The report said that a “16-year-old who does not wish to receive religious instruction” could only be excused from RE lessons with the consent of parents, “who may not necessarily grant the request. In our view this would be likely to lead to a breach of the pupil’s article 9 right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” it said.
What I think may be wrong here is that there seems to be a confusion about what RE actually does. As if it is instruction in a particular faith rather than introducing students to beliefs and the issues that they raise. I can't help feeling that the reductio ad absurdam of this would be to make English, Maths etc non-compulsory at school ... now there may be a way out of that but it's not immediately apparent, give that RE is not about forcing beliefs on people but giving them the tools to think about how and what human beings believe and why. In today's world I'd have thought that religious literacy is vitally important to diminish the influence of fundamentalism of all stripes from Dawkins to bin Laden via Pat Robertson and the ilk.
Teaching Ideas & Resources - TES - The Times Educational Supplement:
Filed in: education, UK, religion, schools, RE
2 comments:
Would your view be any different though if the school was delivering religious instruction or a biased religious education rather than giving a wide understanding of religion and moral reasoning?
Thanks for the question Paul. The main thrust of my argument hinges on the point that the RE syllabus is wide ranging and takes a broad view of religion, including objections to religious views. I think it is important that views are taught fairly that is to say in ways that proponents would recognise as fair representations of their views. So I would be unhappy at state funding of education where that was not happening. I think there is a case for recognising that we all come at ultimate questions with prior commitments and that there can be a value in that and working with that. However, I guess that if there was no fair presentation of religious others and no attempt to encourage a wide-ranging religious and spiritual literacy, I would question the value to wider society and probably argue that it would best be done on a voluntarist basis and certainly one-sided stuff should not be publically funded.
As a Christian, I see this as an outworking of the 'do as you would be done by' principle: I don't want [as I have seen happen in my children's RE at times] my faith to be presented in a way that denigrates and misrepresents it. I'd rather it was not presented at all than be so unfairly, and I object to my taxes being used to denigrate my faith. So I must grant the same to others; either their faiths are presented fairly and with recognition of bona fides or they are not presented at all. And by the same token, we should be open also to the presentation of other viewpoints. This applies also to secularists who can both expect their viewpoints to be fairly presented, and should expect that viewpoints they dislike may be presented.
What I dislike myself is the atheist/secularist viewpoint that assumes that it is somehow neutral and that religious views are somehow not rational. In actual fact, atheism is a faith stance too and not entirely as rational as some of its protagonists would have us believe, and should take its place in the spectrum of faiths and not expect a priviledge position either.
That's a long way to say to say 'yes', but I think that it is important to see more of the issues involved in that answer.
Post a Comment