RE, spirituality and the ‘confusion of purpose’

For my fourth blog I want to return to the issues which underlie some of the problems facing RE in schools, in particular the ‘confusion of purpose’.

There is an important question to be asked about the boundaries around the contribution of RE to spiritual development. Enthusiasts for spiritual development in RE are sometimes in danger of trespassing across these boundaries. We need to define carefully the distinctive way RE can support this important aspect of personal development.

Oddly, I think RE often spends too much time trying to help children and young people become spiritual at the expense of investigating and studying the idea of the spiritual as part of making sense of the world of religion and belief.

As a parent I expected a school to promote a ‘light touch’ approach to the spiritual development of my children appropriate to wider educational goals. I would look to the school to foster:

• self-confidence and self-esteem
• curiosity about the world and a fascination for learning
• a sense of the way learning can help children join up and see connections in their learning
• safe opportunities to explore emotions and feelings and develop a sense of empathy
• an ability to use different forms of creative expression
• an opportunity to examine and discuss different ideas about spirituality

What would others add to the list?

In the end spiritual development in an educational setting is about good teaching across the whole curriculum; it’s about a school having an ethos and sense of values which promote pupils ‘flourishing as human beings’.

How different children respond to these opportunities will depend heavily on the individual. For some it will come from great PE or maths teaching; for others it’s about the teacher who fosters a love of literature or a fascination with the natural world or technology.  On a personal note when I reflect on my own secondary education (different era!) –  it was the English, history and geography teachers who inspired a love of learning; it was maths that gave me a sense of self-esteem; and, it was PE, art and music that damaged my self-confidence and ability to express myself – they have a lot to answer for. And as for design technology (or as we called it, ‘woodwork’!) – just don’t get me started.

It is an interesting activity to invite friends and colleagues to reflect on what ‘did it for them’ in school!

So spiritual development is whole school, whole curriculum and it’s about great teaching. And in most schools I think it is pretty good. Its presence is not always described as ‘spiritual’ and as a result there is a danger that we sometimes try to invent something over and beyond what they already do well.

A big worry for me about RE is our tendency to feel that our subject needs to compensate for a perceived inadequacy in spiritual development in the wider curriculum and the rest of school life. I have become increasingly uneasy about the way various ‘Spirited…’ programmes are identified with RE. Spirited Art/Poetry/Photography projects sit on RE websites – Why and what next?  Spirited Maths; Spirited Technology: Spirited PE?

Is an over-enthusiasm for spiritual development amongst some in the RE world one of the reasons why the subject has become so confused about its purpose? Is there a danger that RE tries to move beyond a ‘light touch’ approach to spiritual development and engage in much more ‘high impact’ semi-confessional activity?

One school of thought argues that RE should go beyond the goal of ‘making sense’ of religion and belief. It argues, for example, that RE should use the perceived wisdom that lies at the heart of religion and belief to stimulate the spiritual development of pupils. In other words we try to use religion as a resource to help pupils develop their own spirituality. But this ignores the highly contested nature of that perceived ‘wisdom’.  Who decides what is wise and what is delusion? Is the attempt to use religious resources in this way in danger of trivialising religion – making your own rosary to remind you of special things in your life; designing your own special pilgrimage??

Are we in danger of trespassing too far into the private world of the pupils’ own spiritual life? We need to remind ourselves that the teachers’ standards do not require or expect us to have a highly developed personal spiritual life. I am sure teachers, including RE teachers, represent as wide a spectrum of spiritual awareness as the rest of the population. We shouldn’t ask too much of ourselves.

Is the idea that RE should have ‘high impact’ on pupils’ spiritual development part of a wider tendency for RE to take on too much; to become over-bloated? We see the same weakness in the attempt by RE to take into itself the study of huge cross-curricular social, economic and ethical  themes like poverty, medical ethics, human rights, fair trade. All at the expense of study of religion itself!

I am very aware I am in very dangerous territory here. I need to return to these questions in a future blog.

RE has limited curriculum time and resources. It’s a modest subject that needs to focus on its core task of helping pupils make sense of the world of religion and belief; to become effective as students of religion and belief. By trying to do too much don’t we end up dumbing down RE? This underlies that key finding of the 2013 Ofsted report that:

“Too often teachers thought they could bring depth to the pupils’ learning by inviting them to reflect on or write introspectively about their own experience rather than rigorously investigate and evaluate religion and belief.”

So how should we define the distinctive contribution of RE to spiritual development? My contention is that RE should be more modest in its claims to support spiritual development. Yes we should foster self-esteem, a fascination for learning.

But the really distinctive contribution of RE to spiritual development is an intellectual one. It is the main context in which pupils can engage in enquiries into the complex and highly contested issue of the relationship between religion, belief and spirituality. We need to give much more attention to getting beyond collecting facts and getting inside the relationship between religion and the spiritual.

The RE curriculum needs to include more opportunities to enquire into:

• the concept of the spiritual itself – what does the word mean and how is it connected to religion?
• the different ways in which religions try to invoke a sense of spirituality
• questions about whether you need to be religious to be spiritual and whether religious adherence can be a barrier to spiritual growth.
• the diverse ways each religion or belief engages with the idea of the spiritual – differences WITHIN a religion are often related to very different ways of thinking about spirituality rather than differences of doctrine.

I am very aware that thought needs to be given to how this is translated into practice especially in the early primary years. But I hope this helps us move towards some principles to define the professional boundaries around the relationship between RE and spiritual development.