UK Supreme Court rules religious education in Northern Ireland is indoctrination

[CForCake]

Religious education in Northern Ireland is different from other parts of the UK. The Curriculum is almost entirely about Christianity, with only a few bits and pieces about other faiths in secondary school.

The Core Syllabus (from the NI dep. of education) starts with: "The revelation of God" https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/de/religious-education-core-syllabus-english-version.pdf

The UK Supreme Court has now ruled that this is unlawful and discriminatory.

The details of the case are on the UK Supreme Court website: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0095#case-summary
including a press summary.

JR87’s parents did not wish her to be taught that Christianity was an absolute truth. Her father, “G”, challenged the legality of the religious education and collective worship and sought judicial review against the Department of Education

in JR87’s school religious education and collective worship were not conveyed in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner

The family had the right to withdraw the child, but this "placed an undue burden on parents"

Note that the family didn't object to the kid learning about Christianity - they just didn't want it taught as an absolute truth.

Humanists UK thinks this should trigger a rethink of religious education in the whole of the UK. In England it is rarely indoctrination like it is in NI (AFAIK), but England retains an anachronistic requirement for collective Christian worship (which many schools, in practice, ignore)

Sky News also reported the judgement

The BBC adds more colour:

• The controversy began when the girl came home from class and began to recite prayers before meals, telling her family she had learned to do so in school
• When the parents queried the child's RE provision with the school, staff replied they were just following Northern Ireland's Bible-based, Christian-focused curriculum
• The girl and her father subsequently took legal action, concerned that pupils in Northern Ireland were being taught to assume that Christianity was "an absolute truth"
• The court heard the girl's family "strongly support" the provision of religious education, "provided it does not amount to indoctrination"
• All families have the right to withdraw children from RE lessons and worship, but the girl's parents did not do so, fearing it could lead to bullying or stigmatisation

Good! The humanists are right on this in my opinion.

I looked for a thread on this yesterday, I think this is a very interesting development which I think will have big implications here in Scotland too. Basically our choices are catholic or Protestant schools, despite the latter being called ‘non-denominational’. It would be great for Christianity to be presented as one of many beliefs and not fact.

How is RE taught in Scotland?
I am in London. I have never looked in huge detail into the issue, but my impression is that state schools in London tend to teach a broadly balanced curriculum, not to present Christianity as the one true religion.

Our local dioceses are looking into the current local agreed syllabus for RE. We already teach about other religions, including Sikhism, Hinduism, Islamic and Judaic faiths, and humanist views too. But the Christianity taught is Church of England focussed and they are looking to widen this to a more world view of Christianity, encompassing orthodox, Pentecostal and other Christian viewpoints. It will take a while but is an interesting move from Anglican dioceses.

I wouldn't mind my child learning Christianity as truth if they went to a RC or CofE school, as we have discussions at home so they know what we believe as a family and can form their own opinion. But I am against compulsory collective worship because there is a difference between learning and taking part and schools don't always understand my perspective as a Muslim parent, and think that by seeking to withdraw my child from worship I'm somehow 'refusing to integrate'. When I was at my CofE school decades ago the Jewish pupils came into assembly after the religious part had been concluded, so I'm surprised by the resistance I have sometimes faced with DC.

It is a very interesting development. Thanks for this post, OP.

I wonder where private schools sit in this? They are bound by the same rules too or are they exempt?

So many of the long established boarding/day schools have a Chapel and chapel attendance is compulsory for boarders. Think of places like Wycombe Abbey, Wellington College..

These institutions, whose traditions are very much anchored in Christianity and marking of various important school events are still held in the Chapel and with Christian prayers. The latter sometimes almost becomes indoctrination!

In today's pluralist society, where national events (e.g Remembrance day service) are being marked with multifaith prayers, schools still seem to not want to change!

Re is taught in a more plural way, all main faiths covered. But ‘collective worship’ is mandated and this is Christian. So they have regular visits from a minister, and Christian services at Easter, harvest, Xmas etc. I’ve never heard they’ve had another religious leader in to guide a service. I wouldn’t say children are pressured directly but God is presented in a factual way rather than as one belief.

Good. It’s heading in the right direction and the sooner faith schools don’t exist the better. Teach about different religions but not as truth or fact.

It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of those with faith also follow the same religion as their parents. I wonder why…

I say this as someone who attended both primary and secondary faith schools. When I was about 19 I thought what a load of nonsense and have been an atheist ever since.

So these parents unwittingly sent their child to a non- secular school in NI and were shocked to find their child was being taught the tenets of whatever religion ran the school?
I call BS.

I'm in the US where you can choose between secular or private religious-run schools, or other secular like Montessori or Steiner or whatever. If you choose any option besides secular/ state schools you pay tuition. It's a system I support. But I don't buy their story and I don't think it would have been onerous to take the child out of the school - they were already prepared to take their fight with the child's school all the way to the top court, and I wonder how that affected the child.

I am not sure about NI, but in Scotland state schools work on a catchment system. Live in a certain part of the country, then your kid goes to a set school.

I follow the atheist community casually, and I don't think the US is as clear cut as you make out. There is pretty much a near constant stream of court cases in the US brought by Christians against public schools. A football coach wants to have team prayers on the touchline ? It's off to SCOTUS we go. Indeed, many US politicians make very public displays of not understanding the separation of Church and State.

It's a test case, and a very valid one in my view.

These are state schools and religious education is built into the system. I grew up there many years ago but, back then, state schools taught protestant beliefs and Catholic schools were sort of private

@mathanxiety

Reading the links, it was a state school, non denominational.

I think it is pretty much a given that teaching any religion to a child as being the absolute truth can be very damaging.

For example, it teaches them to cherry pick. Read the good bits, ignore the bad bits.

Ignore science, and evidence based thought processes.

As for morals, what morals does it teach ?

Faith and schools in NI are much more intrinsically linked than that - almost all education in NI is faith based, choice is extremely limited.

I grew up in Ireland, and attended a 'multi denominational' secondary school where Religion class in the late 70s and early 80s was pretty much a civics debate class. It was a time of enormous social change in Ireland, so it was a class everyone enjoyed. Religion was not an exam subject, but the lack of homework and tests wasn't the reason for its popularity.

Anyway, I have friends in both NI and Ireland whose children sat out sacramental prep and / or worship assemblies in their schools and did not experience bullying. If bullying is part of the school culture and is such a problem that it was a real fear of parent G, then perhaps it would have been more in the child's interest to fight against that, and if school administrators dragged their feet, to present a case to the court based on the effects of that. It's shocking that the probability of bullying was accepted without question. Makes you wonder why the parent thought any of the Christian 'indoctrination' was really hitting its mark.

There are also many cases brought by atheists questioning communal/ team prayers, moments of silent prayer, etc.

It's a nation of laws, and clarifying them is useful.

Fwiw, if I had children in a state school in Oklahoma or any state where religious fundamentalist zealots were insisting on basically protestant prayers or indoctrination, I would take my business elsewhere. This was the bone of contention that caused an RC bishop of NY in the mid 1800s, known as Dagger John, to push for an end to protestant proselytising societies' involvement in running NY public schools and to start working on establishing a separate nationwide, diocesan administered RC school system.

I don't know what religion you're talking about there. Possibly some kind of fundamentalist sect?

Yup. The US is a hotbed of court cases over religion in schools.

You said, " But I don't buy their story and I don't think it would have been onerous to take the child out of the school - they were already prepared to take their fight with the child's school all the way to the top court, and I wonder how that affected the child."

And then you say " a state school in Oklahoma or any state where religious fundamentalist zealots were insisting on basically protestant prayers or indoctrination, I would take my business elsewhere."

So you are fine with potential upheaval in your childs education over religion, but for other parents to do so, in a different country without the same choice of schools is damaging to the child ? ( I am not commenting on parenting at all here).

Have you been following the Enoch Burke case in Eire ?

That's interesting when compared to this case. But it's almost the opposite. In this case he taught at a nominally religious school, Church of Ireland, and he is in court and jail because he says they are not religious enough, basically.

So two cases on the same Island, both over religion, but at opposite ends.

To me, the simple solution would be to keep religion out of schools. It's not as if there are a shortage of Churches for folk to go to.

There are no non secular schools in NI. There are a couple that take pupils from both religious traditions but they, as far as I know, split into RC and protestant for RE.

Having a child sit out of collective worship and RE isn't always easy.

I went to RC schools, we had 4 lessons of RE a week, we had morning worship /assembly first thing, at 11.55 the 'Angelous' bell would ring and we had 5 mins to recite that. We also had prayers at the end of each day.

Then we had 'hymns', where we learned new hymns and sang them.

Occasionally we would have a visit from a mission group and we came off our normal timetable for the week.

@mathanxiety
If you are not familiar with the UK system, ask. Being so opinionated and calling bs on stuff you know nothing about doesn't reflect well on you.

First of all, I presume you know the UK is England, Wales, Scotland + Northern Ireland.

There are no secular schools in the UK.

There are faith state schools and non-faith state schools.

Most faith schools discriminate on their admission policy based on faith, even if funded by everyone's taxes. Can you imagine a public hospital doing that?
Non-faith state schools are still mandated, by law, to have collective acts of Christian worship; in London this is often ignored in practice, elsewhere I don't know.

Religious education in England is a mix of world religions + philosophical views. Eg students might learn consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics etc

Not so in Northern Ireland. As per the link from the NI government I sent you, in NI they cover only Christianity, and present it as fact.

You said that you would take your business elsewhere. That would mean leaving Northern Ireland altogether!! Not always easy. Nor the right thing to do. Some things you fight for.

Have you read what the Supreme Court wrote? It's not only about bullying, it's about the stigma if you are the only one who isn't taking that class.

And, regardless, why should religion be taught as an absolute truth? Why? Can you explain?

I've just had a thought about my school, I don't know if this still applies but RC things popped up in various other lessons e.g. we had to make a simnel cake for Mothering Sunday, what we did in art could also be linked to RC topics.

The only charity we were allowed to collect for was St Joseph's penny and that was a big part of lent.

In French we had to pray in French. We learned the Hail Mary.

Music was often based around hymns and other religious songs.

Yes, it is. School is no place for religion, unless it’s fully comparative.

The majority of my schooling was spent in religious schools in Northern Ireland. This ruling is long overdue. What the schools do there is brainwashing. Get them young. Drum it into them every day. We had as much "RE" (i.e.christian doctrine and catechism, and nothing else) as maths and English.

Add to that, the effect of segregated schooling was to to fuel and extend the troubles in NI and exacerbate hatred between religions in Northern Ireland - it fueled tribalism and othering and perpetuated misunderstanding. What the government should have done 50 to 60 years ago is desegregate the schools and ban religion in schools completely - much the same way as "bussing" was done in the 60's and 70s in the US following the civil rights movement there.
It is much, much harder to dehumanise the other half of the population when you've grown up with them.

I brought my children up elsewhere, secularly, sent them to schools where there was a diverse student body. They've had friends who were christian, muslim, hindu, sikh, jewish and a bunch whose religion I don't know for sure (and don't care, frankly) all running in and out of our house. I stayed away from NI partly because I couldn't bear to put them back in that regressive system.

Not a penny of taxpayer funding should ever go to a religious school. Separation of church and state and fully secular state education is the only way.

Excellent post.

I am Scottish, and we had segregated schools too. Their existence separates the community, or at least they did when I was at school in the 80's.

I casually follow Eire politics, and it is amazing the change there since the RC started to lose their stranglehold on schools. I think Eire is now the nation with the fastest decline of religious influence in Europe.

And it started with Bishop Casey it appears. He fathered a child, and it all started to crumble. The abuse victims came forward, and that whole horrific chapter started to be uncovered.

I'll add - I was taught in schools in Northern Ireland that:
sex outside marriage was a sin
contraception was a sin
masturbation was a sin - the "sin of self-abuse".
Oh, and if you'd been up to anything, the only way to avoid a one way ticket to hell was to tell the creepy middle-aged single guy in the dark room all about it.
And we didn't have sex education - we had "EFL - education for love". Gross.

What it led to, of course, was a lot of shame and guilt, the covering up of anything remotely sexual, the inability to have frank or open conversations about anything remotely related to sex or relationships (including grooming and abuse) with adults, and ultimately, high rates of teenage pregnancy, occasionally with a teacher or member of the church as the father.
As if that couldn't have been predicted.

A state-sanctioned cult.

Wrt your suggestion that I have contradicted myself - look again at the case itself. Note the argument that the parent feared bullying as a direct consequence of having the child sit out RE. At the first hint of a child being bullied, or the first realisation that this problem might present itself, I'd be looking for another school.

Bullying is the problem here.

(Also, it's Ireland, not 'Eire')