Every time moves are made to teach younger people about paganism, we get scaremongering, panic laden reactions from people who show the most depressing levels of ignorance and bigotry. I doubt anyone who needs to read this will get anywhere near it, but perhaps someone will find some useful ammo here.
Religion can, and should be taught as an academic subject. This does not mean teaching students how to be pagans, any more than my RS lessons bleep years ago taught me how to be a Hindu, or a Muslim. Religious studies should cover ethical issues from a range of perspectives and include, in my opinion, what atheist means, and agnosticism. In terms of figures, there are a lot of pagans in the UK – we were the 6th biggest faith at the 2001 census. Teaching about paganism would not involve any deep study of our mysteries – a broad overview of the main paths, a quick whip round the festivals, some words about polytheism and animism perhaps. Plenty of room for playing compare and contrast with other world religions too.
One of the complaints that the idea raises, is that we should, as a ‘Christian’ country only be teaching people Christian values. This makes about as much logical sense as saying we should, as an English country, only teach the English language, the geography of England, the history, literature and politics of England. Perhaps it would be a logical extension to suggest that we should not teach students what communism, fascism, tyranny, feudalism and monarchy are all about either. After all, they live in a democracy, why would they need to know? School is not a political tool for turning out obedient little clones who cannot think for themselves. Education should be there to enable young people to learn about all aspects of the world so that they can grow up able to think for themselves, and able to make good choices. Religion, is not only part of the world, but a major cause of war, genocide, conflict and hatred. I’d like to see a syllabus which pays plenty of attention to the history of religious hatred, and the violence it has inspired. Let’s teach children about the persecution of heretics, that the abuse of the Jews was not unique to Hitler, and that people have been using religion in the most disgusting ways throughout human history.
Another standard complaint is that not teaching just ‘Christian values’ is either about wishy washy liberalism, bowing to multiculturalism, or not upholding proper ethical values. Tolerance is a value. Inclusivity is a value. Respect is a value. Wasn’t it Jesus who said ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’? I don’t remember any caveats about checking their faith position first. When you start exploring religions, you find that the same core values turn up in all of them – variations on a theme of care and respect. Usually with more individual rules about how to honour the deity/deities. When you start looking at the history of religions, what emerges is a sense that the power hungry will happily use them to control and manipulate others, to justify war, and commit atrocities. The more mutual understanding there is between non-violent people of faith, the better a chance we have of not being collectively manipulated into aggression that is all about serving the egos and bank accounts of leaders. Now, why would anyone not want us to do that? Hmm.
When people say ‘Christian values’ do they mean all of Christianity? Are they proposing to teach children not only Protestant values, but also the subtly different values of Catholics, Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Evangelicals, Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists… and what about the more extreme Christian cults? The sort that encourage mass suicide and practice brainwashing? Are we talking all of those variations on a theme of ‘Christian values’? You can bet we aren’t. We’re talking the Christianity approved of by the speaker, who probably has no better grasp of the diversity of their own faith, than they do anyone else’s. This is not really a debate about religion at all, or even about education, it’s about who has the right to tell us what to think. The answer should be ‘no one.’
Not being stupid in public is a really good reason for education. What could be more embarrassing than watching a journalist, politician or other public figure spouting their uninformed prejudices? Making judgements based on prejudice, imagination and the idiotic pronouncements of other uninformed bigots, is a reliable route to looking dumb. It’ also a guarantor of dreadful, unworkable policies. Decent level of school education about religion will at least prevent our politicians and journalists of the future from publically shaming all of us with their atrocious levels of ignorance.