Church of England wants better RE

[MuswellHillDad]

"Church of England attacks Michael Gove over state of religious education"

www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/05/church-attacks-gove-religious-education-schools

As an atheist, I'm delighted that RE is being squashed out of the curriculum and that kids leave school seeing religion as a "mystery".

Why can't churches keep out of school? I don't want Scientologists there or the Pope.

Discuss

[alemci]

Where I worked RE was taught well and the students learnt about the main religions. At GCSE it was taught from a christian perspective

e.g. evil and suffering
Euthenasia

but on the AQA paper there were other faiths but our students were told to do the christianity paper as that is what they had been taught.

[MuswellHillDad]

ouryve - I agree and I had accepted your view (and others with the same view) since my original post. Always happy to change my mind with good evidence and debate.

[Coupon]

Knowledge, education and information are the keys to tackling misunderstandings, intolerance and bigotry. Usually schools will present the mainstream information about each religion. So, when children are older and encounter any type of fundamentalism or extremist religion, they'll realise how far removed from the average version of that religion it is.

[ErrolTheDragon]

You only need to look at the US to see the result of keeping other people's beliefs a mystery.

Yes - prominent atheists such as Dan Dennett want to see RE taught in US state schools.

From what I've seen of DDs RE, its way better now than when I was a child (when it was pretty much just Bible stories, pretty much assumed to be 'the truth'). I'm sure it could be improved but I doubt that will happen on Mr Gove's watch.

I think perhaps it needs refocusing - possibly taking apart into different subjects. I agree with the OP that P&E is important and absolutely is not a subset of RE. But P&E alone isn't enough. There also needs to some study of a wide variety of religious and non-religious systems - so that children don't just know about what their parents believe; I also think that there probably needs to be some additional historical/cultural education (which would mostly be Judeo-Christian in this country) to help pupils access literature, art etc and understand our history.

(The one thing there shouldn't be is any 'RI' or actual worship)

[ouryve]

I figured I'd give my hapenn'orth before trawling through the responses, just in case I felt like hurling my laptop before I got to the end!

All the evidence needed is in some of the posts in this thread, although the posts I'm referring to probably had the opposite intention.

[Inertia]

My personal viewpoint is that education should be secular- there is no need for faith-based schools, people can follow their religion in their own time in their respective place of worship. The state doesn't fund non-religious allegiance-based schools- we don't have vegan schools, for example, or West Bromwich Albion schools.

However, I think there is room for RE to be taught within Humanities based contexts as long as children are taught that there are many different faith systems, there is no 'right' religion , and it's part of a wider cultural curriculum.

Bottom line, though, is that schools are now so governed by results that they generally have to focus as much curriculum time as possible on the League Table subjects, with everything else being squeezed. Science , PE, Geography etc probably don't get anywhere near the curriculum time they should - but then they aren't tested.

[DioneTheDiabolist]

I'm a deist and I agree with Ouryve and now yourself OP, that children do not leave school with religion as mystery.

I was unable to read the Guardian article, but I do know that Ofsted particularly criticized the lack of teaching of non-Christian religions in RE (it was the Ofsted report that prompted a response from the CofE). Most people in the world have a religion. Having a basic understanding of religions gives a basic understanding of people. I think that is a good and necessary lesson for our children (and ourselves).

[MuswellHillDad]

KatyPutTheCuttleOn and Inertia

Three's company in my books, shall I put the kettle on?

[Coupon]

Should we really teach the pluralistic or secular opinion that "there is no right religion" though Inertia? Or would it be better to teach that people have different opinions on what is right? If you say there is no right religion then a religious child may wonder what is "wrong" with theirs.

[ErrolTheDragon]

While 'teaching that there is no right religion' would probably upset many religious people, it is surely the case that schools should not teach their pupils that there is a (specific) right religion.

[MuswellHillDad]

Aren't we mixing up right and wrong with the right or wrong religion?

The first one is the important one, the second one is just dressing.

The excellent Trolley dilemma below is useful. Wouldn't we all struggle to answer and make a choice in the same way, regardless of our beliefs? Therefore whether you are CoE, RC, Buddhist or atheist you would still have the same moral maze to navigate. Again, no religion gives you the answer or an advantage. Morals are actually agnostic and religion is merely a way of communicating them.

[niminypiminy]

As the person who brought up the trolley problem, I would say we have the same dilemmas, but we have different resources for negotiating them, because different ethical systems have different ideas about what is right and wrong.

In my view, the richest moral traditions, those where people have put the most serious thought into ethics, are world's great religions. In my view the systems of ethics developed by atheists, particularly utiltarianism and situational ethics, are seriously, profoundly wrong -- and to understand why they are wrong you need some of the concepts that are fundamental to (some of) the world's great religions.

[Inertia]

Ok, there is no universal consensus about religion would perhaps be better.

[RainierWolfcastle]

i think your kids school must be very bad OP. no AIsian religions? In our area Islam and christianity are compulsory
really!
Mind you if I read letters from the doctor and sit in the odd surgery then i can formulate a REALLY good idea of what its like to be a doctor and how to do it right?

unless you really know about the RS curriculum and what teaching is like I would zip it

[ErrolTheDragon]

Niminy - but then again, there are parts of the 'moral codes' of some religions which appear to many people today to be profoundly unethical.

[niminypiminy]

Errol, I do agree that some parts of the the 'moral code' of some religions appear to many people to be profoundly unethical. But that's something that needs unpacking.

Firstly, I think you mean that people don't agree with some of the moral code that they think it is wrong. That's not quite the same as unethical. For example, the RCC's teaching on abortion is viewed by many as entirely wrong yet it proceeds from exactly the same line of ethical reasoning as the RCC's opposition to capital punishment, which many of the same people, I'm guessing, would think was right. (By the way, I'm not an RC!)

Also, there is a distinction between systems of ethics and moral codes. Moral codes arise from systems of ethics, but they're not the same as them. A system of ethics is the underlying principles that underpin any moral code such as, say, there are universal moral principles such as right and wrong or there are no universal principles, and right and wrong are purely determined by the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. The moral code arises from applying the ethical principles.

And one of the problems about moral codes is that they lead you into difficult situations. It's wrong to kill, for instance; or it's right to kill someone if you prevent the deaths of other people. What I am saying, really, is that even though they get things wrong the world's great religions have greater resources for helping us to deal with these questions than secular philosophers have yet come up with.

[MuswellHillDad]

I read "Aslan" religions there

I can't say with absolute certainty that Islam is not discussed at all in the class as, clearly, I'm not there. However, their workbooks show no evidence of that and their knowledge of other religions seems no more than they might have picked up along the way. Maybe they're just "slow" kids

[MuswellHillDad]

Niminypiminy. Matters such as murder, abortion etc have group morals reflected in Law. A soldier at war is licenced to kill, a gangster with a gun is not. Abortion is legal. All of that is secular. No need for guidance from religion. Of course, you might choose, as a Roman Catholic, not to have an abortion and that be in keeping with your personal moral code and the law.

[pyrrah]

KatyPutTheCuttleOn - "even if you don't believe in the miracles and so on it is still the case that there was a bloke called Jesus who did stuff, some of which was considered to be a miracle"

Actually there is ZERO contemporaneous evidence for Jesus at all - or even historical evidence.

Just one of those things we were all taught in school and never really questioned, even as a life-long atheist it was a surprise to me when I found it out!

[niminypiminy]

MuswellHillDad, where do you think we got those group morals and laws from?? Indeed, where do you think we got the idea that law should cover moral matters?

[MuswellHillDad]

Imagine Potterism in 2000 years.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Moral codes arise from systems of ethics

They should; however too often in practice, religious 'moral codes' seem to derive from particular interpretations of what one ancient book or another says.

Its not at all clear to me what resources religions could have which would give them any advantage over secular philosophers.

[RainierWolfcastle]

plus most of the legal system has its basis in the Judeo Christian tradition

and literature

theyd never understand the swoonability of Aslan

[RainierWolfcastle]

lol asian
obvs!

Then Aslan

[alemci]

Pyrah

I think there are some records of Jesus existing in Roman Documentation. Have a book about it somewhere upstairs.