8.6.97

Religious education is destroying religion 

Michael McMahon says the state is creating a new creed and impoverishing the young

If all religions are equal, why bother with any of them?

A BOY'S mother had died. It had been sudden, and unexpected: collapse, hospital, death. The deputy head of the non-denominational comprehensive I was teaching at got the news just before assembly the following day, and had to let the rest of the children in that year group - 200 of them - know why their friend wouldn't be with them for a while, and advise them how to treat him on his return. He spoke with skill and compassion. Closing, he invited them to join him, if they wished, in saying the Lord's Prayer. The children were silent. They just didn't know the words.

How can this be, when it has long been the law of the land that each schoolday begin with an act of collective worship? Surely few children can have got to secondary school age without having heard the "Our Father" often enough to be able, at least, to mumble along? Well, it is a law that has long been widely ignored, and it may not be the law for much longer. The Association of Head Teachers' conference has just voted overwhelmingly to seek to have daily collective worship abolished, and the issue raised continues to be debated - not least in the correspondence columns of The Times, where shock and indignation have been recorded, and condemnation uttered. And, sad to relate, at the same conference even Church schools had to be exhorted by the Archbishop of York to display crucifixes and say the Lord's Prayer daily.

I understand the indignation of the letter-writers; but I wonder whether it is well directed. Those who voted to be free from daily worship were not all liberal agnostics or hardened atheists. There were those too, like my then deputy head, who are committed Christians. Some of them feel a daily church parade where unbelieving children are drilled in the externals of a faith not held by their teachers is at best sterile, certainly hypocritical, and probably counter-productive. And some - many, I suspect - will have voted for reasons which have nothing to do with religion . Many secondary schools don't have a hall big enough to contain even a quarter of their pupils. For them, daily collective anything is impossible.

But it is not in fact the collapse of collective worship that is destroying religious belief . That is being done by statutory religious education. The law requires that "religious education should be taught to all pupils in full-time education, except for those withdrawn at the wish of their parents." (Department for Education Circular 1/94.) Though "Christianity should predominate", the syllabus as a whole must also include "all of the principal religions represented in this country".

These are conflicting requirements. Even if our children bring home exercise books with two drawings of loaves and fishes to every coloured-in set of Diwali lights, they are still going to conclude, if it is their only encounter with religion, that all religions are equal. And if that is the case - if the god with the elephant head is as worthy of reverence as the God whose head was crowned with thorns, why bother with either (or any) of them?

By gathering the teaching of religions together under one heading, the Tories not only defined a subject but created a creed. Whatever the motives of the legislators, few children approaching the subject cold are going to come to any conclusion other than that there are many different world religions and they all have equal merit. The trouble with the phenomenological approach - "there is this thing called religion : let's take a look at it" - is that it turns potential players into spectators and commentators. Everything is looked at from the touchline. The subject itself becomes a kind of super-religion . Moreover, imposing its teaching makes it the new orthodoxy. The tendency of its relativism was foreseen by G. K. Chesterton: "According to most scholars, Christianity and Buddhism are alike - especially Buddhism." Without realising it, we have allowed the creation of a new state religion; it even has its own Inquisition, under Her Majesty's Chief Inspector ofSchools.

What the Chief Inspector has perhaps failed to notice is that our children do not know enough about Christianity to understand their cultural heritage. A-level Shakespeare texts must now be annotated to explain religious references in the sort of detail that 20 years ago would have been regarded as unnecessary - and pitiful. Meanwhile, those children we see milling about the aisles of our cathedrals chewing gum and wearing baseball caps are doing their RE coursework.

Learning about other religions, as opposed to learning "Religion", is another matter; something to be welcomed. At a time when our country's culture has become so enriched and diverse, it is especially important that children learn about different faiths. But why does it have to be in the context of RE? Why not in History and Geography - both, incidentally, subjects increasingly struggling at the bulging margins of the secondary curriculum? Unless, of course, there is a philosophical sub-text: that schools are expected to teach that all religions are equal, and that to achieve this politically desirable effect religions must be packaged together. Here surely is a chance for our Christian Prime Minister: might he not untie this ugly bundle of a subject so that our children may properly enjoy the benefits of its individual parts?

By allowing this kind of Religious Education such an unassailable position in the curriculum we have hastened the process of eradicating religion from our native culture altogether. We are one step closer to the world so offensively imagined in the John Lennon song: a world uncomplicated by the presence of religion at all. Our national Christian inheritance might have to be given notional pride of place, but only as one of many: first, perhaps, but first among equals. And followers of other faiths would have every right to complain they are patronised by their inclusion in the a la carte presentation of the phenomenon of "religion ".

Of course, this is not to say that Good Things are not taught (by Good People) in RE lessons up and down the land. I know this from what I see in my school - where it is taught (and taught well) both by a practising Christian and a teacher whose personal viewpoint is that of an "agnostic tending towards atheism". But let's not pretend that our children are learning religious truths in RE classes. Studying comparative religion, said Ronald Knox, is the best way to become comparatively religious. But Knox's joke was of another, more innocent time. The trouble today is that we are not turning out even comparatively religious children.

Michael McMahon teaches at a comprehensive school in East Anglia.