Religious teaching in state schools needs overhaul'

KEEP RELIGION in state schools, but don't make it exclusive to any one particular belief. This is the call from two leading education ists in the current issue of New Education.
According to Dr. Cyril Bibby, principal of Kingston College of Education, "the time is over-ripe for a complete recasting of religious and ethical education in non-church schools."
He says Britain needs something which will be intellectually honest, contain no element of disguised moral blackmail and be able to relieve non-conforming pupils from any feeling of disapproved peculiarity.
Dr. Bibby wants legislation compelling religious instruction and worship in schools repealed, pointing out Britain managed without compulsion until 1944 and most countries (including some which are more Christian than Britain) are managing without it still.
He wants the Department of Education and Science to issue an open invitation to teachers' organisations, parents' associations, churches and synagogues and other religious groupings, humanist societies and citizens in general to indicate what our aims should be in religious and moral education, and how those aims could be achieved without dishonesty and with justice to all sections of the community.
BUCK-PASSING Dr. Bibby, a self-confessed agnostic, says such a suggestion should not be regarded as "buck-passing." Ideas emerging from a women's guild or miner's lodge might be more fruitful than from a headmasters' conference, or professional educators.
Dr. Ronald Goldman, principal of Didsbury College of Education, however, says it is completely unrealistic of Dr. Bibby to call for such a sweeping overhaul.
Dr. Goldman points out that a public opinion poll by New Society in 1965 indicated overwhelming support (90 per cent) for the continuance of the present school religious arrangements.
"Even the youngest age group polled, 21 to 24 years, were 86 per cent in favour. This article evoked several heated responses from humanists and secularists at the time, but the signs are unmistakeably clear," says Dr. Goldman.
Dr. Bibby says he would like to see • Teachers refraining from passing on to pupils as fact any ancient legend (whether Judaeo-Christian or other) which Seems more likely to be fiction.
• Teachers making known their own personal beliefs as well as the views and opinions they are expected to put forth.
• When schools arrange religious services in a church, the legality of such procedure being challenged by "humanist parents".
• Priests being stopped from blessing non-sectarian schools as they are opened.
"Until these things are done," says Dr. Bibby, "we shall not have purged our educational system of pious pretence and all efforts to build an effective structure of badly needed moral education will be almost bound to fail."
While claiming that in principle there is a fairly strong case for abandoning all cornmunel worship at school and "letting the churches get on with their own job" Dr. Bibby says he wants a positive approach.
"Unfortunately, so simple a solution leaves out of account the fact that a school assembly benefits from some symbolic act of unity.
"The complete abrogation of worship might lead to something worse—as in the U.S., where every morning pupils salute the Stars and Stripes and pledge allegiance in that modern spirit to nationalism which is so immeasurably inferior an ideal to more ancient spirituality."
Dr. Bibby argues that it may be more desirable to restrict general assemblies to once or twice a week, making them more impressive than the prefunctory daily assembly.
MEDIOCRITY As to the ideological content of assemblies—once they became optional and not compulsory as at present—Dr. Bibby says excluding everything which does not meet with common agreement would lead to insipid mediocrity.
This would be as unwelcome to every sincere believer as to himself. A better idea, he believes, would be boldly to recognise the existence of different beliefs and to plan assemblies accordingly.
One day they could be conducted by an Anglican, another by a Methodist, another by a Jew, another by a Catholic, another by an Agnostic, and in some areas by a Moslem, Sikh or Hindu; each under a general rubic that the form and content should convey those ethical attitudes common to nearly all people of good will.
ACCEPTABLE "Such a varied sequence of assemblies, would not only serve a clear educational purpose, but would be acceptable on balance by all but the most intolerant secretarian or most aggressive atheist on the staff.
Dr. Goldman says he too would welcome variety in assemblies. He warned, how ever, it was a short-sighted policy to tie morality too closely to religious belief. If this is done and children reject religion as intellectually untenable, then by implication they have no moral bases left upon which to build.
Dr. Goldman says it is in adolescence that religious and moral education overlap not because they are inseparable but because all religious questions are about the nature of man, good and evil, and personal relationships.
"I find the idea of 'ethical education' by itself a dehy drated uneducational concept, for it is in the school community that we first have to learn the ethics of life.
Religion which is broadly based takes in various systems and values, is a very important way of analysing and understanding that ethos and how and why it should be applied in any given situation.
"Christians and humanists have engaged, and should con tinue to engage upon exploring the obviously common ground that already exists between them," adds Dr. Goldman.