TACTICS

A personal view

from your Education Secretary:

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to discover it himself.”
Galileo Galilei

Many Humanists believe that it is wrong to have any religion in schools. They usually base this on their experiences of Religious INSTRUCTION in their own schools and their knowledge of the current system in schools is scant. The modern progressive Religious EDUCATION lesson is very different. The RE teachers are just trying to answer the same questions as all thinking and reasonable people(including Humanists) would want to ask about the meanings and purposes of life. They can do this most easily from their own beliefs which sometimes makes for distortion and bias. But taking it that these questions will persist into infinity surely it is better to treat all religions AND BELIEFS as equal and give equal access to a whole range of belief systems.

I accept that advocating the complete abolition of religion in schools is unrealistic and counterproductive. The religions have too much control and historical precedent and we can best hope to take this control from them by advocating the progressive implementation of comparative religious education in all schools including faith schools. I believe that all schools (and not least the teachers) benefit from acknowledging the non believer status of a fair proportion of pupils and their parents. I particularly advocate the teaching methods being developed for the Philosophy for Children movement P4C

Click here for a link to one P4C organisation

And here for a link to a school which uses its techniques across the curriculum

The closest to this sort of treatment of philosophy in the class room within Berkshire is, as far as I know, The Holt school in Wokingham which runs a Philosophy of Religion course from Year 7 upwards. If you know of this happening at any level within Berkshire schools please get in touch.

Email direct on education matters to education.berkshumanists@ntlworld.com