Which is the best model for religious education?
By Terry Sanderson
We hear that the founder of the Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI), Dick Spicer, has resigned as chairman of its board because he can’t agree with the membership over what approach the group should take to religious education.
The HAI was consulted by a reference group that is developing a multi-faith programme for the schools, Scoil Ghráinne and Scoil Choilm. But the group wanted to suggest a French model, which creates a completely secular classroom. Mr Spicer, on the other hand, wanted to recommend the “Scandinavian approach”, which attempts to deal equally with differing religious and non-religious perspectives by offering equal respect to all. He told the Irish Times: “I believe the Scandinavian model is far more in keeping with an ethical humanist approach to society, and that the pursuit of the French model is more suited to a simply secular or atheist pressure group.” He believes endorsement of the French model for Irish schools “is particularly wrong given our national history”.
He said the position favoured by the association “sacrifices for an ideological principle the possible achievement of a network of State schools for the nationally dispersed non-religious community, and the opportunity of accommodating many from other religious minorities within such schools”.
He continued that “the building of a national network of schools which minority religious groups can attend is not something which should be jeopardised in Irish circumstances”. The funding of religious schools was “facilitated by our Constitution and the minorities may move towards ghettoising their children within schools which isolate them further from democratic Irish culture”. (The HAI’s approach has been clarified by the group’s secretary Ann James here)
This brings up the perennial problem of which kind of secularism is best to aim for in British society and education system.
The NSS has also plumped for the more radical (in British terms) approach of wishing to see religious influence removed from schools. That doesn’t mean that pupils shouldn’t be taught some broad detail about religion, as well its geographical spread and impact on history and the arts. We are not deceived by the purported objectivity of Religious Education. The law still permits proselytising in many faith schools, and even in community schools the weekly repetition over years of what Jesus said and God did (rarely served up as “Some Christians think ...”) sears itself on young impressionable minds.
We can make a start by getting rid of SACREs – the local authority bodies that decide the religious education syllabus for each local education authority. SACRES are packed with “faith leaders” who stitch up the syllabus for their own purposes. The fact that there are sometimes humanist representatives (without voting rights) on these SACREs does not help. It simply gives legitimacy to the religious hegemony by enabling them to claim that they represent the whole community – believers and non-believers alike. In fact the best the non-believers can hope for are a few lousy crumbs from a table that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
The Church of England would certainly like to see an end to SACREs – but only because it wants a national, legally binding religious education syllabus that it would write for the Government. This is something else to resist.
You need only look at the Ofsted Religious Education Guidelines to see that the churches and mosques cannot be trusted to be even-handed about presenting their view of the world in schools. Religious education is very much religious instruction still, whatever church apologists may say. The idea that religion is challenged or questioned to any meaningful extent in RE lessons is simply not true.
The only answer is to take religious education out of the hands of the vested interests that control it at present and hand it over to academics with an instruction to come up with a proper concept of providing objective information about religion and all the other philosophies that motivate people.
Trying to accommodate the “needs” of all religions in RE classes simply makes schools into sectarian battlegrounds as competing “faiths” (and non-faiths) vie for influence. In Ireland, for instance, the Catholic Church is still fighting to maintain its iron grip on education.
Mr Spicer has got it wrong, and the members of HAI have got it right. Ireland, more than most countries, has learned a hard lesson about the consequences of theocratic control of schools. HAI members should stick to their guns and press on for a separation of religion and education.
It works in France and America, Turkey and India – it can work in Ireland (and one day in the UK, too).