’10 Essential Facts for British RE Literacy’ – Andrew Strachan

So the National Curriculum, that great Shibboleth of the Thatcher revolution, is to be reviewed (or more accurately, dismantled) and soon we will have the proposals for Maths, English and Science. Colleagues of mine have said that Religious Education should thank its lucky stars for the EBacc which keeps us out of this diabolic review, but I’m not so sure.

In fact I think it’s a massive shame that we have not had a Gove review of Religious Education because it could have led to some radical improvements to the shape of British education.  Apparently Nick Gibb was much inspired by E. Hirsch, and passed this genius on to Gove who has sprinkled it all over the text of his proposals.  Hirsch says children must have a basic foundation of a small amount of facts with which to understand the society they grow up in. So, English must have its sonnets and its unadulterated Shakespeare at Key Stage 3.  Toby Young’s West London Free School must have its Latin.

What would the basic foundation for RE look like?  My imagination takes flight. Clearly, the whole framework would be historical (Elizabeth Truss said in a letter of January 2013: ‘RE is important and studying it teaches children to understand the history that has shaped the values and traditions of this country’) and the role of RE would be to place the young person with the factual tools to understand religion in 21^st century Britain. So, I have come up with my ‘10 essential facts for being RE literate in British schools’.

1. The Synod of Whitby, 664.  The beginning of the end for the Celtic church in Britain and the start of the Romanisation of Christianity in these lands. A significant date in the development of the politicisation of religion in Britain. A desire from the mighty that all should believe the same thing in the same way.

2. The Clarendon Code. A series of Acts of parliament which, from 1661-1665, ensured that all public officials were Church of England, no Non-Conformists could gather in public in groups of larger than 5 and any priest who refused to use the Book of Common Prayer would be thrown out.  A further landmark in the autocratic intolerance practised in this country.

3. The Act of Settlement, 1701. Still in place, although slightly adapted recently to allow Camilla to become Queen, it is still the case that the monarch in this country must be a member of the Church of England.  Discrimination or what.

4. Lin Tse-Hsu’s letter of advice to Queen Victoria, 1839.  Not advisable to ignore the contents of a letter that includes phrases like: ‘Our Celestial Dynasty rules over and supervises the myriad states, and surely possesses unfathomable spiritual dignity’. Even more unadvisable to declare war on that country and force their people to take opium.  The Chinese will have long memories.

5. The Indian Mutiny, 1857.  The Victorians were quick to tell the tale of abuses done to the colonial Brits, but why isn’t it common knowledge that the original offence was that the insensitive British army was using pig’s fat to grease their guns, an offense to Hindus and Muslims alike. For Indian children today, the story is about the beginning of a nation washed in the butchered blood of martyrs.

6. Balfour Declaration, 1917. When it comes to Islam, no self-respecting Muslim in the world will not know the history of the foundation of the state of Israel. But how many young British people are taught about the British mandate in Palestine?  It was the pen of an Englishman that wrote that fateful promise.

7. Amritsar Massacre, 1919. Sikhs were among the first to immigrate in large numbers in the 1950’s. Many Sikhs have been loyal to this country, fighting in both world wars, but all Sikhs will have the memory of this atrocious event burnt deep into their consciousness – where is the British memorial to the 1,000 dead, shot on the orders of a British officer ?

8. U Wisara’s death, 1929. A national hero in Burma, this young Buddhist monk died in a British colonial prison cell after a hunger strike of 166 days.  Among the actions of the rulers that he objected to, was the refusal of British officers to take off their shoes when entering pagodas.

9. Helen Duncan, convicted by a British court of witchcraft, 1944. There are many spiritualists in Britain today, living out their lives, contributing to communities along with the next person. About as far from being witches as the Archbishop of Canterbury. But then, what young person really knows what real witchcraft really is?’.

10. George Orwell’s essay Anti-Semitism in Britain, 1945. Before we get smug about not mistreating Jews in World War Two, all young people should read this piece which includes lines like : ‘I can think of passages which if written now would be stigmatised as antisemitism, in the works of Shakespeare, Smollett, Thackeray, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and various others’.

The issue with Gove’s review is not that facts are not important, but that, what facts you choose to focus on as important. You may not think my ‘Top Ten’ are representative (or even remotely close to it), but what would some people like to choose? Combine that with the statement in the Teacher Standards about upholding British values, and you develop a subject that is about social engineering, about serving a practical purpose. I am pleased to see that Toby Young’s school includes Religious Studies as a KS4 option and no doubt the RE taught in his school will be ground-breaking, but I cannot help, when looking at his website and the prospectus, feeling that his aching, and Gove’s, is not to prepare the young people for the Britain of today, but to mirror the outlook and practice of the traditional public schools which, though successful, are fit to mould a young person for the elitism of the imperial Britain of yesterday.

If we are truly honest about exposing the real faces of world religions, and even of British Christianity, we need to expose the raw belly too and let our children see what we should be ashamed of, so that they can engage in meaningful dialogue with others in the world who bear the marks of these events still.  If we could do that, then a Gove RE review would be a knockout.