what is claimed for the subject and from the nature of religion itself. The philosophy of RE is not another 'scheme' for teaching religion and offers no new information on the subject. It plays the less ebullient but none the less important role of providing the classroom teacher with the tools whereby he may himself constructively criticize what is commonly talked about in RE. In so doing, the teacher is bound to reappraise, perhaps refine and even redefine, the nature of his task in the classroom.

We want to know what sort of grounds there might be for deciding whether what we call 'religion' has any rational basis in our understanding of the world. Can we make a claim to religious knowledge? Or must we settle for what some people would say is something less, mere 'belief' or an emotional dependence on mythical forces - experiences we may hesitate to include in a highly sophisticated process of public education? Or perhaps we must make do with, at most, a descriptive account of religion involving not an exploration of religious knowledge but only a historical, sociological, or psychological examination of what others experience, effectively avoiding the problem of religious knowledge. One of the major problems of religious knowledge comes from the 'positivist' theistic challenge: 'What would count against belief in God?' According to Antony Flew, if a statement is not falsifiable, that is, if it cannot be disproved in principle, then it cannot be a statement at all; it can be proved neither true nor false and is therefore nonsense. All assertions about God, so runs the argument, are compatible. Even the notorious problem of evil is explained away by religious believers. Eventually, says Flew, attempts to prove the existence of God fail in 'the death by a thousand qualifications' (Flew and Maclntyre, 1955, ch. VI, s. A, p. 97).

If it can be maintained that religion cannot be said to be 'true', like science, history, or mathematics, how can it be justified as an aspect of the 'real' external world which schools prepare children for? If we are merely to regard religious scriptures as 'literature', and if we are able to describe devotional attitudes to deity only in terms of a need to satisfy some purely subjective, psychologically based longing, how can we speak of religious knowledge? Surely, it may be argued, if religion can claim to be a fit subject for education, in view of these difficulties, so can magic, astrology and superstition of all kinds. Why should we burden an overloaded school timetable with matters that appear to be unknowable? What rational lines of thought can help us decide what to teach as 'religion'? Lines of demarcation, as well as claims to knowledge, are not just useful as a guide for what the RE teacher is to teach. They are necessary to his being sure, or to his having good grounds for the claim, that what he is teaching is religion and not, say, politics, history, or literature.

If RE can be justified as a curriculum subject on rational grounds, similar to those we might offer for teaching other subjects, what would a 'religiously educated' person look like? What skills, qualities, attitudes, and so on, would he have to exhibit? We may take it as agreed, at least in principle, that any form of 'confessional' teaching of religion would be out of place in public education. But could we say that a practising Muslim, for example, who had never had formal instruction in his religion was not in some way 'religiously educated'? While it would seem unreasonable, on the face of it, to deny that some sort of education must have taken place, it would also seem unreasonable to regard such a person as 'educated' in a more general sense. For the impression given is that such a person is so educated in virtue of his knowledge of doctrines, his religious attitudes and behaviour and his commitment to one distinctive set of beliefs to the exclusion of others. And at this point we may find ourselves wondering, is this truly what I would describe as an 'educated' person in any sense? How would we react to the phrase 'atheistically educated' or 'criminally educated'?

Let us consider that a coherent response lies in the direction of the question 'What is an educated person?'. In asking this we may begin to see that an examination of the notion of a religiously educated person may be fruitless in the sense that we could not recognize as 'education' the limitations imposed by such a narrow band of skills and knowledge. For although we cannot say of a committed Muslim that he is not educated in some narrowly defined sense, we shall want to say that this is not what is to be understood by the notion of 'the educated person'.

Does this mean that the idea of a 'religiously educated' person is misconceived, and that what we really mean be a 'religiously educated' person is someone whose education has included a study of religion? Perhaps there is no need to go into any depth of debate on the issue. 'I frankly have no idea what it means to be a "religiously educated person" ', says Alan Harris (1970, p. 97). We might say something similar of 'religious education'. We might say, what is 'religious education' if not education with a religious component? And if we have now reduced the problem to asking for the characteristics of the 'educated person', then the question for us in this philosophical appraisal of RE is, is what is taught in RE adequate in terms of educational form and content?

Considering 'religious education', then, as distinct from the 'religiously educated' person, we might ask, what are some of the theories underlying the teaching of religion today? In what ways do theorists use religious material? Are there outstanding problems in current approaches? The shift from a 'confessional' approach is evident in the literature but that does not mean there is anything like agreement on the educational underpinning of RE. We shall look briefly at three different theories. Certain theories, certain attitudes in RE are, not surprisingly, more influential than others. The notion of 'implicit' religion is one area we can usefully examine. Does it make sense to distinguish between 'implicit' and 'explicit' religion? Ninian Smart (Smart and Horder, 1975, ch. 1) has made much of the distinction and the RE teacher will want to know something of the logic that lies behind it. Some explanation is to be found in Smart's justification for his well-known six-dimensional account of religion. But, we might ask, how can it be claimed that, for instance, communism is a manifestation of religion? Or again, how would we know that 'ritual' is a form of religion?

Some theorists see religion as a form of ethical knowledge. According to John Wilson (in Wilson, 1971, for example), since religion has its origin in the emotions and emotions are closely connected to moral knowledge, religion is to be taught as part of moral education. However we look at it, the teacher will want to ask not merely whether there is a relationship between the emotions and religion (which there obviously is) but whether central characteristics in religion (worship, for example) can be dependent upon emotional features for their distinctiveness as religion. After all, certain propositional elements in religion (for example, that God exists) can hardly depend on how we feel about it.

Raymond Holley (1978) has argued that there is an important distinction to be made between 'religious understanding' and 'scholarly understanding', and one is led to think that while 'scholarly understanding' is alone satisfactory for other subjects, RE requires the additional intellectual dimensions of 'religious understanding'. What substance is there in this distinction? Is it the case that teachers of RE have for so long neglected the 'ontic' values discerned through 'religious understanding'?

Turning from the theories for the moment, what of the function religion is thought to have in RE? Some Agreed Syllabuses and writers speak of pupils' being encouraged to find the 'truth' and to make a 'choice' in religion. Is there a special sense of 'truth' here? The implication is that there is, and one suspects that it is the 'truth' of the committed religious believer. If this is so, the agnostic or humanist, together with the inquiring teacher, will wish to press the question 'What significance can this special kind of "truth" and "choice" have for a liberal education in which there is no presumption in favour of commitment to religion?'.

The teacher will want to ask why these changes in content and emphasis have come about in view of the professed non-confessional attitude in contemporary RE. One reply that might be given is that Britain is now a multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-religious society. Changes in the syllabuses reflect changes in society. When Britain was a Christian society what need was there to teach Sikhism or humanism? Is it not appropriate in view of the many different religious or religious-type belief systems now widespread in Britain that children should be given the knowledge and skills needed to make their own choice in the search for truth? Further, it might be argued, do children not need to know how to handle problems concerning drug-taking, the effects of TV, and so on, in the modern world? And surely the pupil will need to know the difference between 'right' and 'wrong'? And is it not true today that the educated person needs to know about the effects of world over-population, about conserving the environment, about problems facing trade unions and management and other global problems?

Then there is the more academic side of the coin. It is assumed by some that in the interests of developing the rational mind pupils should be given the academic knowledge and intellectual skills to decide for themselves what sort of choice, within or outside religion, they may make. Is it educationally appropriate to urge pupils to go beyond the acquisition of knowledge and critical skill and to make commitments? Would we teach politics in the same way and expect pupils, qua pupils, to opt for either the Monday Club or the Young Communist League? (Or would these two alternatives be religious choices in Smart's 'implicit' sense?) In what educational sense is the study of religion also a search for the student's own personality, as some would assert?

It may be questioned whether RE should be enlarged to the extent that some syllabuses appear to favour, despite the proffered justification. Has the question about what 'religion' is, about what its boundaries might be, been given the serious consideration it deserves? Can we indeed justify the teaching of communism, fascism and humanism in RE? And is it not possible that the idea of 'religious morality' is a contradiction in terms? for we may well confront serious arguments to support the view that religious behavioural patterns have no necessary connection with the secular morality by which many people live.

Given the openness of the intellectual climate in which schools now operate, is it not arguable that RE is no more than a hangover from the time when Britain was Christian, and that now RE is at best obsolete and at worst a form of indoctrination? Moreover, is indoctrination not inevitable in RE in view of the fact that religion in its Western forms is essentially a proselytizing movement calling for commitment? And is not the danger of the 'faith commitment' - possibly an anti-educational experience especially great where RE is taught by teachers who are themselves committed? On the other hand, if it is not disputed that there is such a thing as religious experience in the world should not pupils be so taught that they will be able to make their own commitment to religion at some stage?

Changes in subject material within RE now include a study of religions other than Christianity. That is one change of attitude, and clearly a natural development in an RE that is no longer bound to a single, Christian, religious tradition. Other attitudes have developed, however, which a secular society might wish to question. There is an increased involvement in moral education within RE, coupled with a discernible desire to regard RE as a sort of spinal cord in the corpus of the curriculum. Then there is the further aspect, projected by many Agreed Syllabuses and writers in the field, that RE must be utilitarian in character either as a guide to how pupils should behave or as a means by which they can discover their own identity. The question such attitudes raise is whether there is any justification for viewing one area of education among many as a super-subject able alone to direct life and its meaning. Such views also highlight a significant aspect of the nature of education as a whole, for they raise the question of whether a process of education is primarily concerned with the practice (what I shall call 'first order' activities) of the various forms of human experience; or, on the other hand, whether education can be conceived as essentially a study of human experience (a 'second order' process) intended to bring young people to the threshold of first order experience. And if the latter view is held, then what possible educational reason could there be for the act of worship in schools, since such an activity can hardly be considered as 'study'?

In order to avoid difficulties that attach to the idea of personal engagement in religion, it has been proposed that RE ought to be interpreted as teaching 'about' religion. Yet it could be argued that the vagueness of the phrase contributes nothing to the debate on whether and in what sense 'engagement' is to be avoided.

Summary of Chapter 1

A philosophical approach to RE is different in character from other studies that may be used to help form educational theory. Philosophy thrives not on settling disputes or proposing theories but on an unending search for weaknesses or fallacies within existing theories. Every attempted refutation of a theory, as Karl Popper might say, especially of a good theory, is a step towards progress. Questions of the sort raised in this chapter are intended to facilitate, indeed to provoke, progress in RE.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 A Philosophical Approach to Problems in Religious Education
• 2 Religion and Knowledge
• 3 Is It Meaningful to Speak of the 'Religiously Educated' Person?
• 4 Theories of Religious Education
• 5 Indoctrination, Commitment and Religious Education
• 6 Teaching Religion
• 7 Suggestions for Further Reading
• References
• Index