Life Design-Ethics-Religion Studies: non-confessional RE in Brandenburg (Germany)

‘Life Design-Ethics-Religion Studies’ (LER) is the only non-confessional form of religious education (RE) in Germany. Six years after German reunification, the federal state of Brandenburg introduced LER with its dimension of non-confessional RE into the school curriculum. In this contribution, LER will be elucidated in three steps. First, the focus will be on LER as an integrative concept encompassing (a) an integration of mainly philosophical investigation as well as religious issues and (b) social integration, in a course where secular pupils and those of different denominations learn together. Second, I will describe how this new concept brought about a break with the long history of confessional RE in Germany and realised the precept of neutrality of religious education provided by the State. Finally, I will examine how the subject was accompanied by a new understanding of RE and how the concept of ‘Religion Studies’ is related to the concepts of ‘Ethics’ and ‘Life Design’. Here, attention will also be given to the competences that can be specified for LER.     

Changing Patterns of Church College Identity and Mission

This article, presented at the conference on ‘The Church Dimension of Higher Education’ held at Canterbury, 4‐6 September 2000, suggests that church sponsored colleges in the UK are currently experiencing a problem in surviving as distinctly ‘Christian’ bodies. Secularisation, the desire to be inclusive and pluralist, as well as other factors, such as merging with larger institutions, have distanced some colleges from their original aims. Survival has often driven secularisation. After examining some of the claims that church colleges make about their religious identities, the article argues in favour of a continued role for such colleges as rigorous academic institutions whose programmes are informed by Christian insights and values. Church related colleges need to continually redefine how their mission is best expressed in the light of changed circumstances and agendas.     

Moral Decision‐Making,Religious Reinforcement and Some Educational Implications

Abstract

There is a fundamental gap between people's assertions as to what is right or wrong and their actual behaviour. This has been traditionally attributed to akrasia or weakness of the will. This paper examines this concept, and the related positive concept of KRAT, and considers what moral education can do about it. Claims by R.B. Braithwaite and others that religious traditions can provide reinforcement are examined and attention is directed to some important qualifications. The implications for moral education are considered, and it is argued that attempts by moral educationists to get to grips with this weakness must involve their own participation in moral debate and in decisions concerning the moral ethos of society.

Anyone who observes human behaviour through moral spectacles soon discovers that there is a significant gap between people's assertions as to what is right or wrong and their actual behaviour. This gap is traditionally attributed to akrasia or weakness of the will. Any attempt to get to grips with moral education must (a) take cognizance of this phenomena and (b) consider what, if anything, can be done about it. In this paper I aim to do three things: (i) to draw attention to some significant factors associated with akrasia, (ii) to explore claims that religious traditions can help to overcome such weakness and (iii) to draw some general conclusions from these points for moral education.     

Liberal Education and the Teleological Question; or Why Should a Dentist Read Chaucer?

This essay consists of an examination of the work of three thinkers who conceive of liberal education primarily in teleological terms, and, implicitly if not explicitly, attempt to offer some answer to the question: what does it mean to be fully human? John Henry Newman, T. S. Eliot, and Josef Pieper developed their understanding of liberal education from their own intellectual and religious experience, which was informed by a specifically Christian conception of the place of education in a fully developed human life. I suggest that the strength of their understanding of liberal education derives from its connection to the various small cohesive religious communities to which they were connected. Nonetheless, this insularity was also the primary weakness because each writer ended universalising what was in fact a particular and unique cultural and religious experience instead of providing convincing proof of a single human nature with a single telos. I will contrast this teleological conception of liberal education with that of Michael Oakeshott and his student Kenneth Minogue, both of whom wrote about education in a post‐religious era in which the earlier consensus had completely broken down. They both celebrated the variety of practices which human beings have invented for themselves over the past several centuries (and past several millennia), and did not appear to suffer from the lack of any unifying single human telos. I will suggest that their understanding of practice insulated them from the need for a single unifying telos.     

Struggling for the soul of education: Towards accountability policy research

This chapter summarises the findings of the chapters above and derives research questions. It identifies potential domains of future policy research in accountability. Since beliefs about what constitutes knowledge and how learning can be demonstrated determine how educational accountability is to be accomplished, it concludes that such research will be central in the struggle for the soul of education. It also recommends cooperative methodologies that attend simultaneously to technical, economic, cultural, political, strategic and philosophical dimensions of a communitarian concept of accountability.     

Preparing primary school teachers to teach religious education

Under the guidelines for Initial Teacher Training, all potential primary teachers are required to learn about teaching religious education. However, religious education is not a high priority on ITT programmes and trainees may often have little introduction to it. Given the sensitive nature of religious education, what is the best way to prepare trainees for teaching religious education, and how far do we need to take into account their views about the subject? This article reports on a study involving trainees on a one‐year PGCE course. All the students were preparing to teach in primary schools and were not specialist religious education trainees. The aim of the study was to discover how trainees felt about teaching religious education in the primary school and how far their feelings linked to their views about religion. The conclusions suggest that any effective preparation of the trainees needs to recognise the diversity of their starting points and allow them opportunity to reflect on their views of religion and religious education.     

Philosophy for Children,Values Education and the Inquiring Society

Abstract

How can school education best bring about moral improvement? Socrates believed that the unexamined life was not worth living and that the philosophical examination of life required a collaborative inquiry. Today, our society relegates responsibility for values to the personal sphere rather than the social one. I will argue that, overall, we need to give more emphasis to collaboration and inquiry rather than pitting students against each other and focusing too much attention on ‘teaching that’ instead of ‘teaching how’. I will argue that we need to include philosophy in the curriculum throughout the school years, and teach it through a collaborative inquiry which enables children to participate in an open society subject to reason. Such collaborative inquiry integrates personal responsibility with social values more effectively than sectarian and didactic religious education.     

The Question Concerning the Aims of Moral Education: Meillassoux’s Ethic of Immortality

In this article, the thesis that moral education is best served through education for irreligious thinking will be put forward. At stake here is the acknowledgment of a disquieting kernel at the deepest level of thinking that is usually glossed over or sedated. I will attempt to confront and articulate this kernel and discuss its repercussions for moral education in reference to the contemporary French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s groundbreaking philosophical project articulated in his debut book After Finitude. Stated briefly, the kernel I am referring to concerns the groundlessness of being and the radical ethical attitude it embodies. Two contrasting orientations when confronted with the notion of such an understanding of being can be identified. I will refer to these, simply, as religious and irreligious thinking. My wager is that religious thinking evades the kernel and needs to be overcome by irreligious thinking, which should constitute the aim of moral education.     

“与时俱进”推动高校素质教育创新

培养什么样的人,怎么样培养人是我国高校面临的现实课题。文章阐述了以科学发展观为指导,强化大学生群体的马克思主义理论素养,强化高校服务当地的职能,强调了＂以人为本＂,以人的可持续发展为核心,推动素质教育创新对培养高质量的社会主义事业建设者和合格接班人具有重要意义。     

Moving out of conflict into reconciliation – Bildung through philosophical dialogue in intercultural and interreligious education

The empirical basis of this article is the reconciliation process in a destructive conflict between students of different cultural and religious backgrounds in upper secondary education in Norway. The Dialogos approach to dialogical philosophizing was tried out through an action research process in order to bring about reconciliation, letting the students explore existential, ethical, religious and emotional topics together. The empirical reconciliation process is discussed in relation to elements of the philosophical concept Bildung, aiming at answering the following overarching questions: how did the movement from conflict to reconciliation come about through the action research process; to what extent might the Reconciliation Project be understood as a process of Bildung towards human maturity and wisdom; and how might philosophical dialogues become an institutionalized part of interreligious and intercultural education?     

Training and Learning

Some philosophers of education think that there is a pedagogically informative concept of training that can be gleaned from Wittgenstein's later writings: training as initiation into a form of life. Stickney, in ' Training and Mastery of Techniques in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: A response to Michael Luntley' takes me to task for ignoring this concept. In this essay I argue that there is no such concept to be ignored. I start by noting recent developments in Wittgenstein scholarship that raise serious issues about how we should handle the translation of Arbrichtung and arbrichten. I then concentrate on the substantive philosophical issues about the very idea that training can have a pedagogically productive role in education. I show that what work training does is a function of the prior skill set of the trainee. This means that we have to endorse some form of rationalism and acknowledge that the learner can only respond to training if they already possess sufficient mental equipment to generate the appropriate responses.     

3. RACE RELATIONS ON THE CAMPUS

Emerging work in the fields of critical cultural theory and feminist epis‐temology suggests ways in which contemporary versions of foundational knowledges have shaped and sustained cultural constructions of “whiteness” that promote the intemalization of dominance among white people in the U.S. Religious educators who seek to nurture transformative educational experiences for white people must work on “unlearning” the racism such constructions support. As a doctoral student in religious education, I propose to begin “at home” to determine how graduate programs in religious education may be contributing to such constructions, and what we can do about it.     

The Sciences and Christian Formation: Helping Today’s Students Find Deeper Faith in a Science-Dominated World

The perceived conflict between science and Christianity continues to be a strong and prevalent narrative, both inside and outside the church. As three long-time science professors in Christian higher education, we have seen firsthand how this conflict orientation threatens both Christian faith and science education. National surveys confirm that many millennial Christians feel a tension between their faith and the discoveries of science, and some leave Christianity over science or the church’s response to it. This article presents an overview of approaches and resources for bringing healthy conversations to campus, including theological principles to frame the discussion, ways to keep the conversation civil and constructive, models for the curriculum and co-curriculum, and roles for administrators. In the midst of controversial issues, educators who work within the context of Christian colleges and universities can disciple students to deeper faith in a science-dominated culture.     

论中世纪巴黎大学社会角色及其冲突

中世纪巴黎大学与社会之间的关系问题在高等教育研究中具有重要意义.引入社会角色概念,分析中世纪巴黎大学可以看到:诞生之初,大学与教会之间存在广泛的互动关系;大学满足了教会对宗教人才与信仰知识的期望;大学在行为模式方面具有极强的宗教性.在随后的发展中,世俗权力对大学控制不断增强;世俗希望大学培养世俗人才以抗衡教会;大学在行为模式上也趋于世俗化.巴黎大学处于宗教角色与世俗角色冲突之中,然而这种冲突却对大学自治、学术自由、组织结构等发挥着积极作用.     

Whose confession? Which tradition?

For over 30 years official disapproval of confessional approaches to religious education in community (formerly county) schools has been the norm. However such forms of religious education persist. Some arguments put forward in favour of non- confessional religious education are now shown to be weak. Confessional religious education is now thought (generally) to be appropriate in church schools. These facts raise the possibility of a return to confessional religious education in non-church schools. Non-confessionalism is founded on a contradiction: that education can proceed without ‘confessing’ anything and is therefore inherently unstable. In fact many different types of ‘confessions’ operate in religious education. Yet pressure continues to be put on Christian teachers to dismantle their confessional approach. This is unfair and an attempt is made to show that such teachers have much to offer the future of religious education in a society which contains many religions.     

Human rights education and religious education: from mutual suspicion to elective affinity

What are the prospects for joining religious education and human rights education? (1) Human rights educators may cite good historical and philosophical reasons for teaching about human rights without making any reference whatsoever to a religious foundation. (2) For their part, many religious communities have resisted opportunities to form alliances with human rights organisations, citing one form or another of ‘incommensurability’ between their faith and rights. (3) However, there also appear to be some occasions and some projects in which these two communities of discourse can embrace each other, and work for similar goals. How can we come to a better understanding about these regions of ‘elective affinity’ and their implications for religious education and human rights education?     

Hip Hop Hermeneutics and Multicultural Education: A Theory of Cross-Cultural Understanding

Cross-cultural understanding stands as one of the great pillars of multicultural education and yet rarely do multiculturalists provide a full account of what it is and how it takes place. This paper will serve as an initial investigation into the complex nature of cross-cultrual understanding. Drawing on the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I will layout the framework for a theory of understanding and provide a concept of culture that avoids the pitfalls of essentialism and instrumentalism. I will then raise, as the backdrop for my examination, the issue of authenticity in the hip hop world. This will allow me to put these hermeneutic theories to work by illuminating the interpretive process through which a hypothetical middle-aged teacher might go about gaining an apprecitaion for rap music to better understand his suburban students who, for him, embody hip hop culture. This phenomenological account of cross-cultural understanding will in turn raise thought-provoking questions about human agency, translation, and the various implications of cross-cultural understanding in the classroom.     

‘Ahead of all Beaten Tracks’: Ryle,Heidegger and the Ways of Thinking

The purpose of this article is to examine two philosophical accounts of thinking—yet examine them anew by considering what I take to be their under‐examined relationship. These are the accounts of Gilbert Ryle and Martin Heidegger. It is often supposed that these two philosophers belong to differing, even conflicting, philosophical traditions. However, this article will seek to demonstrate that an unrecognised affinity exists between them on account of their shared endeavour to venture ahead of the ‘beaten tracks’ of Modern Philosophy. In this way, I will seek to challenge a number of preconceptions that inform the way these thinkers are interpreted and utilised by philosophers of education—particularly preconceptions about Ryle that appear to be active in much ‘thinking skills’ literature. Through exploring certain under‐attended‐to aspects of Ryle's work (including his early essays on phenomenology and his later reflections on the nature of thinking) this article will seek to offer a renewed investigation into these two philosophical accounts of thinking, in terms of both their limitations and the ways of thinking they open.     

地方民族高校与民族地区经济发展刍议

随着知识经济时代的到来,知识取代物质资本,成为经济社会发展中最为重要的因素,教育尤其是高等教育与经济社会发展的关系更加密切。那么,地方民族高校在少数民族地区处于何等地位,发展目标应如何定位,怎样发挥其职能为少数民族地区经济社会发展服务?这不仅是民族地区实现跨越式发展亟需探讨的课题,更是地方民族高校改革发展面临的问题。仅就地方民族高校的区位、定位和职能与民族地区经济发展浅谈个人之见。     

The Ministering Community as Context for Religious Education: A Case Study of St. Gabriel's Catholic Parish

Friendship renewal is offered as both content and context for Christian religious education. In the first section, four marks of genuine friendship are used to elaborate on the meaning of friendship: a shared story, embodied love and intimacy, committed reciprocity, and a shared vision that enables generativity. In the second section, it is suggested that friendship renewal provides an efficacious vehicle for renewing the life and mission of the church. Friendship enables bridges to be built across cultural divides and empowers the church to become a befriending community. In the final section, friendship renewal is discussed in relation to the what, why, where, and when questions regarding Christian religious education.