Language matters: gendering Religious Education teaching

Abstract

Taking its point of departure in the idea that language is never neutral but always coded in the masculine or the feminine (Irigaray), the main purpose of the paper is to explore the gendered coding of Religious Education teaching and how this coding interplays in shaping relationships and knowledge in the classroom. As recent research shows, debates about religion are becoming increasingly aggressive in many Western democracies and Religious Education is not unaffected by this. Drawing on Luce Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference the paper argues that RE tends to have a masculine coding in its overemphasis on beliefs, creeds and concepts. This not only positions both girls and boys as feminine in relation to (masculine) religion, it also fails to offer the more nuanced understanding of religious life so well needed today. The paper is divided into three sections. The first outlines briefly, theoretically and methodologically, the larger study of which this paper is part. The second offers an exposition of Irigaray’s thinking on sexual difference, and the third relates her philosophy to three empirical examples. The paper ends with a summary of the main points of the argument and the implications of language matters for Religious Education teaching.

Keywords:

• Feminist philosophy
• Religious Education
• masculine
• feminine
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish National Research Council (VR) as part of the research project ‘Images of Femininity and Masculinity in the Classroom: A Feminist Philosophical Inquiry into the Subjects of Religion, Science Studies, and Swedish’ (2010–), conducted by Professor Sharon Todd, Stockholm University.

Notes on contributor

Lovisa Bergdahl is a senior lecturer in Education at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. She holds a PhD in Philosophy of Education from Stockholm University. Her research is placed in the intersection between philosophy of education and religious education, drawing mainly on post-structural and feminist theory. She is interested in political and ethical issues in education and in particular the dilemmas that the so-called "return of religion" seem to be causing in schools. She is currently conducting the research project "Lived Values: a pedagogical-philosophical enquiry into the values basis of Swedish schools" financed by the Swedish Research Council (2015-). Recent publications on related issues appear in Journal of Philosophy of Education (2017).

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the reviewers for valuable and constructive comments.

Notes

1. Worth mentioning are also the European Religion, Education, Dialogue and Conflict (REDCo) project (Jackson 2011) that has engaged researchers all over Europe; the ‘Does Religious Education work?’ project which tracks the trajectory of RE in secondary schools in the UK from the aims and intentions represented in policy through its enactment in classroom practice to the estimations of its impact by students (e.g. Baumfield et al. 2012); and of the Ofsted report (2007) Making Sense of Religion: A report on religious education in schools and the impact of locally agreed syllabuses.

2. The above description of the larger study is taken from the project application and could appear in a similar version in other papers published in the project. Used with permission.

3. All names of people in this article are fictitious. It might be worth emphasising that the qualitative approach of the study renders general implications impossible. Hence, the examples are not meant to ‘prove’ anything but should merely be seen as material for discussing the main purpose of the article.

4. I am using the term intellectualised here in contrast to intellectual. Whereas, the latter refers to a thorough and creative use of reason, the former refers to the avoidance of this and an exaggerated use of theoretical language.