Teach Secondary 14.4

John Lawson proposes a bold, albeit tried and tested way of approaching the study of RE... Religion cannot be reduced to ethics – but nor can it be limited to scripture, history and sacraments. Throughout my career, I’ve been able to establish that religious education – or indeed religious studies – is one of the most engaging and purposeful GCSE subjects there is. Or at least it can be, when we push personal ethics to the forefront of our KS4 teaching... Scratching the itch Of the multiple philosophy courses I studied at university, the most memorable had the provocative title, ‘Images inModern Culture: Porn, Pop, Pulp and Politics’. This imaginative, interdisciplinary course was vastly over-subscribed – one assumes – because it scratched a very particular itch amongst the students. I went on adapt that course later inmy career for groups of American teenagers, prompting my boss at the time – an elderly Catholic priest – to admit that I’d done as much as any teacher to elevate the status of religious education. Despite having been initially (and perhaps understandably) alarmed by my talk of ‘sexy theology’ when we’d talked about what I was planning, he relaxed once I explained that I meant ‘sexy’ in the teen-friendly, synonym sense of ‘engaging’ and ‘attention-grabbing’. Because, I reasoned, If we aren’t turning teenagers on to learning, we are switching them off. Teaching adolescents to engage with pressing contemporary issues is what outstanding educators from Socrates to Attenborough have always done. Happiness versus pleasure Does that mean to say we can study pornography in RE classes? Of course. We can, and should – just so long as the discussions we have are sensitively managed to in a way that respects the participants’ dignity and the message of the class. Christians aren’t opposed to God’s gift of sexuality; rather, we exhort sexual activity as a private and powerful expression of our love for someone we love. What happens in people’s bedrooms should remain in their bedrooms. Why, then, should we accept the degrading forms of online pornography that most teens will have seen as a social good? It’s difficult – though necessary – to separate love from lust and happiness from pleasure if we wish to find fulfilment in our relationships. Whilst I respect those who oppose Christian views of sexuality, I’m surely justified in challenging that some sexual acts are more expressions of ‘licence’ than ‘freedom’. Restriction and self-control is an intrinsic feature of all social freedoms. So it follows that ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Lawson is a former secondary teacher, now serving as a foundation governor while running a tutoring service, and author of the book The Successful (Less Stressful) Student (Outskirts Press, £11.95); find out more at prep4successnow.wordpress.com or follow @johninpompano The only way is ethics THE LAST WORD teenagers need to have intellectually challenging discussions about sexual morality in their lessons. Free to choose The foundational question for all ethicists concerns God’s moral authority. If there is no God, as Dostoyevsky once observed, then all things are permissible. And yet, while it is perfectly rational to believe in God, producing absolute proof remains impossible. Faith and freedom only make sense if we are free to choose . The Bible contains holy texts that were written by wise and holy prophets, but it cannot literally be the ‘Word of God’. The divinely inspired prophets were never mere microphones; they were all flesh and blood human beings, complete with their own distinct biases and flaws. Ethics fosters moral autonomy by not permitting us to dissolve controversial questions by asserting that ‘God’ or ‘religious leaders’ say X is right or wrong. As such, the course I taught carefully examined ethical theories, thus providing a robust framework for examinations of countless contemporary issues – from prejudice, racism, crime and punishment, to drugs, poverty, war/peace, media bias and political dynamics – as well as human and animal rights. The potential topics are legion, and most teenagers enjoy evaluating them. When I pose the relativist question, ‘ Do we, in ‘The West’, have any right to dictate global cultural norms? ’, my students are adamant that we don’t. But when they see the harsh physical punishments suffered by millions of children through the practice of FGM, military conscription and exploitative labour conditions, they become less confident. If all morality is relative, then where in the world are rape, thuggery, torture or murder deemed morally acceptable? Teenagers will tend to find utilitarianism’s stress on happiness attractive, right up until they realise how easily happiness can lapse into hedonism. Can two opposite teachings be equally true? Subjectivists/emotivists think so. Why embrace Kantian ethics, with its placing of reason and logic over emotional intelligence? Arguably the greatest strength of Christian ethics is the value it places upon character and virtue. When we listen to teenagers’ views – as I did, having seen how they overwhelmingly chose the study of ethics over church history – they will often view such courses as intellectually stimulating and inclusive, in ways that courses primarily focused on the church typically aren’t. 82 teachwire.net/secondary