UK schools to teach atheism

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2004-04-27 12:17pm

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics ... 78,00.html

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.

InnerBrat · Post by **InnerBrat** » 2004-04-27 01:10pm

Agh! No!

I realise I had a bloody good religious education, but RE is about comparing and understanding religion. We have a perfectly good forum for discussing non-religious beliefs - PSE. If you mingle PSE with RE, you'll make it look like religion is a decent substitute for morality.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-04-27 01:14pm

Teaching atheism is somewhat of an oxymoron isn't it? How do you teach anyone a lack of belief?

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2004-04-27 01:16pm

Pretty much like they do to my year group at my school, Let them muck around

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2004-04-27 01:32pm

Darth_Zod wrote:Teaching atheism is somewhat of an oxymoron isn't it? How do you teach anyone a lack of belief?

Perhaps by teaching them an inherently atheistic ideology such as humanism or Nihilism.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2004-04-27 01:34pm

InnerBrat wrote:Agh! No!

I realise I had a bloody good religious education, but RE is about comparing and understanding religion. We have a perfectly good forum for discussing non-religious beliefs - PSE. If you mingle PSE with RE, you'll make it look like religion is a decent substitute for morality.

What the fuck is PSE?

Besides, this is just about teaching what other people believe, not explicitly religions. Conservation of the environment and other not explicitly religious stuff is already taught in RE, this isn't that much different.

Teaching atheism is somewhat of an oxymoron isn't it? How do you teach anyone a lack of belief?

They're teaching the views of the godless and secular as well as the religious ones. I just gave the thread that title since that's what the online article was called.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-04-27 01:42pm

PSE is more commonly reffered to as Guidance on this side of the border.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2004-04-27 02:15pm

I think it was supposed to happen in form period, but nobody paid any attention during that.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2004-04-27 02:21pm

Rye wrote:I think it was supposed to happen in form period, but nobody paid any attention during that.

Yup, that sounds about right.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2004-04-27 02:39pm

In my RE classes when we studied other religions it focused on what funny hats they wore, why they couldn't eat item X and the rest of the symbolic things that particular religion contained. Atheism doesn't really have a widespread acceptance of a particular type hat last time I checked.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-04-27 05:13pm

If it really is a religious studies class, there's no reason not to cover skepticism and criticisms regarding specific religions and religion in general.

Treating ethics, philosophy, and morality as analogous to religion is fallacious and should be discouraged.

Atheism is not a religion.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2004-04-27 05:28pm

Christ, here's the covering of atheism.

"Atheism is not actually a religion. However, some religions are atheistic in nature. Atheists do not believe in a higher power of any kind."

Here endth the lesson.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-04-27 05:49pm

RE in British schools has evolved over the years from instruction in how great Christianity is to a comparative look at different belief systems. Atheism may not technically be a religion but when taking the quick tour through world religions that my RE mainly consisted of would it not have made sense to also mention agnosticism and atheism as widely held alternatives to religious belief?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-04-27 06:43pm

Plekhanov wrote:RE in British schools has evolved over the years from instruction in how great Christianity is to a comparative look at different belief systems. Atheism may not technically be a religion but when taking the quick tour through world religions that my RE mainly consisted of would it not have made sense to also mention agnosticism and atheism as widely held alternatives to religious belief?

how exactly do you consider atheism a religion in any sense whatsoever? it's specifically defined as a lack of belief. How does a lack of belief translate into a belief of something, which is what most religions are defined by?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-04-27 07:23pm

Darth_Zod wrote:how exactly do you consider atheism a religion in any sense whatsoever? it's specifically defined as a lack of belief. How does a lack of belief translate into a belief of something, which is what most religions are defined by?

Atheism is not a religion, but since any discussion of religion invariably involves either attacks on atheism or not-so-subtle suggestions that a lack of religion leads to moral failure, it is better to give atheists a chance to defend themselves in that venue.

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2004-04-27 07:35pm

Wait a second, you crazy brits have religion class in High School? Am I getting this right?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-04-27 07:37pm

Darth Wong wrote:Atheism is not a religion, but since any discussion of religion invariably involves either attacks on atheism or not-so-subtle suggestions that a lack of religion leads to moral failure, it is better to give atheists a chance to defend themselves in that venue.

Along these lines, I think this is the beginning of the end for RE classes. They were always a waste of time; noone cared because it was tabu to mess with Religion Stuff. Now that it'll quickly devolve (heh) into a discussion about atheism, it'll be easy for all kinds of groups to attack it and have it removed entirely.

No more RE! The human race takes another step forward!

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-04-27 07:43pm

Darth_Zod wrote:how exactly do you consider atheism a religion in any sense whatsoever? it's specifically defined as a lack of belief. How does a lack of belief translate into a belief of something, which is what most religions are defined by?

I’m not really too concerned if it’s a religion or not, I don’t think that the syllabus for any particular subject should be strictly limited by the dictionary definition of the historical name of the subject, if it makes sense for something outside the definition to be included.

When I did RE we skimmed over Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and spent quite a while on Christianity in its many forms, one of the motivations behind this selection seemed to be that we’d acquire a basic understanding significant belief systems in the UK. I think it makes sense to add agnosticism and atheism to this list to help clear up common misunderstandings about them regardless of whether they are defined as religions or not as believers in most religions so often utterly fail to understand agnosticism and atheism.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-04-27 07:48pm

I always figured RE was a method of tacitly forcing kids to have *some* kind of belief. They talked about all religion, except atheism. I was indeed decried for not believing in anything.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-04-27 07:58pm

Stark wrote:They talked about all religion, except atheism.

Well this is because atheism isn't a religion. If they had included it, the discussion of religion would still not have included the religion of atheism.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-04-27 08:02pm

Dark Hellion wrote:Wait a second, you crazy brits have religion class in High School? Am I getting this right?

It’s very much a historical artefact from the old days when it was called Religious Instruction and was a tool of indoctrination. Since the 60s in most state schools now its really just been learning about world religions with a politically correct type positive spin given to all of them.

It’s not very popular though very few people take it at GCSE or A’Level and you hear news stories about difficulty in recruiting teachers.

We not only get religious education but worship too, I’m pretty sure legally schools are still supposed to have at least 1 act of religious worship a day (usually in assembly) though when I was there the law was generally ignored.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-04-27 08:03pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Well this is because atheism isn't a religion. If they had included it, the discussion of religion would still not have included the religion of atheism.

Semantic nit-pickery! Avast, I challenge you to t3h field of honour!

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-04-27 08:08pm

Stark wrote:I always figured RE was a method of tacitly forcing kids to have *some* kind of belief. They talked about all religion, except atheism. I was indeed decried for not believing in anything.

I prefer to see atheism more as a positive belief in the world than a negative lack of belief in something beyond it. I don't like the way religious types try to define it as a failure to believe.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-04-27 08:23pm

Plekhanov wrote:
Stark wrote:I always figured RE was a method of tacitly forcing kids to have *some* kind of belief. They talked about all religion, except atheism. I was indeed decried for not believing in anything.
I prefer to see atheism more as a positive belief in the world than a negative lack of belief in something beyond it. I don't like the way religious types try to define it as a failure to believe.

That's not religious types. You've got it backwards; fundies try to label it an enemy faith. Its Mr. Wong here who always reminds everyone that its not a religion and is merely a lack of belief.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-04-27 10:38pm

Plekhanov wrote:I prefer to see atheism more as a positive belief in the world than a negative lack of belief in something beyond it. I don't like the way religious types try to define it as a failure to believe.

*grin* I guess not all atheists are alike; I don't believe in anything at all. There are things I know, and things I don't know. That is all.