Religious studies, religious education and the aims of education

Abstract

This article interacts with a recent article by Denise Cush and Catherine Robinson in which they call for a new dialogue between religious studies in universities and religious education, and identify a number of developments in religious studies that have implications for the practice of religious education in schools. Cush and Robinson are representative of an influential body of opinion among religious educators that looks to religious studies for inspiration. It is argued that they, along with others, fail to appreciate the difference between the aims of religious studies and those of religious education and that this unrecognised difference leads them both to engage uncritically and superficially with the history of post-confessional religious education and to fail to recognise that the roots of some of the weaknesses in contemporary religious education can be traced to the influence of religious studies over it. Showing that religious education has (and is required to have) a different set of aims from religious studies (though some aims may be held in common) alerts us to its distinctive nature, and this in turn facilitates a clearer understanding of its role in schools, which can serve both to direct and to evaluate educational outcomes.

Keywords:

• educational aims
• moral education
• multi-culturalism
• religious studies

Notes

1. All subsequent references to this article will be incorporated into the text by page number only.

2. By contrast, religious education is compulsory in schools, unless parents exercise their legal right of withdrawal on behalf of their children.

3. http://www.mun.ca/relstudies/about/; accessed on 21 January 2014.

4. http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/religious-studies/index.shtml; accessed on 21 January 2014.

5. http://www.ed.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.44137!/fileManager/Religious-Studies.pdf?v=2014; accessed on 21 January 2014.

6. Elsewhere I have written of a ‘schizophrenic attitude’ towards moral education at the heart of religious education in England and explained its provenance and nature, see Barnes (2014b).

7. The work of the Jubilee Centre for Character & Value at the University of Birmingham is important in this regard; see www.jubileecentre.ac.uk.