M. Felderhof – LE SFIDE DELL’EDUCAZIONE GLOBALE: ANALISI DELLE DIMENSIONI RELIGIOSE

GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES: EXPLORING RELIGIOUS DIMENSIONS

Dr Marius C. Felderhof, Hon Sr Research Fellow,

Dept. Of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham

E mail M.C.FELDERHOF@bham.ac.uk

INTRODUCTION

Many European countries require a provision of Religious Education in their maintained schools. In the United Kingdom, the government legislated for the provision of “Religious Instruction” and a daily act of “Collective Worship” in its 1944 Education Act. In recent years there has been increasing criticism of this basic legal requirement^[1]. Part of this criticism has its roots in the increasing secularisation of European culture. During the closing years of the second World War, the UK legislators could still see religious life and its values as part of the solution to the moral bankruptcy of Fascism, today’s society i s more likely to view religious life as a part of the problem. However, part of the criticism of the legal requirement is also rooted in globalisation. There is a growing awareness of the diversity of religious life that has come about through the mass media, the internet, through travel and tourism, and through migration.

What are schools to do with the expectation of worship in school (a) when teachers and pupils have little experience of it in their own lives and (b) when those teachers and pupils that do participate in religious life, come from families and communities that worship very differently? In the early period in the UK after 1944 Act the requirement of worship was resolved by relying on some basic common elements of Christian worship: a prayer, a scripture reading and a hymn was standard fare. The legal prescription of a process of agreeing a Religious Instruction syllabus in every Local Educational Authority was another way of coping with Christian diversity. Not surprisingly many syllabi took the form of Biblical studies since the Bible was accepted as a shared resource that had left a deep mark on British culture and its values.

The impact of secularisation and globalisation raised questions about the appropriateness of these practices. The problems were particularly acute in Birmingham, the UK’s second city, which had a history of significant immigration. Under the influence of Professors Ninian Smart^[2] and John Hick^[3] at the University of Birmingham, the city adopted the country’s first “Multi-Faith Agreed Syllabus” for its schools in 1975. This approach was widely followed by other Education Authorities. By the time of the 1988 Education Reform Act, the Conservative government had to acknowledge some of the changes that had come about but also tried to reverse the trend somewhat. It spoke of Religious Education rather than of Religious Instruction and began to specify the parameters of the content of Religious Education by requiring that it should be “in the main” Christian whilst “taking account of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain”. The law never explained what it meant to “take account” of the other religions or which they were.

In practice Religious Education in subsequent years had become the secularised study of six or more religions, and increasingly spoke of also studying non-religious “worldviews” within RE. The 1975 Birmingham Syllabus had already recommended the study of Marxism and Secular Humanism, but on legal advice solely as critiques of religion. But why should the study in RE be confined to these two non-religious “worldviews” and why study them only as critiques of religion and not in their own right? The question is: Is the secular study of Religions and non-religious “Worldviews’ appropriate for RE. There are number of reasons why this widespread response to globalisation is an educational cul-de-sac.

FINITUDE

When Religious Education theorists and classroom practitioners contemplate what must be taught in their subject they often become all dreamy and glassy-eyed as they fantasise about their ideal. This is especially true of academic theorists who in their ivory towers have been given a mandate to speculate about what might be possible. Classroom practitioners, on the other hand, are much closer to the realities that keep their feet on the ground. There is, of course, a place for dreaming, for as it is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures in the book of proverbs “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18). One needs to imagine what is possible in order to make it a reality. Nevertheless, one should differentiate between daydreaming and a form of dreaming that operates in the realm of the possible. So the first religious contribution to the discussion on global educational challenges is the reminder that you are not God (or gods). You are human with finite time, with finite resources and finite abilities, and, if you are a teacher, you are teaching children with finite capabilities. You simply cannot teach everything humankind might aspire to know or every skill that people might aspire to develop, so teachers must select what they can, and should, teach young people in school from the vast accumulated store of human knowledge for the benefit of their future.

This may, of course, be stating the obvious. But many Religious Education teachers in the UK suffer from a deep sense of insecurity precisely because they are presented with a dreamy ideal that they do not feel they have the ability to deliver in the classroom. In part, the blame lies with the RE theorists, who in 2004 published guidance in the form of the Non-Statutory National Framework for RE in the UK, with the connivance of the Government’s QCA (Qualification and Curriculum Authority), which suggested that in school religious education one should study (in depth) Christianity, the five other major religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism), and in addition study three “minor” religious traditions (Baha’i, Jainism, and Zoroastrianism) and secular philosophies. One hastens to add that in itself, in an ideal world, there is nothing wrong with studying all of these religious traditions and secular philosophies that together offer a global and inclusive agenda. What makes this assignment so challenging is human finitude; many teachers will confess to not knowing as much about some of these minor (or even major) traditions as they should if they are to teach these traditions with any confidence and enthusiasm. And on top of this, there are those difficult headteachers who will only allocate a maximum of 40 hours a year (if that) to the classroom teacher to deliver this religious element of a global, inclusive agenda. In this situation it helps to remember that one is only human and not a god^[4]. One can only do what is humanly possible.

In a multi-religious city, such as Birmingham in the UK, a teacher could possibly make up for some of his or her own deficiencies by organising first-hand encounters with adherents of any and all of these religious and non-religious traditions, if it was judged that pupils needed to deepen and broaden their experience of every day life. But not every region or city in the country has such resources to hand. And even in an “ethnic-minority majority” city such as Birmingham, not all parents welcome attention to a wide diversity of religions and belief when their offspring is barely acquainted with the religious tradition that has shaped the culture and society in which they live or the one which happens to have shaped their own family life. Thus in determining the range of the content of Religious Education, there are a number of factors that influence curriculum planning: time available, the existence of educational institutions apart from schools e.g. family, museums, religious bodies, wikipedia, the media, to name but some. Further one might consider pupil and societal interests. So in remembering that one is not God, one may begin to take seriously the finite and concrete realities in which one educates^[5]. Also for schools, it is important not to believe hubristically that the educational processes are confined to school hours or to the school years.

Advocating an awareness of human finitude is not intended to be an encouragement to a form of closing of the human mind or to a lack of ambition. Rather the opposite. It should initiate a journey with clear objectives and with an acute awareness of one’s starting point and of one’s resources. The problem that comes with facing an infinite horizon is that one is easily at a loss on where to begin, where to go and what to do. A start may be made through urgent local discussions, (as happens now in England), between teachers, politicians and religious bodies about what realistically might be, and should be, taught and attained in school. Sometimes schools can only initiate a form of (religious) understanding or provide corrections to short memories, to the media, or to hastily formed opinions.

FOCUS OF RELIGION

Secondly, in addition to an awareness of human finitude in setting out a religious education curriculum, it is important to reflect on the proper focus of religious education. Clarity on what defines its content is vital. The contention here is that one might summarise it thus: religious education should be less about “religions and beliefs” and more concerned with what “religions and beliefs” are about. The latter might be variously described as developing religious sensibilities, or to learn what it means to live rightly and well^[6], or what it means to live with integrity. It should be noted that this existential focus has global dimensions. Religions are not simply “world religions” because they happen to embrace adherents from every corner of the globe, but because religions are generally concerned with what some call “big questions” through their overarching narratives of human meaning. These narratives usually take on mythic dimensions by starting at the beginning of the universe and finishing at its ending. This all-embracing, global perspective invariably takes a deep ethical turn,. The ethical turn has the power to bring the different religious traditions together into a serious conversation as they explore the key values in human life. In brief, for educational purposes they soon speak the same language as they seek to define what we as human beings should live for and live by. The experience in Birmingham is that the different religious traditions broadly share the key values and virtues^[7], even if they differ in certain practices and in their recollections of the narratives on which they draw to express and realise those values and virtues.

In England, over the past thirty years Religious Educationalists have spoken of two attainment targets for their subject, “Learning about” religions and “Learning from” them. The contention in Birmingham has been that “learning from” faith should primarily determine what pupils “Learn about” religious traditions. What one might learn about religions almost verges on the infinite; it could take a life-time. The priority of ‘learning from’ faith gives ‘learning about’ religious traditions purpose and direction., touching directly on pupil, social and global interests. The view is taken that this provides a sounder basis for allocating the resource of teaching time then carte blanche to teach about religions in the hope that some of it might be relevant to the future lives of young people.

When religious education (wrongly) seeks to focus exclusively on the study of “religions and belief”, there are two major problems. First, it can be destructively divisive and secondly, it invariably employs an academic methodology which puts the pupil into a position from which they may well miss the essence of religious sensibilities. The first problem follows from a tendency to reify religions, i.e. to objectify ‘religions and belief’ into separate, descriptive packages. These then become convenient group labels. Religious education can turn into something like a trip to the zoo where one may observe the different species in their separate enclosures. By dividing humanity into its different “species”, one may lay the foundations for what can only be described as a “gang” culture, in which the individual seeks greater significance by being absorbed into a group identity, a greater self. This ‘self-aggrandising’ character of a “gang” culture^[8] is, of course, in itself deeply irreligious^[9] from the perspective of most religious traditions. Most religious traditions may more accurately be described as encouraging a de-centring from the self, or of losing one-self, and they see human self-aggrandisement (and a certain kind of “pride”) as the great obstacle to a deeper existence.

The second problem is less easy to articulate but the problem arises from turning the pupil into an observer, which suggests a certain detachment from the focus of their study. Religions, on the other hand, are what one might call existence-communications. They seek to direct (and support) people in what they live for and what they live by, in brief, to illuminate their existence. In this context religious traditions are resources for living rather than ends in themselves. The academic detachment of the observer, and the potential existential disengagement this entails, puts this method of study at odds with the essence of religious life^[10].

It is must be observed at this point that wrongly directing the focus of religious education onto “religions and belief” in themselves rather than on what they are about, constitutes a subtle shift that often goes unnoticed in our Western culture. The cause is twofold. It arises in part (a) from what is widely perceived to be good academic practice and in part (b) from the influence of Christian practice and theology itself. To take the latter influence first: in Christian liturgy one finds people reciting the creed, and thereby giving the impression that at its core Christian faith is about holding and giving assent to a system of beliefs. But in St. Matthew’s gospel, (ch. 25:vs 30ff) in a narrative about the final judgment, i.e. in the most important assessment of what really matters, it is not what people said or understood that counted most, the key factor is what they did or did not do. Did they feed the hungry? Did they give drink to the thirsty? Did they clothe the naked? In brief, it is one’s actions that count. The key to Christianity is not to state the truth but to do it^[11].

Linguistically or grammatically speaking, religions tend to operate in the imperative mood, with commands rather than with the indicative mood and descriptive statements. Statements, or propositions, may raise the question of whether you agree or not, whether they are true or not; commands, on the other hand, raise the question of whether you will obey or rebel. In brief, religions operate in the sphere of existential engagement, and to ignore that, is somehow to miss what is essential about religions. So to ‘learn about’ religions without recognising that religions present themselves as addressing the enquirer by making a claim on the interest the student (and society) has in life itself, is to miss something of its essence. Religions are not theories. There is no objective neutrality here, only a question of what you may ‘learn from’ religions, for better or worse.

Then there is the influence of the academic ideal. Objective study is a goal that factors out narrow self-interest and partiality on the part of teachers and students. In this context, Socrates is presented as the ideal teacher^[12], who through his irony removes himself from the picture, and appears to be totally non-directive in his teaching, refraining from guiding his pupils in life. One also thinks of Plato whose many dialogues or conversations end in aporia, or inconclusiveness, which effectively puts the ball back into the court of the reader/student and puts the responsibility of what he or she makes of the conversation or what he or she does with it, onto his or her shoulders. But, of course, the goal of the educator is clear. Socrates (and Plato) are helping their pupils to examine their life, and the questions they use in this process of self-examination are by no means arbitrary or random but purposeful. Had Socrates been totally non-directive in his teaching it would not have been necessary to prosecute him for corrupting the youth. The teacher is never indifferent to the conclusions the pupils may reach as not every answer is equally rational, cogent, comprehensive or morally deep. It may surprise you but even in the most august university, student work and thoughts are marked and graded with a view to commending them or directing them to do better.

Against the position of the priority of engagement and action, it may be countered that one must know and understand before one acts. Or in this context, it may be claimed that one should learn and know about religions before one can learn from them. Yet this is an oversimplification of the learning process. Taking language as an example. Humans learn to speak, and also later to write, long before they know the rules of grammar or the niceties of rhetoric. They are linguistically competent before they know that they are speaking one language rather another, Italian rather than Chinese, and they are competent speakers before they know how these languages differ in their grammatical structure and vocabulary. Humans learn by doing; they learn to live and work together before they study sociology and anthropology. Similarly, children and young people acquire a culture and a certain sense in life before they are aware that this culture and sense has been shaped by defined ‘inherited’ traditions. Only later do they become more self-conscious about the processes at work in its formation, and learn that this sense and culture may be compared, contrasted and complemented by others. To become religiously literate is effectively a willingness to learn the details of the religious influences and sense that has shaped one’s own culture but also to learn from others about the personal, social and global dimensions of one’s life.

Suppose one of our educational goals is to teach young people ‘to care for others’ and to show that caring for others is important in our society. Parents may do this by setting an example for their children to follow. Parents might give their three or four year old some money to give to a beggar in need and thus begin to instill a life-practice of giving. Schools might reinforce the parental example by sharing with children the parable Jesus told of the Good Samaritan. In the parable, the religious command to ‘Love one’s neighbour as oneself’ is illuminated by the suggestion that one’s neighbour is anyone in need. It is not always easy to grasp the full implications of this religious command so that even religious functionaries, (who should know better), may be deaf to this command. The priest and levite may be distracted due to an obsession with the need to work and to be fit for it, so they pass by on the other side. By contrast, it is the religious alien, the Samaritan, who obeys the call to help the one in distress. The Biblical “Other” here implicitly knows the command and shows the way to act and how to live vis-a-vis people in need. It is similarly instructive for those living in the West that the adherents of Islam are also committed to caring for the poor and for those in need. The third pillar of Islam is the requirement to give Zakat, a defined proportion of one’s wealth which is to be donated to charity. This practice is treated as a form of worship and of self-purification. Likewise it is helpful to learn that every Sikh Gurdwara has a Langar, or kitchen, to which anyone, regardless of who they are, might turn for a free, vegetarian meal, served by those who think it a privilege, rather than a duty, to provide this service. ‘Care for others’ is a common religious command realised and practiced in different ways. In each case, one is indirectly teaching about the religious traditions but the real religious key is to find mutuality and encouragement in a shared aspiration to care.

To re-cap: Human beings are finite and therefore schools and teachers must be selective in what they deliver in the classroom. What they select should have democratic support. When it comes to religious education the focus will be less on religions as some reified entities and more on what religions seek to do by directing people in how to live well. The key questions pupils and teachers should always ask themselves are: what must I/we do to live well, what kind of person(s) should I/we become to be truly worthy, and how might religious traditions and other worldviews help in this endeavour. It is only from this perspective that one can come to understand what religions are and what they have to offer in one’s existential quest, shared with people all over the world. One will also note that the religious horizons, both temporally, spatially and humanly, are all-embracing.

CHARACTER EDUCATION

In shifTing the focus of religious education onto the existential interest of religions, one is relating directly to the overarching aim of education generally. This intimate connection may explain why religious traditions all over the world have been engaged historically in creating and supporting educational institutions and in defining the desired outcome of the educational process. In the UK the overarching aim of education is stated in law to be: “the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils and of society”. With this overarching aim in mind, one may begin to ask how one’s curriculum subject contributes to this development.

It is not unimportant to reflect on how schools contribute to the “spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of society” also, but pupils are what is of the most immediate concern to individual teachers in the classroom. Unpacking the notion of the development of pupils involves recognising the complex nature of the human person. Pupils are not computers who need to be programmed with the relevant software and data, with information. Human beings do not only think and remember; they also have feelings and emotions; they make (or fail to make) decisions and to exercise their wills. Perhaps the traditional tripartite division of the human soul is over simplistic from the point of view of modern psychology but it suffices to remind educationalists that developing pupils is more than serving their intellectual life. It makes sense to speak of their cognitive (mind), affective (feelings) and conative (will) development, as a kind of shorthand and reminder of the complex nature of developing the human person.

Some teachers may prefer to keep things simple and regard any attention to a pupil’s affective and conative life as a luxury they can ill afford in the pressurised life of modern education and its emphasis on examinations. It may help these teachers to be reminded that some students do not see, do not understand or cannot learn, because they do not have any feelings for the object of study. One needs to love nature in order to see its complexities and intricate character in the round. Some people do not learn or understand because they do not want, or do not have the will, to learn. Almost unwittingly, much teacher effort is then devoted to stimulating the desire to learn, to create sufficient interest in pupils so they acquire the will to learn. In the past, philosophers have devoted much time to understanding akrasia, (weakness of will) and the impact this has on human life. St Paul expressed the human predicament in Romans 7, vs 15 “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” It is apparent to him that in a disordered life, there is a disconnect between what one seems to know and feel, and what one does. He realises that there is something profoundly amiss here that needs to be addressed. Knowledge, feelings and will are interconnected and essential dimensions of the one, well-developed person.

Teaching and learning are activities. So developing persons means developing the pupil’s dispositions (tendencies to act in a particular way), which is another way of saying that education has character development at its heart. Traditionally, this has also been expressed as the cultivation of certain virtues. In the multi-faith context of Birmingham, the 2007 Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education identified 24 different dispositions (see Appendix I) but the classical world kept it simpler with its 4 cardinal virtues, Wisdom, Justice, Courage and Temperance, each of which touches directly on an aspect of the complex nature of the human person. To these four cardinal virtues, St Thomas Aquinas added the three “theological” virtues of faith, hope and love^[13]. Aristotle also had his own way of classifying and organising his ideal virtues for humanity. And since the well-developed person is essentially one person with different aspects^[14], so the key human virtues are also interconnected and interdependent. One cannot be truly just without being wise and courageous, nor can one manifest true courage^[15] without being wise and just.

Since human beings are not always as well integrated as they would like, a moral philosopher cannot resist seeing a hierarchy in these virtues, which would lead one to prefer one virtue over another. And indeed, sometimes people are forced to choose between two good (or right) courses of action. Aquinas being the intellectual that he was could not resist identifying wisdom or prudence as the one virtue that should have primacy over the others by saying that ‘Prudence perfects reason itself and is the source of goodness in the other moral virtues.’^[16] but then he hedged his bets by claiming that ‘Justice, as a virtue of will concerned with relating to others as well as to oneself, is the paramount moral virtue.’^[17] Cicero had a similar preference for Justice. He claims that

“Study and contemplation are, in effect, truncated or underdeveloped if no action follows from them. Such action is best exemplified by the preservation of the advantages of human life. …….This is how we can tell that the duties associated with justice, which concern the well-being of the human species – which ought to be the highest priority of any person – take precedence over our obligation to learning”^[18]

Plato, on the other hand, preferred sophrosune, (often translated as Temperance)for his key virtue, but is also identified as the “knowledge of knowledge” i.e. a kind of self-awareness that integrates wisdom, justice and courage, creating a proper balance in life^[19].

With the task of developing persons, religious education, (when it is true to the task of education and to the nature of religion), cannot help but be concerned with the individual person whilst simultaneously locating him or her in society and in the wider world, as a part of existing before the Wholly Other. It will touch on a person’s inner life whilst relating him (or her) to others, near and far in space and time i.e. it cannot be good religious education unless it is also global, unless it prepares pupils to listen to others and consider the needs of others, including the needs of the natural world. This is not just an intellectual issue or one of information, but a matter also of feeling appropriately and doing rightly, of being truly engaged with life. Of course, one must also be aware that religions, their institutions and their histories are not always the best embodiments of virtues. They can exhibit a narrow-mindedness, meanness, intolerance and brutality. The point of a religious education is to show where and how religious people and institutions fall short of their own ideals or fail by the ideals as perceived by others^[20]. But this should not obscure the fact that religions have also been an important source of the compassion, grandeur and depth in human life.

The moral ambiguity of the teachings and practices to be found within religious traditions may raise the question of whether virtue can taught at all and whether religious traditions are the best and only means to do so. It is an ancient question as Plato showed in his writings, e.g. in his dialogue Euthydemos. Plato challenged the facile claims of Euthydemos and Dionysodorus to be able to teach virtue and to “impart it better and quicker than any man.” It would be wrong to claim that religious traditions are better and quicker at doing so but because the moral and spiritual life is their business, they pose the questions even if their answers need to be closely scrutinised and used critically.

PILOT STUDY

In order to establish the principle that it is worthwhile developing moral and spiritual dispositions through religious education, a group of academics and teachers conducted a pilot study in Birmingham and Liverpool under the auspices of the Jubilee Centre in the School of Education of the University of Birmingham. (See Appendix 2). Although it was a very small scale study, the results were encouraging and should motivate others to do a larger scale study if this could be funded. In the pilot study academics and RE teachers working together devised lesson plans to teach either gratitude or compassion in the classroom. Testing pupils prior to the intervention and afterwards showed that the lessons made a significant difference to pupil attitudes and behaviour. The tests also corroborated the supposition of the interrelated nature of the dispositions since those pupils who were given lessons on gratitude not only improved their scores on gratitude but also improved their score on compassion.

After several years have passed, one teacher recently testified to the impact that the work had on her work when she changed schools:

“The work we did on Gratitude has been the start of a new curriculum on Virtues at my new school! 

I am the Director of Virtues and now, rather than science, a Lead Practitioner in Religious Studies. 

I research and write the Virtues Curriculum that we have at (name of school) and have had many other schools come to visit us because of the work we are doing on character education. 

Although (name of school) isn’t a faith school, faith is a huge influence, with almost all pupils being of Muslim faith and there is a cross over of faith and virtues embedded in the Religious Education department. 

We study virtues such as compassion, honesty, courage, humility, etc with form teachers delivering stand-alone virtue lessons to forge lasting relationships with pupils as role models. Pupils write and perform an exposition at the end of each term by way of assessment, which also links in with the GCSE English outcomes, the best one or most improved are performed in a showcase assembly and shared via our website and social media:

So that our form tutors are credible and knowledgeable in the subject of virtues we deliver a significant number of hours of training, based on the purpose of learning about virtue and unpacking the concepts so that staff understand them and apply them to their lives before teaching. “

This is a remarkable testimony but also very challenging since teachers cannot exempt themselves from what they teach.

Of course, moral and spiritual development does raise significant questions when it comes to assessment. How can one check that pupils have progressed or that the teaching has been effective when motivations and intentions are integral to moral and spiritual values. By definition motivations and intentions are not always accessible to public scrutiny and there are spiritual and moral objections to judging others. But just because the judgments that teachers make must be cautious and qualified, this does not prevent them from recognising good and bad behaviour, sensitivity and insensitivity, well-informed behaviour and ignorance. The need for caution is always warranted in moral and spiritual life. Nevertheless, as good parenting practice will tell one, mothers and fathers do not neglect to attempt to educate children in what is right and wrong, and schools and society can not afford to neglect what touches children and young people most deeply.

CONCLUSION

Many European countries require the provision of religious education in schools by law. Some countries ban it as being too disruptive and divisive; in still other countries, people wish to keep the state at bay when it comes to their deepest life so that the state cannot trespass on the territory of religious faith and accordingly schools are prohibited from providing religious education. In those countries where it is required by law, religious education may not always have been done well. Sometimes, as suggested here, this is because religions are decontextualised from the task of living and thus distorts and misrepresents them. Sometimes RE is done badly because having committed to the ideal of sharing all knowledge and understanding, it knows no limits. This ambition is exacerbated by the awareness of living in a global village and needing to take into account the needs of the world and the wisdom to be found beyond traditional horizons of the dominant religious tradition in one’s own community and culture. In this situation it becomes incumbent on all schools and teachers to know their limits and to focus on the ultimate goal of education which is to help pupils to learn to live well. In this religious endeavour it often useful to draw on the wisdom of the religious traditions which appear to be most helpful and to be most near at hand but always with the awareness that no tradition has a monopoly on wisdom. A tradition near at hand may readily be complemented, reinforced and challenged by traditions that may have their roots in other parts of the globe. Young people must learn to draw from the past and globally, so that they might make good decisions for their life and future in a global “village”.

APPENDIX I

Birmingham’s 24 dispositions to be cultivated in and through Religious Education:

1/ Being Imaginative and explorative

2/ Appreciating Beauty

3/ Expressing Joy

4/ Being Thankful

5/ Caring for Others, Animals and the Environment

6/ Sharing and Being Generous

7/ Being Regardful of Suffering

8/ Being Merciful and Forgiving

9/ Being Fair and Just

10/ Living by Rules

11/ Being Accountable and Living with Integrity.

12/ Being Temperate, Exercising Self-Discipline and Cultivating Serene Contentment

13/ Being Modest and Listening to Others

14/ Cultivating Inclusion, Identity and Belonging

15/ Creating Unity and Harmony

16/ Participating and Willing to Lead

17/ Remembering roots

18/ Being Loyal and Steadfast

19/ Being Hopeful and Visionary

20/ Being Courageous and Confident

21/ Being Curious and Valuing Knowledge

22/ Being Open, Honest and Truthful

23/ Being Reflective and Self-Critical

24/ Being Silent and Attentive to, and Cultivating a Sense for, the Sacred and Transcendence

APPENDIX II

Birmingham-Liverpool Pilot Research Project in 8 secondary/primary schools

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The purpose of this Jubilee Centre inspired research project was to examine the potential of teaching virtues in the context of religious education.

A pilot project based in both primary and secondary schools was undertaken in two multi-faith cities. The interventions or lessons used were focused on gratitude and compassion. These lessons were the result of a collaboration between practising teachers and academics in the fields of Theology, Philosophy and Education.

The most significant results were:

• there was a significant increase in gratitude amongst girls.
• there was a significant increase of compassion at primary level amongst boys who had been taught lessons on gratitude.
• whilst there was a positive impact at both primary and secondary level, there was a greater impact amongst primary schools.
• in primary schools the non-faith school initially disadvantaged was able to close the gap with regard to gratitude after the intervention.
• there was a greater appreciation and valuation of religious life after the intervention.
• in one school there had been a noticeably positive impact on the school ethos as a whole.
• The teachers significantly valued the exercise as a part of their Continuing Professional Development.

On the basis of this pilot study it will be desirable to replicate this study on a broader basis with more schools and to include a control group where the tests are administered without the intervention.

THE GOAL OF THE RESEARCH:

 1/ in collaboration with the Jubilee Centre was to devise and test a set of RE lesson plans for (a) Key Stage 2 and (b) Key Stage 3 that focussed on gratitude and/or compassion using information about, and resources from, two main religions

• using the religious resources found in Christianity,
• using the religious resources found in Islam,
• providing resources from a third e.g. Sikhism for pupils which they might use as a base for some individual or group research.

2/ was to test whether pupils have developed a more nuanced grasp on gratitude and/or compassion cognitively, affectively and conatively with a test before and after the set of lessons.

3/ was to test whether the teaching of one virtue had a corresponding effect upon pupils’ grasp and attachment to a different virtue.^[21]

4/ was incidentally to enquire for signs of (a) whether the conceptions of compassion differed depending on the religious tradition used and whether they differed noticeably from more secular conceptions, (b) whether the religious/non-religious allegiance of the pupils made a difference to their understanding of, and commitment to, the virtue, (c) whether it made a difference that the RE syllabus that prevailed in the Local Authority was committed to teaching virtue or whether it was committed to a more phenomenological study of religions.

5/ was to film, and to discuss on film, the teaching of a set of lessons at KS 2 and KS 3 on the identified virtue with a view to making this an available resource for teachers to improve their delivery of religious education with a virtue agenda.^[22]

^[1] See e.g.

Woolf Report, Living with Difference, The Woolf Institute, Cambridge, 2015.

Clarke, C., and Woodhead, L., A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools, Westminster Faith Debates, 2015

Clarke, C., and Woodhead, L., A New SettlementRevised: Religion and Belief in Schools, Westminster Faith Debates, 2018

Dinham,A and Shaw, M., RE for Real,The Future of Teaching and Learning about Religion and Belief, Goldsmith and Culham St Gabriel, 2015

REC Commission on Religious Education, Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forwards, A national plan for RE, September, 2018

^[2] Professor Smart went on to found the renowned Religious Studies department at Lancaster University.

^[3] Professor Hick as a Philosopher of Religion is well known for having promoted religious pluralism in his work.

^[4] The first temptation in the creation story of the book of Genesis is the temptation to become like God.

^[5] For further discussion of this concern see my article:“R.E.: Religions, Equality and Curriculum Time”, Journal of Beliefs and Value, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2005, pp.201-214

^[6] Plato, Crito, 48B

^[7] See The Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for RE at www.faithmakesadifference.co.uk

^[8] This feature may, of course, also be found in tribalism, nationalism, sectarianism and “religious nationalism”.

^[9] And immoral as noted by R. Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1932), Westminster John Knox Press 2002

^[10] And with philosophical life if one follows Plato. See Crito, 46D

^[11] “…the word fidelity itself, in the Latin tongue, is said to signify originally a real correspondence between what is said and what is done.” St Augustine, letter LXXXII (82), p357, vol 1, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, (ed.) P. Schaff, T&T Clarke, Edinburgh, 1994

^[12] See e.g. S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 1989

^[13] Drawing on St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 13:

^[14] Sometimes referred to as “faculties”.

^[15] E.G. Plato in Laches touches on the interdependence of the virtues: the dialogue ends in aporia. (file:///Users/user/Downloads/The%20Internet%20Classics%20Archive%20%7C%20Laches,%20or%20Courage%20by%20Plato.webarchive)

^[16] Part I, 2, q 66, 1 (p. 244)

^[17] Part I, 2, q 66, 4 (245)

^[18] p. 157 On Duties, Book 1 in on living and Dying Well, Trsl T. Habinek, Penguin Classics, London, 2012

^[19] For a more detailed discussion see my article: “Temperance, with a consideration of Evil, Violence and Pedagogy” Journal of Beliefs and Value, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2009, pp. 145 – 158

^[20] E.g. D. Hume dismissed many of the values of monastic life. See Hume, D., Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), 3rd ed revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975

^[21] Dr. Liz Gulliford from the Jubilee Centre who acted as consultant for us is leading a research project into how teaching of gratitude can impact upon children’s scores on compassion.

^[22] It did not prove possible to organise filming.