Stephen Parker (@religiohsitored) writes...
The consultation on GCSE and A-level Reform, not least in Religious Studies, offers a once in a generation opportunity to consider a repositioning of the subject, and a restatement and/or appropriate readjustment in the aims and purposes of the subject.
The background to this in relation to Religious Studies as expressed in the accompanying ministerial letter is undoubtedly matters of ‘security’ and the assertion of particular ‘British values’. Religious Studies is to play its part in fostering the ‘non-negotiables of ‘respect’ and ‘tolerance’, according to ministerial assertion. These assertions are unsurprising, and it mustn’t be imagined that Religious Studies is any less political today than it has ever been. The work I’ve done with Rob Freathy on developments in Religious Education in the 1970s underscores this.
On the whole the proposals for the new curriculum and examinations look to be ‘more of the same’ in many respects, which must be of relief to over-stretched teachers., Even so, the decision to re-introduce textual studies as a major strand of optional study is a surprising (even if welcome one), not least as the erosion of such study within school and university curricula over decades will require a significant investment in resource to make scriptural and textual studies possible.
This all begs the question, what kinds of knowledge, skills and empathies are needed in order to understand religion, not only as a phenomenon to be studied, but as one which is remains a dynamic in the lives of huge numbers of people? The syllabus proposes that alongside textual studies, the systematic study of religion and its philosophical, ethical and social scientific are the doorways to such knowledge and understanding. I’ve found the comments of Peter Vardy on all this convincing.
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