Religious and Citizenship Education: Benefits and Pitfalls - Essay Example

RELIGIOUS AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: BENEFITS AND PITFALLS Q. Critically analyze the relationship of Religious and Citizenship education and explore the potential benefits and pitfalls each subject may hold for the other with particular reference to recent issues raised in the media. Introduction Religious and Citizenship education has consistently been implemented in education curriculums as well as in societies across the world for a variety of reasons. While religious education has been implemented since time immemorial to improve religious and moral awareness of an individual, the citizenship education is a fairly new concept arising essentially due to peculiar characteristics of lack of awareness about citizenship and its responsibilities among the people, cross cultural mixes now visible in many developed and developing countries and migration of people from all corners of the world into alien societies. Religious Education. Religious education has always been in vogue for thousands of years with a view of spreading religious awareness among the populace. In the olden days, when religion was the way of life in most ancient cultures, this education allowed individual societies to evolve in a way that guaranteed better administration, security, economics, health and other such common aspects of day to day living. Many eastern religious cultures have detailed scriptures highlighting these very aspects, some of which even form the basis of many countries' present governmental policies. Further, with evolution of newer religions during past two millenniums, missionaries have spread to remote corners of the world to spread their religion and perform charity work to help under-developed societies and make them emulate a new religion thereby considerably spreading their religious ideologies. Some fanatic religious leaders have also tried to exploit the lower or suppressed classes of many societies and attempted to lure them into their religion for performing anti-national or terrorist activities. These negative aspects have caused considerable animosity in certain sensitive regions of the world where even genuine and well-intentioned missionaries have faced innumerable humiliations and difficulties in assisting the down-trodden. Good work has nevertheless continued without fail and religious education has been continuing in both formal and informal formats with a view to improving physical as well as spiritual lives of people. Religious studies essentially involve training of religious traditions to achieve a degree of religious literacy. This knowledge enables its subjects to transform their lives into religious realm or embrace spiritual dimension in a proficient and enlightened way. This education also helps them to develop well informed thought processes relating to relevant societal, principled and individual issues and thereby allows attainment of well- informed opinions and attitudes which help them and the society at large in the long run. Religious mindset also allows people to explore association between their faith, behavior and knowledge which allowed them to judge their own experiences rationally and develop awareness. (Retrieved from http://www.aiglon.ch/rs/page1.shtm) Citizenship Education. Citizenship lessons commenced in schools in England and Wales as a cross-curricular theme during 1990. However, new educational drives like literacy and numeracy initiatives sidelined it for sometime. Labor government called upon a group chaired by Sir Bernard Crick to study aspects of citizenship who submitted their report in 1998. Citizenship was introduced as a subject in England during 2002. It is taught both as a separate subject and linked to extracurricular activities with children enjoying a real democratic involvement in an artificially created society. Initial studies include theoretical study of Politics to improve their political literacy, further education helps to develop their skills of enquiry and verbal skills through organized debates while strand 3 trains them in participation and responsible citizenship through community activities and volunteering. (Watson, 2004) Citizenship education has also evolved during past decade in many other countries partially due to widespread migration of people from all parts of the world into countries that offered better and safer lifestyles, individual freedom and better job opportunities. Further, countries lacked manpower due to lower population growth, technical revolution leading to a need of more and more workers and other such requirements also led to governments from these countries encouraging skilled migration from across the world and benefit by their technical know how. With people from diverse cultures flocking to these countries, there was a near-crisis situation due to mixed thinking, dissimilar priorities and wide-ranging lifestyles. There was a felt need of indoctrination of people from these diverse cultures and sensitize them about their new country, and training to become its citizens. Thus evolved the need for citizenship education, or education for training people to become good citizens. This referred to education at all levels, i.e. schools, media, legislation, adult education. It sought much more than a simple legal or political entity, i.e. values and commitment from its students as well. This education essentially consisted of national consciousness, political literacy, observance of rights and duties and social values. It can be expected that any migrant from diverse cultures or the younger generation with an indifferent attitude towards political structure of a country due to perceived corruption and poor administration will be able to become a good and responsible citizen after he/she has thus been indoctrinated about citizenship responsibilities and our role in running of societies, municipalities, states and countries appropriately. Religious Vs Citizenship Education The introduction of citizenship education has raised considerable interest within the field of religious education but it has also raised some alarm (Teece, 1998). The connection between religious and citizenship education in democratic societies can be directly pinpointed as such. This is so because aim of religious education in modern era is primarily spread of religion and then to improve contribution towards societies as in case of citizenship education. However, since religious education has a profound impact on moral values, spiritual well-being, training of ethics and making them better human beings, these ideologies definitely have a positive bearing on an individual's growth as a better citizen, and thus contribute more to well being of the society as whole. There have been instances of clear hostility among heads of religious education essentially due to feeling of insecurity or interference with independence and diverse curriculum of their subject. Most such people even thought that religious studies sufficiently paved an ethical and more beneficial way to education of citizenship. (Watson, 2004) Many feel that Citizenship education has too close proximity with subject of Civics, and thus it has even been taken as a waste of time. The concept of citizenship and political studies at secondary stage of schooling have lacked motivational force to give it due integrity. A feeling exists that when religious education also employed open inquiry and discussions, citizenship education has not introduced anything new. Religious education, in fact, also brought about same sensitive issues and particularly motivated people due to its deep roots in people's beliefs. While citizenship education did provide political literacy, religious education helped to handle more challenging and larger issues of life. Some were even hostile to citizenship education since it was perceived as a politically motivated action to improve citizens' ignorance of politics and its proponents, and simply followed western democratic values. On the other hand, religious education looked at larger aspects of life, historical perspectives and was more interesting for the students. However, most people still feel that these two educations dovetail well together because both serve the same purpose of doling out more aware citizens, address global issues of conflict resolution, human rights and mutual respect for each other. (Watson,2004) Benefits & Pitfalls: Religious Education Benefits. Religious education among the populace has many benefits and some pitfalls. Religion continues to be an important influence on most humans. Throughout the history and until today, most humans have been guided by spiritual life in their daily activities. It has also helped them make better sense of the world. In most developed societies too, religion continues to play an important role not only in personal lives of individuals, but also in administration of cities and governance of countries. Most legal documents of today have evolved from the religious scriptures and some communities like Muslims have a separate law for themselves in many countries, which is binding not only in principle, but also in action. Religion also considerably helps to explicate importance attached to certain set of people, structures, places and countries. Religion helps to shape people's values, intentions and reactions to most unsolved universal concepts about living and death, happiness and sadness, war and peace, human sufferings, and the eternal question of right and wrong. Having studied many religions personally, I can say with confidence that all religions teach the same things which is to have compassion for the downtrodden, love for people around you, help for those in need etc. No religion teaches violence, treachery, deceit, harming others and other such evil acts. The fanaticism evident across the spectrum today is nothing else but a product of senseless politicization, self-serving interests and monetary gains of religious entities across the world. Unfortunately, many individuals are known to have actually become atheists or unreligious due to these very factors, which is sad. Religion actually makes a person a nice individual, who contributes much to the society without expecting anything much in return. However, any amount of compulsory religious education will be incomplete if it is limited to only one religion. Religious education should endeavor to be all inclusive, and if that is not possible, the education must include at least basics of all major religions of the world. When taught with fairness and includes all religions to the extent possible, it helps individuals to develop considerate and insightful personalities. They also become more open and respect all other religions as much as their own. Religious discourses become more informed, mature and devoid of any subversion. They learn to respect differences of opinions while maintaining bonhomie. Such education can also form a firm basis which is competent to challenge sectarian and racially prejudiced concepts and mentalities. (Richardson, 2007) In modern world post-911, many people across the world have become anti-Islam. They are all being stereotyped into common thread of terrorism and suffering isolation and humiliation throughout the world. Further, lack of education about their religion among the new generation has further created anti-Muslim bias even among the children. If such education is introduced among children today, they can be expected to become better and more aware citizens in the future with understanding religious sentiments of all such religions which have been viewed with suspicion for decades now. And this awareness shall definitely absolve innocent Muslims of their supposed crime of belonging to a religion, a few fanatics of which have changed the world forever. (Watson, 2004) Pitfalls. Since people belong to varying religious and non-religious beliefs, government sponsored religious education can become a serious source of conflict, especially so, if it encompasses only one religion. In multi-religious countries, serious differences of opinion exist as to whether religious education should form part of the government run school's curriculum or not. People call such curriculums as government sponsorship of a particular religion at the cost of tax-payers' money. Similarly, individuals who do not belong to that religion are sometimes forced to obey the rules which may conflict their own notion of religion or beliefs. Non-conformers in such schools can expect to be secluded out from among their peers for no particular fault of theirs. (Retrieved from http://www.aiglon.ch/rs/page1.shtm) Further, countries whose constitutions guarantee religious freedom to individuals cannot propagate one majority religion compulsorily, while neglecting others. This would amount to spreading a belief without consent. Missionary schools too should include their own religion as an optional subject rather than force it down compulsorily among all students. Religious education in certain religions has often been used to spread religious fanaticism, fundamentalism and to develop irrational and separatist attitudes. This has caused considerable alarms across the world whereby extremist networks have fanned religious sentiments of otherwise moderate citizens and exploited such individuals through unpardonable acts simply to further their own selfish goals of anti-people and anti-religious movements extending beyond international boundaries with disastrous results during the past decades. However, while each aspect has its own benefits and pitfalls, religious education has continued nevertheless, and shall continue to affect our thinking process forever. All religions continue to preach the benevolent aspects of religion and suggest devotion to one's duty in a most faithful way towards overall benefit of the mankind. Religion is still a way of life for most people on this planet, and it can be comfortably stated that most people are good because of values they have emulated from religious texts. Benefits & Pitfalls: Citizenship Education As we know, the history of citizenship education is not as old as religious education. This education has evolved as a necessity of modern times. Lack of awareness among the younger generation about political and democratic structure of the country and widespread immigration of people from diverse countries, cultures, and religions has caused considerable difficulties for the governments to make people emulate culture of their new country. Citizenship training is essentially conducted to make the new generation knowledgeable about the prevalent ethics, customs, politics, social and moral responsibilities as citizens and for their overall community development. These strands normally guide citizenship education curriculum in most countries. Benefits. There are considerable benefits of citizenship education for societies. Prevalent cultures vary considerably in different countries and continents of the world. This education provides for better understanding of legal, human rights and responsibilities of citizens in a particular country or state. It also covers aspects of criminal justice system and its applicability in day to day living. This education also includes raising awareness of the multiplicity of national, regional, religious and cultural identities within the country or a state and the need for increasing mutual respect and understanding among people. This education makes citizens aware of governmental structure of the country, and knowledge of public services offered by them to the people. Opportunities to provide citizens' contribution to public services are also detailed in them. Characteristics and form of governments, and people's rights to elect them are normally covered to improve civic knowledge of people. Community based work groups, voluntary groups and non governmental organizations' contribution to the society is also made known to people. Such awareness improves civics knowledge of people and assists them in future dealings with government organizations. Other aspects directly benefiting individuals include aspects of conflict resolution in a fair and disciplined manner, importance of mass media and its present role in the society, and other political, economic and social implications of a global village also form an important part of the curriculum. As per Crick report (2000), direct benefits of citizenship education are "active and politically-literate citizenry convinced that they can influence government and community affairs at all levels. (QCA, 1998) The report encourages young people to understand citizenship within local and national politics, making greater investment in volunteering, voting and better socio-cultural outlook. The necessity of citizenship education has apparently also evolved due to a fear of lower quality of democratic citizenship. This crisis situation has been frequently reported in scholastic writing and popular media. It has been generally seen that citizens, particularly the young ones, are ignorant of the basic information necessary to live as responsible citizens. They also have a sense of isolation from the political life of their societies which have an awkward image of being dishonest and corrupt, and should be shunned. An agnostic attitude is prevalent among younger people to a certain extent who publicly display anti-social or anti-democratic attributes. Under such situations, knowledge about citizenship education can be expected to arm them with sufficient responsibility and knowledge that they start feeling themselves as part of the system, and eventually join the mainstream and uphold the true values of democracy and modern politics. Pitfalls. There are some minor perceived and certain actual pitfalls of introducing citizenship education in curriculum. Essentially, most people feel this as an extension of Civics subject with a political motivation of indoctrinating young generation into political literacy. While this may be partly true, specific advantages discussed above cannot be wished away easily. Further, resistance from religious heads can be essentially seen as a natural reaction to their reduced curriculum in some ways, and common areas and avoidable repetition which may unnecessarily burden the students. Additionally, Crick Report (2000) does not scrutinize the debatable nature of citizenship education. Citizenship as a concept has been contested throughout the world. Originally, active citizenship meant more work of voluntary nature to slowly moderate public provision as per conservatives while education for citizenship has been confined to moral and legal values. Another conceptualization has insisted on a national identity card due to global citizenship prevalent today. This has also been complicated by increased avenues and speed of global movements of 'people, capital, technology, images of human possibility, and ideals of human solidarity.' (Watson, 2004) One major drawback in Crick's report of citizenship education's relationship with values is not understandable. Controversially, it expects citizenship education should motivate young people to accept shared values so as to avoid 'truancy, vandalism, random violence, premeditated crime and habitual drug-taking' (QCA, 1998,). At the same time, citizenship education encourages people to learn the skills of questioning and analyzing existing values. Accepting an apparently unsocial behavior and at the same time questioning it is not an easy proposition for most. (Watson, 2004) Future of Citizenship and Religious Education Citizenship education needs to be developed in few directions to include knowledge building and redefining the aspects included in citizenship education. The essential education question that needs tackling is as to what kind of education shall help to uphold a diverse and democratic country Collaboration among educational research must involve researchers, policy makers, fundraisers, educators, students, politicians and citizens. A consensus needs to be evolved about the curriculum, and the feeling of duplication with either Civics or religious education must be removed. Mass media can be employed to gather information from all citizens as to what contributes towards citizenship education. Findings of such research must be made available widely to develop evidence based decision-making, contributory policy formulation and well-intentioned curriculum development. (Citizenship Education, 1999) As for religious education in the future, the importance cannot be overstressed. Religious studies have been constantly debated for and against in the modern world. However, there are certain advantages of religious education which cannot be neglected easily. It has been common knowledge that religious studies have immensely helped people to understand fundamental issues in life. Questions like why we are alive and why do good people suffer have often been answered by religions at some point of time before moderators took the better of it out of our lives. The effect and control of religion over the world cannot ever be neglected. Understanding modern world has often been easier for people who try understanding the religious world. Due to insights we are likely to get from religious studies; it is definitely a very valid and important area of study. This is even more so applicable in today's multi-cultural societies. This basic study can go a long way in promoting empathy and tolerance in a violent world frequently torn apart by incidents of crime and terrorism. It is a known fact that after 911 attacks, there was a considerable spurt in the number of church goers not only in the US, but all across the world and religions. Finally, religious beliefs are very valuable in most people's lives. All of us have some kind of belief, and knowledge about beliefs of other people can make us conscious about them so we do not inadvertently hurt them. The important tenet of life remains that there is more to life than what meets the eyes. Slowly, religious awareness can teach us to look beyond the immediate and slowly elevate us into spiritual dimensions of life. (Religious Studies at Aiglon) After removing the duplication, the religious education needs to be restored with confidence such that while a good citizenship education would provide for better citizens, reasonable religious education would give us better human beings in the society, who will uphold centuries old traditions of honesty, spirituality and make better sense of the worldly happenings. There are sufficient indications that religious and citizenship education can become more closely associated in future, not with a view of replacing but complimenting each other. Some religious educators forecast a likely and advantageous merger of citizenship education into religious curriculum. The advantages were essentially in terms of added time for the subject, research funds and improved status among the fraternity. This was especially true where importance for religious education was not up to desired levels. However, regions where religion education holds the requisite status, enthusiasm has not been that forthcoming. (Watson, 2004) Conclusion To bring the debate to a conclusion, it can be said that both religious and citizenship education have their rational basis, and both play an important part to uphold value system of the society and its eventual growth. While religious education handles life's fundamental aspects and attempts to elevate an individual beyond the immediate and changes our perspectives as to what constitutes the world and what is our role in it, citizenship education has been a newer necessity of times seeking motivation for an active and keen participation of the younger generation in political life of a democracy. The society has to grow in such manner that the next generation is not only aware of the mechanism that runs the state, but also attempts to participate in it with responsibility at an early stage to understand the nuances of this job. While it is all fine to talk about corruption and misappropriation prevailing at all levels in politics, someone has to step in and take corrective action too. And people have to be trained for this job too from an earliest possible stage. After all, religious education was the way of life in most early civilizations and this education too facilitated their training for future contribution as leaders of the society. The various anxieties of skeptics regarding stepping into each other's territories have little meaning, and differences can easily be ironed out through simple and honest introspection by educators and policy makers. Any subject that can have a beneficial effect on the functioning of the society in future cannot be unimportant. Both religious as well as citizenship education should be expected to work hand in gloves for considerable time to come. And neither can replace the other completely. Both religious education and citizenship education should continue to form part of our children's curriculum, and in fact, the scope should be widened to cover all major religions of our country and also work towards making our future citizens more responsible, politically literate as well as honest in their dealings. 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