Spirit of Discovery
British schools are obliged to teach religious education. Robert Ellis argues that most miss a vital opportunity to encourage children to explore spiritual values for themselves.
My memories of studying Religious Education (RE) in school are of Bible stories and passages about Jewish weddings copied out of books, both of which I found boring and irrelevant. I suspect I was not alone in that response. Later on school provided one RE lesson every eight weeks, and I have absolutely no memory of what was taught in these lessons. The idea of taking Religious Studies (RS) for O-level at 16 or A-level at 18 simply did not occur to me, despite the fact that I came from a strongly Christian household. So if my experience was typical, it is not surprising that many people now think of RE as part of a deeply flawed and rejected religious establishment. The hope of children learning anything about the spiritual life through it is almost laughable. But it is still possible to be idealistic. After two changes of subject at university I ended up studying theology and eventually training to be an RE teacher. My main supervisor was an enthusiastic exponent of 'experientialism' - the idea that RE should include active and exploratory exercises to help develop children's spiritual awareness, with the child's own experience as the departure point. For example, simple meditations, drama, reflection, and creative writing were used in relation to themes like journeys or imprisonment. These could be connected to personal experience and then related to the ideas, stories and symbols found in a variety of religions. This, I thought, was at least the start of a method for bringing the subject alive. Nevertheless, there is still much debate about experientialism, and even where there is a well-trained and enthusiastic teacher ready to use it, he or she often needs to be cautious to avoid offending colleagues, parents or school governors who may have strong religious or anti-religious views. On the one hand, experientialist teachers have been accused of creating a 'mish-mash' that is disrespectful to religious traditions, and on the other of using subtle indoctrination techniques. After my training, I worked in a sixth-form college where I taught a course on Buddhism as part of A-level RS. A condition of my appointment, however, was that I should not use meditation in the classroom. A-level RS students can approach the subject in an intellectually sophisticated way and have a stimulating time, and I enjoyed five years teaching them. But it is sobering to reflect that RS A-level students make up only about one per cent of the population of 16- to 18-year-olds. In my experience, few of the other 99 per cent ever do any real thinking about the spiritual dimension of their lives. Much of the reason for this appears to be the widespread ineffectuality of RE lower down the education system. Of course there are schools in which RE is given priority and does genuinely help children to understand a spiritual view of life, and others where children at least gain a clear intellectual understanding of religion from it. These, however, remain a minority. Yet I think even a small improvement in this aspect of education has enormous potential for producing positive changes in society. As a Buddhist I am interested in exploring the contribution Buddhism can make to understanding the issues involved in teaching religion in schools. The first step is to understand the confusion of views about what RE should be doing, and then to see what a Buddhist view of the subject might be.
A great deal of RE is ineffectual because many schools and teachers have unclear or divided views about its purpose. Government directives clash with individual consciences and the result is that schools often turn RE into a token gesture (half an hour per week is a widespread allocation). This is largely the result of a stand-off between interest groups. On the one hand the secularists would like to abolish RE altogether, following the model of France and the US. For them anything to do with 'religion' is likely to involve irrationality and conflict, and has no place in the public sphere. On the other there are confessionalists who have strong religious beliefs and think the purpose of RE is to instruct children in those beliefs. Britain is quite unusual in that its educational system as a whole is not dominated by either of these views. The consensus in the UK has been that religion has a part to play in educational development, but this should not be under the control of one religion or denomination (though Christianity is seen as pre-eminent). This has given rise to a new view of RE, known as non-confessionalism, in which children are taught about a range of religions, but not instructed to believe in any of them. Non-confessionalism appears to have many promising features: tolerance, open-mindedness, inclusiveness. It is only due to this approach that anything about Buddhism is taught in schools. It has also succeeded to some extent in increasing people's awareness of the variety of religions in Britain. If we understand the purpose of RE to be learning about religion, it is the best we can do. But what is the point of gaining a superficial knowledge of religion with no inkling of its spiritual pulse? The drawback with this widely accepted approach is that it is relativist. The underlying assumption being taught is that no view about the meaning and purpose of human life is better than any other. The approach implies that religion is something to be considered from a distance, certainly not participated in or explored in a personal sense. The theory is that children, having studied the different religions, could then decide for themselves what they think. But of course if children do not have any role-models in making such a decision, they are far more likely to remain 'neutral', which in fact means materialist. As for the teacher, if he or she has any religious or spiritual commitments it is often thought they should be kept out of the classroom. The most inspiring teaching that has the strongest spiritual effect is bold and personal, yet I have often found myself holding back from such teaching for fear that it is inappropriate when I, the teacher, am supposed to be 'neutral'. Buddhism has an important role to play in helping to lead teachers out of these confusions and fears. This does not mean that all teachers should be Buddhist nor that confessional Buddhist RE would be a solution, rather that the confusion surrounding RE is partly the result of unhelpful attitudes associated with the other world religions. Buddhism often offers a more useful attitude, which is more broadly compatible with modern educational goals. The least helpful attitude is that religion is defined mainly by sets of beliefs which are revealed by God through scriptures (like the Bible) and/or individuals (like Jesus or Mohammed). If people disagree about these beliefs, they question the authority of the others' scripture, prophet or founder, and conflict is bound to follow. Buddhism offers the alternative view that religion should be defined more by its practices. We test the Buddha's teaching in relation to our experience. The question put to the Buddha in the Kalama Sutta might have been that of a group of puzzled RE pupils: 'Which [religious teacher] spoke truth and which falsehood?'. The Buddha's response was: 'When you yourselves know that these things are good … enter on and abide in them'. If goodness is only known through authority, then when faith in that authority is missing belief in the very existence of goodness and truth disappears. RE then becomes meaningless because it will consist in the study of a lot of curious beliefs that are obviously false. If, on the other hand, truth is thought of as there to be discovered, we no longer have an authority to defend and can easily take a more tolerant attitude without slipping into relativism. Experientialism has already set out on a road which avoids this unhelpful doctrine-based idea of religion in RE, and Buddhists can help, not only by challenging it, but also by encouraging experientialist teaching and helping it to develop further. Another unhelpful attitude coming from revelatory religion is the idea that the child starts with no views and is then completely converted to the views of a particular religion at a stroke, presumably because he or she has chosen to believe the revelation or been inspired by God. 'Conversion'
can occur where children are drilled in doctrine, so that, with a sudden rush, they decide they believe the doctrine. But it is hardly likely where they are allowed to explore their experience and understand its complexity. In RE this model of conversion appears in the idea that the child is being offered a menu of religions. This oversimplifies both the complexity of the views the child already has, and the gradual ways in which spiritual motivation may take over from worldly motivation. In contrast, Buddhism offers the model of a variety of levels of participation in religious practice according to one's level of commitment, which only change gradually. The Buddha compared the spiritual life to an ocean in which some can paddle, some swim, and others dive. On this model it is quite appropriate for children to engage in religious practices on their own level in the classroom, without any need for 'conversion' to legitimise this. Activities such as reading, writing, telling or acting out symbolic stories, meditating at a basic level, creating and appreciating religious art, and navigating through moral dilemmas can all aid spiritual development. Yet it makes little difference which religious traditions they are related to. Through activities of this kind a teacher introduces the values of spiritual life, even if Buddhism is never mentioned. The idea of reaching for truth is not lost, yet no sudden commitment to particular beliefs is required. At a higher level Buddhism requires commitment, just like other religions. Such commitment implies not only a positive choice but turning away from alternative paths. But it is unwise to take on this commitment before reaching an appropriate level of maturity. At some point children must confront and discuss the doctrinal conflicts between religions and start to form their own views on which are right and wrong. But this needs to happen when they are old enough. I often experienced the superficiality with which young people make these judgements when they do not have a sufficient positive basis of understanding of the spiritual nature of religion. In my view the role of RE, as a compulsory school subject up to 14, should be to lay this basis. Much praiseworthy work has already been done by Buddhists to make their thoughts about RE heard. However, Buddhism suffers from being forced into the straitjacket of a revelatory religion alongside Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, when actually it has distinct things to offer. Buddhists could show that 'religion' can be defined in a way that is compatible with educational values. Ultimately it is the similarity between the Buddhist conception of spiritual life and the teacher's valuing of education that can enable Buddhists to help make 'Religious Education' a meaningful term rather than a contradiction.