In and out of focus: RE horizons

I understand that long-term prisoners, when they eventually leave prison, almost always have problems with their eyesight. Without any distant horizons to look at, most newly-released long-term prisoners lose their long-sight altogether. This is similar to the experience of some academic researchers. We can focus for so long on our own narrow topic, a field or policy context or educational practice, that when we finally raise our heads and look beyond this to the wider horizons of what is happening elsewhere, we cannot focus on anything at a distance. One of the many joys of editing a journal, and, I hope, reading a journal, is being forced to keep looking at what is happening in different educational, policy, and practice settings around the world. There are some journals that achieve a narrow focus, and that is impressive and most helpful in its own way. But it was never going to happen with the BJRE. The BJRE is a long-established journal. Those unfamiliar with RE research might think that more than eight decades of research on RE would clarify matters, so that, over time, researchers could focus more and more on a narrow range of important topics. However, the world keeps turning, and just about every issue of the journal since the first one in 1934 (under the title Religion in Education) has reported that ‘things are changing in RE’. We focus on one issue, and another pops up; we focus on one policy context, and another emerges as significant. So I think there is little chance of us losing our long-sightedness, however frustrating it can be to keep refocusing – near, far, near, and far again – constantly observing a distant horizon whilst being aware of what is in front of our faces.

The current issue illustrates well the need to go in and out of focus at different distances. We start with two articles that focus on secularity in very different ways. Good research on French RE has been limited not only by the constitutional restrictions on religion in public institutions, but almost as much by the belief that there is no education about religion happening in French schools. Religions and religious culture are taught in various ways, both in state schools and in private schools. However, as Carol Ferrara points out, there is a lack of equity between, especially, Christian and Muslim culture, with the latter being restricted in various ways. This ethnographic research is good at reminding us that whatever the broader policy, the practice within schools may follow different patterns. A broader perspective on secularity is provided by Tünde Puskás and Anita Andersson in their article on ‘secular Advent’ as a way of promoting a ‘banal national religion’ as part of a ‘banal Swedishness’. I can’t help being worried by banality in education, and this article explains why.

In contrast to (nominally) secularist approaches to RE, a number of countries have had long traditions of what is loosely called ‘confessionalist’ RE. There are three articles here that demonstrate how RE in such countries has itself ‘raised its head’ in looking at wider horizons, perhaps moving away from confessionalism in the light of changes around the world. Katarzyna Wrońska writes of solitude and selflessness as central to liberal and religious education in Poland. Based on long traditions of European philosophy and Christian humanism, she engages with current policy in Poland, and by implication, RE across Europe, with a challenge to build on liberal traditions that are potentially threatened by illiberal politics that have found footholds across the continent and across the world. Within Turkey, Muhammet Fatih Genç and A H M Ershad Uddin argue for something like a liberal approach to RE that is based, not necessarily on long historical conditions, but on the current ‘fact’ of globalisation and religious plurality. Defending cultural pluralism, whilst leaving religious-metaphysical pluralism to one side, is a neat solution to the problems of focusing on a single religion in a determinedly (religiously) plural world. Perhaps that is not such a long way from the original liberal philosophies that grew up in 17^th century Europe, referenced by Wrońska. The political context of the island of Ireland may be different to that of Poland and Turkey, but, as Gareth Byrne and Bernadette Sweetman point out, the link between nation, nationalisms, and (national?) religion is still strong, yet – with the focus very much on the individual experiences of those involved with adult education – what was wanted by respondents was a local, personal and dialogic education, and a pedagogy to suit that, rather than a ‘broad sweep’ approach that national policies so easily promote.

There are many ways to focus on religious diversity, from the more local and dialogic approach recommended by Byrne and Sweetman, to a broader ‘world religions’ paradigm described by Petra Bleisch and Ariane Schwab, yet one based on a very narrowly-focused single case study. How interesting that the broader survey of the former article recommends a very local focus, yet the narrow focus on the latter article recommends a very broad horizon for RE. It is helpful to refer, as Bleisch and Schwab do, to de Certeau’s description of ‘tactics’ used by teachers, as well as the ‘strategies’ used by policy-makers (de Certeau 1984). This double-focus is a valuable tool. But it is even more complex understanding how RE works in a country with as much religious and linguistic, never mind political, diversity as South Africa. Nuraan Davids provides a fascinating account of how Muslim educational institutions in South Africa can use Quranic sources to promote gender justice. The ability to draw on ancient (religious) texts to address very contemporary injustices is an important potential contribution to debates in RE. Too often, modern ‘justice’ narratives are seen as alternatives to religious narratives, rather than as – at least potentially – complementary. (Another example: the anti-slavery movements in the Americas and Europe in the nineteenth century were typically driven by religious campaigners more than the contemporary post-French Revolution secular human rights campaigners, even if there were also many pro-slavery arguments made from pulpits around the world.) Davids is well aware, of course, of how much of a challenge this re-scripting will be.

Davids’s work on a single religion complements that of the last pair of articles in this issue. Sigal Achituv and Ruth Danino Lichtenstein write of how Bible stories are remembered by Israeli early childhood education students. Religion and nation-building are intensely related in Israel, as they are in so many other countries – even if, as in Sweden, this is seen as a rather ‘banal’ version of religion. So it is good to see how the Bible stories are tied to personal and potentially to professional identities of these students. Our identities often have longer histories than we might believe: hence the crucial role of early childhood education. A broader perspective is provided by Rina Madden, Gina Bernasconi, Geraldine Larkins, Bernadette Tolan, Paul Fumei and Anne Taylor, in their study of Catholic RE in Australia, with action research taking place across the State of Victoria. However, the action research methodology used allowed for a rich account of the possibilities of developing a new way of teaching RE. One of the many fascinating findings is that having a ‘good’ curriculum and putting that policy in place are two huge tasks – tasks that benefit from subsidiarity (the move to the most local level possible), and from dialogue between leaders and teachers (and students perhaps), in order to provide space for learning new ways of teaching and learning.

Reading this issue of the BJRE, I am confident nobody will lose either their long-sightedness or their short-sightedness. The articles range from historically- and geographically-wide horizons, to the fine details of classroom interactions, and even to the individual memories of practitioners. Modern opticians rely on the work of seventeenth century scientist-philosophers who developed the use of lenses: developed them both for microscopes, to see fine detail, and telescopes, to see into the far distance. I hope our focus can change in such ways, from distant to close and back again, so that RE can be seen as personal, local, national and international, notwithstanding the occasional risk of being momentarily out of focus.