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Choice of School versus Social Justice

2007-09-11 19:00:42
Lisbon, September 7-8, 2007

At the beginning of September representatives of the international non governmental organizations met in Lisbon at the international symposium dedicated to freedom of education. The most valuable speeches were delivered by J. Barnett from COGREE (Coordinating Group for Religious Education in Europe), W. van Kattwijk from European Parents Association, C. Glenn from OILDEL (Organisation Internationale pour le droit a l'education et la liberte d'enseignement), B. Vermeulen from Socires Foundation, C. Clouder from ECSWE (European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education), and Mario Mauro - Vice-President of European Parliament. 'We need to promote different schools but also variety of teaching styles, methods and programs within a school and within a classroom' - the Portugese Vice-Minister of Education, Jorge Miguel Pedreira, said at the opening of the symposium. According to Mr. Mauro (Vice-President of European Parliament), the state can not decide what to teach and how to educate children because education is about the meaning of human life and not about the needs of modern market. It is parents' right to choose the school for their children, and the state must guarantee this freedom to all families.

James Barnett Intervention (September 7, 2007):

Slide 1: The CoGREE is a network of non-confessional as well as confessional organisations. Education, Human Rights and Social Cohesion are, perhaps surprisingly, integral elements in education about religion. In this brief contribution:

First I shall argue on, non-confessional grounds, that an education that ignores human spiritual experience is ipso facto incomplete.

Secondly, I shall suggest that knowledge of the other is an essential element in social cohesion.

Thirdly I shall propose that a good knowledge of one's own position is an essential starting point.

I shall finish by suggesting that, while this is too important to be left to the so-called religious organisations, the three elements have an essential role in partnership with the public school.

I also represent the Intereuropean Commission on Church and School at the Council of Europe, where it is an INGO with participative status. It is a member of CoGREE. In the last few years, we have been been involved at different levels in the work of the Council of Europe. The work has included three of the five seminars organised by the Commissioner for Human rights, work with DGIV (Education, Culture, Youth and Sport) and in two of the meetings organised in the context of the Russian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers last year.

Slide 2: The method involves three chief areas: they are:

learning about religion,

leaning from religion

learning within religion so as to go beyond one's own tradition.

Slide 3: Nearly all countries in Europe provide some form of education about religion in the school curriculum. The general principle in the academic timetable is that one should not make assumptions about what students believe. Nevertheless religion is important and it contributes to well being of society. At the CoGREE conference held at the Wann See, near Berlin, in 2005, Jan Figel, the EU Commissioner responsible for Education and Culture, said that religion can contribute significantly to European culture and development. Getting to know each other's beliefs and values can help people to respect diversity.

Slide 4: I remind you briefly of the convention on the rights of the child and of the rights and duties of parents. (They are an aspect of this table ronde).

Slide 5: In the EU 2008 is the year of intercultural dialogue. The Council of Europe is developing a white paper on the same subject while working on its Religious Dimension. Because religious education as an ordinary school subject in most countries of Europe, it offers a substantive contribution to education for democratic citizenship. Education for tolerance and peace is incomplete without religious education that respects the basic right of freedom of religion. That includes freedom from religion and freedom for religion.

A deep knowledge both of one's own position and that of others is useful. People are often committed to what they believe and to the values associated with their belief. It is more than just knowing about a belief system.

Slide 6: We need to be able to say to other people "you fascinate me, I want to know more about you". In doing so we learn, we make friends and we respect the other. This is easier if we know what we believe and if we understand those whom we meet. It also expression of the human right to freedom of religion and to freedom from it as well. There is no disrespect in believing that our own tradition is nearer to the truth than another one if we know about both, but claiming the monopoly of truth is no longer possible when we know the other.

Slide 7: Is religion a private matter? The French principle of laďcité is related to the law on the separation of church and state in 1905. The classic French argument is to separate religion from the public domain.

Nevertheless if religion is purely a private matter, it is correspondingly difficult to understand its importance to many people as well as its enduring importance in history.

The current interpretation of laďcité is that it is a neutral (or impartial) space in which people may develop freedom of belief and conscience in accordance with Article 9 of the ECHR. It is in the public school that (nearly) all young young people learn to encounter difference. Because, by implication, different backgrounds imply different systems of conscience and belief, it should be where they begin to continue to learn from religion - the traditions of others as well as their own.

Slide 8: We need to define parameters. Neither Europe, nor, for that matter, states, should deal with the merits of different religions and they are certainly not competent to discuss, say, the existence of God. What they do have to do is to ensure that people can live tolerantly together and learn from one another. That is not just a matter of knowledge but of mutual respect.

The space must be neutral or impartial but religion cannot be altogether marginalised from the public domain or the school curriculum... Committed people live in neutral societies and go to neutral schools.

Slide 9: The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is concerned about religion. Mr de Puig wrote a report entitled State, Religion, Secularity and Human Rights.^[1] He said that religious communities can foster peace, co-operation, tolerance, solidarity (and) intercultural dialogue §10, or, if they are without recognition §5 they may begin to feel beleaguered or marginalised. In another report for the Parliamentary Assembly, Monsieur André Schneider^[2] argued that religion can be covered in, say, the history syllabus. Both points are useful, but we need to recognise that commitment is an inevitable consequence of freedom of conscience and belief. The commitment will be diverse because of the plurality of modern society.

Slide 10: In this respect, the French sociologist, J-P Willaime argues that the public school can subject religion to critical examination. This is an area of human knowledge. In introducing it to the collective debate we can help young people to become citizens in religion. So religion is too important to be left solely to the clergy and religious communities.

Slide 11; You want some good practice. So I shall close by telling you about work that I developed over a period of twenty years. It came to fit closely with a syllabus that I taught for Exeter University. Although the content was Christian, the method can be used to understand any tradition. We studied texts. They were liturgical, scriptural and historical. The aim was to understand the church and sacraments, but the course had to be examinable at AO level and A level - that is the school leaving exam in England and Wales. There was an assumption that the people who wrote the texts would have claimed a kind of spiritual awareness. The intellectual exercise was to judge the internal consistency of the texts on that assumption.

One result was that young people discovered that religion was so serious that they could not only respect but also learn from other people's convictions. Later I set up two adult training schemes sponsored by the church of England. We enabled a range of people to apply rigourous analysis to what most but not all participants believed. The Exeter syllabus was broader, as befits a university course. The method was quite similar to what I already had done, but rather different from confessional teaching although we were involved in training clergy. I think that we learned every bit as much as the people whom we were teaching. It was not only that we were developing a new method, because we were also learning from the insights of those with whom we worked. They brought different experience and different outlook on life to our activities.

Slide 12: You may be wondering what I am going to say about the religious organisations. By now You will be relieved to hear that it is not much. I just think that they should introduce people to a rigourous reflection on the tradition and the connected experience. What is taught at a local level may offer too little criticism of the tradition. That is not just academic. The point about religious and non-religious belief is that we cannot be sure to the extent of being prescriptive about truth. So I think that a good theology is provisional, descriptive and reflective. It is not prescriptive and it develops like anything else in human knowledge.

As a matter of fact that also reflects the developing values of modern society and values are connected to beliefs or convictions held by those without religion and those with religion. Thank you for listening.

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