‘But it’s contested!’ ‘So what?’

by Mark Chater

Do you have a Masters degree? Or a Doctorate perhaps? If so, try to forget that you ever studied for them. Your first degree – visualise letting it go. Now A levels, GCSE – say goodbye to them, for a while. Imagine stripping yourself of all the accumulated knowledge and cultural capital that makes you a good teacher, reducing yourself to a state where everything you know now, all your confidence in the subject, and all the complex critical perspectives you can afford to have, are closed to you. That’s where your pupils are. Stay there for a moment.

Somewhere, a teacher is writing a scheme of work on religion and worldviews. They have to write down something that they want the pupils to know. Let’s take a few examples …

• Moses is a key figure in Jewish history, associated with the giving of the Torah. 
• The Vedas are among the oldest scriptures in Hinduism.
• Non-religious worldviews are a majority in the UK.

Inside that teacher’s head, there’s sometimes a voice – maybe an academic tutor, maybe an adviser or a teacher colleague, or a member of a belief community – that instantly raises objections:

• Moses is a key figure in Jewish history, associated with the giving of the Torah. Ah, but not all Jews make the Torah central to their practice. There is Kabbalah too, don’t forget. And there are secularised Jews who don’t observe all the commands.
• The Vedas are among the oldest scriptures in Hinduism. Don’t say Hinduism! It’s a western, orientalist construct. And anyway, what you call Hinduism is vast, varied and quite often uses ritual and practice rather than scriptures. 
• Non-religious worldviews are a majority in the UK. That is true, but you cannot treat the non-religious as a homogenous group and even defining them as ‘non-religious’ makes it seem negative, as if they are characterised by something they don’t have.

I too have heard that voice. In our discussions of worldviews, and our sharing of ideas on how to implement the National Entitlement, it chips in with half a dozen reasons why we can’t teach this or that. In scholarly terms, the voice speaks the truth – it really is more complicated than our knowledge formulas sometimes make it seem. But how helpful is it to be interrupted by that voice? How helpful is it to a teacher, planning what to teach, to be told at every turn that they can’t teach that because it is contested?

Contested. Of course it is contested. In the domain of knowledge that we inhabit, the world of beliefs, myths, subtly complex and evolving cultural traditions, texts, meanings and interpretive strategies, questions, ethical theories – almost all the curricular material we handle can be contested. And the National Entitlement makes a strong point about the internal diversity of belief systems, and the need to teach that. It is also a key point in the Big Ideas.[1]

Where does this leave the teacher of worldviews, particularly in primary schools? Must every taught point be qualified with a ‘but this might not be so’? What kind of a subject will we be, if we do that?

Let’s leave this teacher in peace for a moment, and take a walk down the corridor to the science classroom. Here a teacher is working with a science national curriculum order which says that in Key Stage 2, children must be taught about (among other things) ‘solid objects’, that ‘dark is the opposite of light’, and how to ‘describe the movement of the Earth and other planets relative to the sun.’[2] Now even I, a non-scientist, can see how these pieces of information create understandings in pupils’ minds that fail to capture the full complexity of the universe. Yet the information is, in its own lights, clear. It can be taught clearly. It builds pathways towards complexity, rather than trying to go direct to the complexity. Then in Key Stage 3, children must be introduced explicitly to the disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. They must be taught ‘a simple (Dalton) atomic model’, ‘colours and the different frequencies of light’, and ‘density differences in solid objects.’[3]

What’s different in science is that knowledge is identified and taught with all its incompleteness and simplification, and the sky does not fall in. Knowledge builds on knowledge in subsequent key stages, and the pupils do not feel betrayed. The universities and research labs do not interrupt with ‘But you can’t say that!’ In science, knowledge is produced at national level. Particular pressure groups do not get a look in.

In RE we have terrified ourselves into paralysis with the cry ‘but it’s contested’. In so doing we have disempowered teachers. We have given the whip hand to religious and secular campaigners who want their belief system portrayed in their way, to their liking. We have allowed our epistemology to be franchised out to belief groups, and it’s time we asked for it back. For fear of teaching anything that could be contested, some of us have fled into the marshy wetlands of subjectivity. Worst of all, we have deprived pupils of the knowledge they need, the imperfect knowledge that will nevertheless lead them towards complexity in time.

So yes, teach that Moses is a key figure and the Torah is central; teach the Vedas in Hinduism; teach about non-religious and post-religious beliefs. Do it as accurately as you can, but do it fearlessly, safe in the knowledge that the pupils will not faint when, later, they learn it’s not quite that simple. They will dismantle their constructed understandings and build new ones, using the building blocks you gave them. They will forgive you. You must forgive yourself. And close your ears to that interrupting voice.  

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[1] Barbara Wintersgill, 2018, Big Ideas for Religious Education.  https://www.reonline.org.uk/news/big-ideas-for-religious-education/#:~:text=In%20November%202017%20the%20University%20of%20Exeter%20published,the%20RE%20curriculum%20and%20to%20assessment%20without%20levels.   Accessed 5 October 2020.

[2] DfE, 2013, Science National Curriculum for Key Stages 1 and 2.https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425618/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_Science.pdf    Accessed 5 October 2020, pp 12, 18, and 29.

[3] DfE, 2013, Science National Curriculum for Key Stage 3. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335174/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_Science_220714.pdf    Accessed 5 October 2020, pp 8 and 12.