Faith schools.

28.10.2009.
The question here is whether there is value in faith schools. Anglican and Catholic schools in Britain were among the first to be developed, before the state school system, and it is only recently that Muslim and Jewish schools have developed, with other religions taking an interest. Current policies have promoted these as responsive to parent needs. From the beginning, the object was the religious conversion and nurture of pupils. The parallel purpose was to make children good (that is, to enhance religious observance and moral behaviour).

I have come across two books of interest. Reflecting on Faith Schools edited by Helen Johnson of Kingston University; and For Goodness Sake: Religious Schools and Education for Democratic Citizenry by Walter Feinberg, both from 2006. Johnson balanced the views of the headteacher of Islamia School against the philosophical tirade of Roger Marples against indoctrination and for children's rights to be critically and openly educated. Other chapters (originally short conference papers) explore circumstances in war (Bogata), a comparison of a Catholic and a Jewish school, Methodism and Southlands College, Australian Catholicism, and historical-political aspects. Among the issues are, should education include religious teachings and make moral (behavioural) demands? how should education work on the attitudes of pupils? Are there benefits from a traditional framework for learning? The editor's own interest in reflection comes in two separate 'commentaries', but does not really penetrate into the book as a whole. Most chapters are descriptive rather than reflective.

The reality is that compulsion is not a lasting mechanism for developing religious convictions. Religious education may be supported by parents, but pupils  are) not always persuaded. The fact that Christianity is based on miracle (the virgin birth and resurrection) adds to resistance. The dilemma for the curriculum was: how should the balance be achieved between religious instruction and critical thinking? The 1944 Education Act wrestled with it, insisting on a compulsory place for religious education, which it has had ever since - but as a part of a melange of literacy, numeracy, science, humanities and the arts. The concept of the broad curriculum is still with us.

Today, curriculum balance is an issue only for private schools. A fundamentalist Christian school, or a Muslim school could, if it chose, emphasise religious teachings at the expense of critical skills and knowledge. The events of 7/11 led to many fundamentalist Muslim schools being suspected as harbouring terrorists, which systemically they were not, even if a few individuals were radicalised. Such decisions about curriculum emphasis are not inevitable; Muslim schools have made curriculum decisions which are western and secular, whilst maintaining a key but minority place for religious (Islamic) education. Some have encouraged multifaith understanding by broader curriculum encouraging visits by members of other faiths.

Education needs to prepare pupils for life in a global world. Our question however is whether this is best served by a faith school based on the beliefs of one religion, or whether open inclusive schools without religious privilege are better fitted.

Feinberg sets himself this task. He studies a range of religious schools in America and draws out in particular the issues of education for a plural society, liberalism, moral development and critical thinking. Whilst not hostile to religious schools per se, he indicates that to be educationally acceptable, these features need to be in evidence so that exclusivist bigotry does not take over. Feinberg gives examples of critical engagement within the religious community encouraging a thinking engagement with the religious tradition. He stresses the potential flexibility of interpretation and the importance of challenging authoritarianism. However, the fact that there is this latitude in belief does not irradicate the religious exclusivity of the institution.

I am not generally in favour of faith schools, but am the first to admit that secular schools can miss out on important aspects of learning if they are hostile to religious faith. Propositional scientific knowledge is important, but questions of what kind of people we are and the quality of good relationships are also vital preparations for life, and faith schools tend to be good at these. My problem with faith schools is the assertion that belief is truth, but this is not inevitable. A faith school could develop a positive criticality which examines the religion's truth claims rationally. A faith school need not have unquestioning fundamentalist assumptions and beliefs. This criticality would go a long way to help pupils disentangle the inner 'truth' from the fiction within religious belief. Pluralism should encourage and enable pupils to find common ground between faiths, through which dialogue becomes possible. I would argue that this should better develop a pupil's mature spirituality.

One last thought. 'Faith' schools is strange terminology. A catholic school, or a Muslim school, gives central place to its religious beliefs. My own personal faith, in the potential goodness of humanity and the possibility (but not inevitability) of global moral progress, is secular and not religious. There is an unexplained assumption that only religious people have faith. This is not so. Religious people have doctrine, so if the term 'religious' school has fallen out of favour, the accurate replacement would be 'doctrinal school'. This of course properly exposes the exclusivity (or lack of inclusivity) of the enterprise.

Research and past experience

D Clandinin and F Connelly, in Personal Experience Methods in the 1994 Denzin and Lincoln Handbook of qualitative research (413-427) note: 'Experience... is the stories people live. People live stories, and in the telling of them reaffirm them, and create new ones' (415). Life history has thus become a widespread method of research of various professions. Some base generalisations on a substantial number of life history interviews (for example Goodson and Sikes, Life history research in educational settings, 2001). Researchers also look back into their own life histories in a variety of ways, reflecting perhaps on their careers, or on a particular piece of research they have completed, such as for Masters or a doctorate. There are issues of accuracy and authenticity in this: humans are capable of lying both to others and to themselves, and on other occasions do not reflect with full understanding. So the quality of looking back (retrospection), or reflecting on past experience has to be taken seriously. From a methodological point of view, reflection on a period of research, such as to a doctorate, can be helped by having a written record of one's thoughts from beginning to end. The research diary is the traditional means of achieving this, modelled on the fieldnotes used in anthropology, but being sure to note down feelings, attitudes, beliefs and suchlike as well as 'facts'. The strictures of John van Maanen, Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography, are helpful here, that fieldnotes are not definitive but have been affected by processes of selection, interpretations and partial observation, and maybe by the unrepresentative use of informants (interviewees). Research diaries therefore consist of material to be critiqued, and should not be supercialially accepted. Two of my students were helped by arranging to be interviewed at the beginning of research by an experienced practitioner briefed to be probing. Critiquing that transcript reveals the journey travelled, which might otherwise have become blurred. Other students write their fieldnotes using blog technology, which has the advantage that supervisers can offer guidance frequently. If this becomes a daily habit, a researcher focusing on their own professionality reflects constantly on whatever happens, or whatever thoughts and issues they are wrestling with. I deal with this more fully in Bigger, S (2009) The Potential of Blogs in Higher Degree Supervision, in Worcester Journal of Learning and Teaching issue 1 (online, full text here).

The substantive issue is how to interrogate our own past histories. In talking about reflection on action, Donald Schon (The Reflective Practioner, 1983; Educating the reflective practitioner, 1988) encourages reflection on comparatively recent history - a job that has just been completed for example. Why were certain decisions made, what conclusions have been drawn of success or failure. This encourages habits of evaluation in groups: self evaluation has some sort of control as it is tested by the views of colleagues. Once we attempt to be self-evaluative over a longer period, such dialogue with other participants becomes more difficult. Even straight-forward timelines become difficult as the years blur into each other.

We might even question the purpose of a timeline. To establish an actual factual record does not tell us much about quality. If I can be certain for example that I taught Cambridge Classical Background in 1978, it doesn't tell me whether I taught it well. Or what I might mean by 'well'. Max Van Manen distinguishes between technical rational information (stage 1), contextual reflection (stage 2) including attitudes, values and ethos, and dialectical reflectivity where quality and ethics are critiqued (Linking ways of knowing with ways of being practical, Curriculum Inquiry 6(3), 1977, 205-228).

Max van Manen is a key proponent of the use of phenomenology in pedagogy and the curriculum. A phenomenon is something which is considered real but has no substance for observation. For example, Max van Manen completed early work on tact and tone in pedagogy, and more recent work on pupil privacy. There has to be a great deal of data collection and discussion about the meaning of such words, and the claim made that they are somehow real as opposed to constructed and conceptual. Quality is another such word. What people mean by quality is one level; what is real quality is a higher level. What we assume about the phenomenon (tact, tone, quality) is an interference which we have to put to one side (or bracket out). Many of these phenomena are things in everyday life we take for granted, which means we have not thought deeply about them, our assumptions and stereotypes satisfy us.

The beginnings of analysis of our past experience might be phenomena applicable to us. Whilst tone and tact (to pupils as well as to colleagues) might get us started on pedagogy, and quality might provide roots for views of good practice and self-evaluation, we probably need to construct a matrix of phenomena relevant to us. Respect, justice, community and so on. The case for an item being a phenomenon rather than a concept may have to be debated. What is wisdom? I think it is a concept, not a reality, a judgement that something is sensible rather than foolish. And what of God? I think also a concept, a picture of the highest good, and not an entity which is real. I am sure some readers disagree, but do be sure of your grounds.

I conclude this section by inviting you to look back at your life and career using such markers as tone, tact, respect, fairness, justice, equity, community. There will be aspects in which we feel we have been treated badly, others where we feel we have treated others badly, and still more where others are acting or being acted upon. From this step, observations and recommendations will come.


# post still under construction

Children as social critics for social justice.

This is the text of a lecture on education and schooling (7th October, 9.15 a.m. at the University of Worcester) recommending that the central thrust of the school curriculum is to produce pupils who are adept social critics, of television, the media, their reading and even their schooling. This critique, I hold, is social justice in action, demanding fairness for all irrespective of race, class, gender, ability or background. This is to turn children into activists, concerned with their communities, the environment, and the whole way the world is run. They will be the voters and politicians of the future, so this is akin to them becoming political activists, as Clive Chitty argued in a lecture later the same day in the University of Birmingham.
The full text of my lecture is on:
http://sites.google.com/site/sbiggervaluesineducation

The Bushmen of the Kalahari

I began to be interested in the Bushmen of the Kalahari in the 1970s when reading Laurens Van Der Post's stories A Far Off Place and A Story is Like the Wind, about a friendship between white and Bushmen children. We now know not to believe as fact everything that Van Der Post said (see the biography Storyteller by JDF Jones). The Bushmen (also called the San) have been called a relic of stone age humanity, with interest taken by archaeologists. This is a typical academic gravy train with little substance: they are contemporary people, not museum pieces. That they have suffered at the hands of both white and black is incontrovertible - if you are in doubt, Sandy Gall's The Bushmen of Southern Africa: Slaughter of the Innocent is essential reading. Their hunter-gatherer lifestyle has become virtually impossible today, and their knowledge and skills are in danger of dying out completely.

My current interest is in their spirituality, thanks to an invitation to contribute to the journal Alternation of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa. A link to this paper will be added here when available. This post is to set out the agenda.

Christian missionaries have painted a picture of animistic African tribes worshipping trees and stones and indulging in blood sacrifices. None of this is true of the Bushmen/San so their traditional spirituality is of interest. Fortunately there has been high quality ethnological and anthropological research from the 19th and 20th centuries, preserving information that no longer exists. I am not, as some do, placing these in an evolutionary sequence but allowing the Bushmen the dignity of others trying to see the world through their eyes. If we in the west were stripped of our scientific explanations for things and left to make sense of the land, sea and skies, we would be in a similar position. Their understanding of their environment and the living things within it are based on observation and long communal experience (tradition). For gathering, the women developed an encyclopedic 'ethnobotanical' knowledge of the nature and properties of plants (for food and healing), and their locations and seasons. For hunting, the men had wide understanding of animals and their habits, and some understanding of internal organs from cutting up the bodies. This is the beginnings of a scientific view of their world, as Louis Lieberberg notes in The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science. The sky and stars were invaluable for time keeping and guidance, and they recognised that there were near and far astral bodies and pictured constellations in their own way.

Some things however lie beyond understanding by observation. The weather and especially the rains. Disease, sickness and death. Social discord and jealousy. For this, no natural explanations worked, so they assumed supernatural forces. especially gods in the east and west, with the spirits of the dead living with them and working for them. These gods were not worshipped, just recognized as existing and to some extent feared. One tried not to offend them, and to try to escape their influence. A young person might die because the spirits wanted a new child or wife. Given their lack of knowledge about germs and viruses, this has had explanatory power over the centuries - and they recognize that their attitudes and social customs are those handed down by the old ones.

The trance healing dance gives an illustration of several processes. It is the central social ritual, with some but restricted significance on theology. Those, usually men, who go into trance and heal, recognise that there is an inner power which can rise up, overcome them, and give them special powers. They recognize these powers in many things around them, and they avoid certain foods and certain times. When healing, the tranced man goes from person to person healing them - the benefits are psychological and psychosomatic. Their frequency was about twice a week. When crises are felt - a big family row, for example, this is their solution. In trance the men may see the messengers of the gods, or even the gods, as surrounding the camp, and their duty is to frighten and chase them away, because they bring sickness with them.

It will be interesting to wonder whether better health education will have an impact, and whether the natural/supernatural division will continue afterwards. But it has in the Christian and Muslim worlds, so it probably will. Except the San do not rejoice in the promise of an afterlife, it is, as they see it, just how things are. When they begin to see that there are natural explanations for many of life's mysteries, my guess is that trance dances will still be felt to be socially useful.

1930-1960 Blog

I have been diverted recently to my other blog on world war two history and literature (and especially children's literature) on http://1930-1960.blogspot.com. You might like to try it. This is part of a conversation with Owen Dudley Edwards, writer of the excellent book Children's Literature in the Second World War, which puts together writers, readers and global events. My current post is on Rupert, 1939-41.