RE and the seven things that Gandhi said will destroy us – Jeremy Roberts

The very first time I stood in front of a class of expectant twelve year old faces with permission to ‘deliver’ Religious Education, the advice from my head of department was clear in my mind: “They did chapter four last week so see if you can get them through chapter five and set them the comprehension questions for homework if you feel like it.”

This was 1980 and the reaction of the twelve year olds indicated that this was exactly their expectation of Religious Education. The later polite chat with my head of department, in which he told me that I was “doing fine”, confirmed that all was well.

The rest of the 80s proved to be a rather more exciting time as I worked alongside teachers who had abandoned textbooks and embraced open and active learning. For most of the 90s I led a department in which we saw ourselves as prophetic experimenters and I have to admit that the memory of some of our wilder ideas made me cringe when, in my 21st century role as a school leader, I recalled these days. Thank heavens there were no leadership ‘learning walks’ to disturb the calm of my extended stilling exercises and guided visualisation.

After ten years leading schools I am now restored to my first vocation in the world of Religious Education at a time of widely perceived threat to the subject. The collateral damage from recent government ‘initiatives’ may have undermined the established status of RE but I believe it also liberates the subject. The protection of legal requirement has for too long been a false justification. The new challenge to leaders in the world of RE is to prove how valuable the best RE is to learners and how imaginative and creative we can be in delivering learning through flexible approaches to curriculum planning. I want RE to be at the forefront of innovation not screaming for protection from the artificial devices of the past. I believe that the best of what we have to offer young people is irresistible: The mediocre is not worth preserving.

The increasing autonomy of schools and the decline of local authority structures make many of our traditional expectations about RE’s hallowed (5%) sanctuary in the curriculum irrelevant. Those days are gone and we may weep all we like. They are not about to return. Far better then that we look up and ahead to opportunities to startle those with out of date attitudes to the subject.

I have seen huge improvement in the learning experience of young people over my 34 years in the world of education and I now want Religious Education to be driving development not dragging its heels. There is so much that RE has to offer in a rapidly changing world.

Mahatma Gandhi once concluded that there are seven things will destroy us:

• Wealth Without Work
• Pleasure Without Conscience
• Knowledge Without Character
• Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics)
• Science Without Humanity
• Religion Without Sacrifice
• Politics Without Principle

Re-reading this made me realise what a powerful manifesto we have for our subject.

At a time when those who speak loudest about education promote it as the route to economic well-being through managing expectation and aspiration, I want RE to be the ingredient in the learning mix that prompts the difficult questions of all forms of authority and challenges young people to develop the character, principle and humanity that they will need if they are to be catalysts for change in the world.

It is now pretty clear to me on reflection that, as I have absolutely no recollection of ‘chapter five’, it is unlikely that any of my class of 1980 will either. Some of my students of the 1990s do recall spending lots of time on reflective exercises during which they speculated about whether I was of sound mind. I met two of them only last week. Both now teach RE. The challenge for us now is to make sure that RE is so challenging, so relevant and so effective that it cannot be ignored.