Dealing with illiberal and discriminatory aspects of faith in religious education: a case study of Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture curriculum

ABSTRACT

Taking Quebec’s mandatory religious education curriculum, Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC), as a case study, this paper examines the question of whether it is legitimate to teach about the illiberal and discriminatory aspects of religious belief and practice—misogyny, homophobia, racial discrimination and the like—in a religious education class. This paper seeks an answer the question by considering the pedagogical choice to raise a critical lens to the religions studied in class in relation to the cultural approach to religious education that ERC teachers are required to adopt, the critical, democratic and intercultural aims of ERC, and the legal constraints imposed on ERC by the Canadian and Quebecois constitutional framework. The conclusion of our analysis is that while the cultural approach to RE clearly rules out the use of learning activities specifically designed to reveal illiberal and discriminatory aspects of religions. However, perceived points of conflict with prevailing social values constitute a legitimate opportunity for religious education teachers to invest their specialised knowledge of religious traditions in the service of increasing pupils’ religious literacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural approach to religious education
• Ethics and Religious Culture curriculum
• liberal democratic values
• education law

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual research meeting of the Ethics Education Research Group at the University of Quebec Montreal on 28 August 2018 and at the 2018 edition of the Quebec Association of Ethics and Religious Culture Teacher’s professional development day, held on 22 November in Montebello, Quebec. We thank audience members on both occasions for their valuable feedback.

Disclosure statement

The authors are a vested in Ethics and Religious Culture insofar as they are both involved in preparing pre- and in-service teachers to teach this aspect of Quebec’s state curriculum.

Notes

1. RE that pursues non-confessional aims is hardly unique to Quebec. England, Switzerland, Norway and the German state of Brandenburg all have RE curricula based on a similar phenomenological approach to the study of religion. In all places where this approach is implemented, RE has similar goals. First and foremost, it aims to inform young people about different religions, as opposed to providing socialisation into one particular religious tradition. Second and accordingly, it is integrative and inclusive of all students, positively seeking to avoid excluding certain pupils who do not identify with a society’s majority or dominant religion (Franken 2018).

2. In all three cases, the parents’ claims were eventually considered before the UN Human Rights Committee (Leirvåg v. Norway 2003) or the European Court of Human Rights (Folgerø v. Norway 2007; Zengin v. Turkey 2007). We report the findings of these tribunals.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bruce Maxwell

Bruce Maxwell is Professor of Education at the University of Quebec Trois-Rivières. A former humanities teacher at the college level, he now teaches ethics and law for educators and preparatory courses relating to Quebec’s statutory ethics and world religions curriculum. His research and writings focus on ethical issues in education and ethical development through teaching and learning in schools.

Sivane Hirsch

Sivane Hirsch is Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Quebec Trois-Rivières. Her research deals with the intersection of religion and education in secular societies, in particular the issue of recognising religious and other forms of diversity in the curriculum and in teaching practice. She also does work on learning about and discussing socially and ethically controversial issues in schools.