Religious Education in a Multicultural Europe

Children, Parents and Schools

Emer Smyth, Maureen Lyons, Merike Darmody

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137281500
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

Drawing on a major EU-funded research project, this book examines how religious/secular beliefs are formed at school and in the family across different European countries, offering insights into key policy issues concerning the place of religion in the school system and illuminating current debates around religion and multiculturalism.

1

Introduction

Emer Smyth, Merike Darmody and Maureen Lyons

Across European countries, the education system plays a role in the transmission of religious or secular beliefs and values, with consequent implications for broader social cohesion. The influence of schooling on belief formation can occur in many ways – through the presence of explicit religious instruction within schools, the tacit recognition of specific religious practices and festivals, informal socialization in relation to particular norms and values, specific rules about dress and behaviour and the sociocultural networks to which young people are exposed or from which they are excluded. The relative importance of the education system in religious socialization varies across European countries, reflecting their specific historical and social development. Religious authorities play a significant role in school management in some countries while, in other cases, there is a deliberate separation between Church(es) and school structures.

In many countries, however, there is a growing mismatch between the institutional position of religion in schooling and religious beliefs and practices among the broader population. Many European countries have witnessed a decline in the numbers reporting a formal religious affiliation, with an even greater decline evident in the frequency of religious practice. This process has often been referred to as ‘secularization’, but this is a contested concept and may obscure important complexities in people’s cultural attachment to, and engagement with, organized religion. Davie (2006), for example, suggests that religious belief may become ‘detached’ from institutional membership (‘believing without belonging’). Furthermore, despite the diminishing role of the institutional Churches in people’s everyday lives, they may continue to play an important symbolic function in identity formation (which Demerath, 2000, terms ‘fuzzy fidelity’).

Coinciding with this decline in institutional affiliation has been a growth in the size of particular religious groups (mainly Muslim and evangelical Christian groups) in many European countries. This phenomenon is, at least in part, related to recent immigration patterns, with religious affiliation interacting with cultural identity in complex ways. Different dimensions of ‘otherness’ in terms of religion, culture and socio-economic status have been found to coincide in the case of Muslims in particular (Casanova, 2004).

Patterns of religious decline and revival in recent decades have prompted renewed discussion of the role of religion in schooling. Debates have taken place over whether there should be separate faith schools and which Churches or organizations should be allowed to run schools, about whether young people should experience religious ‘instruction’ or should learn about the spectrum of world religions and whether schools can and should preclude the wearing of religious symbols (see, for example, Bakker, 2001; Halstead, 2007). Criticisms of the state of play have come from opposing perspectives. On the one hand, secular groups have questioned the dominance of Christianity in religious education and argued for greater recognition of humanism and world religions. On the other hand, some religious groups have suggested that the religious identity of faith schools has been undermined by the requirement to cater for diversity. In spite of these public debates, there has been little discussion of children’s rights and perspectives in this domain. While there has been increasing attention in education and social policy circles to the need to allow children and young people a voice in arenas that shape their lives (Clark et al., 2003; Devine, 2003), when it comes to religion, their voice is largely absent due to the assumption that children are born into a particular belief system and choices regarding religious education should be determined by parents rather than children.¹

This book seeks to shed new light on children’s own perspectives on religion and schooling by drawing on an innovative comparative study of primary school children: Religious Education in a Multicultural Society (REMC).² In the remainder of this chapter, we outline the thinking that influenced this study and the approach taken to investigate the perspectives of children and their parents on religion and schooling.³

Conceptual framework

The focus of the REMC study was primarily on understanding the micro levels of home and school in the context of religion and religious education across Europe. Given that the nature of the relationship between Church and State, and the place accorded to religion within schools, varies significantly across European countries, the study is concerned with how these processes play out in such widely contrasting institutional contexts. The current form of the religion–education relationship must be seen as the outcome of a historical process of contestation, conflict and accommodation between the main players. This process is discussed in Chapter 2, which outlines the way in which these conflicts have been ‘resolved’ in different ways across European countries. The chapters which follow focus on original research conducted in five countries: Belgium (Flanders), Germany, Ireland, Malta and Scotland. These countries differ significantly in key aspects of their institutional context: the constitutional and legal position of the Church in relation to the State; (trends in) the religious composition of the population; the extent to which there are different kinds of primary schools and the degree of school choice open to families; the prevalence of faith schools in the primary school system; and whether religious and moral education (RME) is provided in schools and the content of this subject. Analysing these differences between the five study countries will therefore provide invaluable insights into the way institutional structures shape children’s religious development.

In this book, we frame the formation of religious identity as one possible dimension of children’s identities. In so doing, we adopt a broad definition of ‘religious identity’ which encompasses a range of religious and secular attitudes, beliefs and practices. This is particularly important given that secular identities are often treated as ‘hidden’ or ‘nothing’ (Rudge, 1998). Within social science, there is currently a good deal of interest in the ways in which individuals develop and negotiate their sense of self and identity over the life course. Classical social science saw identity as stable and shaped by an individual’s position within wider economic and social structures. Social learning theory, for example, viewed a child’s attitudes and values as resulting from observing and imitating their parents in day-to-day activities (Bandura, 1977). Theorists of late modernity (for example, Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991; Lash and Urry, 1993) have questioned the notion of an essential self, emphasizing instead the self as a social construct, constantly defined and redefined in a range of social contexts. However, these views have been criticized for placing too much weight on individual agency and neglecting the structural context within which identity is formed (Bendle, 2002). In response, a number of theorists have argued for the need to conceptualize the ongoing construction and reconstruction of the self as framed by, and interacting with, existing social and institutional structures (Callero, 2003). Increasing attention has also been paid to the notion of multiple identities, that is, the way in which different dimensions, including gender, social class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and nationality, can become the basis of individual or group identities (Jones and McEwen, 2000). Such identities are not static since different aspects can be salient at different points in time or in different settings (Jones and McEwen, 2000). Thus, religion may be more or less dominant as an element of a child’s identity at home and at school.

How then is religious identity formed? Until relatively recently, research on children’s religious formation has fallen into two broad strands. The first group of studies has shown the strong association between parental religious beliefs and practices and those of their children, focusing on the relative importance of maternal and paternal characteristics, the quality of parent–child relations and the effect of different dimensions of parental religiosity (for example, the frequency of church attendance and the perceived importance of religion) on children’s beliefs and practices (see, for example, Bader and Desmond, 2006; Bao et al., 1999; Hayes and Pittelkow, 1993; Min and Kim, 2005; Nelsen, 1980). This perspective can broadly be characterized as one of ‘transmission’, whereby children are ‘born into’ a particular faith tradition and parents raise their children in accordance with this tradition (Cornwall, 1989; Gautier and Singelmann, 1997; Helve, 1991; Sherkat and Elliott, 1999). The second group of studies has emphasized a developmental perspective on children’s religion, with children seen as moving from ‘concrete’ thinking about religion to more abstract understanding as they become older (see, for example, Elkind, 1970; Fowler and Dell, 2006).

The difficulty with these approaches is that they tend to frame children as entirely passive (Boyatzis and Janicki, 2003) and fail to allow for discontinuity or even contestation between the home and other arenas (such as the school or the local community) over religious values. These perspectives are also increasingly at odds with insights from the ‘new’ sociology of childhood (Ridgely, 2011), which emphasizes even very young children as active agents in their own development and as critically reflecting on their school and wider environment (Clark, 2007; Clark et al., 2003; Cremin and Slatter, 2004; Hewett, 2001). A number of studies have focused on the ‘pupil voice’ as a way of determining more effective ways of engaging children in school and enhancing their learning (McIntyre et al., 2005). Rudduck and Flutter (2004) argue for the need to ‘take seriously what students can tell us about their experience of being a learner in school’ and ‘find ways of involving students more closely in decisions that affect their lives at school’ (p. 2). Furthermore, research with children has indicated important aspects of their well-being which had not always been taken into account previously: ‘given a chance to offer their ideas, views and tell of their experience, children can make adults think differently and see the possibilities of change’ (Burke, 2007, p. 370). A good deal of this work has focused on adolescents, usually those at secondary level. However, a number of studies have extended this approach to incorporate very young children, even those at preschool level (see Clark, 2007; Cremin and Slatter, 2004; Hewett, 2001). The REMC study sought to extend this perspective to take account of children’s voice on issues of religion and belief.

Researchers have only recently begun to explore the implications of a child-centred perspective for understanding their religious beliefs and practices. A number of studies have shown the way in which teenagers from minority faith groups actively negotiate and maintain their religious identities within secular schools (see, for example, Zine, 2001). Young people have been found to adopt different perspectives on their parents’ belief systems, ranging from compliance to challenge and conflict (Hopkins et al., 2010). The peer group is found to influence teenagers’ religiosity, over and above the effect of parents’ beliefs (Schwartz, 2006), although the extent to which young people talk to their friends about religion and belief varies between different groups as well as cross-nationally (Knauth et al., 2008). Overall, existing research has tended to focus on teenagers and young adults rather than younger children. One study, however, has pointed to the importance of moving beyond a ‘transmission’ perspective on the experiences of younger children, revealing the ‘bidirectional’ nature of parent–child communication in relation to religion (Boyatzis and Janicki, 2003). Thus, children were found to ask questions of their parents regarding religious issues, and initiated and terminated such conversations on a frequent basis. This ongoing conversation may be an important way in which children and parents co-construct religious and spiritual meanings (Boyatzis, 2009). Other emerging research similarly points to the value of taking account of children’s perspectives on religion and belief (see, for example, Ridgely, 2011).

Within our framework, children are viewed as active agents in their own religious and moral formation. However, it must be recognized that a child’s agency is bounded by their position in the family and in school. International research indicates a shift in the nature of parent–child relations away from more authoritarian to more negotiated modes of interaction, with young people now having a greater ‘voice’ within t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Religion and Schooling: The European Context
• 3. Religious Education in Primary Schools in Scotland: Consensus or Uneasy Truce?
• 4. The Material and Symbolic Cultures of the Everyday: Religion in Maltese Primary Schools
• 5. Children’s Agency and Religious Identity in Irish Primary Schools
• 6. Religion and Immigration: The Acculturation Attitudes of Muslim Primary School Children Attending Flemish Schools
• 7. Education as Negotiation: Discovering New Patterns of Religious Identity Formation in Germany
• 8. Conclusions
• Index