THE COMMISSION ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, WORLDVIEWS AND THE FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

This article considers the proposals of the final report of the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE 2018) and its controversial conclusion that the law should require religious education to include teaching about non-religious worldviews alongside religions, presumably in equal measure. Attention is given both to Trevor Cooling’s recent defence of CoRE’s proposals against already expressed criticisms and to additional criticisms, that of the abstract nature of a worldview as a highly ramified, philosophical concept, which is educationally ill-suited to the interests and intellectual capabilities of many pupils, and that of the failure of the proposals to indicate in what ways they overcome current systemic weaknesses. It is concluded that religious education should not be reconceptualised as the study of religious and non-religious worldviews nor should it adopt a framework that construes religions primarily as worldviews.

Keywords:

• Commission on RE (CoRE)
• institutional worldviews
• personal worldviews
• understanding religion

7. DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTERESTS

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

8. DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The tern ‘National Entitlement’ is used eighty-two times in the CoRE Report. This gives the impression, which is constantly reinforced, that there is not at present a national entitlement of pupils to religious education, which of course there is.

2 Although religions typically claim authoritative revelation, it should not be assumed that co-religionists always agree on religious and moral matters.

3 https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/; accessed 25 July 2020.

4 See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-science-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-science-programmes-of-study#key-stage-4, and https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-history-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-history-programmes-of-study. There is reference to religion on a few occasions in the History Programmes of Study but religious perspectives on political, economic and social history are not included.

5 In one isolated sentence out of 78 pages of text Commission on Religious Education (2018, p. 72) acknowledges that worldviews have ‘emotional, affiliative (belonging) and behavioural dimensions’.(7057 words)