RE: religions, equality and curriculum time

Abstract

Theory can mislead by ignoring detail and the practicalities of teaching situations. Understanding others requires just this attention to detail and practicalities. These observations identify the failings in the ambitions of the National Framework for RE to teach as many ‘religious’ traditions as possible. Part of the motivation of the authors of the Framework appears to reside in the commitment found in liberal education to equality. The author is not convinced that, unless this is religiously conceived, equality can be achieved amongst religions without creating serious inequalities. Attention to practical constraints given by existing language and culture suggests another way forward but in a dialogical spirit that recognizes an equality before God.

Notes

1. See Wolterstorff's (2004, p. 178) discussion of what he calls the ‘generically human’ enterprise of ‘the once‐regnant understanding of learning’. Not only was the realm of knowledge an entire whole, it did not admit differentiated perspectives. Thus ‘on the once‐regnant understanding of learning, black history, feminist sociology, Muslim political theory, and liberation theology are bad history, bad sociology, bad political theory, bad theology’.

2. A reference to the most recent census would have done but this form of reasoning would open the door to quite different syllabi in different areas of the country since there are significant differences between the regions. According to the 2001 census 71.75% of the population in England and Wales declared themselves Christian, 0.28% Buddhist, 1.06% Hindu, 0.50% Jewish, 2.97% Muslim, 0.63% Sikh, 0.29% other religions, 14.81% no religion, and in the case of 7.71% the religion was not stated. For Birmingham the figures were 59.13% Christian, 0.30% Buddhist, 1.98% Hindu, 0.24% Jewish, 14.33% Muslim, 2.93% Sikh, 0.26% other religions, 12.44% no religion and in 8.39% the religion was not stated. Or must we be guided by the world picture? Is this necessary to understand the nature of religious life?

3. See W. Cantwell Smith (1974, p. 157) on religions as Weltanschauungen: ‘They do not lend themselves readily, or at all, to being subsumed under or subordinated to any alternative stance. To judge one by the criteria of another is clearly a whit inept.’

4. The sense of ascribing truth values to such a complex ‘entity’ as a religion is not at all obvious. Hume attempts to do so when he claims in ‘of Miracles’ (1975, p. 95, 121) in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that a miracle used to establish one religion ‘has the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system’. But is a religion a coherent whole or a ‘system’?

5. Subject to confirmation by some empirical study.

6. The goal of Wittgenstein's philosophy.

7. The argument here applies equally well to other areas of the curriculum such as Art or History where some claim that the art and history of other cultures equally deserve study. It is not disputed that they deserve to be studied but whether it is reasonable that they should be studied equally is what is at issue. I owe this observation to Dr Ieuan Lloyd.

8. These are typical figures given by Agreed Syllabuses. See e.g. Birmingham 1995, p. 7; Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton 2004, p. 3.

9. The position of the National Framework is that the various religious traditions must be covered over the whole of schooling and not necessarily in any one year. This does not change the calculations given an equality of access for it would mean that some religions would have more time in one year and less in another. It only introduces another inequality caused by the disparity of teaching in different years.

10. This is why both realists and non‐realists are mistaken. The truth of our claims is not determined by reference to some metaphysical reality, nor are they arbitrary human constructs.

11. According to J. C. Conroy (2004, p. 103) it appears as an either–or. He is persuaded by C. Taylor that ‘we know the topography of lived, embodied engagements with both the world and the other, not in virtue of following a set of rules that are given either as brute facts to which the individual inner self attends in making judgements about how to think or act. Rather … much of our “intelligent” action is carried on in an unformulated way against what Bourdieu calls habitus.’ I do not believe that one can do wholly without rules but neither do these rules need to be formal and fixed.

12. There is no inevitability about our capacity to recognize the humanity of the other but when we do, our understanding and corresponding action changes. R. Gaita (2004, p. 205) cites a story from George Orwell's ‘Looking Back at the Spanish War’ to illustrate this point in The philosopher's dog.

13. Or whatever term is to be used, depending on the tradition.