Shock at biased nature of new Catholic teaching resource

A new teaching resource for religious education (RE) in Catholic faith schools in England and Wales recommends no teaching about humanism, and espouses discriminatory approaches to same-sex marriage and abortion. Humanists UK, which campaigns for inclusive RE that is taught in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner, said it was a clear example of the bias inherent in the faith school system, and called for education law reform.

The Religious Education Curriculum Directory, titled ‘To know You more clearly’, is published by the Catholic Education Service (CES), an organisation that devises and provides resources for Catholic schools (which make up approximately 10% of state funded schools in England and Wales), as well as lobbying the Government to promote Catholic teaching in education. The Directory is intended as guidance for Catholic schools in developing their RE curriculum. 

Non-religious worldviews in the Directory, where encountered at all, are treated as an ‘add-on’, and not to be touched until Key Stage 3 (age 11) at the earliest – in case children get confused. Children with no religion are recommended to be taught RE with the expectation that they may end up converted to Catholicism.

The contents will come as a surprise to many people, as parents often don’t realise just how biased the teaching in some faith schools is permitted to be. For example humanism, or humanists, are not specifically mentioned at all in any of the Key Stages, and children are recommended to be insulated from knowledge of non-religious perspectives until they are at secondary school. Meanwhile abortion is mentioned as a topic for discussion in year 8, but the suggested emphasis is merely that the Church views the practice as immoral. Furthermore, marriage is emphasised as being between a man and woman only. There is no reference whatsoever to the existence of gay or lesbian people.

Such biased teaching is a problem both due to the fact that children from Catholic backgrounds at primary schools will be denied the opportunity to know that some people in society are not religious, and also because many – often the majority of – children at Catholic schools are not from a Catholic background anyway. If following the recommendations in this resource, the latter group are then subjected to clearly biased and evangelical material, rather than learning about different religions and worldviews in an objective manner. 

While parents of children at faith schools do have the right to request that their child is either withdrawn from RE (in England only) or is taught from the neutral locally agreed syllabus (in both England and Wales), these rights are not widely known about, and their current limited use means that such children can be singled out and ostracised from their peers.

Humanists UK recently supported a High Court victory which will ensure that humanists are able to sit on the local committees that set locally agreed RE syllabuses. However, faith schools do not need to use these syllabuses.

To help explain the legal framework around faith schools, Humanists UK has produced guides for parents all about religion in schools, and regularly hears from non-religious parents who have been allocated a faith school against their wishes. If this applies to you, please get in touch. 

Humanists UK Education Campaigns Manager Robert Cann said: 

‘This resource is a classic example of the problem with faith school privileges. The Catholic Education Service evidently considers it not only appropriate, but excellent practice, for Catholic schools to teach children a very biased curriculum that will not prepare them adequately for life in our diverse society, where at least half the population has no religion. That there is no mention of non-religious worldviews like humanism until secondary school – despite the fact that many children in Catholic schools will have no religion, is a clear attempt to indoctrinate. Indeed, the Education Directory is being openly promoted as a tool to recruit such children into the Catholic faith. 

‘I would advise any non-religious parent of a child at a Catholic school studying a curriculum like this to immediately exercise their right to request the “locally agreed” RE syllabus instead.

‘The worst thing is that all this is perfectly legal. It’s high time for the Government to ensure that children in all schools are provided with objective, critical and pluralistic teaching in RE lessons by default.’

What’s inside To know You more clearly?

• There are no mentions of the word ‘humanism’ or ‘humanist’ in the entirety of the 253 pages.
• It is recommended that children are not taught about non-religious worldviews until secondary school – age 11.
• Learning about other faiths and beliefs may be unwise: ‘thought must be given, for the sake of those Catholic pupils for whom the religious education may be received as catechesis, to when and to what extent other religious and non-religious perspectives are introduced. That is to say, a pluralistic curriculum must never be a relativistic one, at least not in a Catholic school.’ (p. 16)
• While it acknowledges (in secondary schools) that non-religious perspectives exist, ‘…the voices of those students who identify as non-religious are equally ones that are welcomed into the intercultural exchanges that religious education opens’, the caveat is that discussing the non-religious perspectives of children means they are therefore ripe for being evangelised to and ultimate conversion to Catholicism. 
• Such inclusion is badged as ‘… pre-evangelising because the commitment to the inclusivity of the dialogue shows a willingness to engage in debating the questions that really matter to students and, in turn, to create within them an openness to mystery. The study of the non-religious perspective gives students who identify as such permission to engage with the subject. Failing to do so potentially risks alienating them and, at the same time, misses the opportunity the exchange provides for them to fall, contrary to all their expectations, into the hands of the living God.’ (p 16-17)
• Abortion and assisted dying are mentioned only in terms of being immoral behaviours: ‘…Ethical and philosophical options, for example… the sanctity of life from natural conception to natural death and the immorality of abortion and euthanasia under the fifth commandment…’ (p.210).
• Sex is mentioned only in the context of marriage between a man and a woman: ‘…the nature of human beings as sexual beings, who are made for each other, forms the foundation for a study of the Church’s teaching on marriage and the Sacrament of Matrimony’ (page 227).
• There is no reference whatsoever to the existence of same-sex marriage, or indeed same-sex relationships.