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Morality In The Classroom

Adrian Hilton asks how can the Government instil morality by downgrading Religious Education?

By Adrian Hilton

16 Aug 2011, 16:00

Don’t get me wrong: I’m well aware that an awful lot of the state’s provision of Religious Education/Knowledge/Instruction/Studies is truly dreadful. I’ve taught Politics and Philosophy for many years and inspected countless teachers in quite a few schools, so I’ve seen the disasters and car crashes first-hand. Some lessons are great: a child can leave a room positively transfigured by a single encounter. But in far too many schools RE/RS is taught by unqualified teachers with inadequate training or poor knowledge who have no passion at all for the subject and absolutely no appreciation of its inspirational possibilities or sociological significance. And as one steeped in political philosophy, I’m equally well aware that Aristotle and Bentham have as much to contribute to a debate on morality as Jesus: it is axiomatic that you don’t have to be ‘religious’ to be moral (indeed, the professing ‘religious’ can be just as immoral or amoral as any agnostic/secularist/atheist).

But you don’t get an awful lot of moral debate into your average Geography lesson: plate tectonics and longshore drift just aren’t conducive to an exploration of right and wrong. Sure, you can talk about the evils of man-made global warming, but God help your grades if you dare to dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy: the planet’s heating up; man is to blame; and Al Gore brings truth and salvation. History can certainly open up ethical discussion on perceptions of good and evil, but the historian’s task is to piece together the past; not to direct the present and even less to articulate a particular future. Certainly, these humanities can illuminate and enlighten both present and future, but they don’t aspire to inculcate morality or instil an ethical framework. The only subject on the National Curriculum where the philosophical and transcendent meet the moral, ethical and sociological is in RE/RS.

But the unrelenting focus of recent governments (of all persuasions) has been upon standards in English, Maths and Science. That’s all well and good: these might contribute positively to the nation’s GDP, but they don’t help children to become good friends, future parents, considerate neighbours or responsible citizens. There used to be a requirement for a daily ‘broadly Christian’ act of worship, providing space for corporate reflection on matters spiritual and moral. But that statute has become as otiose as the Church of England’s blasphemy laws, and is now in the process of being impliedly repealed.

RE/RS is stranded in a curricular no-man’s land, perched precariously between statutory compulsion and academic irrelevance. Headteachers are loath to devote more than the bare minimum of curriculum time to it because it simply isn’t rated. So the fact that the Secretary of State for Education has chosen to omit it altogether from the EBacc really comes as no surprise: as it is presently formulated (by local SACRE ‘experts’); taught (often by non-specialists); and examined (GCSE question: ‘Where was Jesus born?’), the subject is deficient and delinquent in a great many schools and across most exam boards. In fact, it’s often only in the private sector or in faith-based ‘voluntary aided’ schools where RE is accorded any kind of respect and so acquires academic credibility. The A-level is a whole lot better, but take-up is invariably impeded by the inadequacies of provision in key stages three and four. The future of religious philosophy is bleak.   

As David Cameron and Ed Miliband do battle (‘knee-jerk’ versus ‘shallow and simplistic’) on how to respond to the recent outbreak of anarchy and lawlessness, they could do worse than sit and listen (very carefully) to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. If Britain is ‘broken’, so is our politics: the liberal-centre-left is as morally bankrupt as the liberal-centre-right, and the authoritative extremes of both are abhorrent. The Church of England may be in decline, but its wisdom persists and its truths are immutable. Just a few months ago, writing in the New Statesman, Dr Rowan Williams asked why the shift away from the 1944 ‘Butler’ Education Act (which laid the foundation for state education based upon Christian values) didn’t merit at least some kind of national debate. He was either completely ignored or derided and mocked. And last week, in the House of Lords, Dr John Sentamu decried the decision to eradicate Religious Studies from the EBacc when ‘religious knowledge forms and creates a culture’. Again, his question was ignored.

As the ‘Big Society’ academies and free schools increasingly opt out of the National Curriculum – leaving individual headteachers and governors to set their own curriculum and forge a distinct educational ethos – now is not the time to downgrade Religious Education. It is observed that many of those looting and rioting were children; some as young as seven or eight. If our politicians are right to ascribe their moral depravity and ethical incoherence to inadequate schooling and poor parenting, then the state should actively encourage ‘Big State’ citizenship and inspire the pursuit of virtue. There is, of course, a tension here: it is not, in my view, the task of government to be rigidly prescriptive in school curricula, but when it comes to the moral foundations of our liberty and democracy, it is an imperative.  

So, instead of shunting RE/RS to the peripheries of state education along with cooking and needlework, the syllabus should be beefed up considerably; infused with Citizenship and complemented by a rigorous epistemology of both religious philosophy and secular ethics. And the luring and training of properly-qualified graduates should be as much of a governmental priority as the attraction of high-flying academics into teaching maths and physics. Man does not live by simultaneous equations alone.