This article is a reasoned, normative argument for making religion education (RE) a separate, compulsory, time-tabled and totally normal school subject at all levels in public schools. Should religious education be a compulso .... II Moral values in religious education today, III A critical review of current justifications, IV A new conception of religious education and justification for it. But how far is the original purpose acceptable today? Children brought up within faith communities are inducted into moral rules and values embedded in their faith. It is not easy for most people to disentangle the two claims, to see that the logical dependence goes one way in the first statement and the other in the second. Couple of years back religious studies; Islamic religious Knowledge (IRK) or Bible Knowledge (BK) were made compulsory the Nigerian School curriculum from primary up to Junior Secondary School (JSS). In his dialogue Euthyphro he raises the question, in the words of Socrates, whether something is holy because the gods approve it, or whether they approve it because it is holy (Plato, Euthyphro, 10a). Very many of these have to do with personal/civic qualities desired in young learners and also have a high ethical content. 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. A central obligation on schools is to help children to move away from confusion in their thinking and towards clarity and well-groundedness. The idea that religious education should encourage adherence to Christianity was replaced by a non-confessional approach, emphasizing an understanding of religion. But his new justification for religious education is not powerful enough to keep it in the privileged position it is in now. Britain is a secular society and becoming increasingly so. The later 1930s in Europe saw the increasing influence of totalitarian systems of belief—Nazism, Fascism, Communism. In later sections of this paper I shall leave historical explanations behind and concentrate exclusively on the strengths and weaknesses of justifications given for compulsory religious education. Where was the counter-ideal to mobilize the energies and command the dedication of the British people? Should Non Believers Be Forced To Learn About Something They Dont Believe In? If you want study or share religious views, the church/mosque should be the right place and not schools. 5 Religious Education in Schools (England) Notes . In my opinion, religious studies should not be made compulsory but optional. This liberation in attitudes undermined the pivotal place of women in Christian social thought between 1800 and the mid-twentieth century—as respectable wives, mothers and young girls. This is true, and it is important that children know this. If a high level of sophistication is required, more of the 500 periods could be filled up. CRE is a compulsory and examinable subject in primary school but elective subject in The theme was taken up by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1941: There is an ever-deepening conviction that in this present struggle we are fighting to preserve those elements in human civilization and in our own national tradition which owe their origin to Christian faith. Zhdanov V. (2016) Religious Education as a Compulsory Subject in Russian Public Schools. Register to receive personalised research and resources by email. Until the introduction of the National Curriculum, religious education was the only compulsory subject in state schools. Ah yes I am in the favor of the topic that yes religious and patient should be taught in school as a compulsory subject. These involve epistemologically distinctive forms of argumentation, to which all pupils should be exposed (Hand, 2003). To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. Religious education was made compulsory in 1944 partly for moral/civic reasons and the legacy continues along with other aims to do with understanding and respecting different faiths. I think religious education should be compulsory, as an educative subject - ie, learn about the different faiths and their beliefs in school. The argument for teaching religious education in schools is that helping children to be aware of the broad spectrum of religions and how there are children just like them that believe differently will help them to separate their faith or their family’s religious belief from being a personal matter of who they are. Labyrinthine arguments are no more in place here than in work on political or moral issues. Children exposed to ethical discussion of environmental issues in geography classes are in no danger of coming to believe that morality rests on geography, but with religious education it is different. As Callum Brown has shown, it was during and just after the war that organized Christianity in Britain enjoyed something of a recovery. Another consideration is: what level of sophistication in this religious/scientific understanding is a reasonable objective for children up to 16? Take the section in the booklet just mentioned (QCA, 2000: inside front cover), about ‘the importance of religious education’. The first two of these have mainly to do with the aim, mentioned above, of understanding and respecting the plurality of faiths in British society. Although the wartime perception of religion as a basis for democracy has withered, at least in Britain, the more general belief that religion is closely interlinked with morality has been more long-lived in the religious education curriculum—down to today. This is false, and it is important that children know this, too. Religious education is part prisoner of its own history. What about the great majority of children, those who are brought up outside faith communities? Aside Mathematics and English Language, one is expected to pass one of those subjects as well as it was made to appear a compulsory subject. Whatever the answer—and we will come back to this—there are three ways in which current guidance for religious education in the Model Syllabuses falls short. Between 1970 and 1990 active adult membership of Trinitarian churches in the UK dropped from 9.3 to 6.6 million. In addition, the school curriculum has now been furnished—and not before time!—with a set of overarching aims (DfEE/QCA, 1999, pp. It should also be taught that a lack of faith is just as valid as having faith. link Programs . In our own terms, we may ask whether lying is wrong because God disapproves of it, or whether God disapproves of it because it is wrong. It is certainly problematic. 9mins 6secs Are the churches in Ukraine becoming militarised? If religion is to be studied, why should the whole emphasis be on positive features? In addition there is a centrally published booklet laying down, as for the National Curriculum subjects, the reasons for the importance of the subject, its contribution to learning across the curriculum, and the expected attainments in various areas of the subject for children at different levels of learning (QCA, 2000). (Any other claim would do as an example.) In 1944 religious instruction (RI), as well as a daily act of corporate worship, was made compulsory in all state schools, subject to the right of withdrawal if parents desired this. Religious education was made compulsory in 1944 partly so as to support the moral values underlying democracy. One difficulty here is that, as we have seen, questions about the creation of the universe, life after death, etc. At the moment each pupil is supposed to have some 500 periods of religious education over these 11 years. Its churches and chapels are increasingly preserved as historical monuments or turned to other uses—tyre warehouses, upmarket dwellings, rock-climbing centres. There are countless examples in all this material of links taken to exist between religion and morality. I think in 11th and 12th Grade it should be compulsory to do English, Maths, health/personal development, physical education and religious education. People argue whether students should learn about world religions in school or no. Religious Education Should Be a Part of the School Curriculum? What can the moral content of their religious education lessons add to their moral education? The same verdict is passed on a third justification, based on a recommended switch in the content of religious education classes to the critical analysis of religious claims. They may be motivated by sympathy, loyalty or concern for the underprivileged. The idea that morality needs the backing of religion was taken for granted in the arguments around the 1944 Act. Teaching religion in schools helps students understand the differences among the principles of each and every religion. Currently parents are able to request their children do not take part in sex and religious education, under an opt-out arrangement. For many years now a central aim of religious education has been to encourage pupils to understand and respect the beliefs and practices of citizens from different faith communities, Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu and others. The title of this thread is what it's all about: Education about religion should be compulsory in schools. The Spens Report on grammar and technical high schools of 1938 suggested that the solution lay in religious education. <>stream It was in fact still widespread. It thus became the only compulsory subject, the former state control of the elementary curriculum having been abandoned in 1926 and state determination of the grammar school curriculum soon to be ended in 1945. The only question is: what weight does such an aim have in relation to other curricular aims? There are now several possible candidates apart from religious education lessons, none of which face the particular problem which confronts religious education and to which I shall turn in a moment. (eds) Religious Education in a Global-Local World. Cox states in the earlier quotation that ‘this particular action is right because in some way it accords with the underlying purpose of creation’. There is no indication that many people question the existence of God. The most obvious way of understanding these four aims is that one of the aims of religious education is to contribute to pupils’ general ethical learning. The title itself generates a bias towards a certain point of view. A quibble—and it is not a minor one; we will come back to it—is that if only a minority of the population, at most, belong to faith communities, why should all the emphasis be put on pupils’ understanding and respecting the differing views of this minority? In the light of this plain fact, I suspect that most people in the religious education world will agree that morality does not have to be based on religion, either motivationally or epistemologically. School should be for serious learning not religious indoctrination. I firmly believe that. If presented as mythology and made into a voluntary subject then by all means yes. Religious education encourages pupils to reflect on, analyse and evaluate their beliefs, values and practices and communicate their responses. But we are dealing with schoolchildren, not university specialists in theology. What made Britain decide to make it compulsory needs to be understood against the political background of the time. This is an especially forlorn task, seeing the numbers of secular-minded people who are kind to children, don’t cheat on their spouses, and tell the taxman the truth. Over the next decades, however, religious education developed a civic dimension of a different sort. I think religious education should be compulsory, as an educative subject - ie, learn about the different faiths and their beliefs in school. In the same way, RI/RE’s deep-rooted practice of using religious material for moral lessons is now way out of touch with twenty-first century life. Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab. If we take it for the sake of argument that God disapproves of lying (or commands us not to lie), this could be because lying is wrong (something that ought not to be done). If the trends mentioned continue into the twenty-first century, this majority can be expected to increase. Religious education is not the same as collective worship, which has its own place within school life. Has it ever been acceptable? There is a lot to be said in favour of this aim. If asked, for instance, why they thought compulsory religious education was important, Temple, Butler, Churchill and its other supporters could have argued—and no doubt did argue—for it in those terms. Conclusion. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. bring in scientific and philosophical as well as ­religious perspectives. 10–12). This civic justification faded after the war, but even today one official justification of religious education is in terms of moral education. In: Berglund J., Shanneik Y., Bocking B. He has produced a number of tables and graphs showing its unprecedented decline after 1960 after 20 years of increasing religiosity. There are plenty of other places the kids can get that. It can also help them to think through their strengths and weaknesses. It is quite unfair to indoctrinate dogma into the minds of little innocent kids in the name of religion. Its uniqueness comes only in its answers: the questions from which it starts generate inquiry in many different fields. The ground given is that this accords with the underlying purpose of creation. If we take it that it means something like ‘Is there a rational agent ultimately responsible for the existence of the physical universe?’, this again is a question on which many perspectives bear, including those from science and from the history of the undermining of religious claims over the last three centuries. There is evidently an urgent need to strengthen our foundations by securing that effective Christian education should be given in all schools to the children, the future citizens, of our country. Religious education encourages pupils to consider questions of meaning and purpose in life. It contains nine statements, as follows: Religious education develops pupils’ knowledge and understanding of, and their ability to respond to, Christianity and the other principal religions represented in Great Britain. Even in the one place where fundamental questions are raised about the existence of God in Christian thought, the suggested focus is on ‘evidence for God’ (my italics). Teaching religion as a mandatory subject in a public school violates the separation of church and state. On, for instance, the aim built into the first two of the nine statements—about developing pupils’ understanding of different religions. It runs the dangers of confused thinking outlined in Section (i). (eds) Religious Education in a Global-Local World. To give just two out of very many: from work on Hinduism at Key Stage 3 (age 11–14), children ‘should be encouraged to think about’, among other things, ‘the importance of keeping promises’, ‘the use of violence’, ‘qualities they admire in people’ (SCAA, 1994, Model 2, p. 43). For instance, while confirmations in the Church of England dropped from 181,154 in 1900 to 142, 294 in 1940, they rose to 190,713 in 1960 and then dwindled, largely because fewer women were joining the church, to 40,881 by 1997 (Brown, 2001). Religious Education in England is mandated by the Education Act 1944 as amended by the Education Reform Act 1988 and the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. There are very many examples in the Model Syllabuses of work on specific religions apparently used to trigger more general moral learning. Pupils learn about religious and ethical teaching, enabling them to make reasoned and informed judgements on religious, moral and social issues. If you want to learn about religion there are many avenues to pursue including your local church. It is time for it to hand the moral baton on to those less likely to stumble. Does that mean it should be scrapped—that its legally privileged place in the curriculum as a compulsory subject from 5 to 16 should be abandoned? Aside Mathematics and English Language, one is expected to pass one of those subjects as well as it was made to appear a compulsory subject. He seems to have no problem with a slave-owning society, believes that birth control is a capital crime (Genesis 38:9–10), is keen on child abuse (Proverbs 22:15,23:13–14, 29:15), and, for good measure, approves of fool abuse (Proverbs 26:3). If X accords with the underlying purpose of creation, more needs to be added to show that X is morally right. Many religious educators would put the emphasis elsewhere. Zhdanov V. (2016) Religious Education as a Compulsory Subject in Russian Public Schools. How much harder is it for young children to keep a clear head on this matter! He argues that secularization in Britain has not been a gradual process since the Enlightenment, but has been massive since the 1960s. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church also called for religion to become a compulsory subject in schools. There is no good reason for keeping them hived off in a discrete part of the curriculum. … One well-known traditional form of this argument surely will not do. With PSHE and citizenship as well as history now part of the National Curriculum, there is plenty of scope for including religious material in the work of other subjects. Part of the answer lies in the period just before and during the Second World War. As we have seen, if children are to come to know about different religions, part of their understanding will be that religious beliefs bring moral beliefs with them. Show more segments. The first—and perhaps most effective—vehicle is the ethos of the school: the ideals, rules and virtues which it celebrates and reinforces in its day-to-day life, its pedagogy, and the way in which it is run. There is pressure to broaden the traditional academic content of subjects like geography and technology so as to include discussion of the ethical implications of work in the field. People argue whether students should learn about world religions in school or no. IF the government wants to make this country a Christian nation, then it should make religious education a compulsory subject from elementary to university level so we see better results after some years. I realize my position is controversial and will leave it open at this point for further debate. Discounting has been applied where pupils have taken the same subject more than once, only the first entry is counted . Is this adequate? Few of RE’s proponents today, if pressed, would accept this. Teaching religion, as a required course, would cause contradictions in education. Although there have been smaller scale increases in religious observance in non-Trinitarian Christianity and in other faiths, e.g. Sincerely, I'm yet to see the benefits of these studies on the larger nigerian society. (Loukes, 1965, p. 22). This could be through a private or religious school , homeschooling by the child's parents, or instruction by a private tutor. Other philosophers challenge the assumption in all these that morality needs any foundation. Britain is an increasingly secular society, yet religious education is a compulsory school subject. Philosophical doubts about the possibility of basing morality on religion go back to Plato. Suppose we apply this to keeping promises. This is still, in one way, an inheritance from 1944, since once one asks questions about the justification of democracy, it is to broader ethical values like autonomy, justice, equality and liberty that one turns (Harrison, 1993). They are unlikely these days to back these demands by reference to anything religious, to God’s love, for instance. There are plenty of other places the kids can get that. By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. This does not seem likely, especially in the light of what has been said about general aims 3, 4, 5 and 7; but if it is what is intended, there needs to be much more clarity about this. It is also an inheritance from the earlier part of the twentieth and the nineteenth centuries, when religious instruction, as in our own day, was also designed to make pupils morally better persons, although this was not explicitly connected with democracy. If we assume that knowing something about the main religions is important for every state school child, part of this knowledge will be knowledge of their ethical injunctions. It should be purged of the three blemishes which now mar it, as well as of its role in general moral education. IF the government wants to make this country a Christian nation, then it should make religious education a compulsory subject from elementary to university level so we see better results after some years. This essay examines both justifications and concludes that neither is strong enough to support the continued existence of religious education as a separate, compulsory subject. Registered in England & Wales No. This syllabus, which was based on St. Luke's Gospel, was first introduced in Kenya in 1972 (Walaba, 1999). ‘[The churches] will continue to exist in some skeletal form with increasing commitment from a decreasing number of supporters’ (p. 198). Before 1988 indeed, religious education was the only compulsory subject. Moral education is not the only aim of religious education in Britain today. Another solution would be to abandon religious education as a separate entity altogether. Entries rounded to nearest 100 (entries by pupils at the end of Key Stage 4) Religious education entries includes religious studies entries . The shopping centre of the London suburb where I live is called ‘The Spires’—after the only feature of the nonconformist church still remaining after the latter was pulled down to make way for commerce in the 1980s. The second defect of the Model Syllabuses is that they provide so little opportunity for assessing the soundness of the views presented. Oh, just to be clear - what I mean by 'Education about religion' is helping young people to be freed from uninformed influence and to realise that religious faith is on the same level as belief in Santa Claus or Batman. I Am In My Final Year Of Secondary School, And I Have Never Liked R.E Because I Do Not Believe In God, Heaven Or Hell. Why not aim at understanding and respecting differences in the fundamental beliefs of all sections of the population, including the less committed majority? This account is broadly confirmed by Callum Brown (2001). link About Us . Religious education was made compulsory in 1944 partly so as to support the moral values underlying democracy. (This would not be to rule out raising them more embryonically with younger children). Teaching religion in schools helps students understand the differences among the principles of each and every religion. 10–11). Oh, just to be clear - what I mean by 'Education about religion' is helping young people to be freed from uninformed influence and to realise that religious faith is on the same level as belief in Santa Claus or Batman. %���� In which case, morality exists independently of religion. In some cases they may, let us allow, help moral backsliders to behave as they should. One objection to the crude appeal is that it makes moral behaviour instrumental to one’s own self-interested aims of gaining advantage and avoiding distress. What could replace the dots in ‘We ought not to lie because …’? [11] OSCE, the Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching [5] J. Religious education does not seek to urge religious beliefs on pupils nor [sic] compromise the integrity of their own beliefs by promoting one religion over another. Email: j.white@ioe.ac.uk. Aim 3—encouraging pupils to consider questions of meaning and purpose in life—could be interpreted in a factual sense as about children’s learning what Jewish, Hindu, Christian and other religions have said about these matters. None of the material mentioned in this paragraph has statutory status. Also the reason for 6 weeks summer holidays originated because children were required to work on the land to bring in the harvest. (Loukes, 1965, p. 23). In any case, given that discussion must be conducted fairly, involving children with recondite argumentation may lead them to believe, erroneously, that the weight of evidence falls on the pro-religious side. 3 0 obj Aim 2 makes an explicit link between religious education and morality, in that to understand different religions one has to see that they each bring with them the moral precepts associated with that religion (e.g., the Roman Catholic religion treats practising homosexuality as a sin). Leaving Cox’s argument on one side, how can we justify moral claims—e.g. ‘Should RE be a compulsory school subject?’ British Journal of Religious Education Vol 26 No 2 Reprinted in Philosophy of Education II edited by Richard Smith Routledge, 2015. God, grace and karma don’t come into it. 151-164. Despite the clear evidence of increasing secularization, religious education (RE) is still a compulsory part of the curriculum in state schools in England and Wales. Yet we find on every side profound ignorance of the Christian faith itself. Its exclusively Christian emphasis, prominent in the above quotations, was replaced by a multi-faith perspective, reflecting the plurality of religions now found in the society. Religious education was made compulsory in 1944 partly so as to support the moral values underlying democracy. Every subject is expected to contribute to such aims as ‘valuing ourselves, our families and other relationships, the wider groups to which we belong and the environment in which we live’; ‘the virtues of truth, justice, honesty, trust and a sense of duty’; ‘being responsible and caring citizens’, etc. It would help children to see things as a whole if the questions we have been discussing were brought under this same umbrella. It does not follow from the statement that someone commands us to do something that we ought to do it. A full historical treatment of that event would also have to lay great weight on the desire to move beyond denominational particularism in the provision of religious instruction (Niblett, 1966). The emphasis now is—more broadly—on moral/ethical values. Is its compulsory status justifiable? To see this in more detail, we first need a bird’s-eye sketch of the current situation. 9Mins 6secs are the churches in the writings of a recovery not face the particular problem which religious! 'M yet to see how aims 5 and 7 can be given an intellectualist interpretation message you! Another, there is no indication that many people question the existence of God just like mathematics, physics or. Of putting this is false, and it is important that children know this school... 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