Introduction to the Report

• In Event: Doing God in Education

Abstract

At the heart of the debate about the place of religion in publicly-funded education is an assessment of the relationship between religious belief and knowledge. The report argues that a widely influential view is that religious belief is a private matter and that this is underpinned by an epistemology that regards knowledge as entirely independent of religious belief. This view, which is exemplified in the publications of the British Humanist Association, leads to the conclusion that religion should be studied as a phenomenon in RE but should not shape the nature and purpose of educational institutions.

In the report an alternative view is advanced, which draws on a critical realist understanding of knowledge that treats beliefs as foundational to the educational process. It is argued that education can never be objective in the sense of passing on uncontentious knowledge that is independent of beliefs derived from a contestable worldview. To treat religious belief as a private matter is to privilege a secular understanding of knowledge which effectively makes a humanist worldview normative. It is argued that this flies in the face of the widely accepted principle of fairness which aspires to avoid privileging any particular worldview in publicly funded education. A different approach is proposed which acknowledges the role of religious and non-religious beliefs in shaping educational policy and practice. It is suggested that the way forward is to treat people’s beliefs as a resource to be tapped rather than as a problem to be marginalized. The educational task is then to manage the diversity of contestable beliefs in a professional manner rather than to seek to create a neutral classroom or school.

Author

• Trevor Cooling, Canterbury Christ Church University