What’s in a Worldview? A Response to Trevor Cooling’s Doing God in Education

• In Event: Doing God in Education

Abstract

Trevor Cooling aims to defeat what might be called the marginalizing view of the place of religion in education. I am sympathetic to this aim, and to at least some of the objections he advances. But I think Cooling conflates two different arguments, predicated on two different concepts marked by the term ‘worldview’, and that only one of these arguments is plausible.

One argumentative thread assumes that worldviews are theories of the meaning of life and contends that learning in all areas of the curriculum bears on the credibility of rival worldviews, including religious ones. Study in any discipline can prompt reflection on wider questions of meaning and purpose. It is therefore important to give explicit attention to worldviews in education. This seems broadly right.

The other argumentative thread assumes that worldviews are conceptual schemes and contends that, without initiation into a worldview, ‘children cannot think at all’. While it may be true that having a conceptual scheme is a condition of the possibility of experience, it is highly implausible to suppose that religions qualify as worldviews in this sense. So Cooling’s second argument poses no threat to the marginalizing view.

Author

• Michael Hand, Institute of Education - London