On stating obvious: RE as the study of…….?

I am genuinely grateful to a colleague for reminding me how we so often miss the obvious.

It was a day when a group of us got together to share ideas. What are those core concepts at the heart of our ‘doing more with less’ curriculum? What are the elements of ‘deep learning’ essential to understanding? We need to get beyond ‘learning stuff’ and focus on the really big ideas that lie at the heart of our subject. The ideas were flying: incarnation, prophecy, inspiration, faith etc, etc.

And then we were reminded about the core concept of our subject: religion! And we noticed how, too often, in the hurry to get to the religions themselves, we rush past the most important concept of all.

I am still astonished that the GCSE course criteria and specifications include NO opportunity to study the concept of religion itself. It is amazing how in the haste to study the detail of specific religions, the most basic concept is ignored.

So maybe it is necessary to ‘state the obvious’

Why do we so easily miss ‘religion’, the most basic concept of all?

Four possible reasons:

• It is so assumed that we are simply blind to the way it is overlooked. Not seeing the very thing that is immediately in front of our eyes.
• It is too difficult to handle. That it involves a kind of meta-theory that is too challenging for younger pupils.
• It isn’t the main priority of the religious communities whose main concern is that pupils understand their particular religion.
• OR, if I was feeling more sceptical, because the religions feel threatened by the study of religion. Asking questions about the nature, role and value of religion smacks of investigation by the human sciences and that could dangerous!

It is crucial that we identify the core concepts that lie at the heart of our subject. Religion is not just a catch-all word we use to gather disparate content together. It is THE core concept at the heart of our subject. And Oates says:

“subtle contextualisation of fundamental concepts is the key to deep learning”

I think this means that two key questions are golden threads that should run through all learning in RE. These are the keys to ‘deep learning’:

How has what we are learning helped us to answer the question: What is religion and belief?

How has it helped us think about really effective ways of studying religion and belief?

In practice we need to consider at what age these threads should enter into the landscape of learning. I suspect it is around the same time pupils can begin to actually discuss what they think the nature of RE is as a subject. When might that be? Young children (KS1) can easily tell you the kind of things they look at in RE but would struggle to answer the question: What is RE?

So what might this mean in practice?

Two initial thoughts:

1.  Whenever we teach about material from specific religions/beliefs we need to include opportunities for pupils to reflect on these core questions: How has this helped us think about religion and the way to study religion?

2.  We also need to include some specific opportunities to develop pupils’ understanding of the concept of ‘religion’. Examples I have seen include:

– Creation Myths with year 4/5 – looking at similarities and differences between myths. Pupils were asking big questions about religion. Why do people tell creation stories? Are the true? How do they link to science?

– Year 7 units exploring the concept of religion and identifying different kinds of questions that need to be asked when studying religion – although sadly this work is sometimes then parked and not revisited across the key stage.

– A unit on belief in Year 6 with pupils designing a survey to investigate what different people in the school community (parents etc) think about religion; what they believe etc.

– A Year 8 topic on Buddhism concluding by looking at Smart’s dimensions and applying them to Buddhism – deciding which lens gives the best account of Buddhism (answer – it all depends!).

– Units on Religion and Spirituality – asking questions about whether it is possible to be spiritual without being religious, is there a difference between religion and spirituality? etc.

But there is much more. We could be looking at different ideas about the nature of religion. What is religion? Why are many people not religious? Why do some Christians, for example, say they are not religious?

To paraphrase my colleague again, we can explore whether religion might be thought of as:

• belief – religion as a set of beliefs which people accept to which commit themselves
• tradition and identity – religion as a cultural and social way of living, a sense of identity
• experience – maybe thought of as a spiritual pathway, a journey towards some form of spiritual goal

I would add another:

• a set of values – religion as an ethical way of life

All this before we even get onto different theories about the origin, function and role of religion in human life. Is religion the opium of the people; the sigh of the oppressed, social glue, essential to human happiness, a form of social virus, a meme system?