Primary Religious Education - A New Approach

Conceptual Enquiry in Primary RE

Clive Erricker, Judith Lowndes, Elaine Bellchambers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136909290
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The role of Religious Education within the primary school and how it should be implemented has been the subject of worldwide debate. Responding to the delivery of the non-statutory framework for RE and the recent emphasis on a creative primary curriculum Primary Religious Education - A New Approach models a much needed pedagogical framework, encouraging conceptual enquiry and linking theory to its implementation within the wider curriculum in schools.

The book outlines this new conceptual approach to Religious Education and is based upon the Living Difference syllabus successfully implemented in Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and Westminster. It demonstrates how to implement the requirements of the new QCDA curriculum and Ofsted criteria for effective RE and is rapidly gaining both national and international support. Through this approach, Religious Education is discussed within the larger context of primary education in the contemporary world. This book will help you to teach RE in a creative way in the primary classroom by providing:

• 
  
  

• historical commentaries
• an overview of existing approaches
• case studies based upon developments in religious literacy
• connections to initiatives such as Every Child Matters and cross-curricular links to other areas of the curriculum, including PSHE.

With an all-encompassing global context, this book provides tutors, students and practicing teachers with a firm basis for developing their thinking about the subject of RE, how it is placed in the primary curriculum and how it may be successfully implemented in schools.

PART 1
RE in the primary curriculum

CHAPTER 1
Why is RE important?

Clive Erricker

Introduction

As a primary school teacher you will want to know how to teach good RE to your children. This chapter provides you with some background on religion and RE in our society, both historical and contemporary. This will give you a map or context for understanding the subject and the influence of and responses to religion. The aim is to give you confidence but not to shy away from controversy. To teach RE well you must do it with conviction. Really effective RE teachers have to believe it is an important aspect of their children’s education.

This chapter seeks to convince you of the educational importance of RE and its place in the school curriculum. It starts by presuming you are not convinced of that or, if you are, asking you to consider your justifications for that. It presents some historical reasons for why RE is already a compulsory subject and goes on to question why we should consider teaching young people about religion and how that has been justified through to the present day. It poses some objections to this before, finally, suggesting we need to reconsider what RE is there for and how that has to focus on RE being part of the overall curriculum and the development of young people.

Religion and religious education – something to laugh about?

RE in an historical and contemporary context

‘There is no religion in England… If one speaks of religion, everyone laughs.’ (Montesquieu, Oevres, vol. vii:184; Barnard, 1961:xiii)

This observation by the French writer Montesquieu was made in the 19th century. Times have changed: in the 21st century religion is not such a laughing matter, nor just a private one. ‘Religious education’ could be substituted for ‘religion’ in the quotation since it does suffer from the image of being educationally anomalous as far as many parents, and even teachers, are concerned. The question persists: if you are not religious how is it useful? And, if you are religious, presumably school is not the place where you will get your education in religion; rather it would be in your own religious community. Certainly, if RE is to be understood as educationally worthy it needs some defending.

I can still remember parts of my own primary school experience. For some strange reason one of my memories is being given a bible, as all children were at that time and forever previously. I can’t remember the talk that accompanied this but it would have been intended to be morally uplifting. I didn’t go to a Church school so why did this event take place? What was it about the English education system that presumed religion and education should go hand in hand? Should such an assumption be made today? Religious education has been a part of the primary curriculum in England and Wales ever since public schooling began, but its role has changed. Elementary education was made compulsory under the 1870 Education Act, with arithmetic, basic literacy and religious education compulsory subjects. Why RE? Fast forward to today. Do we still think RE should be compulsory? If so, for what reason?

Religious education has always been controversial, but the reasons for this have changed over time. In 1870 comparatively few would have disputed that Britain was a Christian country. Also, the Christian churches were instrumental in bringing about compulsory education. It made sense that if you were intending to educate all young people for the first time, education in their religious heritage was essential. But what sort of Christianity should be taught? There was no love lost between the Church of England (the Established Church) and influential non-conformist groups such as the Methodists. The latter were instrumental in seeking the education of the poor and increasing literacy among the working classes, which was an important aspect of their seeking rights within an exploitative industrialised society. The right of children to be educated, rather than simply used as a cheap form of labour in factories, provides the backdrop within which religious education formed a part of state education. Education in religion, as part of providing literacy to the population, was controversial because it was highly politically charged. The wider social context was one in which radical reformists such as Robert Owen, and new democratic ideals were pitted against the traditional hierarchical ordering of society. If you taught children religion in elementary (primary) schools, to what purpose were you doing it? Was it to produce orderly and compliant citizens who knew both their catechism and their place, or to empower young people through making them literate and aware of the powerful teachings to be found in scripture? The former dominated, but many feared the latter being a result.

Today, for most primary school teachers, this historical context has been lost. Additionally, secularization has marginalized the importance of religion. Therefore, for many teachers, its purpose is unclear at best and for some its presence on the curriculum is viewed negatively if they themselves are not religious. As a result the subject is often badly taught and, to some degree, avoided or handed to a ‘religious’ member of staff to manage it.

There are many poor reasons for seeking to justify RE and, at worst, they echo some of the poor reasons for its justification in the earlier more religious age described above. Here are some historical attitudes to education and religious education that will alert us to the context into which we fit when thinking about them today.

In 1807 Samuel Whitbread was seeking to pass a Bill in Parliament to enable free schooling for children between the ages of 7 and 14. The opposition was strong. Education might make the lower classes discontented, as Davies Giddes observed:

‘it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments… It would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity.’ (Barnard, 1961:55; Hansard, ix, 798, 13 July 1807)

With a contrasting perspective, but focusing on the same idea of what makes for educational effectiveness, Robert Owen said:

‘Human nature is one and the same in all… by judicious training the infants of any one class in the world may be readily transformed into men (sic) of any other class.’ (Barnard, 1961:58; Owen, 1813:72)

The Swiss progressive educationalist Pestalozzi (1746–1827) understood education to be religious but in a different way to most:

‘The child must learn of the goodness of God or the rightness of truth and kindness from his actual experience; and the educator’s job is not to inculcate or propagandise, but so to direct the child that he may obtain this experience.’ (Barnard, 1961:38–9; Green, 1905:85)

For Pestalozzi this meant the school should have the atmosphere of the home and the teacher should behave with the same care as a parent.

From just these three historical quotations we can see that the idea of education is rooted in different understandings of human nature and experience, society and aspiration. This alerts us to thinking not first about subjects children should or should not be taught but ways in which schooling can develop or retard children. If we take this broader educational perspective it can help us determine the value or otherwise of RE and how the subject might be given a useful purpose in primary schooling today.

However, today there is significant division as to the value of religion, or God in particular. In our modern democratic society is God a help or a hindrance? The ground has shifted as far as the relationship between religion and society is concerned. Commentators discern different understandings, from wider perspectives, than those held historically in a society that we might regard as more religious and more mono-religious. We can observe this in the quotes below.

In The Observer Review section on 30 September 2007 we read, on page 9, the heading, ‘Is God democratic?’ Various replies follow this:

‘What a question… Of course God is not democratic; if he is, exactly how long is a heavenly term of office?’ Mark Thomas

‘Since this question is so meaningless to me, I’ll pretend that what you asked was, “Is there a place for God in a democracy?” One of the cornerstones of the democratic process is that discussion should be rational and that the bases upon which decisions are reached should be accessible to everyone. Religious beliefs do not fall into that category.’ Brian Eno

‘If God stands for tolerance, compassion, the equality of all mankind and moral accountability, then this is all in keeping with the democratic ideal.’ Riz Ahmed

‘God is above democracy. From a Muslim point of view, it is imperative that we take God out of politics.’ Ed Husain

‘All deeply held faith has the capacity to be anti-democratic, because it places the supposed laws of God against the real laws of free men and women.’ Nick Cohen

So, are God and religion irrelevant within our modern world? Some would say the problem is not just religion’s and God’s irrelevance but its and His negative influence.

Summary

This section has explored historical reasons for RE being a subject on the primary curriculum related to the place of religion in English and Welsh society and the development of schooling to include all children and different views on the purpose of education and religious education in particular. We have also noted the tensions that exist today over the place of religion and the purpose of religious education in an increasingly secular but also plural democratic society.

Both historically and today religion and religious education are regarded with passion and suspicion. This poses some questions that we need to consider. For example:

In a modern democratic society does teaching religion in state schools make sense or not?

What sort of RE can you agree with, if any, and what could it achieve?

What is your view? Is religion a serious matter and an appropriate subject for the primary curriculum or is it ‘something to laugh about’ or at least keep private?

Religion and religious education – something to worry about?

Against religion

‘For years I have been pointing out that religions are likely to destroy human life as we know it now on this planet. Religions contribute to virtually all the intransigent and seemingly insoluble conflicts in the world.’ (Bowker, 1996:3)

John Bowker is a religious man so this may seem a somewhat contrary statement. But it was prophetic in relation to events occurring at the beginning of our present century. There is now an understandable negativity toward religion amongst many who are not religious because of its recent association with violence, warfare, anti-democratic behaviour, abuses of children’s, women’s and human rights and its fundamentalism, exhaustively reported in the press and media. This largely but not exclusively is focused on Islam. Bowker’s point is not that we shouldn’t teach RE but that it is necessary to do so to inform young people of the threat religions pose.

Other atheist critics are just as virulent in relation to religion and religious education. Richard Dawkins, the scientist, quotes Victor Hugo: ‘There is in every village a torch – the teacher: and an extinguisher – the clergyman’ (Dawkins, 2006: 309). But whilst ragin...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 RE in the primary curriculum
• PART 2 Conceptual enquiry as an approach to RE and the primary curriculum
• PART 3 Transforming your practice
• References
• INDEX