While it’s true to say that Religious Education is very good in many schools, the overarching picture is one of retrenchment and deterioration. Academisation and the continuation of Michael Gove’s hated English Baccalaureate are having a devastating effect. Increasingly, RE is not being offered to students at Key Stage 4, or in adequate time in primary schools, despite the legal requirement. Examination entries are suffering a catastrophic decline, undoing all the good work of the previous decade.
But in SOF we have a rescue plan. First, in line with the recent report of the Commission on RE in England, we must change the name of the subject to ‘Religion and Worldviews’. That is ‘religion’ – singular – to mark out the field of study, and ‘worldviews’ – plural – to encompass the religious and non-religious worldviews relating to the concerns to which religions and philosophies of life have addressed themselves.
I like this name change: it finally gets away from the charge of indoctrination, of trying to educate pupils to be religious. But a change of name is not enough on its own. We also need to remember that what really matters is what’s in the tin, not on the label. And this is where the Six Big Ideas for RE, developed by Barbara Wintersgill’s specialist team, of which I was a member, comes in. Pupils should have opportunities to learn about and understand that:
- Continuity, Change and Diversity: There is an amazing diversity of worldviews and ways of life, which are themselves diverse and changing, interacting with each other yet also maintaining continuities through different times and contexts.
- Words and Beyond: There are many ways in which individuals and communities interpret and respond to authoritative texts and traditional non-verbal artistic material, and themselves use both verbal and non-verbal forms of communication, literal and figurative, to express their own beliefs, values, experiences and identities.
- A Good Life: There are many ways in which worldviews provide guidance on how to be a good person and live a good life. These can be interpreted differently by members of the same traditions and agreement may often be found across traditions.
- Making Sense of Life’s Experiences: Worldviews are about experience as much as belief, and they can help individuals interpret their experiences as well as providing transformative experiences through practice, and a sense of identity and belonging.
- Influence and Power: Worldviews interact with the wider community and cultures, affecting and affected by politics, artistic and cultural life, social values and traditional rituals, sometimes having considerable power and influence beyond their own adherents.
- The Big Picture: Worldviews provide coherent overall accounts, however provisional, of the nature of reality – life, the universe and everything – often based on texts or traditions taken as authoritative, though people interpret and live out these worldviews in different ways, and not everyone accepts the need for such ‘grand narratives’.
Children and young people need an educational programme that considers the great wisdom traditions of the world, both religious and non-religious, in order to prepare them for life in a multicultural and multi-faith society. This needs to be done in a way that is critical, objective and pluralist, and, I suggest, committed to the principles of ‘Solar Living’.
Solar living, or ‘solarity’, may be seen, as Don Cupitt wrote in Above Us Only Sky, as ‘a new religion for the non-religious’. Here, ‘we accept and joyfully affirm life and its limits, traditionally described as Time, Chance and Death. We no longer wish to veil the truth about life, nor do we dream of somehow being able to transcend its limits.’
The SOF Solarity resource already has 82 sessions for religion and philosophy out-of-school-hours clubs. We now need to construct a Solarity contribution to Religion and Worldviews, making use of the Six Big Ideas. This proposed resource will: approach the living wisdom traditions of the world in terms of their ‘Big Ideas’; enable non-specialist educators to engage their children in investigative study; promote high levels of understanding of Religion and Worldviews; equip learners with the imagination, empathy and resilience needed for making a positive contribution to society; and provide learners with access to the wisdom that will help them to cope with life’s many challenges.
We now need to take up the opportunity provided by the RE Commission recommendations for a national course in Religion and Worldviews.
Dave Francis is Deputy Chair of the RE Council and Associate Adviser for Bath and North East Somerset SACRE.