Teaching Virtue

The Contribution of Religious Education

Marius Felderhof, Penny Thompson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781472522535
• eBook ISBN: 9781472528100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In much of the world, religious traditions are seriously valued but, in the context of religious plurality, this sets educationalists an enormous challenge. This book provides a way forward in exploring religious life whilst showing how bridges might be built between diverse religious traditions. Teaching Virtue puts engagement with religious life - and virtue ethics - at the heart of religious education, encouraging 'learning from' religion rather than 'learning about' religion. The authors focus on eight key virtues, examining these for what they can offer of religious value to pupils and teachers. Individual chapters put the discussion into context by offering a vision of what religious education in the future could look like; the need for responsible religious education; a historical review of moral education and an introduction to virtue ethics. Lesson plans and examples demonstrate how the virtues may be approached in the classroom, making it an invaluable guide for all involved in teaching religious education.

PART ONE

Orientations

CHAPTER ONE

The prospective nature of Religious Education

Marius Felderhof

CHAPTER OUTLINE

This chapter seeks to show that the widespread accepted aims and aspirations for religious education can be both misleading and subversive of religious life. It shows how the character and very nature of the intellectual enquiry can be destructive of religious sensibilities. There is a difference between talking about and doing. Religions above all command and require action. And actions are prospective with a vision of the future; also, actions presuppose intentions and consequences, and hence an ethic. It is further argued that a value-based syllabus for RE must be democratic, child and society centred, and strongly focused on human flourishing in moral and spiritual terms. Treating pupils as agents or as persons makes a number of pedagogical demands with cognitive, affective and conative dimensions. In RE such person-centred education means cultivating dispositions. Freedom and the future will feature large in its pedagogy.

Introduction: The aims of RE (Religious Education)

The history of Religious Education in England and Wales has shown some remarkable transformations in the subject, not all of them welcome. These transformations reflect the changing aims and aspirations for the subject in British society. It is perhaps worth stopping to think about whose aims and aspirations they are because people do not always concur. Are they the aims of the professional educationalists or ‘RE community’? academics? parents? pupils? politicians? faith communities? the wider society? These stakeholders, I believe, have their own distinct expectations and interests. The professionals have a tendency to complain that the others do not understand their aims and objectives for the subject and are inclined to ascribe this supposed lack of understanding to failures in communication rather than to a climate of disagreement (See the Religious Education Council review of RE 2013). But the differences between the professionals and the other stakeholders are real and telling.

Given the widespread acceptance in Britain of the Non-Statutory National Framework for RE (2004) it must seem obvious to many professional RE teachers and theorists in Britain today that all the major religious traditions should be taught ‘in depth’, fairly and equally. Perhaps for the sake of inclusivity the advice (p. 12) is that one should also include a number of ‘minor’ religions. Better still. We should also introduce a serious study of secular philosophies. The aim appears to be to present them impartially as so many alternative ‘worldviews’ that people around the world have embraced and presumably might still reasonably embrace. Young people are then sent away with the guidance to think, evaluate the evidence and to make up their own mind as to which ‘worldview’ reflects their position. Alternatively, the young might formulate their own world view in the light of such study for their own use. Putting aside the issues of whether teachers have the requisite curriculum time, resources or even the knowledge to pursue such a policy of teaching so many ‘religions and beliefs’, there are other deeper concerns that parents and faith leaders might have about the professional educators’ ambitions for the subject. These concerns are not always well articulated but they are rooted in a deep unease, which believes that those particular aims and objectives of RE are subversive of religious life and somehow miss its essence.

Subverting religiousness

The potential for subversion may be a matter of indifference to some professional religious educators since some have taken the view that it is not their business to either encourage or support religious faith, their duty is solely to teach about it. In their eyes the value that RE has is not to be found in religious faith itself but in the impact the subject of RE has on children. There is a subtle but important shift of emphases here from the value of religious faith to the value of the school subject. The latter is deemed by some to be independent of the merit of religious faith. Note how some RE theorists write about ‘teaching Religious Education’ rather than teaching or cultivating religious sensibilities. In the past, and possibly still present among parents and politicians, there is a belief that the merit of religious faith and the presence of the subject on the curriculum were connected. Religious faith is itself what is of value and this provides the reason that it is a subject on the school curriculum. That the subject of RE can separate itself from the value of religious life and may even have within it the potential to subvert religious faith has possibly not fully dawned on the non-professional stakeholder.

It is worth considering how the subject can and does subvert religious faith, that is, how teaching about the various religions ‘in depth’ could somehow become subversive of religious life or miss the essence of religious life. Initially this may just be a hunch based on the many pupils and adults who, having engaged in Religious Studies, have been led to abandon their faith or have failed to live more deeply, morally and spiritually speaking. There is then no necessary connection between religious studies and moral and spiritual development. To examine the issue further with any clarity requires an understanding of the nature of religious life and within it, the role of reflection. In the first instance this is to engage in the activity known as ‘theology’, something that is open to people of all ages and ability, since it attempts to show reflectively what one’s religious faith means to one. This at least appears to be the task set by St Anselm when he defined theology as ‘faith seeking understanding’. In effect, it suggests a method where one begins with the life of faith, critically examining it in order to show its sense (or potentially its contradictions or nonsense) and what it demands from us. The outcome of such an agenda should unashamedly be a deepening of life as an activity. A related attempt is found in the philosophy of religion developed by D. Z. Phillips under the influence of Wittgenstein where the reflection is guided closely by what religious people actually say and do. He refrains from measuring it against some other preconceived framework and expectations.

Phenomenology, as it was first developed by Husserl and later applied by Ninian Smart to RE in Britain, tried to show what a religion was without too many preconceptions. In its approach, it tried to set out how the religion appears to us, letting the phenomenon speak for itself without evaluating it against one’s already existing understanding of the world. The aim is to describe religions as accurately as possible. As a movement this methodology proved to be enormously influential and popular within British RE. The phenomenological exercise is a very disciplined activity which never quite succeeds in its endeavour. There is a failure in the methodology which has something to do with the fact that when we are dealing with appearances, they are appearances to us. This engagement of the enquirer with the object of his or her interest is something so-called ‘objective’ studies systematically seek to leave out of the picture. Yet the relationship with the self will always intrude on the determination to let the phenomena speak for itself. In some respects this reminder (of the inescapable ‘to us’) is a blessing in disguise since a religious faith is itself precisely about the person’s actions and reactions in the medium of life. The voice of engagement that speaks from faith, and to faith, as a consequence, cannot be heard by the secular person without calling upon a great deal more self-awareness and without a cultural critique of the society in which we live and in which we have a share. Secular culture has a way of dulling religious sensibilities precisely because it fails to think reflexively on what we are doing and becoming as individuals and as a society. One feature of these dulled sensibilities is a failure to recognize that the religious voice speaks to us inescapably at some point in the imperative mood rather than in the indicative mood of description. Hence, for example, the listeners said of Jesus that he spoke as one having authority. The question is, ‘what does it mean to be confronted by authority?’, especially an authority that makes claims or demands on the self.

Parents sometimes express their unease about a perceived subversion of faith in RE by saying, ‘I am an “X” so why are you teaching my child about religion “Y.” My child does not know enough about “X”’. It is all too easy to dismiss this as an expression of prejudice or intolerance as religious educators sometimes do. Parents perceive that the teaching about another religious tradition may be a distraction from the more important task in hand, namely of showing young people what they should live for and what they should live by, the kind of knowledge they have gained from their own religious tradition in the past. Educators have responded to this implied criticism: ‘Our teaching is precisely aimed at communicating a set of attitudes and values. The teaching about religions other than their own is to encourage pupils to become more open minded, tolerant and to develop a respect for others.’ But if this is the response then other considerations offer themselves. Parents might still legitimately wonder why so much time is spent on differing religions and secular philosophies. Could those particular goals of open-mindedness, tolerance and respect for others not have been achieved more easily and more readily by teaching young people from within their religious tradition a version of the golden rule of treating others as they would be done by? Or if speaking to children from a largely Christian tradition, would it not be enough to encourage them to love their neighbour as themselves, with the caveat that ‘loving’ is much more demanding than ‘tolerating’ or ‘respecting’? It seems strange to suggest that open-mindedness, tolerance and respect was only available to human beings once they began to gather information about a number of faiths other than their own.

S. Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, expressed somewhat differently the awareness that studying a religion at depth, even sympathetically, may be subversive of its religious sense. For example, he stated that to defend Christianity is already to have betrayed it. In effect one’s relationship to the object of faith has changed the moment one begins to talk about it rather than to see it as a challenge to living it. He lampooned the behaviour of theologians who study the writings of the apostles ‘objectively’ and who do what religious educationalists not infrequently invite pupils to do in learning about religions. Thus Kierkegaard writes these words through the mouthpiece of a pseudonymous H.H:

The divine authority of [an apostle] should in fact be the sure protection which safeguards the teaching, and preserves it at the majestic distance of the divine from impertinent curiosity, instead of which the doctrine has to be sniffed at – in order that the people may discover whether it was a revelation or not; and probably in the meanwhile God and the Apostle have to wait at the gate, or in the porter’s lodge, till the learned upstairs have settled the matter. The man who is called ought, according to divine ordinance, to use his divine authority in order to be rid of all the impertinent people who will not obey, but want to reason; and instead of that men have, at a single go, transformed the Apostle into an examinee who appears at the market with a new teaching. [Of the difference between a genius and an apostle, p. 147f.]

The key words here are authority and impertinence. People become ‘impertinent’ because of the relationship to the object of faith, by the nature of the enquiry and the criteria by which one judges the matter. If one confronts an authority (whether the authority is God, apostle, parliament or police, etc.) the issue is obedience or disobedience. People have a great capacity for disobedience. They will find an excuse not to obey by shifting the grounds to the point of reflection, for example, thinking about the felicity or infelicity of the wording of the command, or with some such evaluation. As Kierkegaard expressed it, ‘To honour one’s father because he is intelligent is impiety’ (p. 153). No doubt children will assess their parents. Their parents will have their particular strengths and weaknesses, but honouring does not follow from such assessments. To do this one needs no reasons other than to recognize that the person is one’s parent; in fact, giving reasons subverts the very foundations of honouring in much the same way that to give reasons for loving another person subverts the relationship of love. If someone were to ask, ‘why do you love your wife?’ the only appropriate response is simply to say that you do. To give reasons, such as, she is rich, intelligent, humorous or beautiful, is to show that you do not love her or have been misled into thinking these reasons would, or should, matter to loving.

The issue at stake here is that it is possible to subvert the religiousness in the subject of RE simply by the character of the enquiry. To treat one’s religion as one world view among others is already to show it is no longer what commands and binds (as the derivation of the word ‘religion’ suggests). Instead, one has put oneself in the position of authority as someone who will evaluate and judge whether the religion measures up to one’s own standards. Whatever is true and good commands because it is true and good, not because one has decided for oneself what one will consider to be true or what one will take to be good. In short, to come to see that something is true and good is to acknowledge that it has a deep claim on oneself.

It is no coincidence that Kierkegaard’s two minor treatises were prefaced by his pseudonym, H.H., as being only ‘of essential interest to theologians’ (ibid., p. 73). He wished them to reconsider the way in which they did their ‘theologising’ in the nineteenth century. In the first treatise, Kierkegaard begins by describing a child who was brought up in the Christian religion not because he was taught various things about Jesus and angels but because he is brought into a relationship to a picture of the crucified Christ. It was a picture that came to have an increasing grip on him in his life. He lived by it. He did not talk about it. Kierkegaard discusses the difference.

Every man understands very well that to act is something far greater than to talk about it; if, therefore, he is resolved that he will do it, he does not talk about it. What a man talks about in connection with a proposed action is precisely that wherein he is not sure of himself. When a person prevails upon himself with ease to give ten dollars to the poor, so that it seems to him a natural thing, and he finds (here we have it!) that it is nothing to talk about – he never talks about it. But perhaps you may hear him talk about his intention of giving a thousand dollars to the poor – alas! The poor will have to be content with ten. (ibid., p. 83)

The theologian is essentially the man who thinks and talks about giving a thousand dollars. In his presence, the poor starve. For Kierkegaard, theologians are those who only chatter about life. If anything, the nineteenth-century theologian is created not by virtue of his faith or engagement with life but from a process of objectifying religions, a process that is an expression of his alienation and doubt. One may conclude that as a result, such theologians no longer really understand the religious life that begins and ends in action. This seems to be the message of his two short treatises.

It is not difficult to translate the nineteenth-cen...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART ONE Orientations
• PART TWO Dispositions
• PART THREE Exemplars
• Appendix: The Birmingham Religious Education Survey
• Index
• Copyright