Religious Education in a Pluralist Society

The Key Philosophical Issues

John Edwards, Peter R. Hobson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317958079
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Religious education in liberal pluralist societies such as the UK, the USA, and Australian underwent radical change in the 1980s and 1990s, with a major shift towards multi-faith, educationally oriented programmes. This has meant significant modifications to both the content and the methodology of religious-education courses and to the way they are conceived of and taught in schools and universities.
One important implication of this change for the teaching and study of religion today is the need for a philosophical dimension that deals with issues such as the truth status of religious statements and the moral acceptability of religious claims. This dimension is often insufficiently developed; this lack is made more critical by the multiple competing truth claims of various religions, giving rise to such contentious problems as the growth of fundamentalism, increasing religious intolerance and conflict, and differences of opinion on central moral problems such as birth control, abortion and euthanasia. This text attempts to provide the philosophical underpinning that the study and teaching of religion in modern societies requires.

PART I

The Legitimacy and Place of Religious Education in Schools

1

A Rationale for Religious Education in the Curriculum

A Contemporary Model of Liberal Education as the Basic Justification

If the study of religion is to meet genuinely educational criteria one must ask what are the underlying educational principles for teaching such a subject. While there are a number of possible justifications – such as promoting tolerance within the community, or helping students to understand the multi-faith and multicultural nature of society – we will argue that the principal educational justification for religious education is best situated within a liberal education model. It will be aigued that there are three fundamental concepts underlying such a model: critical rationality, personal transcendence, and epistemological coherence – these will be elaborated in this chapter. A comprehensive theory incorporating these three concepts will be developed which draws upon the traditional theory as expounded by Charles Bailey, ideas gained from the new theory of holistic education, and our own analysis. We will argue throughout this book that the philosophy of liberal education as expounded here provides a critical framework against which to assess the place of religious education in today’s society.

The concept of liberal education has a history going back to the Ancient Greeks, but has been interpreted in different ways depending on the social and historical context at the time.¹ The modem educational philosopher, R.S. Peters, suggests that liberal education has traditionally been put forward as a protest against education narrowly conceived to serve ‘some extrinsic end such as the production of goods, obtaining a job, or manning a profession’ (1966, p. 43). For Peters, liberal education involves a commitment to what is intrinsically worthwhile, to knowledge which has breadth or cognitive perspective, and to forms of education which are neither limited in their scope nor questionable in their methods. Although critics might argue that this is merely a prescription for the traditional school curriculum, Peters’ justification opens up a broader perspective which educationists need to consider.

What is at issue is access to a world which knowledge unlocks. P.H. Hirst strengthens this view: ‘A liberal education is, then, one that, determined in scope and content by knowledge itself, is thereby concerned with the development of mind’ (1974, p. 41).

Access to different forms of knowledge develops the rational mind and provides students with key concepts and methods which enable them to interpret and interact with the richly articulated world past men and women have unfolded or created. But the type of knowledge Hirst employs is highly specific and consists of seven logically distinct forms (mathematics, physical sciences, human sciences, history, religion, literature and the fine arts, and philosophy) which correspond basically with the subjects of the traditional grammar school curriculum. Hirst, however, has difficulty in substantiating his claim of seven logically distinct forms and has been subject to a wide range of criticism on this point.² Nevertheless, the essential elements of liberal education are cleai; in that knowledge and understanding are necessary for one’s development as a person because description and explanation of an increasingly complex world of objects and persons are encapsulated within different forms of language and knowledge. Students need access to these if they are to realise their full potential as persons equipped to take part as free agents in such a world and to interact constructively with others in a pluralist, democratic society. Equally clearly, more is at stake within education than mere vocational training or furthering economic goals.

Charles Bailey’s Theory of Liberal Education

Other philosophers who have developed this underlying theme of liberal education are R.F. Dearden (1968, 1984), A. O’Hear (1981, 1987), P. Phenix (1964), and J.P. White (1973, 1982). While all of these accounts contain something of value, none of them we believe is sufficiently comprehensive and coherent to stand on its own as a rationale for liberal education in the contemporary educational climate. The writer who comes closest to providing such a rationale is Charles Bailey (1984), in his book Beyond the Present and the Particular, although even in his case there are a number of criticisms that can be made of his work, as we shall see. Bailey’s book offers a detailed analysis and criticism of three of the above writers – Hirst, Phenix, and White. He finds major faults with each of them and endeavours to set out a definition and justification for liberal education which draws upon their strengths while avoiding their weaknesses.

Bailey’s model of education presents a cluster of tightly interlocking key concepts centred on the concept of a person. It is the coherence and objective value of these concepts which gives Bailey’s model its great plausibility. We will examine his account in some detail as it highlights effectively some of the key educational values that will underlie our discussion of religious education throughout this book. While Bailey’s theory was presented in 1984 it still remains the most comprehensive and coherent account of the traditional version of liberal education. We will, however, draw on some more recent writings where necessary to complement and critique Bailey’s account and later in this chapter we will argue that his model needs to be supplemented by a more holistic understanding of human experience.

The cluster of five key concepts Bailey utilises is freedom, moral and intellectual autonomy, reason, justification, and knowledge – which are centrally focused on the concept of a person. While Bailey does not systematically show how all these concepts relate one to the other, it is possible to work out a model which indicates the main components necessary to an understanding of liberal education and how each of these concepts fits into it. This model rests on certain basic assumptions about the human condition, such as that objective knowledge is possible and that this can be acquired by the use of our powers of reason to reflect critically on the world of publicly available meanings into which each new generation is introduced. Our position here along with Bailey’s thus stands in contrast to the tenets of postmodernism, and in this chapter we attempt to show how the basic assumptions of liberal education have an objective basis. A further defence of the possibility of objective knowledge is provided in Chapter 4, where we argue in favour of a critical realist position.

In considering how such a body of knowledge and understanding is built up, the five key principles apply in the following ways. Firstly, in regard to freedom, the following three questions need to be addressed: (i) what is the person freed from? (ii) what is the person freed for? (iii) what is the means by which this freedom is attained?

In relation to the first of these, Bailey’s vision of liberal education is set against an understanding of the human condition wherein men and women have the capacity to ‘open [their] minds to the countless imaginary possibilities of human agency set against different visions or understandings of the human situation’ (1984, p. 117). Bailey contends, and quite plausibly in our view, that a person is not only bom into, but may be entrapped by, the ‘specific and limited circumstances of geography, economy, social class and personal encounter and relationship’ (1984, p. 21). This occurs because any given set of such factors entails only a limited number of possible horizons, which in turn are a subset of a far richer array of alternatives evident in human history and human imagination. This set of alternatives is opened up even further in the contemporary information age where the world has become a global village with multiple competing cultural, political, and religious perspectives. Accordingly, education should free persons from such limited perspectives and possibilities by letting them see that no single combination of factors uniquely defines the human condition nor exhausts its possibilities. Religious education, because of its concern for fundamental human issues, has much to offer in this area, but, as we shall argue in this book, needs to avoid the sort of entrapment discussed above.

The second question about freedom is what does liberal education free persons for? It frees persons to reflect upon the rich matrix of human possibility and allows them to choose accordingly. This freedom is expressed in the ideal of moral and intellectual autonomy – another of Bailey’s key concepts.

The third question about freedom relates to the means of achieving it. Bailey is unequivocal on this: only reason can achieve it (1984, p. 24). In order to understand the logical relationship between reason and freedom we must look again at the two senses in which Bailey uses this term: ‘free … from’ and “free … for’. Liberal education frees the person from the present and the particular, and frees him or her for moral and intellectual autonomy.

By autonomy, Bailey means ‘self-government, not romantic anarchy’ (1984, p. 22). We can to a significant extent control our destiny by understanding and rationally confronting the various forces acting upon us. In relation to reasons for believing and acting, the key point is: ‘the reason must be my own. 1 must come to see for myself why it is right to believe this or do that’ (1984, p. 25). The emphasis is not, however, on making rules for oneself, which has been criticised as an incoherent notion (Baier, 1973), but rather on being able to justify following the rules one does. In relation to religious education we may invoke the notion of religious autonomy and define it as a reasoned commitment to a personal philosophy of life with a justifiable position on the place of the transcendent realm within it.

The notion of autonomy as an educational goal has been questioned by some, such as Ruth Jonathon, who says ‘overriding allegiance to the promotion of individual autonomy, though consistent with the emancipatory aim for individuals, is incompatible with the general aim of social emancipation for all’ (1995, p. 105), because she sees education as a positional good ‘where the emancipatory exchange value to those who have it depends in part on others having less of it’ (1995, p. 98). Howevei; we believe this is to see education too much in consumer or instrumentalist terms and the emancipatory values of liberal education do not necessarily have an exchange value as do consumer goods, but are generally available and relevant for all. It is utopian to expect that every child will achieve the same degree of emancipation, and unnecessary for this to be achievable in practice for liberal education to remain a valid educational goal. The debates about equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome and the related questions of meritocracy and elitism in education do indeed raise important issues. However, whatever the conclusions reached in this debate, liberal educational values remain relevant core goals for education in contemporary democratic, pluralist society.

Joseph Raz (1986) adds a useful perspective on the importance of autonomy by examining the different types of society in which it may be valued. He points out that the achievement of autonomy is not essential to personal well-being in tradition-directed societies, but in modern industrial and pluralist societies it is crucial:

It is an ideal particularly suited to the conditions of the industrial age and its aftermath with their fast changing technologies and free movement of labour. They call for an ability to cope with changing technological, economic and social conditions, for an ability to adjust, to acquire new skills, to move from one sub-culture to another, to come to terms with new scientific and moral views. (1986, pp. 369-70)

He goes on to argue that autonomy is not just one goal among others in such a society; it is necessary for any individual to flourish in that society: ‘For those of us who live in an autonomy supporting environment there is no choice but to be autonomous: there is no other way to prosper in such a society’ (1986, p. 391).

Bernard Williams makes a similar point in discussing the growth of ‘reflective consciousness’ in modem western societies: ‘the uige to reflective understanding of society and our activities goes deeper and is more widely spread in modem society than it has ever been before…’ (1985, p. 163).

Raz and Williams thus bring out the central importance of the concept of autonomy for the sort of societies with which this book is concerned while pointing out that it is not necessarily a universal value.

In order to realise our autonomy it is necessary to transcend the restrictions of our socio-economic and cultural background. This also entails not being entrapped in too restricted or limited an understanding of one’s personal religious tradition. Increasingly in our modem, multi-faith, pluralist societies children encounter a wide variety of competing religious beliefs both at school and in the society at large. This has led to widespread negative responses to this situation in the form of scepticism, exclusivism, and relativism. In this book we will be arguing that such negative responses are both unnecessary and unjustified. A detailed response to these three problems and the associated problem of reductionism is provided in Chapter 2 and further discussion takes place throughout the book.

To achieve autonomy we must first see the restrictions of our particular social and cultural environment as a possible barrier to personal freedom, as well as be aware of possible alternatives. Such awareness clearly depends on a person’s capacity for critical reflection, the ability to set out the alternatives, to marshall the relevant facts, apportion value, justify the choice – in short, to think and reason. Reason, then, is a necessary condition for the freedom entailed in choosing one’s life plan.

This means that if liberal education is concerned to develop freedom then it must be equally concerned to develop reason and the rational mind. This naturally leads on to the question: what conditions are necessary for developing reason or the rational mind? Bailey suggests two necessary conditions are justification and knowledge.

Bailey’s emphasis on justification is perhaps one of his more important contributions to the liberal education debate. He suggests that our choice of beliefs and actions must reflect a rational decision, and not one based on ‘force, threats, irrational emotional appeals, manipulatory conditioning or other influences below the level of consciousness’ (1984, p. 11). While he admits a person can simply plump for one option as against another he believes such a level of response falls ‘short of our most commendable characteristic’ (1984, p. 11), which Bailey maintains is a person’s capacity for justification and that this valuation of justification is actually borne out in practice: ‘All research, investigation, debate and decision making techniques would be pointless without their underlying assumption of the need for justification’ (1984, p. 11).

In developing his case for the importance of justification, Bailey speaks of a need for care for reason and care for persons (1984, pp. 147ff). ‘Care for reason’ centres on our valuation of justification and captures more plausibly what Peters had trouble conveying in his notion of commitment to the standards of a form of knowledge. Peters argued that ‘all forms of thought and awareness have their own standards of appraisal. To be on the inside of them is both to understand and to care’ (1966, p. 31). Bailey’s justification requires the same commitment and care for standards but for a more feasible reason. While Peters’ commitment suggests the dedication of an Oxford don, Bailey’s is more in touch with the human condition: ‘Justification is required as a feature of the attempt to make life rational, to make our activities and beliefs part of an intelligible and coherent whole, to understand what we are about’ (1984, p. 12). This suggests that if it is important whether what we believe is true or false, or what we do is right or wrong, then justification matters – and so too the justificatory tests within given bodies of knowledge.

Bailey contends that accepting persons as reasoners and justifiers also gives rise to a moral perspective in the form of an attitude of respect and care for persons. We come to see persons as ‘centres of rational purpose and intention … worthy of being treated accordingly’ (1984, p. 13). For Bailey this respect for others is shown by the need to justify our actions towards them: ‘the treatment of persons by persons always calls for justification’ (1984, p. 13).

In the case of religion, it is equally important to aim at developing justified beliefs and to pay attention to the distinctive tests for truth that apply in this realm. This goal is encapsulated in the notion of the epistemic community which stre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreward
• Introduction
• PART I: The Legitimacy and Place of Religious Education in Schools
• PART II: Responses to Pluralism in the Teaching of Religious Education
• PART III: Ethical, Political, and Social Dimensions of Religious Education
• PART IV: The Teaching of Religious Education: Case Studies and Recommendations
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• Index