Pupils want to learn more about religion

This is one of those man-bites-dog stories. A survey has just been released by the Ombudsman for Children which shows that secondary school children want more, not less religion taught in class. This is the precise opposite of what we’ve been led to believe, which is to say, that secondary school pupils want less religion taught, if any at all.

One of the questions asked of the more than 1,000 pupils who took part in the online survey was what new subjects they would like to see added to the curriculum and 34pc said ‘religion, drama and psychology’. This was the top answer while 23pc said they would like more time given to languages, another 23pc said they want more time devoted to ‘practical life skills’, while only 11pc said computer science and engineering.

Meanwhile, 33% want less time given to Irish, 14% want less time given to science and 12% want less time devoted to history.

Predicted

If you had asked me to guess the results of the survey in advance, I’d have predicted that many would want less time given to Irish alright, but I would also have predicted that a lot of students would also want less class-time given to religion.

Admittedly, they also say they want more time devoted to drama and psychology, but even allowing for that, the result is a surprise, especially given how secular Ireland has become and how few young people attend religious services.

You would like to be able to dig in more to the motivation behind the answers. We are not really told why a lot of pupils want to learn more about religion. Mind you, the survey does give individual answers that were given to the pollsters.

Here is one: “Both children and teachers can be misinformed or uninformed on topics such as gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, nationality, culture and race. A better education on these traits would lead to more understanding and less ignorance. Access to a safe space to talk freely should be provided for those discriminated against.”

There were a couple of other answers along these lines. Taken at face value, they seem to mean that religion should not really be seen as a subject in itself, of value in itself, but rather as part of a broader education in diversity and multi-culturalism.

One student said she did not want a concentration on Christianity, but lots of time spent on other religions as well”

It is very hard to say whether these individual answers were representative of the students as a whole. Do they all see religion mainly as a subset of multi-culturalism or do they want to learn about religion because religion is interesting in itself, something that shows us how to live and provides a sense of meaning and purpose in life? This is why it would have been good for the survey to dig a little deeper into some of the answers.

Notably, one student said she did not want a concentration on Christianity, but lots of time spent on other religions as well.

This could easily mean that what a lot of students want is their schools to teach them a bit about Christianity, a bit about Islam, a bit about Hinduism or Buddhism and so on.

Expected

Schools ought to teach about different religions, but a Christian school can hardly be expected to teach about Christianity as though it is simply one more religion. A Christian school should teach that Christianity is actually true. A Christian school should teach that ‘Jesus is Lord’. If it can’t do that, it’s hard to see the real point of its existence.

Dr John Murray of Dublin City University (and Chair of The Iona Institute of which I am CEO) has written a very useful primer on this topic called ‘Will Modern Ireland Tolerate Catholic Schools?’, which can be found online. He argues that Ireland will actually become less diverse if faith-based schools cannot teach that their own faith is true and must all bow the knee to a relativistic approach to religion instead.

I’m told they have civics classes in which they talk about world religions, you might as well be talking about various species of butterflies. It has little impact on Faith practice”

But again, we don’t know for sure what the respondents to the Ombudsman for Children survey have in mind when they say they want more religion taught in school.

Fr Patrick Moore also gets to the heart of the matter in remarks he made to The Irish Catholic last week. He said it would be “terrible negligence” to allow children not to receive faith formation regardless of changing demographics.

Pulling no punches, he added: “I think it is absolutely appalling that the young people… have no formation in Faith whatsoever. I’m told they have civics classes in which they talk about world religions, you might as well be talking about various species of butterflies. It has little impact on Faith practice – it’s pretty serious”.

Mindfulness

He thinks ‘mindfulness’ classes are no substitute for proper faith formation.

Nor does he think we should reduce the number of Catholic schools in the country to reflect the true level of demand for them. On this point, I disagree, because I think by trying to hold on to everything the pressure to water down what is taught in religion class only intensifies.

But I totally agree that we need to be strong about what does get taught in RE class and not make Christianity just one more religion among others.

I regard the push to make formation in a specific faith somehow unacceptable as part of the same mentality that in the new curriculum for primary schools wants to ditch the aim of “fostering a sense of Irish identity”. It appears that the State wants to relativise “Irishness” as well.

The Catholic Church should consider doing a follow-up survey of some kind to the one conducted by Amarach Research on behalf of the Ombudsman. Do students want to learn about religion in a sort of arms-length way, or is there a desire to see if religion has something viable to offer them, something better than consumerism and materialism and careerism? And above all, are some of them willing to believe that Christianity, specifically, might be true after all?