What do most schools mean when they say Religious Education?
As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Ombudsman for Children, they released a survey about young people’s thoughts on a number of issues including education. The Irish Catholic reported that the survey showed that young people want more religion in schools.
Most people would be surprised at such a finding, and although it turned out that the headline was somewhat misleading when one looked at the survey results in closer detail with religion lumped in with psychology and drama.
However, if you were to ask me if I believe religion should be taught in schools, despite my campaigning for a separation of church and State in Ireland, I would emphatically say “yes.”
I do not subscribe to any religion but I believe it is very important to learn about religions. With about 85% of the world possessing some form of faith, it makes sense that I should understand why people believe what they believe and how I should respect their wishes, even if I don’t share their beliefs.
For example, if I meet an Orthodox Jewish woman, I believe it is up to me to respect that she cannot shake my hand, whether or not I think it’s silly or not. (The reason comes from the concept called Negiah.) Similarly, I believe it is up to me to learn why many Muslim women choose to wear a hijab, rather than deciding that it is oppressive.
However, learning about religions is not what happens in the vast majority of Irish primary schools. Religious Education in most Irish primary schools is faith forming. In fact, in Ireland, the subject of religion in faith schools uses the terms: faith formation, religion, religious education and religious instruction interchangeably.
However, they are not the same.
If you read the survey, including the comments from the students, it is clear, to me at least, that students aren’t interested in faith formation when they say religion; it is learning about religions.
Religious Education is objective, critical and pluralistic. Religious instruction is different. It is faith forming in one belief system. In other words, only one perspective is presented as truth with other beliefs, if mentioned at all, as alternatives to the truth.
For example, if one looks at the current Catholic primary programme, in its eight year syllabus, there are two weeks in total dedicated to learning about other faiths. One week is on Judaism and the other is on Islam. They are presented from a Christian point of view. For the entire rest of the syllabus, Catholicism (and more widely Christianity) is taught to the children uncritically. There is no uncertainty in the lessons offered to the children.
You might wonder why a country with a low percentage of practicing Catholics would accept that 90% of primary schools teach their children messages that they themselves don’t particularly believe. I do too.
I can only resolve that it is in the messaging.
For example, if you look at any of the Catholic agencies in Ireland, they will always refer to religious instruction in their schools as religious education. They refuse to accept that it is faith forming and they become aghast when it is described as indoctrination.
(By the way, indoctrination means, “the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically,” which is exactly what happens in Irish primary schools.)
If one looks at most Christian-run primary schools in Ireland, one will see a sentence similar to this:
“In this school we believe in a Christian god, but we are happy to accept other faiths and none in our community.”
On the surface, this may seem welcoming, but it doesn’t take much to break down the Animal Farm-esque language here.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
The schools call themselves inclusive to all faiths and none. I’ve written more about this subject here:
The blurring of the definitions of religious education and religious instruction has been wildly successful for denominational education. By doing so, it has managed to retain the illusion that Irish primary schools are not contravening any equality laws. It successfully hides behind the fact that they see no difference between instruction and education, and this allows faith formation to continue in 95% of Irish primary schools, supported by thin veils of proof that this is what parents (and students) want.
Advocacy groups do their best to try and help parents and students understand that there is a difference, but it is a difficult task. When a society has been instructed in the same message for many generations, it can be hard to get a different message through, particularly when most believe it did them no harm.
However, I would argue that people might look beyond their own experience of school and put themselves in the shoes of children and their teachers where the system of religious instruction does cause harm. These are the children that have to sit at the backs of classrooms every day. These are the teachers that have to pretend to be practicing Christians, to be missionaries, to lead worship, to ensure that they pass on the faith tp the children, whether or not they believe in the messages themselves. If they can’t do this, or if it is perceived that they can’t do this, they are unable to get a job. If parents and students understood what religion actually meant in their child’s primary school, perhaps it would make a difference. As we can see from the Irish Catholic’s interpretation of the Ombudsman survey, they are masters at presenting information in a particular manner. By leaving out psychology and drama and by failing to define religion, at best, their headline is misleading. Perhaps, it might be best described as sin by omission.
