As a retired teacher of Religious Studies, I am obviously going to disagree. But not for the reasons that you might think.
First of all - though I am only referring here to teaching at the secondary rather than primary level - quite a number of colleagues I worked with were atheists who just happened to be fascinated with religion as a social phenomenon or were attracted to the philosophical and ethical aspects of the subject. So there is not much danger of indoctrination.
Secondly, one of my own university teachers, John Bowker, wrote in the preface to one of the earliest GCSE textbooks that religion was worth learning about because of all the evil that had been perpetrated in the name of it. That’s a pretty good justification in my view.
Thirdly, the subject does tend to get taught in a manner that encourages critical thinking and intelligent scepticism. A quick look at any GCSE or A level syllabus will reveal that. Often, in the terminal GCSE examination itself, the most marks are awarded for questions in which the candidate has to critically evaluate statements such as ‘There are no convincing reasons to believe in God’, or ‘People who claim to have religious experiences are hallucinating’, or ‘There is no good evidence that we survive death.’
Fourthly, although secularisation is happening in some places, the world is still, rather unfortunately in my view, as furiously religious as it ever was in others. So from that point of view it can’t really be avoided.
Plus, people do seem to still yearn for what might be abstractly referred to as the transcendent, some kind of realm beyond the ego, even if they only achieve that through taking drugs, watching City humiliate United, or going to an event like Glastonbury.
Am currently reading Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan’s book Faith, Hope and Carnage, in which Cave admits that he might have devoted a lot of energy to reflecting on a being that does not exist, but that faith (tempered by a lot of doubt) got him through the death of his son, still sustains him and continues to inspire his songwriting.
And Christopher Hitchens actually said something similar before he died, admitting, ‘I’m a materialist…yet there is something beyond the material or not entirely consistent with it, what you would call the Numinous, the Transcendent, or at best the Ecstatic…It’s in certain music, landscape, certain creative work; without this we really would merely be primates.’
Should add that I am in no position to make much sense of what Cave and Hitchens are on about as I have never had an experience of anything like that, though I do find music, art and literature to be transporting in a non-mystical sense.
Fifthly, doing an A Level in Religious Studies is one of the best ways to be introduced to atheistic thinking these days, namely, that of luminaries such as the wonderful David Hume, Bertrand Russell, AJ Ayer, Jeremy Bentham, JL Mackie and, of course, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
In fact, one of the best and most resolutely sceptical philosophers around at the present time is a guy called Stephen Law, who often does workshops for sixth-formers. He is actually the author of a book called ‘Believing Bullshit’ which I once contemplated making one of the official textbooks for my A Level students, as the idea of their parents and fellow pupils stumbling across them reading it had a certain subversive appeal. Unfortunately, there wasn’t quite enough overlap between the content of the book and the syllabus that I was teaching at the time to justify that decision. But anyway, here he is in action:
I used to show that to my Year 9’s.
Finally, if Religious Studies was removed from the curriculum, there is a danger that the extremist and sometimes barking mad beliefs that some kids get from home would go unchallenged and would be left to incubate.
There is also a danger that - at A level - if they are studying History, English Literature, Art or even Economics, that a lack of knowledge of religion might leave them a bit of a disadvantage.
For example, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is as much a work of theology as it is of economics, something that would have been immediately apparent to its first readers but is scarcely appreciated now.
Having said that though, it wouldn’t bother me if the name of the subject was changed to ‘Philosophy’ or ‘World Views.’
As far as primary school kids are concerned, I don’t see any reason why they can’t be introduced to a bit of critical thinking even at that age, as there are books and courses designed to specifically do just that. See here:
P4C in the UK
www.philosophy-foundation.org
Pete Worley’s publications are really good for that as they are aimed at kids from about 5 upwards.
Anyway, this post is far too long. So will leave it there. Off to cook dinner and listen to Ghosteen again.
