The Grace Pages

The George Fox Six on trial

A group of Lancaster University students known as the 'George Fox Six' are going on trial today. Their university is taking them to court for 'aggravated trespassing' after what appears to have been a peaceful demonstration at a conference. They face a maximum of three months in jail.

Is it just me or is this totally f*cked?

Official supporters website is here.

Let's stop pretending ... Let's scrap RE

No one could accuse Chris Woodhead of failing to say what he really thinks. With outrageous provocation (no bad thing), his article in the Sunday Times is prefaced thus:

Let’s banish God from the classroom
RE lessons are badly taught and fail to instil faith and tolerance. They should be axed ...

The former head of OFSTED argues that Religious Education is so badly taught in UK schools, it ought to be jettisoned from the curriculum altogether. But the problem is not just bad teaching or lack of suitably qualified teachers, he says:

It is the pusillanimity of the politicians responsible for what is taught in schools who approve the teaching of knowledge about different faiths, but who recoil nervously from the prospect of offering children any experience of that complex of doctrine, worship, ritual and prayer which is religion.

The knowledge without the experience is worthless. We assume that a smattering of information, taught at present by someone who may well have little or no intellectual or spiritual grasp of what is involved, will lead to greater religious understanding and therefore civic tolerance. It will not. RE lessons in a school that has no commitment to a particular faith can never realise the aspirations we deem to be so important.

Well, I certainly know of few actual RE practitioners who assume that "a smattering of information ... will lead to a greater religious understanding and therefore civic tolerance". (Ironically, on the rare occasion I have found that attitude, it has been in the faith schools that Woodhead champions!)

Two issues raised here are the question of truth and whether RE can get beyond facts and educate students in what it really means to experience religion. Andy Goodliff discusses the truth question here, and he is correct, following Andy Wright, to emphasize that religion is about truth claims -- this is the part about which the politicians are so "pusillanimous". RE often teaches about religion stripped of all controversy. The RE world ought to take Wright's observation seriously; after all, surely one of RE's core objectives is to equip children to develop the skills to interpret the world around them critically? Why then this glossing over the truth question?

The second issue is whether it is possible truly to educate children in the reality of experiencing faith and religion. Frankly, I wonder where Woodhead has been for the last few years if he thinks RE has been merely about "smatterings of information". RE teachers are at least attempting to develop more experiential approaches to the subject, even if its success is moderate. But Woodhead appears to be discouraging the RE world even from trying. In effect, he allows us simply to shrink from the challenge. Maybe what RE needs right now is sharp thinkers, creative minds and brave strategists to meet the challenge; what it does not need is to throw in the towel altogether.

Part of the solution may require thinking outside of Woodhead's embarrassingly small box. His paradigm assumes that being part of a faith school accomplishes the goals of RE in itself; having taught RE in a Catholic school, I can assure him such an assumption is utter tosh. There is also the tacit assumption that being part of the curriculum is the equivalent of one hour of traditional-style  "teaching" a week in a standard classroom set-up. It's time we stepped out of that limited paradigm. There is no reason why RE, like Citizenship (I know I will regret having made this comparison), cannot be taught through active projects or by setting aside afternoons or full days for workshops, off-site activities and other events. It's too early to give up the challenge without exploring the future of RE, both its content and its delivery.

Alas, I wonder whether Woodhead is really capable of thinking outside of that paradigm. He writes that "the 14,000 state schools in England that have no religious affiliation would be better off using the time now devoted to religious education to bolster learning in other subjects such as maths and English." I fear this approach betrays the kind of sentiment that promotes literacy and numeracy at the expense of the arts and humanities.

I think I may write my own article for the Sunday Times. It will begin with a call to banish Chris Woodhead from the RE classroom.