RE Debate Goes Public
The Humanist Society and the NI Inter-Faith Board have been more in evidence recently, aware that the RE syllabus might be up for review. The Humanists were involved in correspondence in the Belfast Telegraph, the NI Inter-Faith Board in more active lobbying.As they hoped, the RE syllabus will indeed be reviewed. Section 75 of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement refers to “the need to promote equality of opportunity between persons of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation” and those who want a less Christian syllabus feel this lends weight to their argument.
The reality of the situation is not much changed since the last review. On NIACT's 10th anniversary press releases mentioning NIACT's contribution to the case for a Christian syllabus were sent to various newspapers. A journalist from the Irish News phoned with the suggestion that a Christian syllabus was unfair to minorities. When it was pointed out less than 0.5% of the population were of other faiths the logic was so overwhelming it was a non-story!
Recent letters to the Belfast Telegraph suggested that RE in schools perpetuates the problem of sectarian division. Given that the four main churches (that's Catholics and Protestants) actually agreed the syllabus it seems more like a historic breakthrough to be celebrated rather than binned.
By the Belfast Humanist Group's figures less than 4% of Northern Ireland's population described their religion as "none" in the 1991 census. Add all other non-Christian beliefs (humanists, atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, etc.) and the figure rises to less than 4.5%. Consider the advantage of our various Christian communities learning about each other and what each really believes and it becomes obvious why Northern Ireland was given special permission to develop this syllabus rather than a multi-faith approach.
To suggest that the syllabus is exclusively Christian is also not quite true. It would be impossible to teach RE well without giving some depth of Jewish background to the New Testament. In addition, a world religions module has been available on the A level syllabus. Few pupils ever attempted the questions, hardly an encouragement to go down this route at an earlier stage.
We need to
recognise lobbying in our newspapers as such and shake ourselves out of
our complacency. Too many Christians in too many churches do not realise
that their children have been blessed with a Bible-based RE syllabus and
are not praying hard and speaking up that it might be retained.
