Greg Daly
Experts in religious education are uneasy about a proposed new primary school course in religions and ethics, Greg Daly discovers
“It’s always struck me that people who have a deep respect for their own tradition, whether it’s religious or otherwise, are more likely to be respectful of other traditions,” Fr Eugene Duffy muses, commenting on the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment’s plan for a new primary school programme, Education about Religions and Beliefs and Ethics (ERBE).
In the current issue of The Furrow, Fr Duffy, who lectures in Theology and Religious Studies at Limerick’s Mary Immaculate College, responds at length to a departmental consultation paper about the proposed course, arguing, for instance, that the questionnaire issued in connection with the paper asked questions that everyone could agree with and eschewed questions that would reveal the realities of Irish education.
“They should have tested what is the current situation,” he tells The Irish Catholic, suggesting that questions should have been asked about how inclusion is facilitated in Irish schools, “and then make some recommendations on the basis of that”. The questions asked, he suggests, were indicative of “a lazy approach to the issue”, and one that would be open to sleight of hand in how they might be interpreted.
Evidence
Professor Emer Smyth of the ESRI told this newspaper only last year that when it comes to education in Ireland “a lot of debate takes place in the absence of evidence”, and it is difficult to see what data, if any, was drawn on to support the notion – implicitly underpinning the proposed course – that religious intolerance is a problem in Irish schools, especially given how the reality may be otherwise.
“One of my main concerns,” Fr Duffy explains, “is that there isn’t an acknowledgment of what is being done or what has been achieved in terms of inclusion and accommodation of people from other faiths and other ethnic backgrounds – some who are Catholics and some who aren’t, or aren’t even Christian – in the primary schools.
“I think the parish schools have probably done more to accommodate people and facilitate integration into local communities and the wider society than any other agency,” he continues.
Kildare and Leighlin’s Primary RE Advisor Maeve Mahon agrees, remarking, “I believe our Catholic schools are already doing a huge amount of work in the area of inclusion, both formally and informally. The number of children in our schools of all faiths – and indeed of no other stances for living – is huge.”
“With the new curriculum for religious education in primary schools – the Catholic curriculum – children will be learning about other religions,” she continues, expressing a concern similar to that expressed by Fr Duffy in his Furrow article that ERBE could entail “adding a layer into an already overcrowded curriculum that just isn’t necessary at the moment – there may be a need for some guidelines that we may have to look at, but in terms of an entire curriculum, it’s very hard to see where it would fit and why it is necessary”.
Anne Hession, lecturer in Religious Education at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and author of the new Catholic primary curriculum concurs, saying that “most of the aims that they’re proposing for this new ERB and Ethics programme are already covered in the new Catholic pre-school and primary religious education programme for Ireland”.
The new curriculum, she says, deliberately addresses “respect for diversity, and inclusion, and how we approach people who have different stances on religion or religions different from our own”, as well as promoting justice and freedom, teaching about other religions, and challenging discrimination.
Like Ms Mahon she would favour some State guidelines to help educate children for life in a religiously diverse Ireland, she says, since “every religion needs to be able to relate its beliefs and values to the values of a democratic society”, but that’s very different, she observes, “to prescribing a secular code and imposing it on all schools”.
Parents have a right in any case, Fr Duffy says, to have their children formed within their own faith, something which he believes takes time and sensitivity and should not be disrupted by causing “confusion unnecessarily before people have put down their own roots and have an understanding of their own tradition”.
Dialogue
Inter-religious dialogue, which he describes as “a legitimate subject” is something that could cause such confusion, he says.
“I think children can be respectful of other people and other traditions, but I don’t think you can expect them to engage in any kind serious dialogue, and it’s actually going to cause confusion before they have formed any religious faith images or convictions themselves,” he says, adding, “certainly I don’t think children are sufficiently grounded in their own faith tradition to engage in that kind of thinking”. Ms Mahon highlights the confusion that could arise by teachers “saying to children in one breath that Jesus Christ is the centre of our world and the person on whom we base our values and we draw our energy, and in the next breath that he’s only one of many different people who might inform our values”. This, she says, would be “a very difficult thing for small children – and indeed for teachers – to get their head around”.
Aside from how this would effectively undermine the ethos of Church-owned schools, such that it could be constitutionally questionable, Ms Hession says it’s profoundly unfair to teachers, to whom she says “it doesn’t make sense to say ‘you’re going to teach from a secular perspective now for half an hour, and later in the day you’re going to talk to the same children and teach them from a religious perspective’”.
It is, she maintains, disrespectful to teachers “who have strong life commitments, religious or otherwise, to say that you can do both with integrity”.
This entire approach, Fr Duffy fears, is based in any case on the questionable notion that religions can honestly and accurately be taught about from a strictly neutral position. Sceptical about whether one “can study religion as a phenomenon from a distance, and that one’s own particular convictions don’t have to enter into the picture or the equation”, he wonders who would identify and define this “neutral ground”. Ms Hession is more pointed in her criticism, saying that the notion of “neutral ground” is “clearly a wrong assumption” since “every approach to religion is an approach from somewhere”.
“There’s no such thing as a neutral approach to religion, and that’s the big problem now with the proposals as they stand,” she says.
