Religious Education and Human Rights

Dr. M. C. Felderhof

University of Birmingham, Westhill

May 1, 2000

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to important international agreements that have a bearing on the delivery and place of religious education  in schools. It begins by acknowledging that governments, the teaching profession and parents all have a stake in the schooling of children and young people. They will each seek to underwrite their stake by invoking educational ideals. These ideals have an important part to play but the appeals should be treated with a degree of suspicion. Each party can as easily subvert them and use educational institutions for their own selfish ends.

Apart from the children and young people themselves, of the three parties mentioned, the weakest party is no doubt the parents. But here the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child and Convention on the Rights of the Child3 together with the Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, Article Two comes to the aid of parents with respect to their religious and philosophical convictions. These international agreements support parents, if it is their wish, to transmit their religious and philosophical convictions withinthe sphere of education and its institutions. Each of the agreements does so in its own way. The United Nations’ Declaration and Convention by exhorting us with an ideal, the European Convention through legal sanction.

The import for RE teachers, theorists and governments are to find practical ways in which these parental rights might be acknowledged. The conclusion is drawn, firstly, that educational institutions should not suppress religious life by refusing it public expression within the sphere of their responsibility. Secondly, these institutions should value diversity and avoid representing the diversity of religious life under the common framework of e.g. a secular study of religion, that may itself subvert religious life and its distinctive forms.