Time to Ditch ‘Religious Education’ and ‘Religious Studies’ says Dave Francis

Chris Street of REnameRE Campaign says (~500 words, edited 4 January 2014):-

In REonline Dave Francis [2013] makes a case that Religious Education should adapt to meet the changing needs of the people it serves. RE has a problem. And it’s not just an image problem: the name religious education no longer does what it says on the tin.

Since Ninian Smart in the mid 1970s, those who saw ‘RE’ as a subject that aimed to develop children’s ‘religiousness’ have 'suffered a dramatic and irreversible decline', says Francis.

Now, the development of children’s ‘faith’ or 'belief' is the role of the family, the specific community or for children to decide for themselves their choice of worldview. The subject should be about helping children and young people to learn from the wisdom of the world’s religious and philosophical traditions so that they can make the best of their lives and find the resilience to cope with life’s tragedies and disappointments.

He argues that it is both desirable and feasible that RE should become a discipline, like Geography, History or the sciences. However this will only be possible if RE changes its name and its aims and content.

Francis says RE already makes use of several subject disciplines – theology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology and history included – in pursuit of its aims. At times, an understanding of the scientific method, mathematics, geography, art and several ancient languages is required.

Alternative names suggested for RE have included ‘Philosophy and Ethics’ (as suggested by National Secular Society) or ‘Beliefs and Values’. But such titles, as well as omitting the ‘R’ word, are clumsy and often misleading. They are difficult to abbreviate for the timetable and confusing for pupils, parents and colleagues, says Francis.

The future of RE is exploration of life itself. We need a study of ‘religious’ values; of wisdom. Religious education should involve a study of and search for wisdom on both personal and social levels. The studies should be about the beliefs and exponents of both established religions AND non-religious philosophies of life or worldviews. It would include the ‘wisdom of the heart’ as well as of the ‘mind’, says Francis.

Francis suggests we call the subject ‘wisdom studies’. The subject would sustain a ‘discipline' of its own, and he suggests the combination of the Greek terms ‘Sophia’ (wisdom) and ‘Logos’ (study). The name of the new subject would be ‘Sophology’.

Sophological study would include most of the world religions. Equally important Sophology would include philosophies of life, including Humanism, which must be recognised by all syllabuses as a philosophical tradition and non-religious worldview, worthy of study, says Francis.

Sophology, he says, would be a Humanities interdisciplinary subject, dealing with an ever-changing and diverse human world. Sophology will be in a better place to do this than ‘RE’ because it will be a better fit for the critical interpretive approaches aka critical thinking, that lie at the heart of the Humanities.

Francis quotes a number of sources to support his case including the 2004 non-statutory National Framework for RE (nsNFRE), Brian Gate, Terence Copley, Jim Conroy and the 2013 review of RE by the Religious Education Council and the accompanying ‘national curriculum for RE’.

Sophologists would study a disciplined, rigorous subject. This will be in contrast to RE which is so often mistaken as an attempt to make the inhabitants of this world, ‘religious’, says Francis.

Christopher G Street BSc (Hons) DMS CDipAF MBA
3rd January 2014

I have reproduced below, unedited, the 2380 word, 'Think Piece' in REonline on 16th December 2013 by Dave Francis.

Francis, D. (2013), Time to Ditch ‘Religious Education’ and ‘Religious Studies', [Online], Available: http://www.reonline.org.uk/supporting/re-matters/news-inner/?id=22402 [accessed 3 January 2014]. This was an updated version of an article that first appeared in Resource 36:1 Autumn 2013 (the journal of NATRE - National Association of Teachers of RE). http://www.retoday.org.uk/benefit/resource-journal (accessed 2 Jan 2014)

Time to Ditch ‘Religious Education’ and ‘Religious Studies’ - Dave Francis

The problem with ‘RE’

 ‘The trouble with religious education’, according to one pupil, ‘is that is contains the two words that children hate most’.

‘The trouble with religious education’, according to one parent, ‘is that it sounds like you’re trying to make people religious’.

‘The trouble with religious studies’, according to one former HMCI, ‘is that it is not an ‘ology’; I would never advise any bright child to follow a course that contains the word ‘studies’.

‘The trouble with religious education, according RE teachers, is that many people, from members of government to the general public, simply don’t “get it”’.

I have paraphrased the things people say about RE above, but we all recognise the sentiments. The pupil, the parent and the inspector may all be wrong, but RE has a problem. And it’s not just an image problem: the name religious education no longer does what it says on the tin.

Things have moved on since the 1944 Education Act that introduced religious education as a compulsory part of school life (comprising ‘religious worship’ and ‘religious instruction’) and locally agreed and denominational syllabuses for RE were made mandatory.

Since around the mid 1970s when Ninian Smart’s analysis of religious experience began to filter into the thinking of those interested in religious education, those who saw ‘RE’ as a subject that aimed to develop children’s ‘religiousness’ have suffered a dramatic and irreversible decline.

The situation now

Now: there is broad agreement that development of children’s ‘faith’ is the role of the family and the specific community. (Though increasing numbers of parents go even further and have preferred to leave their children’s choice of worldview up to them.)

Now: there is a rapidly growing interest in the development of children’s ‘spiritual’ awareness – though some contest the term ‘spirituality’ as being unhelpful.

Now: there is a consensus in the RE world that the subject is about helping children and young people to learn from the wisdom of the world’s religious and philosophical traditions so that they can (a) make the best of their lives and (b) find the resilience to cope with life’s tragedies and disappointments.

The 2004 non-statutory National Framework for RE (nsNFRE) expressed it all in a statement on the importance of the subject, speaking of opportunities for personal reflection and spiritual development as well as developing knowledge and understanding of religions and worldviews. In one key phrase, the statement advises that RE:

‘challenges pupils to reflect on, consider, analyse, interpret and evaluate issues of truth, belief, faith and ethics and to communicate their responses’.
(QCA, DfES, (2004), Religious Education: The non-statutory national framework, QCA, p 7.))

Back in the 1970s, Brian Gates spoke of pupils becoming ‘religiate’, referring to those who can think spiritually, ethically, theologically and philosophically; those who can:

‘understand the faith of others and develop their own equivalent faith by which to live – and be equipped to be able to make effective moral judgements’ (REC National Strategy Document, July 2001).

One of RE’s problems, according to a former RE Adviser, is that it is not a ‘discipline’, in the sense that History or Geography or Science are ‘disciplines’. The Russell Group of universities say that such disciplines are ‘facilitating subjects’; that is, they provide students with the skills and understanding required to enable success in a variety of fields beyond the subject itself. But RE is not yet a discipline: it is seen as a cuckoo subject that tries to be all things to all people; jumping on every bandwagon because it has no direction of its own.

The truth is that RE makes use of several subject disciplines – theology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology and history included – in pursuit of its aims. At times, an understanding of the scientific method, mathematics, geography, art and linguistics can be useful too. Then you might even have to know classical languages such as Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Gurmukhi, Sanskrit, Pali and Latin!

Learning from the cuckoo

But, like the cuckoo, RE possesses the cunning to survive. Like many a successful religion, and like successful education itself, RE adapts to meet the changing needs of the people it serves.
So, is it (a) desirable and (b) feasible that RE should become a discipline? My contention is that it may be desirable, but that it is not feasible unless it changes its name and, to some extent, its aims and content.

Academics tell us that RE should be about something called ‘truth’, or ‘faith’, or ‘justice’, or ‘morality’, or ‘objectivity’, or ‘phenomenology’, or ‘empathy’, or ‘spirituality’. Or being ‘religiate’.

Look at it this way: if you do well at History you may become a historian. If you do well at Geography, you may become a geographer. At Maths – a mathematician, at Science – a scientist. OK, so you don’t become German by doing well at German, but you might become a linguist. What do you ‘become’ if you do well at RE? Religious? But that’s no longer the aim, is it? A Theologian? But that is not an inclusive enough term for humanists and many Buddhists, for example. Spiritual? How so? Wise? May be. Human? Don’t go there. One attainment target, two attainment targets, three attainment targets, four. Five attainment targets, six attainment targets, seven attainment targets, more!

RE took a decisive turn when it ceased to be mainly about faith development. And we cannot turn the clock back, no matter how much some would wish to. So where on earth are we going?

In the days when RE competed for pupils at options time in Year 9 with the other Humanities subjects, one of the historians used to tell the pupils in the school in which I taught that ‘History is about this world; RE the next’. I retorted that History was a thing of the past; RE is about the present – and the future. Word play of course, but now is the time for the reinvention of RE and yet another manifestation. And this is the most cunning transformation of all.

RE’s transformed future

This is RE’s future – exploration of life itself. We need a study of ‘religious’ values; of wisdom. Today, religious education must involve a study of what things in the public world mean to us, personally and socially.

So here is a proposal. Let’s be clear about the overarching aims of the subject that used to be ‘religious’ education. Let’s be clear about the broad concerns and content of that subject. Let’s outline a discipline for that subject that will make sense to the general public as well as politicians and those within the ‘RE community’.

So I have a suggestion, and it is one I have resisted until now, because it removes the ‘R’ word altogether. As Terence Copley once observed:

‘Some secondary schools have even re-named the RE department to keep religion out of the shop window, which seems strange given that religion is a potent force in the lives of women, men and children across the planet. Not that being a potent force makes religion necessarily true, or good, which is why we don’t need to worry about the R word appearing in the title.’
http://reonline.org.uk/supporting/re-matters/news-inner/?id=3896

The danger, as Copley pointed out, is a real one, namely, a tendency in some RE to secularise religious material. So, for example, again with Copley:

‘Joseph is treated like the liberal secular hero of the Amazing Technicolor (©) Dreamcoat rather than the Joseph of the Hebrew Bible or Yusuf of Sūra Yūsuf in the Qur’ān. Any dream will not do in these sacred texts, as dreams are seen as one way in which God communicates.’ (ibid.)

The schools Copley was talking about used such titles as ‘Philosophy and Ethics’ or ‘Beliefs and Values’. But such titles, as well as omitting the ‘R’ word, are clumsy and often misleading in nature. They are difficult to abbreviate for the timetable and confusing for pupils, parents and colleagues.

Yet ‘RE’ will no longer do. We need to coin a new term, one that does justice to the real nature of what RE actually is and what it should become.

A study of wisdom

There are clues to what we need in the nsNFRE’s importance statement quoted above and also in the words of Jim Conroy, Professor of Religious and Philosophical Education at Glasgow University, following the recent three-year investigation into the aims, purposes and practice of RE. Conroy says that good RE involves:

‘the creation of space for serious and critical exploration of the meanings and values by which we live’.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2012/february/headline_223678_en.html

This exploration of different layers of meaning and value is what I would call the search for and study of wisdom. And I mean wisdom as relating to all the world’s experience and learning as expressed through its established religions and philosophies of life and through the exponents of those worldviews. It will include the ‘wisdom of the heart’ as well as the ‘mind’.

This is supported in the recent review of RE by the REC and the accompanying ‘national curriculum for RE’, 2013. Here it is recommended in the ‘purpose of study’ statement, that pupils ‘learn to weigh up the value of wisdom from different sources, to develop and express their insights in response, and to agree or disagree respectfully’ (A Review of Religious Education in England, October 2013, p. 14).

We could, therefore, call the subject ‘wisdom studies’, but, mindful of the need to ensure that the subject contains and sustains a ‘discipline’ of its own, why not combine the Greek terms ‘Sophia’ (wisdom) and ‘Logos’ (study) and centre our efforts on developing a new subject of the school (and university?) curriculum, namely, ‘Sophology’.

This is not a new idea, of course. There is already a Sophology Society with a website devoted to the study of wisdom: www.sophology.org, but that is not to prevent the initiation and development of Sophology as the natural inheritor of the RE tradition.

No doubt, people will raise difficulties and objections. Perhaps the word sounds too much like ‘sophistry’ (with all its negative connotations). Perhaps it sounds as though everyone who studies it will suddenly become ‘wise’. Perhaps religious communities will not like the removal of the ‘R’ word from the title. But these objections are superficial. Similar objections could be levelled at most other curriculum subjects.

There will be those who think any arguments for changing the name are a distraction and what we really need is to keep on promoting good practice in ‘RE’: ‘what matters is what’s in the tin, not the label’. But while it is true that no name change alone will be sufficient to change poor practice to good, the challenge to teachers and learners to search for, study and critically interpret received wisdom in the religions and philosophies of life might just raise everyone’s game a notch.

There will be longer term practical difficulties too, particularly surrounding the statutory place of RE in the curriculum. So my proposal is not one for the faint-hearted. But we do need a subject that is fit to be called a ‘discipline’ in the 21st century; one that will attract new recruits to the teaching profession; and one that will bring real benefits to all children and young people.

Implications of a new discipline

An academic ‘discipline’ is a somewhat slippery concept, but here are some thoughts as to how the discipline of Sophology can be established.

First, we need to refer to the ‘founders’ of the developing RE / Sophology tradition; amongst whom we might count Ninian Smart, John Hull, Michael Grimmitt, Bob Jackson, Eleanor Nesbitt, Trevor Cooling, Andy Wright, Vivienne Baumfield and others, whose pedagogies, methodologies and approaches to RE, from phenomenology to ethnography, from ‘concept cracking’ to ‘critical realism’, have put us on the trail of how we might find wisdom in the multiple traditions available to us now. Of course, it remains to be seen whether any of these giants of the RE world recognise the pattern I have detected here. But the point is to trace the key movements in the development of what has become ‘RE’ in order to establish the subject’s enduring value.

Next, we will need to draw some lines around the ‘content’ of Sophological study. Here it will be for each country or region to set its sights, but I am thinking here of the particular religions and philosophies of life that will be chosen for study. Traditionally, in the UK, ‘the major world religions represented in Britain’ have featured in RE syllabuses. In recent years the ‘big six’ of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism have been joined by Bahá’í, forms of Paganism, Rastafarianism and Zoroastrianism in some RE programmes. And it is surely time that various forms of Humanism are recognised by all syllabuses as philosophical traditions and worldviews worthy of study.

Any discipline will need to define its distinctive approaches to study. Here, as I have indicated above, Sophology would, like RE, continue to be polymethodic, employing the research methods of the social scientist, anthropologist and ethnographer; the systematic thinking of the philosopher and the analytical approaches of the art historian, the psychologist and so on. But Sophology will make use of its own technical vocabulary, namely the key concepts used by the religious and philosophical traditions themselves as well as those of the scholar of religion and belief.

A reinvigorated part of Humanities

Sophology, though distinct in its traditions, content and methods, would not need to set itself apart from the rest of the curriculum. In fact, it would be ideally suited to reinvigorate its place in Humanities-based interdisciplinarity, dealing as it would with the ever-changing, surprising and diverse human world. It will be in a better place to do this than ‘RE’ because it will be a better fit for the critical interpretive approaches that lie at the heart of the Humanities. Sophologists will not mind that their contribution to such inter-disciplinary studies will be partial, tentative and limited – such is the complexity of human knowledge and understanding – but they will be assured that such contributions will be taken seriously as the products of a disciplined, dare I say, rigorous, approach to the matter in hand, rather than mistaken as an attempt to make the world or its inhabitants, ‘religious’.

References

Conroy, J. (2012), quoted in Glasgow University News [Online], Available: http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2012/february/headline_223678_en.html [26 Nov 2012]

Copley, T. (2012), Putting the R back in RE, [Online], Available: http://www.reonline.org.uk/supporting/re-matters/news-inner/?id=3896 [26 Nov 2012]

Francis, D. (2013), Time to Ditch ‘Religious Education’ and ‘Religious Studies', [Online], Available: http://www.reonline.org.uk/supporting/re-matters/news-inner/?id=22402 [16 Dec 2013]

QCA, DfES, (2004), Religious Education: The non-statutory national framework, QCA.

Gates, B. (2001), REC National Strategy document.

Dave Francis is an education consultant with current contracts as Lead Consultant for RE:ONLINE and Adviser to North Somerset and Somerset SACREs. His email address is dfmayfly [at] icloud.com