Religious Upbringing Reconsidered

There is, on the face of it, a logical difficulty as well as a practical one about ascribing to parents both a right to give their children a religious upbringing and a duty to avoid indoctrinating them. Curiously, this logical difficulty was largely overlooked in the debate on religious upbringing and parental rights between Terence McLaughlin, Eamonn Callan and Peter Gardner in the 1980s. In this paper I set out the terms of the logical problem and propose a solution to it.     

Hand on Religious Upbringing

Michael Hand's recent paper, ‘Religious Upbringing Reconsidered', re‐opens a debate that was flourishing over a decade ago in this journal and, long before that, in the works of others. In this response I examine Hand's claims that earlier contributions to the debate passed over the central problem and that he can solve that problem. I endeavour to show that several of Hand's arguments, such as those dealing with indoctrination, as well as his claims may be flawed, that the relevance of his inquiries is open to question, but that his hidden and, apparently, unacknowledged agenda should not remain hidden or passed over.     

Religious Upbringing is not as Michael Hand Describes

Michael Hand, in his recent ‘Religious upbringing reconsidered’ in this journal, has claimed to find a logical problem neglected by earlier writers on religious upbringing and parental rights. In this paper, I argue that he has mis‐described the terms in which he poses the alleged problem.     

Diversifying Diversity in Religious Education: A Rejoinder to Cragg-Kim and Hosffman Ospino

Abstract

In this article, I comment on responses to my Presidential Address offered by HyeRan Kim-Cragg and Hosffman Ospino. While I take on board their call to diversify the references on defending pedagogies of difference and hope, I caution against judging arguments on the grounds of the origins of their authors. Neither Enlightenment nor Counter-Enlightenment thought can provide a defensible basis for this dialogical pedagogy, I argue. So, we need a new start grounded in authors who eschew comprehensive universal views that marginalize particular groups such as the historic otherization of Jew and Judaism.     

Counter-Extremism in British Schools: Ensuring Respect for Parents’ Rights Over Their Children’s Religious Upbringing

The UK Government’s PREVENT strategy to counter radicalisation and extremism has been the subject of criticism. Concerns arise over clarity of purpose, clarity of terminology used and potential human rights impacts. Where the policy engages with schools, one human right potentially engaged is the right of parents to transfer their religious beliefs to their children. This paper looks at how PREVENT risks negatively impacting on this right. It proposes a way that this risk can be reduced by adopting a proactive approach to the Government’s security concerns which is centred on human rights education.     

保育、教学与养育的融合

在北欧国家,特别是丹麦,大多数儿童都能接受托幼机构的教育,因而他们能与其他儿童和教师一起共享社会生活。本文对丹麦有关保育是儿童健康和发展的手段,而教学是儿童学习的媒介这一常见的观念进行解构。这一观念把保育(在日托中心进行)和学习(在学校进行)看作是一对矛盾,使得丹麦早期教育处于一种浪漫的儿童中心地位。保育、教学和养育应该彼此融合。教师的作用主要体现在支持儿童自身的实验、调查以及儿童的社会性互动和游戏。     

徐特立的家风家教

徐特立重视家庭教育，注重家风家教，在与妻子和睦相处，关心教育儿子、儿媳、女儿以及孙女、外孙女等方面，为后人树立了光辉的榜样。     

Religious Education, Religious Literacy and Common Schooling: a Philosophy and History of Skewed Reflection

In recent times, questions of religious education—about the place and significance of knowledge and understanding of religious belief and practice in the general educational development of children and young people—seem to have been largely overshadowed or overtaken by controversies concerning the relative merits and shortcomings of common and faith schools. However, in as much as such controversies have also turned upon questions of the relative merits of so-called confessional and non-confessional conceptions of religious education, they have mostly served to obscure the inadequacies of both these approaches to religious education. The present paper maintains that the real question of religious education—as a key element in the educational formation of all children—is that of how the great religious narratives of diverse cultural inheritance might be meaningfully understood and taught in a broadly liberal educational spirit. To this end, it is argued that a form of religious literacy—avoiding the errors of both confessional and non-confessional approaches—can and should be promoted in common schools as not just compatible with but indispensable to liberal education.     

驾鹤仙去:郭璞之死解读

东晋时期,郭璞因为卷入上层统治集团内部斗争而被叛将王敦杀害。他虽然是因政治斗争而慷慨赴死,但是支撑他临危不惧、视死如归的精神力量却不是杀身成仁、舍生取义的儒家政治理念和道德精神,而是摆脱人间苦难,成为快乐神仙的宗教信仰和宗教理想。正是在宗教动机的支配下,郭璞不仅做出了一系列荒诞、乖谬的举动,而且面对屠刀从容自若、视死如归。郭璞的被杀,既是统治阶级内部矛盾斗争发展的必然,也是他在宗教理想鼓舞下主动追求的结果;他既是东晋上层统治集团内部斗争的牺牲品,也是神仙道教的虔诚殉道者。郭璞之死是一个生动的个案,正确认识其性质,无论是对郭璞和魏晋文学史研究,还是对道教史和文化史研究,都有一定的意义。