Children to study atheism at school
· National exam body plans new guidelines for RE lessons
· Falling church numbers prompt radical syllabus reform
Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday February 15, 2004
The Observer
Children will be taught about atheism during religious education
classes under official plans being drawn up to reflect the decline in
churchgoing in Britain.
Non-religious beliefs such as humanism, agnosticism and atheism would
be covered alongside major faiths such as Christianity or Islam under
draft guidelines being prepared by the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority, which regulates what is taught in schools in England.
Although some schools already cover non-religious beliefs, there is
currently no national guidance for what is taught, even though all
schools must provide religious education.
The draft plans being drawn up by the QCA will not be compulsory,
allowing religious schools the freedom to keep devout parents happy.
But they will be regarded as best practice for heads, and are likely to
be followed across the country.
A spokesman for the QCA said its guidance would be released for
consultation in the summer term, but added: ‘It is very much the
intention that young people in the context of religious education
should be studying non-religious beliefs. There are many children in
England who have no religious affiliation and their beliefs and ideas,
whatever they are, should be taken very seriously.’
The plans risk sparking a conflict between evangelists, who want to
strengthen faith teaching, and secularists, who argue it is becoming
irrelevant to modern life.
The first shot in the debate will be fired with a controversial report
to be published tomorrow calling for RE to be renamed religious,
philosophical and moral education and children encouraged to debate
such ethical issues as whether it is permissible to express racist
views.
‘The whole thing is terribly biased in favour of religion right now -
it’s all about encouraging an identification with religion,’ said Ben
Rogers, author of the report for the Institute for Public Policy
Research thinktank.
‘There are huge numbers of people who are atheists or whose families
are atheists and who are coming into a class where their family’s view
is not acknowledged. You should be able to have a conversation about
ethics that doesn’t collapse into a conversation about religion.’
While 19 per cent of Britons attended a weekly religious service in
1980, by 1999 that had fallen to 7 per cent - prompting some to argue
that RE should be scrapped as a compulsory subject. Secularists say
there is little point trying to drum religion into sceptical children
at school.
‘We’re not trying to suggest that nobody should learn anything about
religion: it is part of our culture and informs our art and our
literature,’ said Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society,
which has written to Education Secretary Charles Clarke calling for
atheism to be included on the syllabus.
‘But if you try to teach morality through “the Bible says” or the Ten
Commandments, most children won’t accept it as they don’t believe the
religious message. It would be much better if people learned morality
by looking at current examples. It’s philosophy that we really want to
be teaching.’
Religion in schools is a sensitive subject, with France renewing a ban
on the wearing of the hijab while in Britain it emerged last week that
a Luton schoolgirl had launched legal action after being sent home for
wearing traditional dress.
But Rogers said that trying to keep religion out of schools would not
work: ‘It won’t make religious strife go away - if anything it will
exacerbate it. Religious education can play an important part in
combating prejudices.’
If non-religious beliefs were included in classes, parents should lose
their current right to withdraw pupils from RE lessons, Rogers said.
Comment:
The decline of christianity can be attributed to its irrational doctrine which disagrees with human intelelct, and the growth and rise of Islam is due to our belief agreeing with reality and hence convincing the human mind and intellect. Also the Quran as being an intellectual miracle which challenges humanity to produce a verse like the Quran’s in order to refute it has stood the test of time. Islam has answers for every single problem which humanity faces today and was implemented for centuries in a state form and was the leading nation in the world.
While christianity is on a downward trend, Islam on the other hand is gaining ground in the west and in the islamic lands as an ideological alternative to the man made capitalist doctrine. The return of Islam to life is not far off no matter how much the west fights the Islamic movements and their allies from the secular muslims aid them out of ignorence of their deen.