Values, Religions and Education in Changing Societies

Values, Religions and Education in Changing Societies

Karin Sporre · Jan Mannberg Editors

Values, Religions and Education in Changing Societies Foreword by Robert Jackson

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Editors Prof. Dr. Karin Sporre Department of Education Umeå University SE-901 87 Umeå Sweden [email protected]

Dr. Jan Mannberg Department of Education Umeå University SE-901 87 Umeå Sweden [email protected]

ISBN 978-90-481-9627-2 e-ISBN 978-90-481-9628-9 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2010934644 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Foreword

This important book marks a new stage in the increasingly strong Nordic contribution to research and debates concerning religions and education internationally. In focusing on religion in relation to the multicultural nature of societies as a result of migration, and also on questions of gender, the book brings together highly topical local, national and global values issues. The Nordic conference on religious education and values has a history going back to 1977. Since that date, scholars from the Nordic countries have met periodically to share ideas and research findings and to engage in critical debate and discussion. It was my privilege to be a keynote speaker at the conference in Varmaland, Iceland, in 1999 and again in 2007 in Stavanger in Norway. One novel feature of the latest – the 10th – Nordic conference, held in Umeå, Sweden, in 2009, was its inclusion of a number of speakers from Southern Africa, together with guest participants from a wider range of countries and keynote speakers from Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. Again the personal reverberations are strong for me, since I have had the privilege of working with Southern African scholars and researchers in the religion education field since 1994 (e.g., Jackson, 2003) as well as opportunities to work with colleagues on various projects in Europe and North America. There are very good reasons for the particular international broadening of the Nordic conference reflected in this book. Firstly, the editors have strong personal and institutional research links with Southern Africa, and with South African and Namibian scholars. Secondly, there is also important work on the two central conference themes being carried out in other parts of the world; thus significant work conducted by Canadian, German and British scholars, who also have academic links with the conference organisers, was included in the conference and the book. Thirdly, as indicated above, debates about religions and education, which used to be set very much at national and regional levels, are now global. For example, education about religions and beliefs is now an international concern of the United Nations through its Alliance of Civilizations

Robert Jackson: Professor of Education at the University of Warwick, UK, Director of Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit and Professor of Religious Diversity and Education at the European Wergeland Centre, Oslo

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programme. The Alliance of Civilizations clearing house website on Education about Religions and Beliefs links research centres from countries as diverse as Indonesia, India, the USA, South Africa, Turkey and the United Kingdom (see http://www.unaoc.org/content/view/252/224/langenglish/). At the European level, major institutions have also made education about religions and beliefs a major priority, in addition to work already proceeding in values fields, such as education for democratic citizenship, intercultural education and human rights education (including education for gender equality). It is revealing that before 2002 no Council of Europe educational project dealt with the study of religions in public education, because religion was felt to belong to the private sphere. As acknowledged within the Council of Europe, it was the events of September the 11th, 2001, in New York and Washington that provided a wake-up call for those routinely excluding religion from public – including educational – discussion (Jackson, 2010). Thus, in 2002 the Council of Europe launched its first project on teaching about religions in schools. The rationale for this was concerned with the relationship of religion to culture. It was argued that everyone, whether or not they held religious beliefs, must surely appreciate that religion is simply there in the world. It was argued that, regardless of the truth or falsity of religious claims, religion is a part of life and culture and therefore should be understood by all citizens as part of their education. It was on this basis that the Council of Europe launched a project on the study of religions as part of intercultural education. There were several outcomes from the project. One was the publication of a reference book for schools, aimed especially at those countries with little or no study of religions in public education (Keast, 2007). But most importantly, the Committee of Ministers – the Foreign Ministers of all 47 member states – agreed to a policy recommendation that all member states (which of course includes all the Nordic countries) should include the impartial study of religions within the curricula of their schools. The recommendation (Council of Europe, 2008) should be studied closely by educators, policy makers and politicians across Europe. Independently from the Council of Europe, another major international institution concerned with human rights also considered the place of the study of religions and beliefs in public education. This is the Organisation for Security and CoOperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE was founded in the 1970s, and includes as participant states most European countries, plus the USA and Canada – 56 states in total. The security brief of the OSCE includes the human dimension as well as the military/political and economic dimensions; hence it has an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). Along with the Council of Europe, the ODIHR conducted a project to identify principles on which participant states could develop policy and practice for teaching about religions and non-religious beliefs in schools across its enormous geographical region. The result was the publication of a standard-setting document, the Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools, named after the city in which the drafting team first worked on the text, and in recognition of Toledo’s historical role in communication between those of different religions (OSCE, 2007). Again,

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this important document should be studied and used as a tool by educators, policy makers and politicians across Europe and internationally. These policy and standard-setting documents provide a basis for the study of religions in educational institutions across Europe and beyond that is not driven by any theological agenda, but rather relates to human rights, citizenship and intercultural education arguments. However, what the present book does is to move the discussion forward a stage by facing up to concrete issues and challenges generated by inter-religious and intercultural encounter within and between particular societies. In relation to the key themes of religious and ethnic plurality and gender, fundamental questions are raised by contributors to the first part of the book – ‘societal changes posing new questions’ – concerning the following issues: building sustainable democracies; the democratic state’s historical resources for handling diversity (ranging from Lutheran cultural values to the African philosophy of Ubuntu); the concepts of human dignity and social justice; balancing human rights with human responsibilities and duties; dealing with conflicting human rights and values and with gendered aspects of human rights discourse; the individual’s unique identity in relation to identifications with wider groupings, together with the issue of plural identities; tolerance of, respect for and recognition of difference within democratic societies; balancing one’s responsibility to the state as a citizen with one’s responsibility to the planet as a global citizen; and preparing individuals for participation in democratic institutions. The keynote presentations, and the responses to them, provide some powerful discussions of these issues, supported by theoretical reflection and sometimes by empirical research findings. In some contributions, the authors’ deep experience of other countries and cultures also adds to the rich mix of source material. The second part of the book focuses specifically on developments in religious and moral education, with examples from Canada, Sweden and Southern Africa. All the authors, writing from their different national contexts, grapple with the twin aims of increasing understanding of religious and nonreligious worldviews together with moral understanding on the one hand, and of providing opportunities for personal development in relation to these fields on the other. In advocating interdisciplinary worldview study in a higher education leadership programme, the Canadian contribution (from New Brunswick) links the self and the other in a hermeneutical way; knowledge of the self, it is argued, cannot be gained apart from knowledge of the other. In a wide-ranging and pedagogically imaginative course described in the chapter, students combine academic learning with philosophical discussion and dialogue and with direct encounter with people from different religious and worldview backgrounds. It is interesting that in some other provinces of Canada, debates about a balance between curriculum content and personal development and between understanding religions and nonreligious worldviews have also been taking place. For example, Quebec now has its own syllabus for a field of enquiry called ‘ethics and religious culture’ (Gouvernement du Québec, 2007). The Swedish contribution points out that for the past 40 years or so, religious education in Sweden has officially included an exploration of existential – or vital – questions in parallel with the study of religions. However, successive studies have

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indicated that, while young people enjoy the discussion of ‘vital questions’, they still do not enjoy religious education. For various reasons, in the practice of secondary religious education, particular weight still tends to be placed on curriculum content, while in primary RE, and in a new subject of ‘life knowledge’, the emphasis is the other way around. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, and echoing the Canadian contribution in this book, the author argues for approaches, which place the learner and the curriculum in a dialectical relationship to one another – a hermeneutical pedagogy, which has features in common with my own interpretive approach (Jackson, 1997). In the author’s view, the stress on the relationship between teacher, pupil and subject matter in Swedish teacher training can lead to the kind of polarity that Dewey wished to avoid. The author urges respect for both the pupil and the curriculum, but adds that this balance needs to be created with an awareness of and relationship to wider social issues. This is a point made by others, such as Ruth Deakin-Crick in her review of international research on citizenship education (Deakin Crick, 2005), Heid Leganger-Krogstad writing about her own model for religious education developed in Norway (Leganger-Krogstad, 2001), and Bruce Grelle, in suggesting adaptations to the interpretive approach for use in American public education (Grelle, 2006); all of these writers link a balanced exploration of personal issues and subject content to wider – local, national and global – contexts. In the cases of Namibia and South Africa, developments in curriculum content and method have reacted against the apartheid-influenced approaches to religious instruction of former years. In each case, in different ways, a narrow and bigoted form of religious instruction has been replaced by broad studies of religions and ethics, related to life orientation and issues of citizenship. However, important as these developments are, they are less to the front of the educational debate than issues of modernisation, democracy, health, social justice, wealth and poverty, which are still very pressing. Taking the contributions on religious and moral education together, they exhibit some common themes as well as differences. Moreover, all of them illustrate that each recent national policy, as well as drawing on its home-grown resources, is partly influenced and shaped by theory and research generated in other countries or by international teams. The final chapter and third part of the book – ‘Towards the Future’ – moves the discussion in the direction of development education, introducing an emerging African perspective on values in a globalising world. At the very least, this chapter shows the necessity for an understanding of colonial history if we are to move forward with collaborative work between northern and southern countries on values and religions. In conclusion, the book as a whole provides a wealth of international source material for those who need to grapple with issues relating to religions and values in education within pluralistic societies – especially in relation to the issues of plurality and gender. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated on their important contributions to the ongoing debates. Warwick, UK

Robert Jackson

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References Council of Europe. (2008). Recommendation CM/Rec(2008)12 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the dimension of religions and non-religious convictions within intercultural education. Accessed January 13, 2010, from https://wcd.coe.int//ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=CM/ Rec(2008)12&Language=lanEnglish&Ver=original&BackColorInternet=DBDCF2& BackColorIntranet=FDC864&BackColorLogged=FDC864 Deakin Crick, R. (2005, December). Citizenship education and the provision of schooling: A systematic review of evidence. International Journal of Citizenship and Teacher Education, 1(2), 56–75. Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. (2007). Ethics and religious culture elementary. Québec, QC: Gouvernement du Québec. Grelle, B. (2006). Defining and promoting the study of religion in British and American schools. In M. de Souza, K. Engebretson, G. Durka, R. Jackson, & A. McGrady (Eds.), International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions of Education (pp. 461–474). Dordrecht: Springer. Jackson, R. (1997). Religious education: An interpretive approach. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Jackson, R. (Ed.). (2003). International perspectives on citizenship, education and religious diversity. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Jackson, R. (2010). Religious diversity and education for democratic citizenship: The contribution of the Council of Europe. In K. Engebretson, M. de Souza, G. Durka, & L. Gearon (Eds.), International handbook of inter-religious education, Volume 4: Religion, citizenship and human rights. Dordrecht: Springer. Keast, J. (Ed.). (2007). Religious diversity and intercultural education: A reference book for schools. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Leganger-Krogstad, H. (2001). Religious education in a global perspective: A contextual approach. In H.-G. Heimbrock, P. Schreiner, & C. Sheilke (Eds.), Towards religious competence: Diversity as a challenge for education in Europe (pp. 53–73). Hamburg: Lit Verlag. OSCE. (2007). Toledo guiding principles on teaching about religions and beliefs in public schools. Warsaw: Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Accessed January 13, 2010, from http://www.osce.org/item/ 28314.html

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karin Sporre and Jan Mannberg Part I

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Societal Changes Posing New Questions

Scandinavian Democracies Learning Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Erik Amnå Challenges to Building Sustainable Democracies: Lessons from the Margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Catherine A. Odora Hoppers

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Islam in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict? Dan-Paul Jozsa

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Religious Youth in a Secular Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geir Skeie

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Global Citizenship Education and Equality: Gendered Hegemonies, Tensions and a Global Gender Ethic . . . . . . . . . . . . Madeleine Arnot

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What Name Are We? Global Citizenship Education for Whom? . . . . Karin Sporre

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Diversity and Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Denise Zinn and André Keet

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Blind Spots and Privileged Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kerstin von Brömssen

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Part II

Religious and Moral Education in Changing Societies

Worldviews of Today John Valk

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Vital Issues, Worldviews and Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sven Hartman

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Namibia and South Africa as Examples of Religious and Moral Education in Changing Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christo Lombard

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Part III Towards the Future Emerging African Perspectives on Values in a Globalizing World . . . . Catherine A. Odora Hoppers

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Contributors

Erik Amnå Youth & Society (YeS), Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden, [email protected] Madeleine Arnot Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, [email protected] Sven Hartman Department of Education in Humanities and Social Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, [email protected] Dan-Paul Jozsa Georg-Eckert-Institute, Braunschweig, Germany, [email protected] André Keet Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, [email protected] Christo Lombard Department of Religion and Theology, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, [email protected] Jan Mannberg Department of Education, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden, [email protected] Catherine A. Odora Hoppers South African Research Chair in Development Education, University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, South Africa, [email protected] Geir Skeie Faculty of Humanities, Stockholm University, Sweden; University of Stavanger, Norway, [email protected] Karin Sporre Department of Education, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden, [email protected] John Valk Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, [email protected] Kerstin von Brömssen Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, Göteborgs University, Göteborg, Sweden, [email protected] Denise Zinn Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, [email protected] xiii

About the Authors

Amnå, Erik PhD, Professor in political science at Youth & Society (YeS) at Örebro University, Sweden. He is a researcher into democracy with special attention to the development of civic engagement and civil society. Besides involvements in several Swedish and European research projects, he has been engaged by the Swedish Government, for instance as principal secretary of its parliamentary Commission on democracy for the twenty-first century as well as chief investigator on Swedish imam training. Currently he is also president of the national adult study association Bilda, which is set up by protestant free churches, catholic churches and orthodox churches in Sweden. Arnot, Madeleine PhD, is Professor of Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is Deputy Director of the Centre for Education and International Development and International Coordinator of the DfiD funded Youth, Gender and Citizenship project in Africa and South East Asia. She has published extensively on educational issues relating to citizenship, social inequality and social justice. Her recent publications include Educating the gendered citizen: Sociological engagements with national and global agendas (Routledge 2009), Reproducing gender? Essays on educational theory and feminist politics (2002) and (co-edited with S. Fennell) Gender, education and equality in a global context: Conceptual frameworks and policy perspectives (2007). von Brömssen, Kerstin PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her main area of research interest is education with a focus on religions, religious studies and learning, and in a broader perspective transnational children and youth, globalisation and issues of social justice. She has published, for example, “Identity construction and the landscape of cultural negotiations among Muslim Girls in Sweden”, in J. Sempruch, K. Willems and L. Shook (eds.) (2006) Multiple marginalities. An intercultural dialogue on gender in education. Königstein: Ulrike Helmer Verlag and “Reflections on Pupils’ Talk about Religion in Sweden” in M. Carlson, A. Rabo and F. Gök (eds.), (2007) Education in ‘multicultural’ societies. Turkish and Swedish perspectives. Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Transactions, Vol. 18.

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Hartman, Sven PhD, is Professor of Pedagogy and Education at Stockholm University. He has over the years carried out a number of studies concerning children’s thoughts about life. Further he has published several works in the field of philosophy and history of education, especially religious education. Jozsa, Dan-Paul PhD, is currently Researcher in Religious Studies and Islamic Studies at the Georg-Eckert-Institute, Braunschweig. From 2006 to 2009 he was Project leader of the REDCo-project at the University of Münster. Keet, André PhD, qualified as a teacher from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He taught at secondary schools for 9 years and also tutored in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Cape where he completed his Masters Degree in Education (Cum Laude) in 1995. He also completed certificate courses in human rights in Uganda and Denmark in 1997 and 1998. A PhD degree from the University of Pretoria was conferred on him in April 2007. At present he is the Director of Transdisciplinary Programme at the University of Fort Hare, a part-time Commissioner with the Commission for Gender Equality, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria. He teaches in the field of education and human rights at South African and other universities on a visiting basis. Lombard, Christo PhD, started his tertiary teaching career at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in 1975 and after finishing his Masters and Doctorate he moved to Namibia and the University of Namibia (UNAM). He stayed at UNAM for 20 years as Chair of the Department of Religion and Theology, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Director of the Ecumenical Institute for Namibia and Chairperson of the new curricula in Religious and Moral Education in public schools. Since 2005 he is back at UWC, teaching Religion, Theology and Ethics – and recently also elected Chair of the Department. Odora Hoppers, Catherine PhD, holds the South African Research Chair in Development Education at the University of South Africa, Pretoria. She is a UNESCO expert in basic education and lifelong learning, and is a policy specialist to multilateral and bilateral agencies on education, international development, North–South questions, social policy, disarmament, peace, and human security. She has been a resource person to the World Economic Forum and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on private sector innovations, traditional knowledge and community intellectual property rights, benefit sharing and value addition protocols. Skeie, Geir PhD, is Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Stockholm University and associate professor at University of Stavanger, Norway. He teaches religious studies and religious education and his research interests include the politics and philosophy of religious education, with particular emphasis on issues related to modernity, pluralism and identity, and empirical studies of religious education practice.

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Sporre, Karin PhD, is Professor in Educational Work at Umeå University, Sweden. With a background in ethics her more recent educational research has a focus on values in education, where issues of gender and diversity are prominent. Through a decade of cooperation with colleagues in South Africa through exchanges and in research cooperation, issues of democracy and human rights have been studied and researched. Professor Sporre has a strong interest in South–North cooperation and its effects on knowledge. Her publications are as well in Swedish as in English. Karin Sporre was responsible for the 10th Nordic Conference of Religious Education and Values, Umeå University, June 2009. Valk, John PhD, is Associate Professor of Worldview Studies at Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick. He focuses his teaching, research and writing on developing various worldview types and frameworks and on the impact of worldviews on higher education, public policy and leadership studies. His journal articles include: Knowing Self and Others: Worldview Study at Renaissance College; Religion or Worldview: Enhancing Dialogue in the Public Square; A Plural Public School: Religion, Worldviews & Moral Education; Religion and Education: A Way Forward; and Teaching about Religion in the Social Studies Curriculum. Zinn, Denise PhD, is currently Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She started her career as a teacher in secondary schools in Western and Eastern Cape in the 1980s, and was active in community and educational organisations in the antiapartheid liberatory struggle. She studied for her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and was a board member and co-chairperson of the Harvard Educational Review in 1993–1995. She has been involved in teacher education since the mid-1990s, and has taught in the USA, Israel and South African universities. Her research interests include the preparation of teachers for diversity, language issues in education, gender equity in higher education, and humanising pedagogies.

About the Editors

Professor Karin Sporre and Dr Jan Mannberg have worked together at Umeå University since 2006. Sporre has her background in ethics, theology and religious studies, while Mannberg has his in education with an interest for hermeneutics. Both share an interest in international dialogue in research and education. Together with H. Russel Botman, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, Karin Sporre in 2003 edited the book Building a Human Rights Culture: South African and Swedish Perspectives. Sporre has initiated, developed and participated in educational and research exchange between Sweden and South Africa over the last 10 years. Jan Mannberg has, together with Lars Dahlström, edited the book Critical Educational Visions and Practices in Neo-Liberal Times and worked with teacher education in Namibia, 1997–2000. Within the former Department of Teacher Education of Swedish and Social Sciences, Umeå University, Sporre and Mannberg have given academic and administrative leadership, respectively.

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1 Background Societies go through changes. This book focuses primarily on two changes: (a) the fact that many societies through migration have become more multicultural over the last decades; and (b) that the matters of the relationships between women and men, the issues of gender, have also become important over the last decades, or the century. The context, that these changes are brought to have a bearing on in this book, is education – especially religious and values education. The above changes have come to imply that nowadays we find a diversity of identities and conflicting interests of groups or cultures, and that, for example, issues of ethnicity and gender are articulated and expressed in new ways in societal arenas. Value changes occur. Through migration the patterns of religious activities also change. The presence of citizens with more varying religious affiliations and with different understandings of the role religions are to play in society, pose new questions for societies and their citizens to respond to. And gender relations are another area of change. The roles of women and men, or girls and boys, and equity between them have become crucial issues during the latter part of the twentieth century. Nowadays they are also complexly interwoven with issues of ethnicity, social class, race and sexuality and how these are understood and expressed, for example, in educational practices. Issues such as the above are often linked to democracy and human rights, forming crucial challenges to these two important contemporary concepts. Within the academic community, issues like these are researched and discussed. As already stated, the context here is educational. It has also got a particular geographical location. Since 1977 researchers in religious and values education from Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have met regularly. In June 2009 at Umeå University, the Nordic Conference on Religious Education and Values (NCRE) met for the tenth time. What was in the beginning a smaller group of teacher K. Sporre (B) Department of Education, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

1 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_1, 

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educators and researchers with an interest in religious education (RE) has now become a researching community. In June 2009 colleagues from the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and other non-Nordic countries added to the Nordic group. The theme of the conference was Changing Societies – Values, Religions, and Education. What forms this book are the keynote presentations from this conference, and soon the contributions will be introduced. First, however, let us briefly comment upon the composition of keynote speakers and consequently authors of the book. The choice of keynote speakers obviously rested with us as planners responsible for the conference. Some might find it a bit unexpected that we have several keynotes from South Africa. This has a specific background. In the life of our academic department we have come to develop considerable relationships with South African colleagues. This builds on earlier work and activities for both of us, the editors of this book. Professor Karin Sporre has since the year 2000 initiated, led and participated in extensive exchange of students and staff as well as research cooperation between Sweden and South Africa. Dr. Jan Mannberg, Head of Department, has been actively working with the development of teacher education in Namibia (1997–2000) and also on other international projects. We have found it to be of utmost importance for students, staff and researchers in educational academic contexts to have strong relationships outside their own country, and so we have developed cooperation with South African colleagues. This has been done partly through a reciprocal exchange of students and staff, the Swedish Linnaeus-Palme program. Various kinds of research cooperation has developed from out of such cooperations. In addition to these reasons and arguments for the presence of South African keynotes the conference theme itself, Changing Societies – Values, Religions, and Education, could clearly draw on experiences from South Africa, which with its eleven official languages represents considerable diversity in a country having gone through remarkable societal change in the past decades. However, not all our keynote invitations could be understood through links between Sweden and South Africa. Given the theme issues of a more multireligious situation in Europe and in the Western world in general also made us invite researchers with special contributions related to these issues from Germany and Canada. The special capacity in her field also brought a gender researcher from Great Britain to the conference. Within the circle of Nordic researchers we then found further keynotes as well as people who could contribute as respondents to the keynote lecturers. Through this format with keynotes and respondents, we wanted to create an enriching discussion where the responses could articulate a different perspective, add some more material for further thought, critique and so develop the themes discussed. We will soon move into a more detailed description of the content of this book but before doing so we would like to mention that we have received support from The Swedish Research Council, The Committee for Educational Sciences as well as Umeå University and Umeå School of Education for which we are very grateful. This support was necessary for the success of the conference as well as the

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keynote contributions to this book. We also want to thank our colleagues Dr. Hanna Zipernovszky, Mr Lennart Spolander, Professor Sven G. Hartman, Professor Geir Skeie and Dr. Gudrun Svedberg for their support in different ways to the conference. It was most valuable.

2 The Book and Its Content What changes have the Scandinavian countries gone through over the last centuries and what conditions has this created for coping with a more diverse cultural and religious societal situation? This question is dealt with by political scientist Erik Amnå in the chapter Scandinavian Democracies Learning Diversity. From Socialisation among Lutherans to Training of Imams. The chapter opens the first section of the book called Societal changes posing new questions where four keynote lectures are followed by responses to them. In his contribution Amnå gives a historical overview pointing to Lutheran cultural values and state-individualistic orientations. Further, he discusses as a case the Swedish concrete political educational issue, recently dealt with, namely the question of whether the state should fund the education of imams or not. After having discussed this, Amnå concludes by proposing a few principles for the handling of diversity in a welfare state that treats its citizens alike. In doing this Amnå also suggests that those involved in developing democracy in Scandinavian countries learn from others, those more experienced in the handling of diversity. The response to Amnå’s contribution has the title Challenges to Building Sustainable Democracies – Lessons from the Margins. The author is Catherine Odora Hoppers, professor in development education. In her response Odora Hoppers first discusses whether democratic systems build a democratic culture or not. Do they regard all human beings as citizens alike? Do they prepare all citizens for participation in democratic institutions? Further on Odora Hoppers draws attention to how the discourse on rights has limitations in that rights can be conflicting, and that a discussion of rights without at the same time actualizing duties does not work. Odora Hoppers then introduces the philosophy of Ubuntu in contrast to contemporary liberal democracies. She concludes with an open question as to what Sweden could learn from South Africa. The second keynote lecturer deals with Islam in education and reports from a comprehensive European study, Religion in Education – a Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in Transforming Societies of European Countries (abbreviated as REDCo). In the chapter Islam in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict? Dan-Paul Jozsa presents an overview of the findings. He focuses on issues like the role of religion in pupils’ lives, their beliefs and views on the role of religions in school and society. He does so contrasting the views of Muslim pupils to the views of Christian pupils, or pupils with no religion. In summarizing he concludes that religion is not a factor of conflict for the studied pupils for several reasons. Further, issues of religion are avoided by the students. When comparisons

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are made the studied pupils in England, relative to other pupils, consider their model of religious education to give them better knowledge of religions and more respect for adherents of religions, this regardless of the confessional or non-confessional background of the pupils. In Religious Youth in a Secular Culture Geir Skeie, Norway, responds to Jozsa’s lecture. Skeie does so as a fellow researcher in the REDCo-project and reflects from the point of view of the results of the Norwegian study with the purpose of giving a reflection valid for Scandinavia. First, he reflects on the relationship to religion of people of the 14–16 years old age group; how formal or informal is their relationship? Further, among other issues Skeie discusses the findings of the REDCo-project in terms of homogeneity and heterogeneity in relation to majority and minority groups, and this in relation to the self-understanding of the pupils on an individual and collective level. This is of importance for the interpretation of the results. In concluding, Skeie points out that broad religious education, as in England and Norway, seems to foster knowledge about and respect for (other) religions. The third theme to be discussed deals with gender and education, put in the context of global citizenship education. Madeleine Arnot, in her chapter Global Citizenship Education and Equality: Gendered Hegemonies, Tensions and a Global Gender Ethic, addresses these issues. She starts by pointing to how a global citizenship education with a focus on power can open to young people of today an agenda where global inequalities are studied. In relation to this she warns of the male hegemonic aspects of the human rights discourse. She further discusses how to rethink gender from a Southern perspective and also brings in critical voices against a Northern gender hegemony. In concluding, Arnot summarizes by saying that her account of a global citizenship education promoting gender equality has the purpose of opening up debates on gender equality from a global educational perspective. In her response What Name Are We? Global Citizenship Education for Whom? Karin Sporre addresses the issues of joint knowledge production in a global world. The place where we are located/situated forms the condition for our knowing and thus also our relationship to the world. Accordingly global citizenship education takes different shapes and forms, and responsible knowing is a challenge. When Sporre exemplifies and discusses possible content she draws on South African sources as well as feminist philosophers and theologians from elsewhere. She concludes with the concept of human dignity and a challenge to RE researchers and educators to further develop gender as a perspective. With their chapter Diversity and Teacher Education – Explorations of a Social Justice Framework Denise Zinn and André Keet open up a fourth theme. In their contribution Zinn and Keet start by linking the concept of diversity to social justice. In their chapter they analyze anew findings from an earlier study whereby different ways of understanding diversity are put into a new analytical framework, using a structural, cultural and personal level – an analytical scheme that they develop. The chapter draws on theoretical work by Derrida. It puts diversity in a context of socio-economic inequalities. The authors’ purpose is to contribute towards new

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frameworks for investigating diversity in education and to show how the suggested frameworks could be used. In Blind Spots and Privileged Places Kerstin von Brömssen responds to Zinn and Keet’s contribution. She starts by pointing to how they situate their discussion on diversity and teacher education in relation to social justice – a timely and crucial positioning. Thereafter von Brömssen reflects on and discusses different understandings of the concepts of, for example, multiculturalism and diversity. Further she reflects on critical pedagogy, and endorses anew the way the focus on social justice brings new aspects into the discussion of diversity and teacher education. Kerstin von Brömssen concludes with an open question as to whose interests are served even in the use of the concept of social justice. In the second part of the book, Religious and Moral Education in Changing Societies, contributions from Canada, Sweden and South Africa/Namibia are brought together. With one example from higher education on how to deal with issues of plurality; one reflection on how existential issues came to be handled within RE over the last decades; and one contribution analyzing curriculum development in two changing societies, a considerable variety is exposed. What turns out to be of interest, however, is that in spite of such variety several underlying themes coincide. In the last of these contributions the dialogue becomes explicit. Let us now elaborate a little on the single contributions. In Worldviews of Today: Teaching for Dialogue and Mutual Understanding, John Valk, Canada, presents a model of teaching which is inclusive of both religious and secular perspectives. He does so against a background of secularism within higher academic learning whereby a secular worldview could operate as neutral. The method and the curriculum of the model Valk proposes opens up a way for different worldviews, religions included, to be actually studied and understood in dialogue. This model opens up to students’ possibilities of understanding worldviews of today: one’s own, those of others and those that are operating in the public sphere. The theoretical and empirical background to a change in the Swedish RE curriculum in 1969 is discussed by Sven Hartman in Vital Issues, Worldviews and Religions: Challenges to Religious Education Today. The change represented a break away from a tradition-transmitting pedagogy with a content focus, to a pupil oriented curriculum with an emphasis on the existential issues of pupils. This new emphasis could be called ‘Lebensfrage-pädagogik’, or ‘Vital-issues centred education’. In his contribution Hartman analyzes the curriculum change against the scientific support that it had, and puts it in relation to general pedagogical theories. In concluding he argues for space both for the child/young person and the curriculum, both the questions of the child and the traditions. Namibia and South Africa as Examples of Religious and Moral Education in Changing Societies is the title of the contribution by Christo Lombard. In the chapter Lombard shows how Namibia and South Africa have dealt with the changes from a Christian confessional based curriculum (for primary and secondary school), to one where worldview issues and values education have ample space. Simultaneously, Lombard compares the development in these two countries with aspects coming

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to the fore in the contributions of Valk and Hartman, thus engaging in dialogue. Lombard’s text is further anchored in the contemporary political development of the countries. He concludes with and reflects on an example of religious and ethics teaching at tertiary level. In the third and concluding part of the book, Towards the Future, a contribution by Catherine Odora Hoppers has found its place. The conference theme Changing Societies – Values, Religions, and Education, with its mention of values triggered her to think ahead and push the issues further. This she does in Emerging African Perspectives on Values in a Globalizing World where Odora Hoppers positions herself in an African context when she approaches values and human rights. She thoroughly critiques the colonial history of the West and points to abuses, both historical and contemporary. She also brings the years of apartheid and its guiding logic into the picture, contrasted to Ubuntu and restorative justice as examples of a different way of thinking. What Odora Hoppers brings out as a challenge for the future where tough tasks await is a shared commitment to what it means to be human. This is where this book ends. Before concluding this introduction we want to thank our colleagues who have contributed their research, their thoughts and their passion. Thank you each and every one!

Part I

Societal Changes Posing New Questions

Scandinavian Democracies Learning Diversity From Socialisation Between Lutherans to Training of Imams Erik Amnå

1 Introduction In a recent Swedish dissertation in political science, the young author raises this particular question: “Is there a limit to how much diversity democracy can sustain?. . . How diverse, in terms of values, life styles and identities, can the population in a society be without negative effects on democracy?” (Johansson Heinö, 2009, p. 253). To many this may sound naïve and confused. Nonetheless, it does reflect growing senses of uncertainty and fear among citizens as well as among political leaders and intellectuals in Europe at large as well as in Sweden. For a couple of decades cultural and religious diversity has been a new dimension in various innovations to improve the qualities of democracy. Lots of projects to more or less desperately engineer democracy by efforts are funded by leaders all over Europe (Amnå, 2010). Dialogue, discussion and deliberation have become catchwords used by those at the top in order to engage those at the bottom whose distrust in representative democracy needs to be overcome to guarantee the political system’s stability. Safety politics seems to have become a policy area. It illustrates a return of public concern to a very basic capacity of a welfare state to combat violence and crime in public spaces. In the light of threatening globalisation all forces have to be mobilised, not least at the local level in all-including governance networks of partners from state, market and civil society. The European Parliament election in June 2009 reminded us that the Cosmopolitan Europe project has a severe lack of legitimacy among large parts of European society. When xenophobic political parties in several European societies have convincingly demonstrated their capacity to attract so many citizens’ votes, neo-tribalism seems to be treated as an alternative in all seriousness. In territories of low economic growth men with little education especially seem to listen to populist messages sent by xenophobic political organisations.

E. Amnå (B) Youth & Society (YeS), Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

9 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_2, 

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This is exactly what is so confusing: We know for sure from comparative studies of democratisation that national homogeneity and common identity are among the most crucial conditions for a sustainable democracy. Sweden has been equivalent with the demos as well as with the ethnos. It is not by chance that some of the strongest democracies in the world are to be found among the nationally most homogenous. It sounds paradoxical that “while national homogeneity is an important social good, the ideas and policies which create it, such as nationalism and assimilation, are dismissed as harmful and bad” (Johansson Heinö, 2009, p. 254). Undoubtedly, all Scandinavian democracies have been founded on very homogenous identities. Norwegians, Danes and Swedes are hard to divide internally in terms of civic values and political behaviour. From an international point of view their three democracies still stand out as being extraordinarily strong. Historically, they have consisted of an engaged, participatory and fairly equal citizenry organised in national political parties and/or national voluntary association through which a remarkable gender balance has been continuously developed and also formally achieved (Amnå, 2006a). However, even they have been hit by so-called postpolitical processes – de-politicisation as well as politicisation. While the first process entails a weakened centrality of state and government institutions in guaranteeing citizen rights and resource allocation, the latter deals with the transfer of political responsibilities to market and civil arenas and actors. For the first time in their 80–100 years of history, Scandinavian democracies now really have to deal with domestic cultural diversities challenging their predominantly Lutheran frame of reference. It is noteworthy that multiculturalism has not been forced upon us by foreign powers. Sweden in particular has deliberately committed itself to respond to global processes of migration through fairly generous policies towards refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as from former Yugoslavia. Therefore, today one out of five Swedes has a foreign background. However, I am not convinced that we have either experience or fantasy enough to anticipate the far-reaching consequences. It is true that we are known for being a principally tolerant people. But for the first time we now have to learn to live tolerance in our everyday life contexts. We are confused and ambivalent. I therefore want to discuss whether the claimed causes behind our historical democratic successes can be developed in order to handle current challenges in Scandinavian democracies when it comes to ways in which citizens socialise into a remarkably sustainable and coherent political project.

2 The Lutheran State Church History Swedish democracy is regarded as one of the strongest contemporary democracies in the world.1 The Swedish welfare state is frequently rated as comparatively efficient 1 When

the Economist in 2006 ranked the world’s nation-state democracies by about 60 criteria, Sweden was found to be best – ‘an almost perfect democracy’. In one category, however, it did

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and uncorrupted. That it also serves the most rational-secular citizens in the world should not, however, hide its history of frequent ideological contestations that still put its religious neutrality to the test. From the protestant reformation movement led by King Gustav Vasa in the sixteenth century, the most influential ideological partner of the Swedish state has been the evangelical Lutheran church. For more than four centuries the Swedish population was forced not only to belong to it but also to regularly participate in its services. Swedish citizenship was united with Christian confession through baptism and confirmation. The religious acts not only had a religious function but were indeed a true rite de passage. It was an arena for communicating events, laws and news in public. In addition, at the local level the church was a basic provider of social care, education and health service under the priests’ supervision. In 1862, parishes and municipalities were separated. At the national political level, the clergy was one of the four estates in the parliament until 1864 (Bäckström, Edgardh Beckman, & Pettersson, 2004). From the mid-nineteenth century societal changes rapidly started to decouple the citizenry from church authority. Thanks to parish registers from 1749 onwards, now filed in a demographic database, we can be very precise about even the very date of the changes. State and church as well as parish and municipality were closely unified as late as the 1850s. As late as 1863 between 80 and 90% of the population in a Swedish city participated in the communion according to the law. In the 1880s less than 5% took part, partly because they had to take part. Priest-less religious activities in civil society, in homes as well as elsewhere outside state churches buildings, were prohibited until 1858. Urbanisation itself can explain part of the radical shift. Through that, popular movements were organised in favour of individual freedom such as the revivalist movement, the temperance movement and the labour movement. Among men and women as well as among young and old people, new patterns and attitudes were established. It happened first among coastal industrial workers. Half a century later inland farmers also showed signs of breaking from family based communitarian ideas to more individualistic liberal ones (Bäckström et al., 2004). If the agrarian culture can be seen as a church-and-family based collectivistic ideology, industrialisation left room for the welfare state to take over as principal actor guaranteeing welfare and social security. Somewhat paradoxically though, it simultaneously promoted a more individualistic ideology; through the by-pass of the family as a basic societal unit it established a primary relationship between individuals and the state. A Swedish citizen should not rely on relatives for his or her welfare. A vertical dependency on a universal state was preferable to dependencies on unevenly distributed family resources (Berggren & Trägårdh, 2006). The impartial welfare state promised to release its citizens from their capricious horizontal networks. However, to be able to fulfil that mission, the state too had to be released from not score full; due to the long and close state–church relationship its trustworthiness concerning religious freedom could be questioned – an evaluation that certainly does not go in harmony with the collective self-understanding as being the most secular citizenry in the world.

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its conservative framing of bourgeois-dominated bureaucracies and agencies. The winning left alliance of liberals and social democrats regarded a public sector under democratic control and financed by a progressive tax system as the key for receiving trustworthiness and legitimacy in welfare state formation. The church was forced to choose to either preserve itself as an ideological container for collectivism or develop into a more individualistic ideological project. In parallel with the political hegemony built around the Folkhem (People’s Home) metaphor a theological, collectivistic low-church programme was launched. It stressed the relationship between church and people by protesting against the individual’s relation to the church. It was not, however, a simple continuation of the old state church project that was suggested. Nor was an associational, sect-like church influenced by Free Churches desired. Instead, the bishops in particular argued for a closer relationship to the modern democratic society necessitating independence from the state as well as individual freedom to exit (Thidevall, 2000). Instead of complying with the bishops’ wish to release the church from the state into a civil society actor, the Swedish parliament chose to keep it under its control. Moreover, in 1930 it was explicitly designed as a public ecclesiastical authority. During these years, some of the most formative years of the welfare state’s ideological development, the Swedish political parties decided to take care of church affairs themselves through general elections. In other words, the priests’ function as public officials was enforced, while the voluntary, woman-dominated work was marginalised and organised in independent associations without a formal position in the church (Bäckström et al., 2004). The political parties’ control of the church can be seen as an insight into its ideological importance. A separation of church membership from state citizenship may have jeopardised the ethnically based national community. What is more, independence might have also triggered activities in conflict with the welfare state project. Therefore, to equalise the parishes with the civic municipality meant that they were forbidden to compete with municipal services, since two different public authorities must not impose taxes for similar activities (Bäckström et al., 2004). At the same time as the so-called negative principle of freedom of religion was established in 1951, a series of governmental commissions started to investigate the legal and practical conditions for a church–state separation. Not until 1994 was a parliamentary decision taken that at last enabled a separation in the year 2000. The ending of a remarkably sustainable partnership now forces the church to redefine itself. This has to be done in a cultural context where religion is no longer synonymous with either The Church or even Christian communions. Moreover, it has to be done in a political setting where well-recognised measures and priorities of the welfare state cannot be taken for granted. In order to understand the politicians’ seizure of power, one has to bear in mind the wider context in which it could take place. For some in the first generation of social democrats combating the church was seen as a vital part of combating conservatism in a class struggle perspective. More moderate party people, whose footprints were visible in the first party programme from 1882, declared their utmost intention to completely separate state and church because religion ought to be a matter

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of privacy. In the same wording as the German Gotha Party programme of 1875 and the Danish Gimle Programme of 1876, the Swedish social democrats defended the idea of an undenominational state power in combination with sending religion outside politics. A third faction tried to identify socialism as original and radical Christianity, thereby inviting even conservative groups interested in developing social reformism (Tingsten, 1941). At the outset, the social democratic debate was characterised by a widespread anti-clericalism mixed with anti-religious as well as atheistic ideas rooted in a strong positivistic and anti-metaphysic position among the pioneering leadership. However, its spiteful critique of religion as such was voted down at the constituting party congress in 1889. Subsequently a more fatalistic standpoint started to grow, in line with historic materialistic perspectives about a withering away of religion as an ideological superstructure concurrently with the collapse of capitalism (Hessler, 1964). The ideological shift towards a more tolerant position can probably be seen as a result of influence from Germany and Wilhelm Liebknecht. Principles were modified due to tactical calculations. All of a sudden a partly new light was thrown on the issue. Young socialists’ suggestions to fight against religion were repeatedly rejected. Instead an idea launched by the prominent economist Knut Wicksell had greater success; before the church was separated from the state, it ought to be reformed in order to better serve contemporary societal needs. In other ways, the church was reinterpreted from being a problem to offering a solution. Such ideas about an inclusion of the church in the political project of Swedish social democracy went along with some priests’ liberal theological orientation towards its social ideas. One of the most influential defenders of such a joint partnership in social affairs was the Archbishop Nathan Söderblom (1866– 1931) – an incoming leader in the international ecumenical movement of the 1910s and 1920s. However, Marxists, like Arthur Engberg, continued to argue in favour of the abolition of the church while at the same time believing that a reformed state church could be used for spreading a new outlook of life in harmony with Marxist ideology. Interestingly enough Engberg and others at the beginning of the 1920s started to reformulate their critique of religion substantially; through its church the state could secularise the people. Controlling the priests’ education became a cornerstone. The church could be seen as an integral part of the public sector under the rule of the state as well as of its head of state, the King (Hessler, 1964). In sum, the early social democratic party did have troubles with the evangelical Lutheran state church, basically because its ideas seemed to be in sharp conflict with socialism. On the one hand, from a principle point of view it was of course hardly impossible to defend a state-owned religious apparatus, whose ideas could threaten the spread of socialism. To keep it within the state could be contraproductive. From a strategic point of view, the social democrats had doubts about their own ideological capacity to defeat the popular legitimacy of the church. Many leading members were indeed afraid of having a strong, nationwide and resourceful civil society beyond state control. Making a virtue of necessity, the party therefore, for decades decided to keep it under state control. Even within its own party an organisation of Christian socialists (Broderskapsrörelsen, Brotherhood Movement) was

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established in 1929 and gradually recognised, at least as a useful tool to compete with conservatively oriented priests and free churches. To about the same extent as the labour movement and the temperance movement, the protestant Free Church movement has generally been regarded as a forerunner of the democratic breakthrough in the late decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. In this light its independence as well as its democratic formal structures have been of particular importance. At the micro level, the free churches have been praised and supported due to their socialising capacities, as ‘schools of democracy’, as indicated by the fact that their non-formal adult education institutions – folkhögskolor and study circles – were equalised after World War II with corresponding public schools that were run by county councils. In line with widespread, hegemonic statist scepticism about intrinsic values of civil societies, their instrumental values have been acknowledged. It may stand out as a historical irony, that the Free Church movement’s struggle for the individual’s right to interpret the Scriptures – beyond the grasp of the clergy – helped to deliberate a secular reorientation of Swedish citizenship. Together with the universal school system it helped to empower the citizens. The anti-authoritarian value orientation of contemporary Swedes appears to be anchored in deep historical traditions of civil society and educational systems that succeeded in combining individualism, associational autonomy and state-friendly attitudes (Cf. Berggren & Trägårdh, 2006). The major Lutheran church at least until its formal separation from the state in the year 2000 has indeed regarded itself, acted and been valued by citizens as an integral part of the nation-state under widespread public trust. Hence, to a great extent the proud record of Nordic democracy has been achieved without any severe tests in terms of either war or conflict solving with other fellow citizens, those looking like your own reflection. The Lutheran heritage has been embedded and hidden, although crucial factors behind the expansion of the welfare state, not least due to its strong local parishes, can be seen as forerunners of local municipalities. Somewhat ironically, the expansion was not only partly meant to make the churches’ social activities unnecessary but also to get rid of religious beliefs as such. In both respects, the social democratic project undoubtedly seems to have failed, so far. For sure, Swedes belong to churches to a lessening extent, but they are still believers. In addition, individually as well as organisationally they are now welcomed back for backing up a welfare state under stricter global limitation. Members are not needed at the same time as membership is becoming less attractive. But volunteers, especially unpaid women, need to be recruited. And local congregations are invited as members of governance networks in local social political projects (Amnå, 2006b). In other words, the religious factor is far from marginal in Swedish politics. Globalisation processes as well as the internal transformation of the welfare state and the churches are among the structural forces promoting a renaissance of religiosity, although under new conditions. In terms of political ideology, this seems to, and maybe has to, take place in a vacuum since the welfare state is doomed to stand away from religion.

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3 A Contested Civic Culture What mechanisms and processes can then explain the undoubtedly strong civic culture of solidarity, engagement and participation? In many respects, citizens of the Nordic countries generally show the highest levels of political participation in most modes (Teorell, Torcal, & Montero, 2007). For instance, Nordic adults are relatively active citizens in voting and party membership and also in associational involvement. Political scientists have put forward various explanations for this pattern. Nordic citizens are said to be more politically motivated, have more political resources and have stronger participatory norms than others, partly depending on a long tradition of democracy (Andersen & Hoff, 2001). Ironically though, Swedish scholars, through the ages, have been remarkably uninterested in this particular feature of our national identities. Indeed, it illustrates my point: Our political identity is so merged with our religious identity that we do not discover the religious component of Swedish citizenship. In comparison with our national context, young Swedish adolescents’ activities or membership of religious organisations seemed to lack political markers or meanings, while in the United States the same activities and memberships appeared to contain significant civic and political meanings (Amnå, 2007). In Sweden, we are just waking up to an awareness of a new context of a globally anchored multiculturalism. Slowly we realise how Christian we are, at the same time as we are said to be one of the most secular people in the world. A recent study of political opinion and religiosity claims not only to manifest that religious heritage affects political opinion but also to, particularly, the cognitive processes linked to “religiosity affects the political opinion of the individual” (Hagevi, 2009, p. 360). Moreover, we gradually understand that the secular individualism we ‘love to hate’ is a result of a religious mobilisation. Therefore, it is paradoxical but logical that the organisations that have contained these very values now have severe difficulties surviving (Vogel, Amnå, Munck, & Häll, 2003). In this situation some Christian civil society organisations become and act remarkably ambivalent. For instance, Swedish university chaplains can give examples of how afraid they are to speak out and articulate their religious beliefs in public, some of them having been sharply instructed to loyally serve the public with social assistance and personal counselling in crisis management but to keep quiet about the rest, whatever it may be. In contemporary politics we see tendencies of a growing religious awareness. At the top, the prime minister humiliates the Christian leadership by saying ‘no’ to upholding a firm tradition of regular meetings with the Christian leadership. And Church leaders start to raise their voices in protest when it comes to the harsh treatment of asylum seekers but more often concerning family law and gender issues. At the bottom, frightened municipal political leaders are on the one hand asking how to find and cope with the progressive Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic civil society leaders but marginalising those religious leaders who appear to undermine or even combat values of equality, equity and state–church division. Politicians who

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for decades saw themselves as natural leaders of their local communities are now challenged by leaders who are the very first people most refugees connect with on their arrival. In addition, from having been sovereign controllers of extensive municipal taxes, they now sometimes have to hand over tax payers’ money to confessional schools, due to international conventions promoting parental – not children’s – rights. A religious diverse globalisation invades neighbourhoods that were until recently culturally homogenous municipalities. Several of the politicians have to do it in sharp contrast to their political knowledge and conviction that universal welfare institutions are superior to particularistic ones. Moreover, in a situation of high unemployment local politicians work hard to manage ensuring fair treatment and tolerance. This particular mission has to be executed without triggering Islamophobic movements that are already represented in many municipal assemblies. These are now preparing their entrance into the Swedish Parliament after decades of mobilisation in particularly civil societies in territories of poor economic growth. The established politicians’ anxieties can be summarised in the question raised by the French social thinker Alain Touraine (1997): “How are we to escape the worrying choice between an illusory globalisation that ignores cultural diversity and the disturbing reality of introverted communities?” In other words, religion in Sweden per se can no longer be assumed to be without any distinctive political meaning. To my understanding, it exposes how our collective self-understanding is lagging behind concerning religious awareness.

4 State Individualistic Values Some scholars put the relatively participatory democracy of the Nordic countries in relation to specific cultural factors, such as strong emancipative and tolerant values resulting from socioeconomic development (Ingelhart & Welzel, 2005). And indeed, the global value map indicates that Scandinavian values are rather exceptional in the way they combine high levels of self-realisation with as high values of secular-rational values. This is not to ignore that we have had, and for sure do have, clashes around values that we cannot summarise as belonging to the general right–left controversy. The Sami people of Scandinavia may argue that they in particular have been forced to pay a high price in a societal development so intimately associated with a Lutheran nation-state project (Lantto & Mörkenstam, 2008). In one way, one might conclude that democracy has succeeded in fostering citizens on the one hand remarkably disloyal towards authorities they have not chosen themselves and, on the other hand, citizens commissioned to use their trained critical methods to question even the most legitimate power holder. At the same time, we have to bear in mind that democracy not only requires citizens who are tolerant and impartial towards people and ideas that differ from their own; it also needs citizens willing to hand over discretionary power to others, even if it would be taken back later. It is not to wonder about why the offspring of the generation of democratic

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pioneers have worse problem than their parents and grandparents in trusting their representatives. Still, however, Scandinavians more than most other citizenries still trust their leaders as well as their states. They still have great and positive expectations of government action. As strange as it may sound, a big state is their guarantee of freedom and safety (Berggren & Trägårdh, 2006). The state rescues the citizen from social bonds threatening their self-expression projects. Finally, as has been indicated above, a relatively extensive participation could simply reflect an, at least until recently, absence of ethnic diversity. Heterogeneity has been held to be harmful for a factor close to participation, namely interpersonal trust (Stolle, Soroka, & Johnston, 2008).

5 General Institutional Policies What Scandinavian welfare democracies have learned from their experiences might be broadly summarised into three general policy recommendations. (1) Socioeconomic equality. Scandinavian countries are known for high standards regarding socioeconomic equality. In its turn this has led them to strong performances in many other policy areas. In general, societies with big differences in income are doing worse in the areas of public health, mental illness, child mortality, HIV/AIDS, social problems and criminality. It does not seem to be the absolute level of prosperity or GNP that counts but the distribution of it. Moreover, in these societies even the rich are suffering from the unequal distribution in terms of stress. Many people become losers. Moreover, interestingly enough, a recent study has confirmed earlier findings stating that equality promotes trust, not the other way around (Wilkinson & Picket, 2009). (2) Associational life and good governance. Talking about trust, when trying to explain the civic culture of Sweden, many have pointed to Scandinavians’ substantial amount of social capital. There seem to be comparatively high levels of interpersonal trust between fellow citizens – among adults as well as among adolescents (Amnå, 2007). Scholars are arguing about how the amount of social capital can be explained. Where does it come from? How is it developed? One group of researchers are assuming that it is mainly gained from activities as associational members in football clubs or church choirs or from community networks promoting interpersonal trust and values of tolerance by face-to-face communication (Putnam, 2002). Others question this approach, arguing that social capital is developed the other way around. More precisely, it is not primarily the quality of the people, their networks or their civil societies that matters but the quality of governmental institutions. They stress the importance of having a fairly uncorrupted public sector (Rothstein & Stolle, 2008). If you have trustworthy civil servants, you also will trust your fellow citizens.

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(3) Civic education. Several international scholars trying to find the reason behind Scandinavian successes in terms of political participation often draw attention to the systems of civic education in both the general schools and the voluntary forms of education such as the folk high schools and study circles arranged by the old popular associations such as the labour movement and the Free Church movement (Milner, 2002). I have to admit that I am worried about the growth of particularly private schools, deliberately based on confessional identities that basically question the secular character of the state. For sure, I know this development deliberately can be seen as an outcome of international conventions promoting parent’s (nota bene, not their children’s) rights. Undoubtedly, it put our major socialisation processes under extraordinary pressure. One issue now calling for our multidisciplinary attention is whether these very mechanisms will operate as positively in as multicultural a setting as they have.

6 Specific Policies – The Case of a Swedish Imam Training Even though the state should be neutral in confessional matters, the state should not be without specific values. For example, democracy, equality and freedom are values defended and supported by the state and all institutions in Sweden should support the common values that constitute the foundation of Swedish society. As a case in point, I would therefore like to discuss a current case in educational politics. I will shortly illustrate how cultural diversity is handled in contemporary policy-making processes in Sweden. In 2008, I was commissioned by the Swedish government to investigate the need for an education programme for imams working in Sweden. A growing number of Swedes now have a Muslim cultural background and Islam is numerically the second largest religion. Due to international development (especially terrorism in the name of Islam) and internal debates, Muslim groups had approached the government and asked them to set up a training programme that could help Muslim religious leaders to work for integration and peace with the rest of the society. Like all Swedes, Muslims should have equal rights and opportunities to practice their religion, but they also have responsibilities. To investigate the need for and the support for a Swedish imam training programme the inquiry was asked to (a) map and analyse the need for an educational programme for imams in Sweden that various Muslim groups/organisations articulate, (b) investigate what kinds of education the imams are asking for and what kinds of subjects and skills they need in order to improve their work in Sweden, (c) find out if the Swedish educational system can meet the requests raised by the imams and (d) analyse and describe how other countries in Europe have responded to and solved the issue of training programmes for imams. In my final governmental report (SOU, 2009:52), it was initially shown that Sweden today could be characterised as a multireligious and multicultural country

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where most religious traditions are present in the largest cities. Approximately 20% of the population is born outside Sweden or have a parent who has immigrated to Sweden. However, it is important to stress that the large majority of people from a Muslim cultural background are not expressing a strong religious belief. Quite the contrary, many of them are secular or atheist. Hence, it is not possible to view Islam and Muslims as a homogeneous community that speaks with one voice. A large number of Muslim institutions have been set up to facilitate religious, social, cultural and linguistic services to the heterogeneous Muslim community of Sweden. The imams are providing both religious and social services and they have taken on new roles and functions as the society is changing. Even though most imams have been in Sweden for a long period and have undertaken language courses in Swedish, the imams still ask for more training in the Swedish language, history and political science. Concerning their labour conditions, most of them hold other kinds of occupations besides their religious duties. It is also clear that the imams are not asking for a confessional religious education in Islam. Even though the majority are positive to the set-up of a Swedish training programme for imams it is clear that the legitimacy for such an initiative is uncertain and the incentives are generally weak, due to lack of resources and career options in the congregations. Most religious organisations organised by immigrants suffer from similar problems. Muslims should not be treated as an exception or a unique case. It may be worthwhile to look at the history of the non-Lutheran congregations in Sweden. After several decades of internal financing, their non-formal adult education (folkbildning) in combination with their theological training seminars for pastors and priests managed to receive funding from the state. Most of the ‘domestic’ faith communities have now set up their own university colleges. However, it is clear that the independent Christian churches have built their own institutions and this process has taken a long time. The gap between these seminaries and the religious and theological institutions at universities is closing and today the differences are often marginal. In contrast, the immigrant congregations still lack seminars or training institutions that can prepare priests, pastors, rabbis and gurus for their future jobs as religious leaders in a multicultural and multireligious society. Via the Commission for Government Support to Faith Communities it is possible for recognised religious groups to apply for small grants for the training of religious leaders (mostly outside the borders of Sweden). Even though a number of private institutions have started to discuss the possibility of starting a training of imams in Sweden, it is unlikely that these initiatives will get unconditional support. A European outlook indicates that most initiatives in, for example, France, Germany, Holland and the United Kingdom are suffering from a lack of legitimacy. Thus, it would be possible to argue that the state should start a specific training programme for imams working in Sweden. By such a procedure the state should treat Islam as an equal and important religion for many Swedes. Imams and Muslims should undoubtedly receive the public recognition they deserve. In line with the request by some Muslim civil society organisations, many imams apparently need

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training in civics as well as in the Swedish language in order to be able to also attract young Muslims born in Sweden. Yet, on the basis of the dialogues, meetings and the survey among the 167 imams working in Sweden, I generally found stronger arguments against a stateorganised training of imams (SOU, 2009:52). They are basically of two kinds. On the one hand, the state should remain confessionally neutral. This is not, however, to say that it should defend value neutrality. But at the same time as the state is fully aware of religious values, organisations and functions, it has to stay neutral itself in confessional matters. This crucial constitutional principle will be jeopardised if the Swedish government authorised selected imams by giving them training at universities. It would also be violated if the government began to categorise its citizens along religious identities by treating people of cultural Muslim background as if they were Muslim believers. In fact, many of the refugees have come here precisely because they want to get rid of state-authorised theocracy. Moreover, to claim that Muslims in general and imams in particular should be specific targets may even boost Islamophobia by demonising/claiming them to be particularly dangerous. Therefore imams should not be viewed as different from other minority religious leaders. Hence, public authorities such as prisons, hospitals and universities must not discriminate but treat all religious leaders equally. Furthermore, universal educational programmes aiming to integrate people of foreign background are preferable to special arrangements for certain ‘problematic groups’. The other set of arguments against a specific public imam training programme is claiming that in order to best serve the long-term interest of Swedish democracy Muslim congregations ought to be autonomous. The Swedish public sphere needs independent voices of review and critique. According to the constitutional principle, religious freedom necessitates value pluralism within the Constitutional framework. What is more, Muslim faith based organisations cannot easily be treated within the national corporatist state structure due to their radical decentralist organisation – far from having an archbishop. In addition, an imam training by the state would necessarily interfere with domestic affairs at the mosques themselves. It may in turn strengthen a development in conflict with democratic values of equality, equity, tolerance and so on. Instead of state incentives, the mosques have to solve what they see as a problem with ‘foreign’ imams. In fact, our survey showed that most of the imams have been here for more than a decade. Finally, Muslim civil society organisations have to control their own bodies, as other faith based organisations have been doing – before approaching the state. Not the other way around. At last, I therefore advised the government not to undertake any affirmative action. On the contrary, the existing educational system should be more efficiently used, for instance, by also adjusting to meet the specific demands of the imams (as well as other minority religious leaders coming from traditions outside Sweden). The municipalities, hospitals and prisons and other institutions that are organised under umbrella organisations, such as the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, and the Christian Council of Sweden, should take a greater

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responsibility and set up training programmes for male and female religious leaders and chaplains who can work in a multifaith and multicultural, equal society. Furthermore, if the imams are in need of more education in order to function more efficiently in, for example, hospitals and prisons, the local authorities should set up the necessary educational programmes to meet this demand. There is no need for a specific training programme for imams and the Muslim leaders should not be viewed as a unique case. The education that the imams are calling for can also be provided within the existing educational system and there is currently no demand for a confessional training for Islamic religious leaders in Sweden. In a context of growing Islamophobic attitudes as well as outspoken suspicious blaming of Swedish imams to be connected with international terrorism, the issue of imam training for sure can be seen as a test case for how we ought to handle cultural diversity associated with various religious heritages. For principal as well as practical reasons, I rejected affirmative action. There are good reasons to believe that the principles of an impartial and universalistic welfare state are in the long run better in keeping the society together, thereby promoting institutional trust as well as interpersonal trust.

7 Conclusion In accordance with my arguments regarding imam training, my preliminary recommendations for a well-reflected and legitimate way to approach a growing cultural diversity in Scandinavian democracies would in conclusion run as follows. To begin with, the more or less hidden tradition of a partial religious embedding of the public institutions has to be publicly scrutinised and replaced by principles of fair, equal and confessional neutral treatment of all citizens. Since minority and migration groups in the Swedish context are substantially identical, welfare policies have to be used in order to wipe out the differences that cause particular harm to them, primarily due to their lack of socioeconomic resources. Furthermore, to strengthen diversity and pluralism within the common constitutional framework of values, civil society organisations as well as governmental institutions have to realise and value that their cooperative interdependency necessitates mutual independency. Tendencies of subordination and colonisation have to be counteracted. Consequently, educational institutions must be rewarded continuous support by bringing young and old citizens together to jointly reflect, review and reshape those common values that are necessary to keep societies together – as well as those values that are necessary for keeping societies plural with autonomy in all other respects. Scandinavian democracy developers have to learn from other more trained multicultural political settings how to deal with profound religious diversity with on the one hand tolerance and respect, on the other equality and human dignity. To sum up, it may sound paradoxical, but I do think a secular state needs a policy of religion based on humanistic values.

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References Amnå, E. (2006a). Playing with fire? A Swedish mobilisation for participatory democracy. Journal of European Public Policy, 13(4), 587–606. Amnå, E. (2006b). Still a trustworthy ally. Civil society and the transformation of Scandinavian democracy. Journal of Civil Society, 2(1), 1–20. Amnå, E. (2007). Associational life, youth, and political capital formation in Sweden: Historical legacies and contemporary trends. In L. Trägårdh (Ed.), The state and civil society in Northern Europe: The Swedish model reconsidered. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Amnå, E. (Ed.). (2010). Normative implications of new forms of citizen participation. Berlin: Nomos. Andersen, J. G., & Hoff, H (2001). Democracy and citizenship in Scandinavia. Hampshire: Palgrave. Berggren, H., & Trägårdh, L (2006). Är Svensken Människa? Gemenskap och Oberoende i det Moderna Sverige. Stockholm: Norstedts. Bäckström, A., Edgardh Beckman, N., & Pettersson, P. (2004). Religiös Förändring i Norra Europa (Vol. 8). Uppsala: Uppsala Institute for Diaconal and Social Studies. Hagevi, M. (2009). Politisk opinion och religiositet i Västra Götaland. Lund: Sekel. Hessler, C. A. (1964). Statskyrkodebatten. Uppsala: Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningen. Ingelhart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Johansson Heinö, A. (2009). Hur mycket mångfald tål demokratin? Demokratiska dilemman i ett mångkulturellt Sverige. Malmö: Gleerups. Lantto, P., & Mörkenstam, U. (2008). ‘Sami rights and Sami challenges: The modernization process and the Swedish Sami movement, 1886–2006’. Scandinavian Journal of History, 33(1), 26–51. Milner, H., (2002). Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens Make Democracy Work. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Putnam, R. (2002). Democracies in flux: The evolution of social capital in contemporary societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rothstein, B., & Stolle, D. (2008). An institutional theory of social capital. In J. van Deth & D. Castiglione (Eds.), Social capital - A reader (pp. 273–302). Oxford: Oxford University Press. SOU. (2009:52). Staten och imamerna – Religion, integration, autonomi. Betänkande av imamutbildningsutredningen. Stolle, D., Soroka, S., & Johnston, R. (2008). When does diversity erode trust? Neighborhood diversity, interpersonal trust and the mediating effect of social interactions. Political Studies, 56, 57–74. Teorell, A., Torcal, M., & Montero, J. R. (2007). Political participation: Mapping the terrain. In J. W. Van Deth, J. R. Montero, & A. Westholm (Eds.), Citizenship and involvement in European democracies. A comparative analysis. London and New York: Routledge. Thidevall, S. (2000). Kampen om folkkyrkan. Ett folkligt reformprograms öden (pp. 1928–1932). Stockholm: Verbum. Tingsten, H. (1941). Den svenska socialdemokratins idéutveckling (Parts I–II). Stockholm: Tiden. Touraine, A. (1997). Pourrons-noue vivre ensemble? Égaux et différents. Paris: Fayard. Vogel, J., Amnå, E., Munck, I., & Häll, L. (2003). Associational life in Sweden: General welfare, social capital, training in democracy, (Report No 101). Stockholm: Statistics Sweden. Wilkinson, R., & Picket, K. (2009). The spirit leve: Who more equal societies almost always do better. London: Allen Lane.

Challenges to Building Sustainable Democracies: Lessons from the Margins Response to Erik Amnå Catherine A. Odora Hoppers

1 The Dilemmas in the Demands of Democratic Citizenship As we warm up to the twenty-first century, there is no single idea that holds the greatest hope for humankind as democracy, and closely following in tow, human rights. Democracy has emerged as the most pre-eminent form of governance. Given the turn of events at the level of geo-politics in the past 20 years, the form of democracy that has taken the spotlight is liberal democracy, and within that, the idea of individual freedom, suffrage for competitive multiparty elections, and popular sovereignty (Hiley, 2006). Electoral democracies now represent 120 of the existing 192 countries and constitute 62.5% of the world’s population. If we are to judge by the expansion of popular elections, the number of democratic countries have clearly risen. But as citizens in our time, and in our own episode, we are called upon to remain alert to human signals arising from emergent conditions that demand our attention and ethical action. We also know that liberal democracy in particular has had a chequered and disturbing history of grave omissions, and turned a blind eye on grossly unjust situations. We know for instance that the liberal representative model of democracy, very strong in the United States and England, which emerged at the end of the eighteenth century routinized the substantive exclusion of women and slaves from ‘citizenship’; while in England, suffrage was based on property. From this point of view, it can be argued that in West liberal states only became substantive democracies after the political mobilization of the broad mass of citizens, including urban working class and women behind demands which included the extension of the franchise to all adult citizens. It is this democratic revolution – which increased citizen involvement in the affairs of government – that expanded the concept of citizenship itself to cover economic, social, as well as political entitlements (Luckham, Goetz, & Kaldor, 1998). In fact, it has been stated that in the United States, true democracy was attained only with the rise and triumph of the C.A. Odora Hoppers (B) South African Research Chair in Development Education, University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] 23 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_3, 

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civil rights movement in the 1960s, which introduced into the American mind-set the idea that ‘human beings’ included black people, too. The lesson to be learnt from this is that democracy is not simply a set of governmental institutions, but it is a citizenship capability, and the test of a truly good system, whether nationally or internationally, should be its ability to invest in building a democratic culture, and in particular, preparing all citizens for full democratic citizenship.

2 The Problem of the “Community” and the “Nation-State” In fact, the very arena within which democracy operates (i.e., the nation-state), poses its own set of problems. As Sartwell has so well put, communities as a form of group identity are not made from the abstractions of shared beliefs, but on something more difficult to articulate: a deep level of communication which Sartwell (2002) calls “emitting noise in the right shape”. To the extent that conceptions of community miss the crucial formative role of exclusion, they misconstrue how and why they form and perpetuate themselves, while remaining quite unequipped to deal with this darker shadow. . . the inbuilt exclusion inherent in the DNA of that concept and practice. Communities are formed by exclusions and by violence, and what constitutes ‘normal’ is articulated by a process of scape-goating – that is, creating and internalizing hallucinatory images that degrade the ‘other’ as excuses to dominate, abuse, murder, or exploit people while exalting the ‘we’ group. Thus, exclusion is key in defining an identity in a community (Sartwell, 2002, pp. 47–49). Therefore, it can be stated that democracy does not equip the citizen with tools to reconstruct itself from an exclusion based identity to one that is embracing.

3 Human Rights Here, I turn to Howard Richard’s incisive analyses. To begin with, he acknowledges that “rights” is an especially valuable concept because it is a concept that almost everybody respects as having moral authority. It makes an inward appeal to conscience especially in the respect that most people develop inwardly to guide their own conduct and avoid infringing on other people’s rights. It has moral authority in the sense that one is considered justified while acting within one’s rights, and also in the sense that one is considered to be justified in becoming indignant when one’s rights are violated. Furthermore, a cultural context where it is acknowledged that the rights of others are supposed to be respected provides a framework for meaningful dialogue (Richards, 2004). But according to Richards, what we need is something more than respect for the rights of others for three reasons. Firstly, citing Hegel, Richards argues that there are too many rights. And where there is a surplus of rights, force decides. Commonly in a war, or in a bar room

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brawl, both sides can paint with the language of rights to give their cause the colour of moral superiority, and to give themselves the colour of ‘knights errant’ fighting for a righteous cause. And where culturally recognized precepts of right gives both sides good moral arguments, there is a moral stalemate in which both sides are rhetorically armed with good reasons for declaring the other evil. It is at this point that force becomes the final arbiter. The second argument he makes, drawing from Karl Marx, is that the stubborn persistence of poverty, the instability of capitalist systems, and the exploitation of labour are all consistent with recognizing the rights of humanity embodied in the laws of commerce. Where everything is sold at its market price, in a free market, with property rights respected, it is often the case that labour is sold for little or nothing. This is a NORM which is also endorsed by the very same societies that harp on human rights. The third argument, drawn from Solzhenitsyn and Mahatma Gandhi, is that in principle, rights without duties are unworkable. Emphasizing rights at the expense of duties is similar to adopting Denis Diderot’s eighteenth-century definition of liberty: ‘whatever the law does not forbid is allowed’. Like liberty, rights-talk can easily lend itself to an irresponsible ethic. It authorizes everyone to say what they are supposed to be allowed to do, are supposed to have, and supposed to get. But it does not make anyone responsible for contributing to the welfare of others, or to the common good (Richards, 2004). It is not for nothing that looking from the outside, I nod appreciatively at Sweden’s history of successful democracy that was thankfully neither limited to, nor for that matter drawn from Marx, but rather, guided by its own sui generis ideas formed in the light of its circumstances in dialogue with mainstream currents of Western academic social science. It is for precisely the value of, respect for and the need for sui generis expressions of democracy to be allowed space to flourish that I will now turn.

4 The Call for Sui Generis Systems of Democracy To begin with, as we stare at the world around us, we are aghast and amazed at how the human family has failed its simplest test: that of assuring that every sister or brother has enough food. Looked at this way, we can see that in many instances, liberal democracy has, in particular been more of an insular process stuck in the governance mode and rather oblivious of its potential link with, and responsibility towards ,respect for other forms of life, the environment, and genuine diversity and practices that speak to that diversity at a global plane. Seen from the perspective of societies that have been at the receiving end of liberal democracy’s onslaught, we see quite clearly the power play that converted partnership and ubuntu-based societies into predatory, dominatory societies that valorize separation, exclusion, force, fear, mutual indifference and exploitation. Democratic societies of the West could not see the contradiction between espousing philosophies of economics that is anchored in the idea of ‘economics of scarcity’

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with its attendant pursuit of profits without end, and societies whose thinking and lived ethos is built around the idea of ‘economics of plenty’ in which the cup is always half full, and there is always enough to share with the next stranger that shows up at the door. How has the ideals of cooperation and sharing been compromised by the counter ideals of property rights and individual freedom even in the context of democracy, for instance? In many parts of the world that has been defined only in terms of their relationship with the powers that colonized them, institutions of representative democracy are unable to link with the cultural and political traditions upon which the people base their livelihoods. Time and again, we see how those societies are pushed to choose forms of democracy that have evolved from other people’s sui generis circumstances, and are forced to make as clean a break as possible with their own past (Nandy, 1997). The ‘present’ of most of these societies is then tied to the ‘past’ or present of Western society, which itself is clearly unable to or has lost the sense of its own future in relation to the many societies it once conquered. The predominance of the assumption that liberal democracy is the only suitable form of governance both for managing the now-ubiquitous modern state and mediating the forces of rapid economic and culture change in all societies, therefore, endorses the continued existence of the Third World societies at the receiving end of the global system, and celebrates the fact that the options of delinking or opting out of the global system is no longer available to them. The best thing that they can do is to adapt to the system. Yet, we know that a number of these “receiving countries” had their own civilizational pasts and highly evolved, complex forms of governance which, though it did not depend on direct consent of the subject populations, sought to retain the legitimacy of their own rule through multilayered structures of authority and multiple governances that accommodated various interests and identities in society. The story of globalization and homogenization through liberal democracy should be seen in this light – as a story of gradual impoverishment of democracy itself. As it becomes quite evident, the discourse on democracy that follows from this is an adaptive, evolutionary process that stands in sharp contradiction to the very idea of liberty, equality and fraternity that it purports to represent. Yet, processes of social transformations within society require diverse institutional forms of democracy that take into account particular political histories, societal structures and cultural ethos which has all been ignored by the international system. Instead, just like development, democracy is presented with a capital ‘D’ that is closely linked with the idea of global homogenization in which the governability of a country is linked directly with the maintenance of the stability in the world market rather than citizenship building and dialogues around diversity and plurality. It becomes easy to see how questions about alternative systems to democracy have receded into the background, while there is little or no thinking about how to give democracy more content and substance not known to the liberal democratic forms.

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5 From the Margins The struggle from the margins is therefore best captured as the struggle between two competing histories: 1. The civilizational histories of co-survival of communities, and 2. The political history of ethnic conflicts as we now know it. Just like it happened with the women’s and the civil rights movements, the scope of democracy is being searched and expanded not at the level of the high discourse of globalization, but at the margins by the new Gandhians, the off-springs of the Mandela spirit, and from children of the soil, peace and post-development moral entrepreneurs, movements for people’s rights and empowerment and champions of transformative politics (Richards & Swanger, 2008). By working at the frontiers of democratic institutions, they operate simultaneously at the level of polity and society, traditions and modernity, filtering the past into the present to create new futures of a different kind. It is from these struggles that contemplations around democracy at local and geopolitical levels can be systematized. In a country such as Sweden whose democracy is built on the presumptions of homogeneity, new capacities need to be fostered that go beyond precisely this familiarity, and into learning how diverse societies with different philosophical underpinnings function, organize, govern and manage livelihood. Looking at Sweden and South Africa, it is clear that while the former is a democracy based on homogeneity of culture, ethnicity and religion, the latter is explicitly a democracy based on heterogeneity and the problemmatization of difference, with clear constitutional recognition of diversity. What could these two countries learn from each other?

References Hiley, D. R. (2006). Doubt and the demands of democratic citizenship. New York: Cambridge University Press. Luckham, R., Goetz, A. M., & Kaldor, M. (1998). Democratic institutions and politics in the contexts of inequality, poverty, and conflict. A conceptual framework (IDS working paper 104). Brighton: IDS. Nandy, A. (1997). Colonization of the mind. In M. Rahnema & V. Bawtree (Eds.), The post development reader (pp. 168–177). London: ZED. Richards, H. (2004, November). On the concept of peacemaking. The Danish Peace Academy. Retrieved January 26th, 2006, from http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/peacemaking.htm Richards, H., & Swanger, J. (2008). The dilemmas of social democracies: Overcoming obstacles to a more just world. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Sartwell, C. (2002). Community at the margin. In P. Alperson (Ed.), Diversity and community. An interdisciplinary reader (pp. 47–57). Oxford: Blackwell.

Islam in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict? Dan-Paul Jozsa

1 Introduction In recent years issues concerning religion in school in general and Islam in education in particular have also become a ‘hot topic’ on a European level, which has led to increased research in the field with a strong focus on international comparison (see also Jackson, 2008). The EU-funded research project Religion in Education. A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in Transforming Societies of European Countries (abbreviated as REDCo), referred to in this chapter, was run from 2006 to 2009, and aimed to generally research the potentials of religion in education as a factor to promote peaceful coexistence between people with different religions, worldviews and cultural backgrounds in Europe, and how the differences can be taken into account without creating conflict or exclusion. The research focused on gaining a better insight into the views and attitudes of young students, in the age group 14–16, of different religions and worldview backgrounds with regard to the mentioned points (Jackson, Miedema, Weisse, & Willlaime, 2007; the website of the project: http://www.redco.uni-hamburg.de). The qualitative study of the REDCo-project was based on a questionnaire that was distributed to a minimum of 70 students per country. In total 1,011 students participated to the qualitative research, mainly in the age group 14–16. The questionnaire included eight questions aiming to identify the students’ views and experiences of religion, the role religion plays in the life world of the students especially in the interaction with their peers, and the views of the students regarding religion and religious education in school.1

D.-P. Jozsa (B) Georg-Eckert-Institute, Braunschweig, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1 The

main results of the quantitative study were published in Valk et al. (2009). See also Körs (2009) for a discussion and presentation of the sample.

29 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_4, 

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The quantitative survey of the REDCo-project was based on the outcomes of the qualitative study, partly taking up its findings and seeking to verify central results on a broader, quantitative basis. Three research questions were central for this study: • What role has religion in pupils’ lives? • How do pupils view religion in school and the impact of religion in education? • How do pupils consider the impact of religion in society? The questionnaire had 127 items, and was distributed to at least 400 students per country. In total 8,085 students were pooled.2 None of the studies had a specific focus on Islam or Muslim students. However, while trying to get a balanced sample, efforts were made to also include students from religious minority groups in the sample, which in most of the countries meant also including students with a Muslim background, given the fact that Muslims are, generally speaking, the largest religious minority group in most of the countries involved in the study. This led, for the studies in the western European countries involved, to samples with considerable percentages of Muslim students: France (13%), England (12%), Germany (9%), Spain (10%), Norway (9%) and the Netherlands (23%). In this regard we can get a good picture of the views and attitudes of these Muslim students and compare them to the views of the Christian students respective to students with no religion pooled, who form in all samples the largest worldview groups. See Table 1, where the percentages of students with no specific religious affiliation, the percentages of Christian students and of those belonging to other religions are also given.3

Table 1 Religious affiliations in the sample of the quantitative study (percentages)

England France Germany The Netherlands Norway Spain

No religion

Christian

Muslim

Other

59 47 41 36 50 45

19 36 47 38 38 44

12 13 10 24 8 10

10 4 2 2 4 1

2 These classifications follow those of the students themselves, however not differentiating between

different Christian and Muslim sects on one side and classifying also those students who claim having a non-religious worldview like ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic’ as students with ‘no religion’. The group of students with ‘other religions’ is very heterogeneous, including, for example, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Heathens, Pagans, Satanists, and ‘own religion’, and in most countries very small, so we will not refer to it anymore in the course of this analysis. 3 Students with ‘no religion’ are students who do not consider themselves as having a specific religion or worldview.

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In this chapter I will first try to give a summary of the findings of the quantitative studies run within the project with regard to Muslim students and Islam. I will summarize the differences found in the views and attitudes of Muslim students compared to Christian students, and students with no religion, with regard to the role of religion in pupils’ lives (Part II), religion in school (part III) and the impact of religion in society in the view of the students (part IV).4 In the last part of the chapter I will reflect on these findings based mainly on the standardized qualitative studies run within the REDCo-project.5 When presenting the quantitative results I will try to work out the commonalities concerning Muslim students compared to Christian students and students with no religion in the samples of the studies in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain.6 In these countries, the models for dealing with the study of religion in school are quite different, at least in state schools. Of the six countries studied, England and Norway have nationally approved compulsory non-confessional religious education at least in state schools (confessional in most of the confessional schools), and most pupils included in the sample attended this model following the nationally approved curriculum.7 In France, with generally compulsory confessional religious education in confessional schools, there is no specific subject called ‘religious education’ in state schools, with the exception of Alsace-Lorraine, where optional confessional religious education is offered only to Christian and Jewish students, but topics concerning ‘religious facts’ have been included in public schools in recent years in other subjects like history and French literature.8 In Germany9 and Spain10 religious education is confessional in both state and confessional schools, and is generally compulsory in confessional schools and optional in state schools.

4 For

a more comprehensive version of the analysis presented here see Jozsa (2009). differences between Muslim students respective to Christian students and students with no religion are mentioned, they mean statistically significant differences using different statistical tests (correlation analysis, the Man and Whitney test or the Kruskal-Wallis test). For the statistical testing SPSS 17 was used and the samples used were those collected within the REDCo-project. 6 See Jackson and O’Grady (2007) for a description of the situation regarding religious education in England and Skeie (2007) in Norway. 7 See Willaime (2007) for a description of the situation regarding religion in education in France. 8 From the federal states taken into account in the German sample only Hamburg has a model of ‘religious education for all’ that is somehow special. However, also for the students in Hamburg the school has a lower importance as a source of information about religion when compared to the family; see also Jozsa, Knauth, and Weisse, (2009). For a description of the situation regarding religious education in Germany, see Knauth (2007) and Jozsa (2007). 9 See Dietz (2007) for a description of the situation regarding religious education in Spain. 10 In the Netherlands sample 23% of the students did not attend RE, 39% attended compulsory confessional religious education and 38% compulsory non-confessional religious education; see also Bertram-Troost et al. (2009). For a description of the situation regarding religious education in the Netherlands, see ter Avest et al. (2007). 5 When

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In the Netherlands religious education is from its legal status confessional in confessional as well as state schools, but if one considers the realities in schools, a variety of models of religious education can be found.11

2 Personal Views and Experiences with Religion Over 60% of the Muslim students in all samples consider religion to be very important to them, while only very small minorities of Muslim students, between 0 and 6%, consider religion as ‘absolutely not important’. The others place the importance of religion in their personal life between these two extremes. In all samples the Christian students tend to consider religion less important than the Muslim students, while the students with no religion tend to consider religion even less important than the Christian students; see Table 2, where the percentages of students belonging to the different worldview groups – students with no religion (no r), Christian students (ch) and Muslim students (mu) – who consider religion ‘very important’ and ‘absolutely not important’ are given. Table 2 Importance of religion (percentages) Very important

Absolutely not important

How important is religion to you?

no r

ch

mu

no r

Ch

mu

England France Germany The Netherlands Norway Spain

3 3 7 7 3 7

37 18 18 28 12 18

82 68 67 82 63 68

31 43 27 44 42 28

3 8 5 2 12 3

0 4 0.3 1 6 2

When asked about their opinion with respect to the existence of God or of ‘some sort of spirit or life force’ Muslim students are more inclined to answer that ‘there is a God’ than Christian students, who again are more inclined towards this statement than students with no religion. In all samples over 90% of the Muslim students think that ‘there is God’ and below 2% that there is no ‘God, spirit or life force’ (Table 3). In line with the higher importance they attribute to religion, the Muslim students in all samples are engaged more often than their peers in activities related to religion: They state that they think more often about religion, about the meaning of life, pray more often, attend religious events more often or read sacred texts for themselves. The Muslim students tend to agree more often than their peers in all samples that religion helps them ‘to cope with difficulties’ and ‘to be a better person’. They tend 11 See

Table 4 where the percentages of students who stated that they attend religious education at the time of the questioning are given for the different groups as well as the means of the years of attendance during their school life.

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33

Table 3 Which of these statements comes closer to your position? (percentages)

There is god

England France Germany The Netherlands Norway Spain

There is some sort of spirit or life force

I don’t really think there is any sort of god, spirit or life force

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

mu

11 8 25 15 13 27

75 49 56 82 45 63

98 97 93 99 96 98

45 33 43 37 26 36

19 33 37 14 33 30

2 2 5 1 2 2

44 60 32 48 61 37

6 18 7 5 22 7

0 1 2 0 2 0

to agree more that religion is important to them because they ‘love God’, that they ‘respect other people who believe’, that religion determines their ‘whole life’, and that ‘religion is important in our history’. At the same time they tend to agree less that ‘religion is nonsense’, that one can be a ‘religious person without belonging to a particular faith community’, that they ‘have doubts – is there a God or not?’, which is in line with their stronger tendency to state that there is a God. Generally the Muslim students in all samples talk significantly more often about religion with others, be they ‘family’, ‘friends’, ‘classmates’, ‘teachers’ or ‘religious leaders’, than their Christian peers. Christian students also talk more often about religion with others than students with no religion, which is again in line with the importance accorded to religion in these three groups. The Muslim students pooled not only talk more often about religion with different people, they are also more often interested in what their best friend thinks about religion and consider more often than their peers that religion helps them to cope with difficulties and to be a better person, with 60–90% of the Muslim students agreeing with these statements depending on the sample. The views about religion seem to be more fixed for the Muslim students than those of their peers: only comparatively small minorities of the Muslim students, between 6 and 20% depending of the sample, consider that what they think about religion is open to change; only between 6 and 27% state that they sometimes have doubts concerning the existence of God. Respect for other people who believe is shared on the other side by around 90% of the Muslim students in all samples. The students were asked about the importance of family, school, friends, faith community, books, media and the Internet as sources of information about religion. For the Muslim students in all samples ‘family’ is the most important source of information about religion: over 90% of the Muslim students in all samples consider it to be important for them in this respect, followed by faith community, which is considered by at least 70% to be important, books, by over 60% and friends, by over 50%. The importance of school as a source of information about religion depends, for Muslim students as well as for students in general, on the context. However,

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D.-P. Jozsa

one can say that school is important as a source of information about religion for the majority of Muslim students pooled in contexts where religious education is available to them, not reaching, however, the same level of importance as family and faith community or even books. School is most important as a source of information about religion for the Muslim students in the English sample. This is also true for the Christian students and especially for the students with no religion. The vast majority of students, and more than 80% of the Muslim students, share the same view about religion as their parents: they state that their parents do not have completely different views about religion from themselves. With regard to the religious diversity in school, the samples from the different countries are quite varied. However in all samples the majority of the students state that they have classmates of a different religion from themselves (77% in the English sample, 62% in the French, 80% in the German, 60% in the Dutch, 71% in the Norwegian and 56% in the Spanish). Only a minority of the students state that they have family members of a different religion from themselves. However the shares are not negligible and might exemplify the level of religious heterogeneity and its integration in the social life of western Europe: 32% of the students in the English sample state that they have family members of a different religion, 29% in the French, 30% in the German, 21% in the Dutch, 23% in the Norwegian and 18% in the Spanish. The shares of students who state that they have friends of a different religion are comparable to those who have classmates of a different religion: 75% in the English sample, 76% in the French, 79% in the German, 46% in the Dutch, 72% in the Norwegian and 70% in the Spanish. The religious heterogeneity in the life world of the students strongly depends on the contextual life world of the students, which is also defined by the neighbourhood and the school attended. The level of religious heterogeneity in the family is low for the Muslim students in all samples comparable to those of the other groups. In almost all samples Muslim students have more classmates and friends of a different religion than students with no religion, which should not be surprising, since they form in all contexts a minority; the only exception being the Dutch sample, where most of the Muslim students went to an Islamic confessional school attended mostly by Muslim students. Generally only a minority of the students, around 30%, in almost all samples think that most of their classmates have the same view about religion as themselves, which again can be regarded as an indicator of the religious and worldview heterogeneity in the life world of the students pooled. However about half of the students in all the contexts studied tend to have friends with the same views about religion: at least every second student in all samples states that most of their friends have the same views about religion as themselves. In all contexts, the majority of the students also state that they go around with students of different religions from themselves at school. In their spare time, however, the religious heterogeneity decreases in most of the contexts studied, although only a minority, around 20–30%, state that they prefer to go around with people of the same religion as themselves.

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More Muslim students than Christian, or students with no religion, report in all contexts that they have friends with a different religion. On the other hand, Muslim students tend more often than Christian, and students with no religion, to have friends who share their views about religion.

3 Religion in School The attendance of religious education by students in general, and by Muslim students in particular, strongly depends on the sample and the religious education models offered in the specific context.12 In the English and the Norwegian sample almost all students state that they attend religious education, which should not be a surprise since religious education was compulsory in all schools included in these samples. In the Dutch sample almost all Muslim students attended religious education, along with a vast majority of the Christian students, and the students with no religion. The Muslim students in the sample mainly came from schools with compulsory religious education models (Table 4).13

Table 4 Attendance of religious education (percentages of those who do attend RE and means of the respective years the students studied RE during their school life) How many years have you studied RE?

RE this year or not?

England France Germany The Netherlands Norway Spain

12 50%

no r

ch

mu

no r

Ch

mu

98 2 74 73 97 47

100 22 84 80 99 72

96 11 44 95 94 23

7.59 0.17 6.51 3.95 8.11 7.12

8.27 0.83 7.60 6.76 8.14 9.19

8.00 0.08 3.72 4.79 7.24 2.71

of the Muslim students in the Dutch sample came from a confessional Islamic school with a compulsory Islamic religious education model, and 44% from Christian schools, where religious education is also compulsory and, from the legal status, also confessional, but in fact more or less ‘confessional’ regarding the content of the teaching, depending on the school. The reason why only 75% of the students with no religion and 80% of the Christian students attended religious education in the Dutch sample is that a considerable number of these students attended schools where no religious education was offered or the subject dealing with religion was called ‘History of culture and Christianity’ or ‘Worldview’, apparently not always regarded by the students as ‘religious education’ (see also Bertram-Troost, Miedema, ter Avest, & Bakker, 2009). 13 In Germany this is true for all federal states included in the sample with the exception of Hamburg; see the remarks made above in this respect and Knauth (2007).

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D.-P. Jozsa

In the German and the Spanish contexts, where religious education is, in general, confessional,14 and at least in state schools optional, Muslim students generally attend religious education less often than Christian students and students who state that they do not have a religion. This is on one side a general effect of confessional religious education models, which tend to systematically ‘discriminate’ religious minorities due to the difficulty of offering confessional religious education for all religious groups in all schools, ‘forcing’ the religious minorities either to attend one of the available religious education classes offered or to opt out of religious education. Apart from that, religious education for Muslim students was only introduced in these two contexts a few years ago, and a complete satisfaction of the actual demand, even in schools with a large share of Muslim students, is far from being reached (see Jozsa, 2007; Dietz, 2007). In all contexts studied (i.e., also in those with a confessional religious education), the majority of students independent of their religion or worldview agree that at school they ‘get knowledge about different religions’, ‘learn to have respect for everyone, whatever their religion’, ‘have opportunities to discuss religious issues from different perspectives’ and that learning about different religions at school helps them to live together, to develop their own point of view as well as moral values, and to understand the history of their own country and of Europe. School thus seems to be widely recognized by students as an institution that transfers knowledge about different religions, with large majorities of students at least agreeing that at school they ‘get knowledge about different religions’: 92% in the English sample, 69% in the French, 76% in the German, 73% in the Dutch, 90% in the Norwegian and 56% in the Spanish. Differences between some of the countries are quite considerable: the students generally most agree that they get knowledge about different religions in the English and the Norwegian sample (i.e., in those contexts where religious education is non-confessional), significantly more than in all other contexts, while the students in the Spanish sample tend to agree less than those in all other samples. On the one side it is the students in the German sample, taken as a whole, who agree less than those in all other samples that at school they learn to respect everyone whatever their religion, while on the other side the students in the English and the French sample agree more than those in all other samples with the statement. A lot of the students state that learning about religions at school helps them ‘to understand current events’ and that they find religions as a topic at school ‘important’ and ‘interesting’. However in all contexts only a minority of the students surveyed agree that learning about religions at school helps them ‘to make choices between right and wrong’ or that it might help them to learn more about themselves, which might be regarded as a sign, that students perceive their religious education more as promoting learning about religions than learning from religions.

14 Around 0.1% of the people identified themselves as Muslims in Estonia in a census run in 2000;

the data of the Estonian census of 2000 are available online at: http://www.stat.ee/censuses (see Schihalejev, 2008).

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37

Looking at the particularity of Muslim students in this context, we find that the Muslim students pooled tend to consider the impact of learning about religion in school to be stronger than the Christian students and the students with no religion. They state more often than their Christian peers and students with no religion that learning about religions is important and interesting, and that it helps them to live together with others, to understand current events, to make a choice between right and wrong, to develop their own point of view and moral values and to learn more about their own religion. With the exception of the English sample the majority of the students disagree that ‘learning about religions leads to conflicts in the classroom’. With regard to the Muslim students the same is true for all samples apart from the German one, of whom only 39% disagree with the statement (see Table 5). In some contexts Muslim students seem to perceive more intensively the conflict potential of learning about religions in school than their peers: this is the case for the Muslim students in the German, the Spanish and the French samples, where they tend to agree more than their peers that learning about religions leads to conflicts in the classroom. Table 5 Religion and conflicts in school (percentages of those who at least agree (ag) and of those who at least disagree (di) to the statements) A student who shows Learning about religions I have problems his/her beliefs openly in leads to conflicts in the showing my views about school, risks being classroom religion openly in school mocked

England France Germany The Netherlands Norway Spain

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

mu

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di

26 14 16 6 16 15

24 15 11 8 18 13

20 25 27 3 18 34

38 21 24 11 25 19

38 27 24 16 33 20

32 16 20 11 16 20

46 65 58 70 60 55

50 68 67 76 55 62

54 14 62 28 50 26 53 5 50 28 43 23 39 9 68 9 69 15 84 9 77 23 49 12 55 8 65 22 54 20 51 15 53 16 52 19

64 38 73 73 57 61

38 63 46 57 53 54

39 51 48 60 33 52

46 64 64 82 57 62

In all samples it is the majority of the students with no religion that least disagree that they have problems showing their ‘views about religion openly in school’. With the exception of the French sample this is also true for the Muslim students. However in some samples Muslim and Christian students alike tend to have more problems showing their views about religion openly in school: this is the case for France and Norway. In other samples there are no significant differences between the three groups in this respect: this is the case for England and Spain. In the German sample the Muslim students tend to have more problems showing their views openly in school than Christian students and students with no religion, while in the Dutch sample the Christian students tend to have most problems showing their views about religion openly in school.

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D.-P. Jozsa

With regard to the visibility or the consideration of religion in general school life there are some differences between Christian students, Muslim students and students with no religion in all the contexts studied; see Table 6 where the percentages of students who least agree with some statements in this respect are given for the different groups. Table 6 Religion in school (percentages of those who at least agree)

England France Germany The Netherlands Norway Spain

England France Germany The Netherlands Norway Spain

Students should be able to wear religious symbols at school: discreet ones

Students should be able to wear religious symbols at school: more visible ones

Students can be absent from school when it is their religious festivals

Students should be excused from taking some classes for religious reasons

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

mu

81 79 64 88 77 52

88 79 81 88 90 64

87 80 76 78 86 57

45 13 31 64 61 37

60 15 32 48 73 35

94 35 76 94 86 66

47 40 51 54 61 55

73 55 59 67 66 59

96 87 90 90 83 94

27 11 23 21 28 31

31 18 22 28 26 25

80 36 51 52 40 60

At school meals, religious food requirements should be taken into account

Schools should provide facilities for pupils to pray in school

Voluntary religious services could be a part of school life

no r 55 58 51 31 55 50

no r 28 6 16 31 17 11

no r 18 23 25 25 9 11

ch 63 60 55 40 62 57

mu 92 84 92 79 86 94

ch 47 18 29 56 18 13

mu 88 27 58 84 55 42

ch 59 33 41 46 18 21

mu 72 30 42 69 34 35

The Muslim students in all samples tend to agree more than Christian and students with no religion alike, that religious dietary laws should be taken into account in school, that students should be able to wear ‘more visible religious symbols’, that they can be absent from school ‘for religious festivals’, and that students should be excused ‘from taking some classes for religious reasons’. With the exception of France, where the difference between Christian and Muslim students is not significant, the Muslim students tend to agree more that the school should provide ‘facilities for pupils to pray in school’. On the other side the differences between the level of agreement of Christian and Muslim students with regard to wearing discreet religious symbols are not significant in all samples. With the exception of the French sample, it is generally the majority of the students who least disagree that religion should not have any place in school life. With the exception of the French sample the same is true for the Muslim and the Christian

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39

students, and even the shares of students with no religion who disagree that ‘there should be no place for religion in school life’ are quite high. In the French sample 44% of the students agree in general that they do not need the subject of religious education because other school subjects cover all they need to know about religion. The shares of students who agree with this statement in the other samples are much lower: 30% for the Spanish sample and 26% for the Norwegian, around 15% for the rest. In all samples the Christian as well as the Muslim students agree less than the students with no religion that the subject of religious education is not needed. The need for such a subject is supported by the majority of the Christian and the Muslim students, with the exception of France and Spain, where only 43% of the Muslim students disagree with the statement. The students seem to favour the model of religious education they know. In contexts with a model of religious education where students are taught together, whatever differences there might be in their religious or denominational background, this model of religious education is approved by the majority of the students surveyed: 75% in England, 68% in the Netherlands, 56% in Norway, and 72% in Hamburg prefer this model. However in contexts where the students attend a confessional model of religious education, and where they are separated in religious education according to their religious background, this model is favoured by the majority of students. In the area states in Germany 59% of the students favour such a segregated model of religious education, in Spain 59%. Generally the majority of students are in favour of getting ‘objective knowledge about different religions’ as well as of learning ‘to understand what religions teach’, of learning to ‘communicate about religious issues’ and of learning ‘the importance of religion for dealing with problems in society’. Generally speaking, the Muslim students tend to approve all the aspects of learning concerning religion in school, more than their peers. No matter if the religious education model is confessional or not, only small minorities in all contexts consider that students should be guided towards a religious belief in religious education. However in all contexts Muslim students stress this aspect of religious education more. An astonishing example might be the fact that in the English sample, albeit that the non-confessional model of religious education is in place, 60% of the Muslim students, while only 34% of the Christian students and 12% of the students with no religion, think that students should be guided towards religious belief in religious education.

4 Impact of Religion in Society in the Views of Students Only a minority of the students, between 7 and 20%, agree that ‘religious people are less tolerant’ and that ‘religion is a source of aggressiveness’; however the share of students who neither agree nor disagree with these statements is substantial in some samples. Larger minorities of students, between 10 and 30%, think that ‘without religion the world would be a better place’.

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D.-P. Jozsa

The vast majority of the Muslim students in all samples disagree that without religion the world would be a better place and with the exception of the Norwegian sample, the majority of the Muslim students disagree that religion is a source of aggressiveness. The Muslim students tend to reject the statements ‘without religion the world would be a better place’ and ‘religion is a source of aggressiveness’ more than Christian students and students with no religion – a finding in line with their more positive attitude towards religion compared to Christian students and students with no religion. When it comes to the question of whether religion belongs to private life, the differences between the national samples become quite interesting. The majority of the students in total least agree with the statement that ‘religion belongs to private life’; in France (52%), in Germany (51%), almost the majority in Norway (46%) and the Netherlands (43%), while it is a minority who agree that ‘religion belongs to private life’; in Spain (30%) and in England (28%). With regard to the specificity of the Muslim students there is no clear general tendency in the samples: in the Norwegian sample, for example, there are no significant differences between Muslims, Christians and students with no religion in this respect, while on the other side in the German sample Muslim students tend to agree less with the statement than Christian students, who in turn agree less than the students with no religion; in the Spanish sample we found that the Muslim students tend to agree the most, with however no significant differences between them and the students with no religion. Regarding the views of the students about religion as a topic of discussion, it seems striking that in all contexts the majority of the students disagree that talking about religion would be embarrassing: in England 72%, France 66%, Germany 76%, the Netherlands 83%, Norway 71%, and Spain 67%. However substantial shares in all samples find the topic boring. The majority, or almost the majority in all samples, think that talking about religion helps them to understand their own views and those of others. However, only minorities, sometimes substantial ones, like in the Netherlands (44%) or England (37%), think that talking about religions would help them to live together with people of different religions. Only minorities again, think that talking about religion only leads to disagreement. And again, only minorities in all contexts state are talking about cruelties carried out in the name of religion. With respect to the impact of talking about religion, Muslim students tend to be generally more positive about its effects than Christians and students with no religion, mirroring the more positive attitude of the Muslim students concerning learning about religion. Asked about their views concerning the possibilities of living together, the vast majority of the students in all contexts, over 70%, disagree irrespective of their worldview with the statement ‘I don’t like people from other religions and do not want to live together with them’. However the majority or almost the majority think that ‘disagreement on religious issues leads to conflicts’, while only a minority agree that ‘people with different strong religious views cannot live together’ (see Table 7).

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Table 7 Possibilities of living together (percentages of those who at least agree respectively disagree)

How far do you agree?

“Disagreement on religious issues leads to conflicts.”

“Respecting the religion of others helps to cope with differences.”

“I don’t like people from other religions and do not want to live together with them.”

no r

ch

mu

no r

ch

no r

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di

ag di ag di ag di

England 69 France 77 Germany 46 The 54 Netherlands Norway 54 Spain 52

6 7 14 15

52 13 50 24 54 15 82 1 72 9 53 22 79 6 84 4 42 15 40 19 58 8 73 5 42 25 36 33 71 12 87 1

12 45 12 43 13 55 10 71 6 12 48 16 43 23 54 10 65 8

mu

82 81 79 83

4 2 6 6

70 7 80 9

ch

mu

ag di

ag di

4 2 4 5

4 8 6 4

86 82 84 84

10 70 5 81 7 13 60 10 68 6

75 79

10 5 7 5

70 85 75 80

86 86 84 80

The majority of the students irrespective of their worldview think that ‘respecting the religion of others helps to cope with differences’ and the vast majority, over 70 up to 90%, consider that it helps people to live together, if they ‘share common interests’, ‘know about each other’s religion’, ‘personally know people from different religions’ and ‘do something together’. The positions regarding the potential of strong state regulations and of the banishment of religion to the private sphere are quite divided, with considerable shares who consider these strategies to be important, considerable shares who consider them unimportant and considerable shares who answer ‘cannot say’. With regard to the positions concerning all these strategies there are no systematic significant differences between the groups.

5 Reflections and Conclusions Multivariate analysis shows that a lot of the quantitative differences found between Muslim students, Christian students and students with no religion have their basis in the fact that Muslim students tend to consider religion more important in their lives. The respective importance of religion seems to have a strong impact on the positions and attitudes expressed through the questionnaire. The qualitative studies within the REDCo-project (see Knauth, Jozsa, BertramTroost, & Ipgrave, 2008) also revealed differences in the meaning and in the importance of religion, at least as it is expressed, between Christian students, Muslim students and students with no religious affiliation. Generally one could say that religion does not play a central role in the personal life of the vast majority of students with no religious affiliation. For most of the Christian students religion is more related to faith and spirituality, where religious rules and duties have no central role. The case for most Muslim students is somewhat different. Religion is

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D.-P. Jozsa

also important and present in their daily life because, for them, religion is important not only as a matter of faith and because of its spiritual dimension, where daily prayers, and attending religious services are important, but also as a source of rules of conduct. Accomplishing religious duties and following commandments is important for Muslim students, alongside their belief and religious convictions. Therefore, religion is more consciously present and visible in their daily life. The Muslims were found to be more explicit about their religion than the Christians and in several cases declared Islam to be the one true faith. The Muslims’ religious affiliation was generally more obvious and recognized not least because of the decisions they had to make about dress and diet, for example, as they negotiated their place as minorities in the public sphere of society and school. The public nature of being Muslim, coupled with negative images of Islam in the current state of international relations and home security, meant that it was easy for them to be discriminated against (instances of this were reported by Muslims and their peers) but also seemed to increase a sense of solidarity, several of the Muslim students offering expressions of pride in their belief and identity. This was less so with Christian students whose identity remained more hidden (Ipgrave & Bertram-Troost, 2008, p. 383).

In the qualitative studies of the REDCo-project Islam emerged as a relevant topic for many non-Muslim students in connection to religion, when asked about their experiences with other religions in the qualitative study, even in countries where Muslims are a negligible minority such as Estonia, where the percentage of Muslims is below 1%. The non-Muslim students mentioned Islam for various reasons. One reason is because they had personal experiences with Muslims. But even without such personal experiences Islam is often mentioned in some contextual settings. The reason for that seems to be the media coverage regarding issues linked or identified with Muslims or Islam, and also the perceived visibility of Islam in day-to-day life due to dress codes or dietary requests. Béraud et al. (2008) speak in the context of France of “an Islamisation of the way religion is represented” for some students, where Islam is perceived as “the religion that attracts the most attention”. While the conflict potential of religion or of disagreement concerning religion is acknowledged by the students, however, religion does not seem to become a factor of open conflicts in schools between most of the students in the age group studied. This is partly because religion only plays a subordinate role in the lives of most students, and partly because they want to avoid conflicts about religion in school. This leads, however, to the avoidance of encounters on a religious level and to avoidance of discussions about religion, if a conflict potential is perceived. Two ‘division lines’ between the students, partly triggered by this ‘conflict avoidance strategy’, became obvious: one between the students who consider religion important and the students who consider it unimportant, and another division line between the students of different religions. Nevertheless, independent of religion or worldview and of the respective importance religion has in their personal lives, the students share a vision of a peaceful coexistence in Europe. The Muslim students are no exception in this respect (see Bertram-Troost et al. 2008).

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43

The quantitative studies presented in this chapter do not contradict the findings of the qualitative studies presented in Knauth et al. (2008). They broaden the picture concerning differences between Muslim students, compared to Christian students and students with no religion in the respective countries. Summing up the findings presented one can conclude that religion tends to be more important for Muslim students, who are consequently more involved in activities related to religion, think and talk more often about religion with others, are more interested in religions, more keen to learn about religion in school and more positive about the effects of learning and exchange (talking, dialogue) about religion for a peaceful coexistence. They also tend to advocate a stronger consideration of religion in school life, and in society in general, and express more respect for other people who believe than their peers. However, their views about religion are more fixed, and although the Muslim students pooled tend to have friends of a different religion more often than Christian students or students with no religion, they also tend more often to have friends with the same views about religion as themselves. School is most important as a source of information about religion for the Muslim students in the English sample. Since this is also true for the Christian students and especially for the students with no religion, we can conclude that the English model of religious education seems be the one that manages to take into account the different interests that students have when it comes to religion in education, and to be accepted by the vast majority of the students irrespective of their worldview background. It is a model that also assures in an efficient and fair way the participation of minority groups in the study of religion in school, as well as exchange and dialogue between students of different religions and worldviews. Along with the students in the Norwegian sample, the students in the English sample are those who agree most that they get knowledge about different religions at school, and along with the students in the French sample, the students in the English sample agree most that at school they learn to respect everyone, whatever their religion.

References ter Avest, I., Bakker, C., Bertram-Troost, G. D., & Miedema, S. (2007). Religion and education in the Dutch pillarized and post-pillarized educational system: Historical background and current debates. In R. Jackson, S. Miedema, W. Weisse, & J.-P. Willaime (Eds.), Religion and education in Europe. Developments, contexts and debates (pp. 203–220). Münster: Waxmann. Bertram-Troost, G., Ipgrave, J., Jozsa, D.-P., & Knauth, T. (2008). European comparison. dialogue and conflict. In Th. Knauth, D.-P. Jozsa, G. Bertram-Troost, & J. Ipgrave (Eds.), Encountering religious pluralism in school and society – A qualitative study of teenage perspectives in Europe (pp. 405–411). Münster: Waxmann. Bertram-Troost, G., Miedema, S., ter Avest, I., & Bakker, C. (2009). Dutch pupils’ views on religion in school and society. Report on a quantitative research. In P. Valk, G. Bertram-Troost, M. Friederici, & C. Beraud (Eds.), Teenagers’ perspectives on the role of religion in their lives, schools and societies – A European quantitative study (pp. 221–260). Münster: Waxmann. Béraud, C., Massignon, B., & Mathieu, S. (2008). French students, religion and school: The ideal of Laïcité at stake with religious diversity. In T. Knauth, D.-P. Jozsa, G. Bertram-Troost, & J. Ipgrave (Eds.), Encountering religious pluralism in school and society – A qualitative study of teenage perspectives in Europe (pp. 51–80). Münster: Waxmann.

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Dietz, G. (2007). Invisibilizing or ethnicizing religious diversity? The transition of religious education towards pluralism in contemporary Spain. In R. Jackson, S. Miedema, W. Weisse, & J.-P. Willaime (Eds.), Religion and education in Europe: Developments, contents and debates (pp. 103–123). Münster: Waxmann. Ipgrave, J., & Bertram-Troost, G. (2008). European comparison: Personal views and experi-ences of religion. In T. Knauth, D.-P. Jozsa, G. Bertram-Troost, & J. Ipgrave (Eds.), Encountering religious pluralism in school and society – A qualitative study of teenage perspectives in Europe (pp. 373–388). Münster: Waxmann. Jackson, R., & O’Grady, K. (2007). Religions and education in England: Social plurality, civil religion and religious education pedagogy. In R. Jackson, S. Miedema, W. Weisse, & J.-P. Willaime (Eds.), Religion and education in Europe: Developments, contexts and debates (pp. 181–202). Münster: Waxmann. Jackson, R. (2008). Teaching about religions in the public sphere: European policy initiatives and the interpretive approach. Numen, 55, 151–182. Jackson, R., Miedema, S., Weisse, W. & Willlaime, J.-P. (Eds.) (2007). Religion and education in Europe: Developments, contexts and debates. Münster: Waxmann. Jozsa, D.-P. (2007). Islam and education in Europe, with special reference to Austria, England, France, Germany and the Netherlands. In R. Jackson, S. Miedema, W. Weisse, & J.-P. Willaime (Eds.), Religion and education in Europe: Developments, contexts and debates (pp. 67–86). Münster: Waxmann. Jozsa, D.-P., Knauth, T., & Weisse, W. (2009). Religion in school – A comparative study of hamburg and North Rhine Westphalia. In P. Valk, G. Bertram-Troost, M. Friederici, & C. Beraud (Eds.), Teenagers’ perspectives on the role of religion in their lives, schools and societies – A European quantitative study. Münster: Waxmann. Jozsa, D.-P. (2009). Muslim students view on religion and education – Perspectives from western European countries. In A. Alvarez Veinguer, G. Dietz, D.-P. Jozsa, & T. Knauth, (Eds.), Islam in education in European countries (pp. 131–158). Münster: Waxmann. Körs, A. (2009). Jugend und Religion in Deutschland und Europa. Jugendliche Einstellungen zu Religion in Lebenswelt, Schule und Gesellschaft im Vergleich acht europäischer Länder. In D.-P. Jozsa, Th. Knauth, & W. Weisse (Eds.), Religionsunterricht, Dialog und Konflikt Analysen im Kontext Europas. Münster: Waxmann. Knauth, T. (2007). Religious education in Germany: Contribution to dialogue or source of conflict? A historical and contextual analysis of its development since the 1960s. In R. Jackson, S. Miedema, W. Weisse, & J.-P. Willaime (Eds.), Religion and education in Europe: Developments, contexts and debates (pp. 243–265). Münster: Waxmann. Knauth, T., Jozsa, D.-P., Bertram-Troost, G., & Ipgrave, J. (Eds.) (2008). Encountering religious pluralism in school and society – A qualitative study of teenage perspectives in Europe. Münster: Waxmann. Schihalejev, O. (2008). Meeting Diversity-Students’ Perspectives in Estonia. In Th. Knauth, D.-P. Jozsa, G. Bertram-Troost, & J. Ipgrave (Eds.), Encountering religious pluralism in school and society – A qualitative study of teenage perspectives in Europe (pp. 247–278). Münster: Waxmann. Skeie, G. (2007). Religion and education in Norway. In R. Jackson, S. Miedema, W. Weisse, & J.-P. Willaime (Eds.), Religion and education in Europe: Developments, contexts and debates (pp. 221–242). Münster: Waxmann. Valk, P., Bertram-Troost, G., Friederici, M., & Beraud, C. (Eds.) (2009). Teenagers’ perspectives on the role of religion in their lives, schools and societies – A European quantitative study. Münster: Waxmann. Willaime, J.-P. (2007). Teaching religious issues in French public schools. From abstentionist Laïcité to a return of religion to public education. In R. Jackson, S. Miedema, W. Weisse, J.-P. Willaime (Eds.), Religion and education in Europe: Developments, contexts and debates (pp. 87–102). Münster: Waxmann.

Religious Youth in a Secular Culture Response to Dan-Paul Jozsa Geir Skeie

Together with Dan-Paul Jozsa and researchers from several European countries, the religious education research groups at the University of Stavanger, with me as the project leader, have participated in the REDCo-project that Dan-Paul Jozsa is referring to. These comments are therefore not coming from the outside; they are rather an attempt to discuss some issues raised by Jozsa in his chapter, as well as continuing the reflections already started within the REDCo-project consortium. Since the context of this presentation is a Nordic conference, I have made it a point to try to relate some of the issues to the Norwegian situation, hoping that this may also seem relevant to our Scandinavian neighbours. As pointed out early in Jozsa’s chapter, the quantitative study of the REDCoproject shows that a large part of young people in the countries investigated have little interest in religion. When asked whether they ‘have a certain religion or worldview’, a large part of the young people answer that they have not, and after England, Norway had the largest group with no religion (50%; see Table 1 in the chapter “Islam in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict?”). In the case of Norway this does not fit with the membership rates of religious groups, since the Church of Norway alone has about 80% of the population as its members. So, how should we interpret these answers? On the surface level it seems reasonable to argue that many respondents are not answering based on their formal relationship to religions or worldviews, but based on their personal relationship to religions or worldviews. From this perspective significant groups do not consider themselves as belonging to a particular religion. It is probably also important to reflect on the age group we are referring to. The 14–16-year-olds can be described as capable of exercising self-determination, but still too young to fully embrace this independence. In Norway the formal age of religious self-determination is 15 years, which means that at this age it is not the parents, but the young people themselves who decide about membership issues. Since most of them have not used the right to exit the religious groups they formally

G. Skeie (B) Faculty of Humanities, Stockholm University, Sweden; University of Stavanger, Norway e-mail: [email protected] 45 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_5, 

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belong to by virtue of their parents’ decisions, it is probably best to assume that the age groups investigated by REDCo (or at least the Christian part) are not too preoccupied with formalities in terms of religion. Whether this may change with increasing age is another issue. The answer young people in the REDCo survey give regarding what influences their views on religion is that their parents are their most important sources of information about religion and worldview. Based on this, we may say that there is a fair chance that the pattern of what may be called non-believing belongers may continue into the next generation of the Christianity-oriented majority population. The recent elections for councils on parish and diocese levels in the Church of Norway was also a test of membership records and the relevance of the church, and this revealed that the vast majority of the population still want to stay on as members. In other words, there might continue to be a large part of the population in Norway who want to be members of a Christian church, but still might not see themselves as Christians. Knowledge about these complexities is not only important for religious educators because it tells something about the life-interpretation of their students, but it is also important because it says something about the socio-religious context that Muslim European children and youngsters live in. My assumption is that the understanding of what religion and worldview are about, is shaped in the interface between majority and minority interpretations and practices in this field. One of the main points in Jozsa’s chapter as I read it is that Muslim children differ from Christian children in the way they think and act as religious people. One result in particular seems to capture some of the motivation behind this difference, which is displayed in Table 2 (see chapter “Islam in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict?”). When the teenagers are asked whether they find religion important, Muslims stand out compared to Christians. Only a sizable minority of the Christians find religion to be ‘very important’, while this is the answer of the vast majority of Muslims. Jozsa argues that the explanation for quantitative differences between Muslim and Christian youth as well as students with no religion is not the religion as such, but whether they find religion to be important. It seems that the self-perception of Muslim youth is much more homogenous on this issue than it is for the Christian and non-religious young people. It is not obvious that it should be so, since Muslims in Europe have many different social and national backgrounds, and belong to a great variety of groups who are interpreting Islam differently. At least in larger cities this is displayed by the range of mosques and other cultural and national affiliations available to the Muslim population. It is therefore not obvious that a sufficient explanation of the seemingly religious homogeneity within the Muslim population has to do with theology or aspects of the larger Islamic tradition as such. There is, however, another possible explanation related to the minority and/or immigrant situation that Muslims in Europe find themselves in. As a minority, Muslims are seen from the outside as being more homogeneous than they are, and to some extent they may accept this ascribed identity. The young people in this survey are all in schools where they meet a variety of people from different backgrounds, probably more so than most of their parents. In this social space, it is

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possible that the majority’s portrayal of Muslims as ‘different’ gives little room for individual interpretations of their religion. On the other side, in a minority situation the religious identity may offer both community, cohesion within the group and the family, and also a relatively safe ground for young people. The opposite may be the situation for Christian and non-religious majority youth. I have already mentioned that they are clearly heterogeneous by having a large nominal membership, not reflected in personal belief and activity. This means that within the self-declared group of Christians, the internal differences are big, as shown by Jozsa. If we continue to apply the majority–minority dimension to this aspect also, it is conceivable that majority youth, whether they be Christian or not, do not consider their religion as being something given, but rather as something related to choice, and that this also goes for the architecture of beliefs and for religious practice. Interpreted like this, the majority is not seen as ‘different’, they are just a lot of different people, while the Muslims are seen as a ‘group’, based on the majority’s power of definition in the public space. In a secularized country like Norway, the REDCo study clearly showed that religion is not seen as ‘cool’ by the majority of young people, but this seems mainly to affect the Christians, and not so much the Muslims. In many ways, therefore, the young Christians who find religion to be very important in their lives may pay a higher price for this than young Muslims. In short, Muslim is something you just are by virtue of (minority) background, while Christian is something you have to defend, because it is ‘chosen’. This does not mean that life is easier for young people from a Muslim background; on the contrary, it may indicate that on the level of religion, they feel less pressure to hide or abandon their religion – at least this seems to be the case in parts of Norway. Having said this, it should be noted that the minority/majority situation does not necessarily explain everything. An important limitation of the REDCo study is that religious minorities other than Muslims are so small in figures that they do not give any reliable information. If we knew more about this it could have led to a more refined discussion of possible explanations for the results. Regarding religion in school Jozsa’s chapter renders important information about religious differences. It is clear that seen on a European level the situation for young Muslims is more unpredictable and insecure than for Christian students. One example of this is the unevenly distributed anxiety about religion bringing conflict to the classroom, where Muslims seem more vulnerable. Also on the institutional level there are reasons for minorities to be worried. In the case of Germany, the situation for religion in education differs from state to state, and Muslims are not always granted the same system as Lutherans and Catholics; this is also a problem in the Spanish confessional system. In addition some aspects like lack of teacher training and less influence in school policies nationally and locally probably play a role here. Muslim students therefore seem to feel more vulnerable in school in some countries, and not in others, as Jozsa mentions. The Norwegian sample, which is discussed in the same book that Jozsa is referring to (Valk, Bertram-Troost, Friederici, & Béraud, 2009), shows that on the level of the local school differences in teaching culture can also be quite noticeable. This fits well with the result of qualitative studies that

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show issues of conflict being quite closely related to the ability of the school and the teacher to secure an atmosphere of trust and safety (Avest, Jozsa, Knauth, Rosón, & Skeie, 2009). This may also be part of the explanation for the finding Jozsa refers to regarding the preferred model for religion in education. Here students tend rather to favour the model they are used to than to go for a single model across national contexts. Also in other cases it seems that the students are rather influenced by their national background, and do not always have so much in common as believers within a specific religion. This is the case when asked about the relationship of religion to the public–private division. In his final discussion Jozsa argues that a lot of the differences between Muslim and Christian students, and also students with no religion, can be referred to by the degree of importance of religion in the young peoples’ lives. If the sample is organized according to answers about ‘importance of religion’ this creates a set of groups that seems to be acting and responding in similar ways. As discussed above, this question is cutting straight through the group of Christian students, separating them into several rather large groups with different degrees of importance attached to religion. This is not the case with Muslims, who seem to be pretty united in the position that religion is important to them. As Jozsa mentions, this is a general picture in the study, and I will add that in Norway it is even more pronounced. One question to ask is whether this touches upon the understanding of religion as such. In European sociology of religion, discussions about ‘invisible religion’, ‘secularization’ and ‘sacralization’ as well as about substantial and functional definitions of religion are seen as signs of how the role of religion in society changes. If we try to relate these discussions to the REDCo study, it seems that these debates may be more relevant for understanding changes in the role of the Christian religion, than towards religion as such. It is of course difficult to see how this dynamic will develop in the future, and whether the young generation will develop new patterns of thinking and action from those of their parents’ generation. What Jozsa refers to as an ‘Islamisation of the way religion is represented’ is highly interesting in this context and in one way this points in a different direction from that which was mentioned above. The young people in this study are, in spite of their limited contact with peers from other religious and worldview backgrounds, still quite used to living in a religiously diverse society, compared to their parents’ generation. They meet students with a different background in school and to some extent also in other arenas. In different ways, school seems to address this, and the young people want knowledge about religions other than their own. According to this study, majority of young students seem to display distinct internal differences in interest, commitment and practice related to their religious and worldview affiliation. This is different from their Muslim peers, who are seemingly united and confident in their beliefs and committed to a religious practice, at least in principle. In this they resemble what we may call the committed Christian group of young people, those who claim religion to be ‘very important’ in their lives. In Norway it is very clear, sociologically speaking, that Muslim youth in general have an attitude to (their) religion which finds a parallel only among a small part of the Christian youth. A question to be asked, therefore, is whether the possible ‘Islamisation of religion’

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means that this will influence the interpretation of being religiously committed to whichever religion, rather than Islam gradually being influenced by ‘Christian’ ways of thinking and practicing religion. On this point it is also important to consider how strongly an often quite hegemonic secular worldview position pictures religion. In Norway, a large group of young people take this position, and like several other Nordic countries, the hegemonic ‘public culture’ is secular even if this is not made an official policy in the way we see it in France. Based on Human Rights law, and particularly clearly in the field of religion in education, there also seems to be a development in school policies towards caution regarding teaching models that engage students in dialogue, personal encounter and involvement across religious division lines. The intention is to protect the freedom of religion and belief, but there may also be a danger that important issues are not then addressed. In this perspective it is interesting what Dan-Paul Jozsa refers to regarding the interest that young people in England and Norway show towards getting knowledge about different religions and learning to respect each other. It seems that broad religious education in public schools is an important arena to develop further, and also to the benefit of young Muslim students in European societies.

References Avest, I. ter., Jozsa, D. P., Knauth, T., Rosón, J., & Skeie, G. (Eds.). (2009). Dialogue and Conflict on Religion. Studies of Classroom Interaction in European Countries. Münster: Waxmann. Valk, P., Bertram-Troost, G., Friederici, M., & Béraud, C. (Eds.). (2009). Teenagers’ Perspectives on the Role of Religion in their Lives, Schools and Societies (Vol 7). Münster: Waxmann.

Global Citizenship Education and Equality: Gendered Hegemonies, Tensions and a Global Gender Ethic Madeleine Arnot

1 Introduction Over the last 50 years, those concerned with social inequality have focused attention on national state education systems. In that sense, educational researchers encouraged the development of more equitable notions of nationhood and national citizenship. The aim of much feminist writing within this tradition has been to create male and female citizens through the national educational system who are able to engage with, and act in the name of, gender equality. That civic practice which saw schooling as a key agency of social reform is now deeply challenged by the emerging focus on global citizenship. Today, the concept of global citizenship education provides a different and difficult new context within which to reconsider the promotion of gender equality. This emergent school curriculum, subject or theme (whether it is called global citizenship education, global or cosmopolitan education) moves us from the national to the global, from the particular to the universal, from the safety of state educational agendas to international politics (Arnot, 2009). Global citizenship education is fundamentally about power – it is a space within which the young global citizen can learn not only about the massive global inequalities between rich and poor nations, but also about the ways in which globalisation as a cultural and economic force aggravates local inequalities. At its most ethically forceful, global citizenship education is a form of moral education channelling outrage at the destructive unequal effects of globalisation and the suffering in the world. Some argue that there is potential in this subject, if based on the universal notion of humanity, to shape a global community. Nussbaum (2002, 2004), for example, argues that if the child is educated to respect the dignity of reason and moral choice of every person and to recognise the power of common global values to strengthen self-knowledge and community involvement, global citizenship education could even extend our humanity. It could create a new form of cosmopolitan solidarity. M. Arnot (B) Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected]

51 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_6, 

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The moral values associated with global citizenship are more often than not based upon the liberal notion of human rights. The image created of the new global citizen, of a true humanistic spirit, is a person who would recognise and actively promote the universal validity of human rights – the rights of personhood over and above those of national citizenship. As Griffiths (1998) argues, the ethical and humane global citizen is one who is not merely aware of her right but able and desirous to act upon them: of an autonomous and inquiring critical disposition: but her decisions and actions tempered by an ethical concern for social justice and the dignity of human kind: therefore able, through her actions, to control and enhance ‘the trajectory of the self’ through life while contributing to the commonweal, the public welfare, with a sense of civic duty to replenish society (Griffiths, 1998, p. 40 quoted in Davies, Harber, & Yamashita, 2005, p. 4)

Such associations of human rights with moral goodness, however, can be problematic, not least for those concerned with the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights globally. Human rights represent in some senses a form of cultural/political hegemony, particularly when applied to gender issues (Unterhalter, 2007). In this chapter, I want to touch on some of the dilemmas associated with the application of human rights discourse to global forms of male hegemony – patriarchal relations. Of particular interest in this context is the extension of the rights discourse into intimate, private relations between the sexes. What makes the contemporary period even more interesting is that this globalised human rights agenda which radically challenges male hegemonic forms, in turn, now has to confront Southern feminist critiques of the dominance of Northern knowledge. The second theme which I explore here is the paradox that, as Northern educationalists particularly those of us promoting gender equality internationally, we need to be aware that our educational agendas are imposed on and potentially experienced as oppressive by different nations and cultures. Without reflexivity and awareness of the writings of those outside Northern academia, it is genuinely difficult to envisage an appropriate framework for a gender-sensitive form of global citizenship education. In effect, I wish to raise the question about whether liberal notions of gender equality and education and women’s rights developed in Northern liberal democratic states have sufficiently engaged with the dangers of exporting, if not applying, a rights-based framework to relations between the sexes in the South. I begin with the challenge to male hegemonic power.

2 Global Development, Human Rights and Male Hegemonic Power In Western Europe, the human rights discourse has made us aware of the extent to which national citizenship works to include and exclude particular groups in society – the distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the marginalisation of the poor, or the gay, disabled or minority ethnic and immigrant communities. Through the work of feminist writers in Europe, North America and Australasia, we have become

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particularly aware of the ways in which male hegemonic power within the political economy and within culture constructed a world in which women were exploited and oppressed in both public and private spheres. After 50 years of the most recent wave of the women’s movement, many advanced liberal democratic societies are thought to have developed a very effective female counter-hegemony. That counterhegemony is built around and within the discourse of human rights which expects all women to have the same rights as men (Arnot, 2002). Since the l980s, the women’s movement internationally has also succeeded in making gender inequalities and female subordination the focus of a number of international declarations and treaties putting ‘flesh on the minimalist bones of existing human rights legislation’ (UNESCO, 2003, p. 27). For example, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was ratified by 173 countries and came into force in 1981. As a result of the Dakar Framework, two of the key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) supported by the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF are to achieve universal primary education (to ensure that by 2015 children everywhere – boys and girls alike – will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling (Goal 2: Target 3)). Global Goal 3 goes even further – it aims to promote gender equality and empower women: by eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015 (Target 4). At present, international concern is focused on bringing into line the 28 countries that do not meet these MDGs. This internationalisation and universalisation of gender equality challenges worlds which are deeply patriarchal in structure, anti-Western and hostile to any undermining of their religious and cultural traditions. In effect, for gender equality goals to be delivered, governments and international aid agencies would need to subvert and/or remove some of the ingrained social relations and forms of gender (male) power in Southern societies. Yet, although the debate about the educational disadvantage suffered by children in the global South represents religion and cultural beliefs as possible obstacles to achievement, it does not recognise the variety and complexity of localised patriarchal power relations embedded in customs, traditions and religions. Further, such international goals tend to be more conservative than radical, since they fail to recognise the ‘patriarchal dividend’ (c.f. Connell, 2005) which men acquire through their advantage in society, the ways in which schools themselves create gender inequality and hierarchy through their gendered cultures, and the social and cultural mores embedded in the institutional discriminations that shape women’s lives (Marshall & Arnot, 2008; Unterhalter, 2000, 2007). Paradoxically, human rights goals take on board the power of gender customs and traditional knowledges but not their gender biases and their close associations with male dominance. There is also little sense of the history of colonialism and imperialism which shaped and reinforced such dominance in its own Northern image. A more radical challenge to national and local patriarchal gerontocratic relations has developed as a result of the increasing emphasis in the North on personal rights, not least rights in the private sphere to do with sexuality and biological reproduction. Global messages about new notions of human rights are transmitted through the

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world media and the fashion industry, through new technologies – through telephones, music books and tourism. Increasingly as Plummer (2003, p. 117) describes, vast social and culture ‘flows’ are changing the conditions of sexualities and are implicated in the transformation of personal gender relations. As part of this process intimate relationships are changing in the wealthier more privileged parts of the world and impinging on our view of the South. The ‘transformations of intimacy’ (Giddens, 1992) implied by globalisation are good examples of this North-South tension over conceptualizations of the universality of human rights. It is here that we find acute conflict over what are now called sexual citizenship and reproductive citizenship in Western European (predominantly Christian) countries and the rest of the world. Associated with the notion of liberal democratic societies is the freeing of the sexual self from traditional constraints that determine what is permitted in terms of life style, sexual lives and tastes, and reproductive behaviour. In ‘a runaway world’ (Giddens ibid), democratisation has delved deep in the private realm, promoting the idea of an individual’s right to freedom of sexual expression and association and a diversity of sexual life styles, whilst attempting to stop the exclusion of sexual minority groups from their rights of citizenship. This concept of sexual citizenship entails an individual’s right to participate in pleasurable sexual activity, the right to give sexual consent, and to receive care and respect whilst reproductive citizenship refers to the right to control one’s own body and bodily functions including the right to sexual and reproductive self-determination – the right to choose whom to marry, when to have children, to plan the number and sequence of children and so on (Weeks, 1998; Richardson and Turner, 2001). Significantly, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development recognised that all women have the right to a satisfactory and safe sexual life and can chose when to reproduce and how. This extension and universalisation of rights and of personhood widens the gap between the global North and South, making it exceptionally difficult to know how to address the intimate sexual relations in income-poor countries with strong patriarchal traditions. The anger of the international women’s movement is focused on the suppression of female sexuality by religious doctrines and practices in the name of religion which control and denigrate women’s sexuality, abuse their bodily rights in relation to childbearing, and determine their choice of sexual partners etc. Such doctrines and related practices are perceived as denying women choices whilst claiming to offer women protection. On the whole, the effect is to point to the failure to provide such sexual and reproductive rights, particularly for women in various contexts. In many societies, personal sexual freedoms are also controlled by patriarchal relations in the state. Women’s sexuality is regulated by a whole range of male controls: criminal laws (such as the age of consent, certain sexual practices, public indecency and pornography); medical discourses which define normality, perversions, and deny medical or reproductive treatments to certain groups; and religious discourses that can lead to institutional exclusions. A global citizenship education that support women’s rights of personhood would have to start addressing these hegemonic mechanisms which deny women (as well as other groups such as the disabled and gay communities) the rights of sexual and reproductive citizenship.

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The educational content of global citizenship becomes even more problematic if we are to take account of the violence against women and girls. We know that, if the education of the global citizen is to have any moral force in support of women, then it would need to engage in a real sense with what Charlotte Bunch (1997) called this ‘most pervasive violation of human rights in the world today’. We know that violence is not generally considered an appropriate topic for national citizenship education in schools. However, the protection of children’s innocence from the adult world makes them ill prepared for violence in their society and in the world generally: Violence against women is so deeply embedded in cultures around the world that it is almost invisible. Yet this brutality is not inevitable. Once recognised for what it is – a construct of power and a means of maintaining the status quo – it can be dismantled (Bunch, 1997, p. 1).

It must be said that, despite the prevalence of world religions in which millions participate, despite their deep commitment to ethical and moral conduct towards others, despite the morality of neighbourliness and care in so many religions, the fact is that the female half of humanity is still faced with assault, rape, sexual slavery, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, verbal abuse, mutilation, even murder because they were born a member of a particular sex. Similarly, despite the success of the international human rights community in framing transnational declarations against violence and gender based violations, women worldwide still experience battery, physical and psychological imprisonment in the home, entrapment into prostitution and trafficking, female infanticide, malnutrition and infection with AIDS/HIV by men. Hypothetically, global citizenship education is a counter-hegemonic curricular space which can, if so desired, be used to challenge these patriarchal practices and controls over female sexuality and male violence. Entry into this debate can be justified on the evidence that (a) two-thirds of those who are illiterate globally are girls (UNESCO, 2003); (b) there is massive poverty amongst women globally and increasing female poverty as a result of global movement of trade and capital; (c) and, that globally women suffer a lack of rights and opportunities for self-development and independent economic survival. The question for Northern global educators is not what can young people learn about such gendered inequalities but could global citizenship as a curriculum subject really take on board these more controversial of gender themes? Another equally important dilemma is whether, given the success both nationally and internationally of linking women’s rights to human rights, there is also the need to consider how such a counter-hegemonic force can itself become a form of global hegemonic power both within and across transnational institutions and contexts. In an insightful piece, Ulrich Beck (2006) argued that human rights today appear to be immune from dispute and, if the only principle of social justice, can as a result become a hegemonic discourse in which consent is (by definition) assumed. In the development world, human rights are represented publicly as principles which civilized people support – those who do not are immediately defined as primitive or uncivilized. Whilst appearing fundamentally tolerant, particularly if represented as

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universal, human rights are built on the assumption that no disagreement is possible. Paradoxically, Beck argues, the effect is to gloss over the complexities of class, ethnic, gender power, and the global responsibilities for the creation of poverty, and the interdependence of unequal nations. As a result, numerous conflicts arise – not least those of gender. As Beck (2001, p. 60) points out, one of the dangers of this twenty-first century scenario is the ‘untidy arena of ongoing conflict between the sexes and (still) increasing (and more and more intolerant) lifestyle conflicts of all sort’. To sum up, the development of human rights as the framework which underlies global citizenship raises considerable concern about the prevalence of oppressive patriarchal regimes and the ways in which male hegemonies work through not just the denial of women’s rights but also the violation of women’s well-being. At the same time this framework, whilst countering male hegemonic practices, if taken to its logical conclusion can also come to represent Northern hegemonic knowledge about women and about gender relations in the South. Global citizenship education, if it is to be truly global, would need to hear the counter-hegemonic voices of Southern feminists. It is to these voices to which I now turn.

3 Rethinking Gender and Education from a Southern Perspective An alternative way of assessing the value of using a global feminist framework within the citizenship curriculum is to locate more firmly our gender conceptualisations within the Global North. This process of deconstruction needs to be genuinely reflexive. Such a self-critical stance, however, is not easy to achieve, not least since Western gender research and its educational agendas have not been challenged by research from developing economies. This is perhaps because of the sharp disciplinary divide that cuts through the research on gender and education – on the one hand, we have national empirical knowledge and, on the other, gender and development studies (Fennell 2007). An important conceptualisation of global citizenship education means reconsidering this divide. It means developing an understanding of how we ourselves are positioned within the global divisions of Northern and Southern, living in income-rich countries, and from such a standpoint, establishing criteria with which to assess gender relations in the South. Gender scholarship in education has been part of a one-way traffic that leaves Western Europe and North America often without having been influenced by insights from other cultural traditions.1 Also, as Connell (2007) demonstrates, the hegemonic knowledge created in the powerful academic apparatus of global

1 Gender

education research and policy-making appears to be located more within development studies departments, government ministries and NGOs than in the university faculties of education or institutes for the training new teachers.

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metropoles systematically denies the creativity and contribution of academic knowledge coming out of other regional and national academies. Thus, even though Southern gender researchers work in innovative ways within their own countries and cross-national boundaries in order to undertake comparative international research, their local research on gender and education (schooling, adult education and informal education) has difficulty achieving international scholarly impact. Paradoxically, despite concerns about gender pluralism and diversity within a nation, we Northern gender researchers also appear to have ignored our own hegemonic positioning within colonialist and imperial legacies. The imposition of culturally specific Western notions of gender education transmitted through the MDGs (referred to earlier), and through allegedly universal goals of gender equality, have been received critically by some Southern feminist educationalists (Narayan, 1997; Unterhalter, 2007). These non-Western views suggest that, as countries have different historical trajectories, they have developed distinctive understandings of gender and gender relations (Momsen & Kinnaird, 1993; Nzegwu 2003). In reality, the privileging of gender relations and patriarchy above other social forms of power (e.g., those of age, rural–urban, caste, ethnicity or race) does not translate easily across societies. Nor do the categories, for example, of ‘woman’ and ‘man’, the concept of the public or the notion of the family since they too are arbitrary cultural formations (e.g., Nnameka, 1998; Odyoye, 2000; Oyewumi, 1997, 2003, 2005). Further, diasporic and migratory contexts, rather than stable and embedded cultures, shift gender conceptualisations and effect change in what is possible for men and women (Brah, 2002). As a result of this difference in context, when international agendas uncritically export liberal individualising models for education into developing countries they are in danger of undermining women’s position and future and can even aggravate existing gender divisions. As Unterhalter (2007), Mundy and Murphy (2001) and others point out, transnational declarations of gender and education, even those which highlight gender equality rather than gender access, can be Trojan horses – in other words vehicles for other ideologies, only some of which might be liberatory for women. The tendency is to re-create its hegemonic Northern knowledge in distant cultures in its own image. In this context, the lack of critical engagement with and validation of ‘Southern’ gender theory arguably can also disadvantage precisely those countries which are the target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). According to Bhola (2002) writing in Africa Today, we need to recognise two intersecting dialectics – that between education and development and between modern knowledge and indigenous knowledge. In resolving these conflicts, especially when there is considerable international pressure to deliver certain targets, national institutions of education within a developing nation are in danger of losing the creative knowledge and imagination of indigenous cultures. A more productive response to new global education agendas is to confront and understand the particular historical and intellectual forces in different cultures/nations which generate specific conceptual and analytical gender frameworks. As Connell (2007) suggests, the key is to return to the manner in which knowledge is gleaned, accumulated and distributed across nations and the world. In the gender context, such accounts will constitute what

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Ramamurthy (2007, p. 1) called the ‘geographies of feminist knowledge formation’. Using this approach, the Millennium targets for gender and education could encourage situated localised empirical studies, even if international agencies which promoted such targets did not include such South–North learning. In the case of gender and education, the Millennium Development Goals offer a rather unique opportunity to start such dialogical work. Two years ago Shailaja Fennell and I began the process of ‘reading’ and ‘hearing’ African and Indian feminists’ critical readings of metropolitan gender theory as a way forward in constructing a more globally informed field of gender education research. Our readings identified various themes which are particularly relevant to educational researchers whilst recognising that there are many more complex arguments to be found in theorisations of gender in many other global locations (Fennell & Arnot, 2008a, b). Below I outline some of the arguments we found valuable in our reflections on education, feminism and development.2 These arguments helped us begin to engage with the process of deconstructing the universalisation of human rights within gender education.

4 Challenging Northern Hegemonic Gender Research In 1988, Chandra Talpade Mohanty3 who described herself as ‘a Third World feminist trained in the United States, was interested in questions of culture, knowledge production and activism in an international context’ (Mohanty, 2003a, p. 45). She wrote a now-celebrated piece ‘Under Western Eyes; Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’ (Mohanty, 1988). Here she pointed out that what she regarded as ‘Western feminist research’ was ‘colonising’ in the manner in which it depicted women from other societies as an essential category of ‘Third World Woman’. Women in the developing world were categorised by their female gender (read sexually constrained) and Third World character (read poor, uneducated, tradition bound, domesticated). The ideological construction of ‘Third World Woman’ was based on a presumed social homogeneity, or shared characteristic, despite the existence of major differences in ‘race’ and social class and experiences in the real lives of these women. The effect was to create a single story of male violence and oppression of subjugated and powerless women who were seen as dependent on men, oppressed by religion and family systems and where the way forward was to create a single sisterhood that was united in its struggle for ‘freedom’. In ‘Cartographies of Struggle’, Mohanty (2003a) extended her analysis of Western hegemonic knowledge showing the ways in which the term ‘Native’, 2I

would like to thank Shailaja Fennell for giving permission to reproduce some of our arguments here. 3 Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Professor of Women’s studies at Syracuse University. She came from India to the United States especially to study for her doctorate within the field of education. The trajectory of her argument can be traced in Mohanty (2003b, 2003c, 2003d, 2003e).

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constructed in anthropology in the early twentieth century, drew on racial and sexual stereotypes to provide the epistemological basis of the term ‘Third World Woman’. This analysis offered a valuable examination of the paralysing power of binary forms of ‘othering’, creating in this case a distinction between the ‘West’ and the rest of the world. The implication of Mohanty’s analysis for educationalists is that knowledge production in the literary and social-scientific disciplines as a ‘discursive site for struggle’ is just as important as material struggle (Mohanty, 2003a, p. 76). Her call for a more nuanced and political understanding of the categories used by social scientists are equally relevant for gender educational research and global citizenship education. The concept of the universal ‘girl child’, for example, which is applied to Southern contexts and often used in relation to female educational access in EFA targets, may well be another example of such essentialising. Despite sophisticated awareness of the intersectionality of social class, and ethnic and gender identities in metropolitan social science, the concept of the ‘girl child’ in Southern countries is mostly used to explore educational access and participation. This concept too could be regarded as part of hegemonic knowledge production that infantilises girls, seeing them not only as ‘childlike’ hence without agency, but also as a homogenous (undifferentiated) group. As a result, the diversity of experiences of young women within such societies, the range of possible femininities, and indeed their contribution to the survival of their families and their own negotiations and resistance are likely to go unrecognised amongst both national and global civic educators. Mohanty (1988) also argued that, as a consequence of the discursive constructions of ‘third world’ women, only those aspects of their lives which relate to what she regarded as ‘Western’ epistemologies were opened up for investigation. When international development brings education into the centre of its aid agenda and political concerns, there is a similar danger. New universals regarding gender (this time of young people) are based on the historical features of the Western European industrial experience and theories of advanced economic development. The plight of the ‘girl child’ (or boy for that matter) in relation to such educational goals are considered only within the framework of individualised transitions from family to school and from schooling to work rather than through the deeper formations of subjectivity, identity and belonging within complex colonial and traditional cultural heritages (Bhola, 2002). Contemporary research and teaching about gender and education in Southern contexts today has to consider whether it recognises the influence of such historical and negative stereotyping of the ‘third world’ girl, her teacher and her community. Women (and female children) cannot be studied as gendered beings without recourse to the histories that have created the nation-states within which they are located and how these histories have been refashioned by the colonial encounter. To be reflective of these histories, international human rights agendas around girls’ education and global citizenship would need to address not just internal differentiations but also the colonial and postcolonial history of this discursive framework.

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Hegemonic gender discourses are woven into these contexts and today permeate into the micro-politics and family practices that surround them.4 Yet deconstructive writing about these colonial legacies is surprisingly rare amongst Northern feminist educators. Positioning oneself as a researcher or a teacher in relation to the tensions between colonial American and European discourses, postcolonial feminism and indigenous knowledge forms is a difficult task that few Northern education researchers engage in. In contrast, despite its obvious political dangers, Southern feminists outside North American and Western European metropoles use poststructuralism to reflect on their own positionality across the North–South divide in which many have been educated. To engage in that process, Southern social theorists have had to rework the concepts of structure and agency within American and European social science and privilege both contextual and indigenous meanings in their own work. Many draw on Spivak’s (1985) influential writing5 where she points out that it is only by ‘decentring’ the individual at the heart of a Foucauldian analysis and removing the geographical imperialisms that lurk behind his analysis that agency can be fully understood. Spivak asked whether ‘the subaltern can speak’. In poststructuralist research, as long as her voice is directed by intellectuals who are unable to de-centre themselves or their established forms of epistemology, their voices will not be heard. If ‘subalterns’ such as ‘Third World Women’ are to be heard then, Spivak argues, we need to change the way in which we, as academics, use and work with ideas or we will not be able to interpret the articulation of the subaltern woman. However, as Shailaja Fennell and I found, not all Southern gender writers are enamoured with poststructuralism and its decentring processes as the means of being heard or as a method of challenging Northern hegemonic knowledge. As Nnameka’s (a Nigerian Professor of French and Women’s Studies at Indiana University) points out, Foucauldian theory cannot help in redressing the political problems associated with Western European and North American epistemologies since poststructuralism’s focus on discourse and aesthetics instead of social action encourages the egocentricity and individualism that undermine collective action (Nnameka, 2003, p. 364).6

Escaping such egocentricity and individualism involves the construction of a different sort of gender theory and understanding of Southern feminist writing. For 4 The

plurality of gender relations in multicultural societies, such as those in Africa, also requires that gender difference should be replaced by differentiation with regard to oppression, conflict and struggle (Mohanty, 2003a). Mohanty argues that what is needed is a transnational multicultural feminism which is radical, antiracist and non-heterosexual and which can challenge a hegemonic capitalist regime; thus, the task that ‘feminist educators, artists, scholars and activists face is that of historicising and denaturalising the ideas, beliefs and values of global capital such that underlying exploitative social relations and structures are made visible’ (Mohanty, 2003c, p. 124). 5 Subaltern Studies emerged in the 1980s as an alternative approach to history, and social analysis more broadly, that focuses on the agency of non-elites (i.e., subalterns) to bring about political and social change. 6 See also Nnameka (1998, 2005).

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example, recognition of the complexity of African countries requires in Nnameka’s view what she calls ‘Nego-Feminism’ – a feminism of negotiation or the non-ego form of feminism. Essentially Nego-feminism challenges the Cartesian duality of public/private spheres and male and female forces on which North American and Western European research is premised. It also implies a full exploration of these relational worlds of young men and women without slipping back into the forms of individualism and individualisation associated with Western liberal democracy.7 The African sense of identity is located within the communal other than individual space. There is not the space here to demonstrate the different social scientific traditions that have been developed to counter the hegemony of Western European educational knowledge. Shailaja Fennell and I identified a number of African writers who challenge the concepts of the body, the ‘ego’ and the self which lie at the heart of North American and Western European research and which frame our understanding of what it means to be an individual and ‘a subject’ within an economically developing nation (see Fennell & Arnot, 2008a, b). This individualism also lies at the heart of the concept of ‘education for national growth’. From this perspective, the MDGs and their targets build an educational discourse that precisely embeds counter-intuitive individualised notions of self within educational systems.

5 Gendered Ethics in Global Citizenship Education The impression I have given about the role of global citizenship education in the promotion of a gender ethic around equality is necessarily messy, complicated, confusing and challenging. I intended to open rather than conclude debates about gender equality from a global educational perspective. The arguments I have put forward represent the need to influence the emergent notions of global citizenship education so that we do not quietly slip gender equality agendas which are associated with national territorialism and the nation-state unproblematically into concepts of the global without a critical positioning and reflection. Because of its location within the modern state, the educational system and educationalists have to a large extent been protected from global politics, whether mainstream, postcolonial or global. In today’s world, it is important to start engaging in more active way with global politics and to think about where this leaves the school system with its moral purpose and its need to present to young people some sense of a global gender ethic or a global ‘conscience collective’ (see my use of Durkheimian models of moral solidarity (Arnot, 2009)). In the chapter, I have adopted a dual focus that highlights the contradictions between, on the one hand, challenging male hegemonic power in different national contexts through international agencies and development agendas and, on the other,

7 See

for example: Beck & Beck-Gernsheim (2001) for a discussion of the increasing individualisation of Western European society.

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being challenged by Southern writers to look for the construction of inappropriate forms of gender knowledge. The universalisation of global women’s rights raises questions about the appropriateness of exporting Northern feminist thought without consideration of historically constituted global diversity. Having said that, the emergence of global equality agendas in this decade associated with new frameworks and metrics for national growth provide a unique opportunity to bring together the diverse understandings of gender that are emerging from the different trajectories taken by academic traditions in Western Europe/North America and other regional/national traditions of research (Tsing, 1993). An extraordinary opportunity is now here to recognise the creativity and contribution of academic knowledge from the South (non-Eurocentric, non-Western). A chance to see the world of gender education, and female socialisation differently – an opportunity to validate the work of university academics outside Europe and North America. In this postmodern world, the education system may encourage palimpsest identities through its pedagogies based on prospective, reflexive, individualised learning, student voice and choice. Or it could make a major attempt to achieve some sort of civic public form of ‘coordination’ between two incompatible goals – on the one hand ‘the effort to ‘rationalise’ the world’ and on the other hand, ‘ the effort to groom rational beings fit to inhabit it’ (Bauman, 2001, p. 138). Bauman, himself, is pessimistic. He argues that the latter goal which is the ‘underlying assumption of the modern educational project, seems no longer credible’ (Bauman, 2001, p. 138). Others, such as Massey (2000), are more optimistic arguing that whether it is possible to create ‘global interconnectedness’, by linking global learners to the emergent ideas of international networks and radical protest movements. Hutchings (2002) argues that the idea of global citizenship involves an ‘imagined human community of the future’ (p. 53) – in this case one which brings together a wide range of social movements which struggle for peace, human rights and ecology. However, one has to be aware that such new politics around global injustice can make young people feel even more powerless. Demaine (2005) argues that even though global citizens can expose ‘the inequalities between citizens rights and resources both within and between nation-states’ – the globalised rich and localised poor (Beck, 2000, p. 55), developing a real sense of outrage could be a goal that is meaningless in income-rich countries. There are clearly aspects of globalisation processes that can be used to strengthen claims for equity and empowerment in education, with one of the key discursive spaces for mounting such a claim existing in global citizenship education. There has been a growth of Southern women’s development groups. These globalised women’s movements reflect increasing activism; they also arise as a result of the hugely negative effects of globalisation on women’s lives. The feminist movement is one such movement, suggesting on occasion that the notion of the feminist global citizen is ill conceived or misconceived not least because of its universalism and its failure to understand the gender power implied by this ideal. The image Hutchings (2002) creates is of a ‘citizen pilgrim’ seeking a future in which women’s lives are transformed, and arguably gender inequities are removed. The future which is entailed, however, fails to resolve the conflict between the human rights and human freedoms

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implied in universal declarations and the enormous diversity of women, difference between women and presence of often incompatible feminisms found globally. The decentring of hegemonic power is welcome but the promise can only become a reality whether North or South, if serious consideration is given to how to ensure that local and national specificities are brought into the centre of education research within a human rights approach. Such decentring requires a repositioning of the notion of human rights – a disordering of existing hegemonic knowledge construction around women’s rights. If global citizenship education is to provide a new global gender ethic it needs to be rethought. Bauman (2001, p. 93) argues for a ‘new ethics for the new age’ Contemporary humanity speaks in many voices and we know now that it will continue to do so for a very long time to come. The central issue of our times is how to reforge that polyphony into harmony and prevent it from degenerating into cacophony. Harmony is not uniformity; it is always an interplay of a number of different motifs, each retaining its separate identity and sustaining the resulting melody through, and thanks to, that identity (Bauman, 2001, p. 93–4).

References Arnot, M. (2002). Reproducing gender? Essays on educational theory and feminist politics. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Arnot, M. (Ed.) (2009). Educating the gendered citizen: Sociological analyses of national and global political education. London: Routledge. Bauman, Z. (2001). ‘Whatever happened to compassion’. In T. Bentley & D. Stedman Jones (Eds.), The moral universe. London: Demos. Beck, U. (2000). What is Globalisation? Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U. (2001). Der hässliche Bürger. In A. Brosziewski, T. S. Eberle, & C. Maeder (Eds.), Modern (pp. 57–68). Londstanz: UVI Verlagsgesellschaft (translated by D. Faas). Beck, U. (2006). Cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., & Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2001). Individualisation: Institutionalised individualism and its social and political consequences. London: Sage. Bhola, H. S. (2002). Reclaiming old heritage for proclaiming future history: The knowledge-fordevelopment debate in African contexts. Africa Today, 49(3), 1–21. Brah, A. (2002). ‘Global mobilities, local predicaments: Globalisation and the critical imagination’. Feminist Review, 70, 30–45. Bunch, C. (1997) The intolerable status quo: Violence against women and girls http://www.unicef.org/pon97/women1.htm (accessed 9.6.05) Connell, R. W. (2005). Change among the gatekeepers: Men, masculinities and gender equality in the global arena. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), 1801–1825. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Cambridge: Polity Press. Davies, L., Harber, C., & Yamashita, H. (2005) Global citizenship education: The needs of teachers and learners. Unpublished report, University of Birmingham. Demaine, J. (2005). Education and global citizenship. The Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 5(3), 103–109. Fennell, S. (2007). Contested gender frameworks: Economic models and provider perspectives in education. In: S. Fennell & M. Arnot (Eds.), Gender equality and education in a global context (pp. 35–50). Abingdon: Routledge. Fennell, S. & Arnot, M. (Eds.) (2008a). Gender education and equality in a global context. London: Routledge.

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Fennell, S., & Arnot, M. (2008b). Decentring hegemonic gender theory: The implications for educational research. Compare, 38(5), 525–539. Giddens, A. (1992) The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Griffiths, R. (1998). Education, citizenship and independent learning. London: Jessica Kingsley. Hutchings, K. (2002). Feminism and global citizenship. In N. Dower & J. Williams (Eds.), Global challenges: A critical reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marshall, H., & Arnot, M. (2008). Globalising the school curriculum: Gender, EFA and global citizenship education. In Fennell, S. & Arnot, M. (Eds.), Gender education and equality in a global context: Conceptual frameworks and policy perspective. London: Routledge. Massey, D. (2000) The geography of power, Red Pepper, July. Mohanty, C. T. (1988, Autumn). Under Western Eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30, pp. 61–88. Mohanty, C. T. (2003a). Cartographies of struggle: Third world women and the politics of feminism. In: Mohanty, C. T. (Ed.), Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity (pp. 43–84). Durham: Duke University Press. Mohanty, C. Y. (2003b). Feminism without borders: Decolonising theory, practicing solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press. Mohanty, C. T. (2003c). Western eyes revisited: Feminist solidarity through anti-capitalist struggles. Signs, 28(2), 499–535. Mohanty, C. Y. (2003d). Genealogies of home, country and nation in feminism without borders: Decolonising theory, practicing solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press. Mohanty, C. T. (2003e). Antiglobalisation pedagogies and feminism. In M. B. Zinn, P. HondagneuSotelo & M. A. Messner (Eds.) 2005, Gender through the prism of difference. New York: Oxford University Press. Momsen, J. & Kinnaird, V. (Eds.) (1993). Different places, different voices: Gender and development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, London. New York: Routledge. Mundy, K., & Murphy, L. (2001). Transnational advocacy, global civil society? Emerging evidence from the field of education. Comparative Education Review, 45(1), 85–126. Narayan, U. (1997). Dislocating cultures: Third world feminism and the politics of knowledge. New York: Routledge. Nnameka, O. (Ed.) (1998). Sisterhood, feminisms and power: From Africa to Diaspora. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Nnameka, O. (2003). Nego-feminism: Theorising, practicing and pruning Africa’s way. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29(2), 357–385. Nnameka, O. (2005). Bringing African women into the classroom: Rethinking pedagogy and epistemology. In: O. Oyewumi (Ed.), African gender studies: A reader (pp. 51–66). New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Nussbaum, M. (2002). Education for citizenship in an era of global connection. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21, 289–303. Nussbaum, M. (2004). Women’s education: A global challenge. Signs, 29, 325–355. Nzegwu, N. (2003). O Africa: Gender imperialism in academia. In Oyewumi, O. (Ed.), African women and feminism: Reflecting on the politics of sisterhood (pp. 99–154). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Odyoye, M. A. (2000). Daughters of Anowa African women and patriarchy. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Oyewumi, O. (1997). The invention of women: Making an African sense of western gender discourses. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Oyewumi, O. (2003). The white woman’s burden: African women in Western feminist discourse’. In Oyewumi, O. (Ed.), African women and feminism: Reflecting on the politics of sisterhood. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Oyewumi, O. (Ed.) (2005). African gender studies: A reader. New York, Basingstoke and Hamps: Palgrave Macmillan. Plummer, K. (2003). Intimate citizenship. Montreal, QC: McGill and Queen’s University Press.

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Ramamurthy, P. (2007) Feminist Conundrums in Post-Socialist India, Paper presented at the conference on Gender, Empire, and the Politics of Central and East Europe: A Gender Symposium, Central European University, Budapest, May 18–19, 2007. http://www.duke.edu/womstud/Ramamurthy%20Paper.pdf Richardson, E. H., & Turner, B. S. (2001). Sexual, intimate or reproductive citizenship? Review article. Citizenship Studies, 5(3), 329–38. Spivak, G. (1985). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. Champaign, IL: Illinois University Press. 271–317. Tsing, A. (1993). In the realm of the diamond queen: Marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. UNESCO (2003). Gender and education for all: The leap to equality, EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/4. Paris: UNESCO. Unterhalter, E. (2000). Transnational visions of the 1990s: Contrasting views of women, education and citizenship. In M. Arnot & J.-A. Dillabough (Eds.), Challenging democracy: International perspectives on gender, education and citizenship. London: Routledge. Unterhalter, E. (2007). Gender, schooling and social justice. London: Routledge. Weeks, J. (1998). The sexual citizen. Theory, Culture and Society, 15(304), 35–52.

What Name Are We? Global Citizenship Education for Whom? Response to Madeleine Arnot Karin Sporre

1 Introduction In her chapter Madeleine Arnot discusses the conditions for a global citizenship education where gender equality is taken into account. The limitations that are there due to education being a national activity, and the destructive effects of colonialism on joint knowledge production North–South form part of her discussion. Arnot ends her chapter reflecting on what she calls a new gendered ethics within global citizenship education. She then asks what could be understood as something common beyond the contemporary articulation of diversity and difference through many voices. In her chapter the tensions created by the universalism of the human rights discourse are also repeatedly critiqued. Here I will continue the sketching of a global citizenship education by discussing issues of knowledge production in a more global ‘knowledge society’ where North– South relationships are understood through critical post-colonial lenses – and the domination of the North so questioned. I will also point to some resources for such an education and illustrate that what we construct to be important knowledge varies. In concluding I will indicate what I consider to be of importance in a discussion of what could constitute common ground in the search for a global citizenship education. In my contribution I draw on a critical feminist discussion on epistemology, as well as my own praxis of exchange between Sweden and South Africa, including student and teacher exchanges, and research cooperation. With a background in education, ethics and in (feminist) theology I reflect on resources for an empowering ethics in global citizenship education.

K. Sporre (B) Department of Education, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

67 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_7, 

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2 Am I That Name? “Am I that name?” a South African colleague asked with certain emphasis, after having listened to a Western scholar at a recent conference. The European researcher had spent 4 months studying masculinities in the South African researcher’s hometown, that is the place where the South African had grown up and lived for some 20 or 30 years. “Am I that name?” he asked in relation to the colleague’s research results, and continued to raise questions concerning how we construct knowledge in research; so also questioning the significance of our ‘situatedness’.1 What is our location? Where do we come from? What are our issues? How are our thought patterns/theories constructed and how do they influence the research we actually do and the results we present? Are research paradigms neutral? To extend his questions one could ask: What role does it play if we come from the Netherlands, Sweden or Great Britain when we approach a certain practice or issues in research, in a Southern (or Northern) context? Or put in another way: How would it influence the outcome if we from South Africa researched a matter in Germany, Sweden or Great Britain? The basic question here, as I see it, is how we can meet in the production of knowledge in a more globalized world. Further, is it the ideal that we research our own ‘home towns’, other people’s ‘home towns’, or what are really the conditions for what could be said to be a responsible production of knowledge with relevance more globally? In the matters discussed in the chapter by Arnot and those to be discussed here, both post-colonial insights and a gendered ethics are reflected upon, and issues are raised as to how they can be handled in relation to global citizenship education.

3 Listening to Other Voices in Producing Knowledge I have found the critical discussion within feminist theory from the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g. Alcoff & Potter, 1993; Code, 1991; Harding, 1986) regarding the position of the knower to be of considerable importance, both politically and epistemologically, when dealing with questions as those above. To understand how our knowing is inscribed into patterns of power demands clarity, critique and openness, today not the least from us who start our knowledge production in the North, and certainly when we lean on traditions of thinking and theorizing, decades, centuries or even millennia old. In relation to this I have then found the discussion of responsible knowing (Code, 1995; Haraway, 1991) to demand a critical distancing from

1 Here

I make use of the concept ‘situatedness’ as introduced by Haraway (1991). It refers to us as knowers being located, situated, that is, living under particular societal circumstances that are in turn marked by class, gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality and geo-political position to give some important examples.

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what seems to be taken-for-granted, and instead to be ready to listen to the voices of others, through that to be questioned, and so see with different eyes (Sporre, 2007a). However, being in the academy and acting from within feminist or gender theory I have come to realize that knowledge production in the academy is quite a slow process. We build on the theoretical work of others, in processes where certain theorists receive authority and become ‘canonized’, that is, are read and quoted. And how then do the voices of others, Southerners, and non-native English speakers and their research become part of the global knowledge society? How are the different ‘indigenous’ voices heard? Most often, unfortunately, they are not heard; and further, the way achievement works in the academies in the North and South today, where mainly American and European journals in the English language are valued and ranked in the ‘publish-and-perish’ systems, a silencing of other voices constantly takes place. To be actors in a more global knowledge production demands a lot from us both in the South and the North. We struggle within systems that are harsh to handle at the same time as we need to enter into respectful dialogues with one another as knowledge producers in other contexts. In a recent research dialogue we took up between South African and Swedish researchers, we jointly engaged in investigations of our educational systems and the way they are placed within our societal systems (Odora Hoppers, Gustavsson, Pampallis, & Motala, 2007; Odora Hoppers, Lundgren, Pampallis, Motala, & Nihlfors, 2007). This became an example of a process characterized by an open, mutual search for knowledge, where we as Swedes and our South African colleagues became more aware of how we are positioned. This was achieved through exploratory meetings and critical discussions of one another’s research. Such encounters demand an ethical awareness of how mutual respect, listening and learning are enacted, and also an openness to being questioned both in terms of our values and our understanding of how knowledge production is best done. Having entered into this dialogue, it has also become obvious to us that if these are the kind of research activities that we would like to develop further, research funding systems are to a large extent not constructed to support such processes. Rather they focus either on national projects, or huge international comparative (often European or Western) projects between nations. To move beyond such a national emphasis in educational research as the examples above imply, towards a bi-national North– South cooperation as the dialogue between Sweden and South Africa exemplified, or in other forms of cooperation, could mean a development in global knowledge production where North and South, and local and global could be held together in interesting ways. This could mean developing North–South research cooperation where South and North meet on more equal terms. To promote such research would mean moving beyond the development discourse, in which it has been implied that the North is developed and without problems and the South represents the opposite (see Odora Hoppers, Gustavsson, et al., 2007, pp. 1–14). In education problems exist in both North and South, problems of a different kind (e.g., how to handle issues related to multiculturalism and/or the presence of religious diversity – in which some countries in the North can learn from countries in the South). To understand

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research cooperation in terms like these means to explore joint knowledge processes. Let me now turn to another aspect of global citizenship education. What content could it have?

4 Ethics – And Other Voices When I was to teach ethics as a visiting professor in South Africa in 2005 I was challenged. ‘Ethics and economics’ was the theme of the basic course in ethics that I was supposed to teach. In my studies of ethics as an undergraduate and PhD student in Sweden, not much economics had been brought into the study.2 However, there in South Africa in 2005, with the issues alert as to how to construct a new, more just society after the decades of apartheid, within a tough global economy, these issues and perspectives were self-evident to my colleagues. You could not study ethics without also relating it to economics. That framed the ethical discussions. Further in my encounters with South African academic discussions I have come to see issues in contexts that are different from Swedish ones. For example gender issues, ethics and theology are related to the HIV/AIDS pandemic (Ackermann, 2002). Or issues of rape are discussed in relation to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with a critical tone towards how they could or could not be integrated into those processes of reconciliation (du Toit, 2005, 2006). I have also seen the issues of citizenship discussed into relation to poverty, destitution and scarcity (Gouws, 2005) in ways that challenge more Northern presuppositions. In addition, in education in the area of sexuality and social relationships learning materials and curricula, underline the need to deal with those matters as stricken by violence and so also a potential threat to young children; the purpose of the education supposedly being to enlighten them, to make them less exposed to dangers and so less vulnerable (Sporre 2009). Through these examples I have wanted to highlight that what are understood as crucial perspectives in ethics and how gender issues are understood are shaped by local circumstances. So when we discuss a global citizenship education the fact that our contexts are different also has to be taken into account. Otherwise we as Northerners run anew the risk of understanding our position as the general one – the one that is to be the starting point for all. Creating a global citizenship education becomes the complex task it ought to be, if we take into consideration that not only is the world global and different in terms of national situations, but our relationships as citizens to the global level – understood in the example from the ethics course above as the global economy – also positions us differently within our different countries. And also when approaching issues related to gender our local situations do vary. What we then suggest as the content of a global citizenship education could be quite different. When we are to do something jointly it needs to be carefully thought through and, most important, negotiated. 2 There

are exceptions. See for example Jarl (2000).

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5 Western Voices – Open to Other Voices In her discussion of a global citizenship education Arnot brings Martha Nussbaum into her discussion. Another contemporary moral philosopher among the Western voices whose work I have found helpful is Seyla Benhabib. She has shown interestingly how the discussions on rights of individuals and groups could be critically discussed, balanced and analyzed from within a gender perspective (2002). Further, she has principally discussed how rights in a global society can be discussed as local, national and global/cosmopolitan (2006). In her early works she has also spoken of the need to enter into dialogue with the concrete other, not extrapolating the thinking of others from one’s own thinking (1992). Another example of a voice from within the field of gender theory that I think could be of importance in relation to a global citizenship education is Shari Stone-Mediatore (2003). She focuses on the need to use academic discourse for articulating experiences which might otherwise be silenced. This she articulates in contrast to a more post-structural gender theoretical position in the intra-gender theoretical discussion which tended to put experience-based knowing aside, thereby diminishing the possibilities for people under domination or oppression to articulate their concerns. Stone-Mediatore searches for a theory in favour of articulating such experiences. A more hermeneutically formed understanding of research follows from her position. I understand Stone-Mediatore to give a focus to an actor’s perspective that Arnot asks for where collective agency can also be central. So far I have raised questions emphasizing the need for us to critically ask ourselves, where we are located, ‘what name we are’, when we discuss a global citizenship education. To really be worth its name such an endeavour needs careful negotiation, reflecting ethical thinking, both in its epistemology and its content, whether developed locally (i.e., in a certain country) or as a joint undertaking.

6 Something Common? Arnot concludes her chapter by asking for something that could be understood as being common, as uniting human beings after the articulation of differences, after numbers of different voices have been heard. The question as I see it touches on the tensions between the individual and the collective, and on the local and the global. What could be said to be ours, to be common, beyond individualistic understandings of our being? Or what could be articulated beyond more partial views, even if they were more collective? In my studies of the ethics of the feminist theologians Chung Hyun Kyung, Katie C. Cannon and Mary C. Grey (Sporre, 1999, 2003), I have found them to express a matter that I want to draw attention to in this context. In their descriptions of our lives as human beings, oppression is the point that they start from. Further, whether discussing the conditions of Asian (Chung), African American (Cannon) or European (Grey) women they underline that what people concretely experience when living under domination and oppression, is that when they resist

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those conditions their human dignity is restored. Human dignity is something that time and again is given back to those who refuse to accept the conditions that violate and take their dignity away from them. The examples they describe of how to resist inhuman treatment do vary, but they are consistent in expressing human dignity as being something achieved through resistance. For me it was unexpected to find this consistent use of the concept of human dignity in their texts. In my further reflections I have found it interesting to connect this finding to the role that the concept of human dignity plays in the South African constitution adopted in 1996 after the downfall of apartheid (Sporre, 2007b). In the constitution the human dignity of each and every one is stated as foundational. When I approach the question here of what could be stated as common between human beings and so needing respect, I find human dignity to be a candidate, not least in educational contexts where such concepts can be used as a basis for reflection, that is, forming goals to strive for. The discourse of human rights is nowadays critiqued for several reasons: for being Western, for not taking gender issues into account or for focusing on too narrow a rights perspective. However to examine the concept of human dignity, and to do it in the light of the feminist theologians Chung, Cannon and Grey, strongly supported by the emphasis given to it in the South African constitution, puts the emphasis elsewhere. If human dignity is restored by resisting domination and oppression, actually both for the victim and the perpetrator, that implies a different starting point for viewing something as a common ground. Even if human dignity is often linked to human rights it represents a different starting point. Well aware that such a proposal might sound naïve, when the dignity of human beings is over and over again violated, I think it is appropriate to defend the place and space for that in educational contexts; this as education is about change, about dreams, about what we strive to achieve, even in times when the conditions for such values can be harsh.

7 Gender and Religion – And Religious Education Fairly explicit in Arnot’s overview is also a quite general critique of the role of religions in relation to the situation of the rights of girls and women. Having brought into the discussion here as I have done, material from feminist theologians from within the Christian tradition, it becomes obvious that voices also vary within this tradition; that is, the tradition is at the same time both patriarchal and has opened up space for feminist voices. There are nowadays numbers of voices articulating women’s concerns – for example, the right of women to a space where they are not discriminated against within their own religious tradition (Ackermann, 2003); those asking for a development of the tradition towards recognizing the thinking of women (e.g., Holness, 2001). There are also ethicists who in relation to the sexual exploitation of women have argued for right and respectful relationships (e.g., Bóasdóttir, 1998; Harrison, 1985) – a most crucial ethical issue.

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However, when turning to the research field of religious education which is to a large extent the context of this book, one must truthfully say that much more could be done to continue to develop studies where the critical perspectives from feminist and gender studies in general, and feminist theologians, are brought in and put to work. This is needed for new productive knowledge to emerge and also to be included in what young citizens, differently situated, might take into the future. Among what they will need to address are the issues of global sustainable development. That is in the proper sense of the word a common issue. However that will have to be discussed more extensively and must therefore wait for another context.

References Ackermann, D. M. (2002). A gendered pandemic? HIV/AIDS in South Africa. In Grenholm, C. H. & Kamergrauzis, N. (Eds.), Feminist ethics. perspectives, problems and possibilities (pp. 120–143). Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics 29. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis. Ackermann, D. M. (2003). Freedom of religion and the equality and dignity of women. A Christian feminist perspective. In K. Sporre & Botman H. R. (Eds.), Building a human rights culture. South African and Swedish perspectives (pp. 180–193). Report 2003:11, Arts and Education. Falun: Högskolan Dalarna. Alcoff, L. & Potter, E. (Eds.). (1993). Feminist epistemologies. London: Routledge. Benhabib, S. (1992). Situating the self. Gender, community, and postmodernism in contemporary ethics. New York: Routledge. Benhabib, S. (2002). The claims of cultures. Equality and diversity in the global era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Benhabib, S. (2006). Another cosmopolitanism, with Commentaries by Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka. R. Post (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bóasdóttir, S. A. (1998). Violence, power, and justice. A feminist contribution to Christian sexual ethics. Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics 20. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis. Code, L. (1991). What can she know? Feminist theory and the construction of knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Code, L. (1995). Rhetorical spaces. Essays on gendered locations. New York: Routledge. du Toit, L. (2005). A phenomenology of rape: Forging a new vocabulary for action. In Gouws, A. (Ed.), (Un)thinking citizenship. Feminist debates in contemporary South Africa (pp. 253–274). Aldershot: Ashgate. du Toit, L. (2006). Våldtäktsfrågan. In Glänta, 4, 68–82. Gouws, A. (Ed.) (2005). (Un)thinking citizenship. Feminist debates in contemporary South Africa. Aldershot: Ashgate. Haraway, D. (1991). Situated knowledges. The science question in feminism and the privilege of a partial perspective. In Simians, cyborgs, and women. The reinvention of nature (pp. 183–201). London: Free Association Books. Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Harrison, B. (1985). In Robb, C. (Ed.), Making the connections. Essays in feminist social ethics. Boston: Beacon Press. Holness, L. (2001). Christology from within: A critical retrieval of the humanity of Christ, with particular reference to the role of Mary. Unpublished PhD thesis, presented at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Jarl, A.-C. (2000). Women and economic justice ethics in feminist liberation theology and feminist economics. Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics 25. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

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Odora Hoppers, C., Gustavsson, B., Pampallis, J. & Motala, E. (Eds.). (2007). Democracy and human rights in education and society: Explorations from South Africa and Sweden. Örebro: Örebro University Press. Odora Hoppers, C., Lundgren, U. P., Pampallis, J., Motala, E., & Nihlfors, E. (Eds.) (2007). Dilemmas of implementing education reforms: Explorations from South Africa and Sweden. Uppsala: STEP and Uppsala University. Sporre, K. (1999). Först när vi får ansikten – ett flerkulturellt samtal om feminism, etik och teologi [First when we have faces – A cross-cultural conversation on feminism, ethics and theology], Lund studies in ethics and theology, 9. Stockholm: Atlas Akademi. Sporre, K. (2003). Women’s human rights in Sweden: A feminist ethical perspective. In Sporre K. & Botman H. R. (Eds.), Building a human rights culture. South African and Swedish perspectives (pp. 288–310). Report 2003:11, Arts and Education. Falun: Högskolan Dalarna. Sporre, K. (2007a). Att se med andra ögon. Feministiska perspektiv på kunskap i ett mångkulturellt samhälle [To see with other eyes/to see differently]. GEM rapport nr 5. Stockholm: Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm. Sporre, K. (2007b). Sverige – en regnbågsnation? Om människors värdighet, skillnader och rättigheter [Sweden a Rainbow Nation? On human dignity, differences and rights]. In Gunner, G. (Ed.), Människa är ditt namn – om mänskliga rättigheter, mänsklig värdighet och teologi (pp. 179–199). Stockholm: Verbum. Sporre, K. (2009). Epistemology from a broken body? – A study of education about sexuality in South Africa and Sweden. Conference paper to ‘Gender justice and body politics’, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, February 4–6, 2009. Stone-Mediatore, S. (2003). Reading across borders. storytelling and knowledges of resistance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Diversity and Teacher Education Explorations of a Social Justice Framework Denise Zinn and André Keet

1 Introduction Diversity as a topic of interest, concern and debate has swept into the pedagogical vernacular over the past two decades, picking up on discourses coming predominantly from northern countries, particularly the United States.1 It is a topic and concept that sits uneasily in South Africa, as it has to locate itself within a context in which diversity has been a foundation for separateness, or apartheid. Since the first democratic elections in South Africa, interpretations around ‘diversity’ have been steered by the notion of ‘equality’ as the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights in our 1996 Constitution. Within the context of the new rights regime, the notion of ‘equality of difference’ has thus formed the bedrock of our discourse on diversity. The diversity categories2 of the equality clause of the Constitution (Section 9 of Act 108 of 1996) thus have become, for many participants in this debate, an ultimate point of departure. This legal codification of ‘diversity’ through ‘equality’ brings into focus fundamental, historically induced contradictions in relation to human dignity, equity and equality. That is, in South Africa the discourse of equality now overlay systemically anchored inequalities. These inequalities are rooted in the political, cultural and socio-economic conditions that are part of South Africa’s past and present reality. Since inequalities for most part are constitutive of and are in turn constituted by diversities, the ‘diversity’ that is referred to in this chapter is constitutive of historical meanings, contemporary constructions and possible future

D. Zinn (B) Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] 1 Some

examples of authors here include Cochran-Smith, M., Foster, M., Grant, C., & Secada, W., Ladson Billings, G. Villegas, A., inter alia. 2 The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996, which includes the Bill of Rights, Section 9 (3) on Equality states: “the state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.”

75 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_8, 

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articulations. As such, it does not accumulatively build on existing notions of ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘co-existence’, but rather on new ways of thinking about ‘diversity’, social justice, difference and solidarity. In a previous reporting on the findings of a research study on teacher preparation for diverse classrooms, Robinson and Zinn (2007, p. 61) referred to ‘the intertwining of the pedagogical and social task of teacher education.’ This chapter is particularly concerned with the nature of the social task of teacher education in the light of the pre-occupation with and necessity to engage with issues related to diversity, in the context of a new democracy that still carries the scars and ravages of the Apartheid era, and the foundations and effects of colonialism on which that era was built. These scars and ravages have expressed themselves in contemporary high levels of conflict, intolerance, violence and hate crimes.3 However, teacher education in South Africa is not challenged because of the ‘diversification’ of the classroom, because these arenas have always been diverse. Rather, its challenge is to engage with this topic because of the manner in which the educational discourse has either employed a ghettoized, selective form of equality, or an anti-solidarity notion of difference. The first is linked to the exercise of equality around a particular difference with the intentional consequence of exclusivity, and the latter results in a de-contextualized understanding of ‘my difference’ – in other words, individual difference as an exercise of a ‘minority’ right. Dealing with diversity within the context of socio-economic inequalities is a constituting element of social justice, and teacher education needs to search for a ‘social justice’ response to diversity. Why is this so? Let us briefly focus on a few contextual imperatives which necessitate engagement with these issues in the terrain of education and teacher education. Figure 1 below presents a graphical overview of equality-related complaints to the South African Human Rights Commission in the period 2006–2007: The same report also reflects the “Top 10 Typical complaints between April 2006 and March 2007” as follows: These graphs clearly show that (1) issues of race still dominate the equity/equality agenda in South Africa, and (2) the majority of complaints regarded as human rights violations fall into categories that relate to basic living conditions: housing, property, freedom and security of person, health care, food, water, social security, and labour relations. In the complaints data presented in Fig. 2, interestingly the 3rd largest single category relates to matters of equality and 5th largest to issues of human dignity. If these two are combined, human dignity and equality issues would represent the largest category of complaints, second only to matters related to the rights of arrested, detained and accused persons. 3 Examples abound: the University of Free State incident involving white students and black clean-

ers in one example, The Ministerial Commission on the Climate in HEIs focusing on racial and xenophobic issues, recently released a damning report entitled “Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions”.

Diversity and Teacher Education 80%

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75%

70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 4%

0%

Gender

Sex

Pregnancy

Ethnic/social origin

Colour

2%

2%

2%

1%

1%

1%

Marital status

0%

Language

1%

Conscience

2%

Religion

9%

10%

0%

Culture

Disability

Age

Sexual orientation

Race

0%

Fig. 1 South African Human Rights Commission, Annual Report, 2008

Access to courts

162

Housing

173

Property

209

Freedom & security of the person

222

Just administrative action

279

Human dignity

293

Healthcare, food, water & social …

387

Equality

396

Labour relations

498

Arrested, detained & accused

885

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900 1000

Fig. 2 Top 10 typical complaints April 2006–March 2007 (South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) Annual Report, 2008)

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It is therefore no wonder that Keet (2008) refers, ironically, to ‘South Africa’s Big Five’, as the following set of ‘animals’/phenomena: • • • • •

Socio-economic inequalities and unemployment The HIV/AIDs pandemic Poverty Discrimination and prejudice Crime

In one attempt to address the social task of teaching, the South African Department of Education (DoE)’s Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy (DoE, 2001) identifies ten values that should be promoted in schools: democracy, social justice and equity, equality, non-racism and non-sexism, ubuntu (humanness),4 sustaining on open society, accountability, rule of law, respect and reconciliation. How this is to be done is left to those engaged in sites where teaching and learning take place. However, there is no explicit monitoring and support provided to assess the extent of implementation. Research in this arena is held together loosely by unclear concepts and a multiplicity of theories, research approaches and agendas. Within this loosely bounded terrain, however, ‘social justice’ is seen as a critically important value-orientation, and has been identified in several studies that attempt to frame various teacher educators’ approaches to the development of curricula that take on this social task (e.g., Papier, 2008; Robinson & Zinn, 2007, inter alia). An important focus of this chapter, therefore, will be to ‘unpack’ (deconstruct) notions of ‘social justice’ and apply this/these as lens/es to view some of the data that have recently emerged in relation to issues of diversity in school and university classrooms.

2 Approaches to Diversity and Social Justice Conceptions of social justice are multifarious. The first pointer here is to recognize that social justice as a framework has to be used in relation to a well-defined and explicated discourse, as well as by contexts which inform interpretations of this discourse. By way of such explication, a starting point is the acknowledgement of the long history of the concept that includes the social contract theories of Locke, Rousseau and Kant, which, according to Rawls (1971, p. 75) must be taken to a higher level of abstraction of ‘justice as fairness’. Rawls posits the notion of “distributive justice” and argues that “the conception of social justice, then, is to be regarded as providing in the first instance a standard whereby the distributive aspects of the basic structure of society are to be assessed” – and this should form the basis for “assigning rights and duties and defining the appropriate division of social advantages” (Rawls, ibid, p. 73). 4 In isiXhosa, the notion of ubuntu is explained through the phrase “Umntu ngumntu ngabantu”, which translates into English as “you are what you are through other people”; essentially asserting that one’s humanness comes from the interrelationship with other human beings. In Afrikaans, the terms ‘medemenslikheid’ is used to capture this notion.

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However, MacIntyre (1992) questions these notions maintaining that “our society cannot hope to achieve moral consensus” on such a range of principles of moral derivation, and thus that the Aristotelian and Lockean notion of ‘justice as a virtue’ must be abandoned. Gewirtz and Cribb (2002) make an explicit case for ‘plural conceptions of social justice’, in line with MacIntyre’s overall argument, and demonstrate that understandings are dependent on the context within which the notion is employed. In other words, the notion of social justice at any given time is dependent on the meaning framework within which it is used. Gewirtz and Cribb (2002) argue for the plurality of the notion of ‘social justice’ which extends beyond ‘distributive justice’. Such a plural notion includes ‘distributive justice’, ‘cultural justice’ and ‘associational justice’. Freire commented (1993, p. xii) that ‘subjectivity has become unmoored from its former narratives of social justice’, which leaves us questioning how then to make social justice a theoretical hook for a conceptual pedagogical framework for dealing with diversity. Griffiths, who has written extensively on the notion of social justice in relation to education, asserts that social justice depends on both ‘recognition’ and ‘redistribution’: A focus on redistribution is clearly important, but. . . Practices which function as mechanisms of disrespect cannot be resolved by a politics of redistribution, but demand a cultural transformation, a shift in the values, language, relationships and structures of schooling (Griffiths, 2003, p. 52).

Most importantly, she reminds us that ‘any theory is never the last word, but always corrigible, always revisable’ (ibid, p. 55). She invokes the need, within the development of theory, ‘for both “grand narratives” and “little stories” (which exist in relation to the other) in any understanding of social justice’. Further, she makes the fundamental point that the notion of ‘difference’ has to be seen within the context of a ‘single humanity’ (ibid, p. 7). For the purposes of this chapter, then, we take the approach that it is more sustainable and desirable to interpret and anchor social justice within a conceptual frame that logically links difference and diversity with the political notion of ‘solidarity’, so human agency can be advanced. Teacher education/training is thus not simply aimed at managing the expressed or demonstrated diversity in the classroom, but rather at how to engage with diversity as an operative notion for social justice, and solidarity with humanity, and human suffering. We will pick up on these ideas in the last section, drawing lessons or pointers from a case study that is (re-)examined in the next section.

3 A Case Study: Relooking at Data Through Different Lenses Using as lenses ideas developed in Section 2, we now re-examine findings from a study in which one of the authors of this chapter was involved as researcher (see Robinson & Zinn, 2007), that set out to investigate how pre-service teacher educators thought, and what they did, about the preparation of future teachers to enable them to deal with diversity in the classroom. Specifically, in that study, the

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researchers asked what the teacher education programmes in which the respondents were involved in, were doing to prepare teachers for the fact that many schools in South Africa include learners from a variety of cultural, racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, who often speak different home languages and who might have special educational needs. Are teacher education programmes acknowledging, through their curricula and training, the various ‘barriers to learning’ experienced by learners from marginalized groups? And, more generally, in what way were teacher education programmes responding – or contributing – to the South African imperatives of national reconstruction and social development? In considering how teacher educators addressed diversity, we were not only focusing on how they were recognizing and conceptualizing difference, but also on how the actions of the teacher educators did or did not consider the ‘just distribution’ of educational opportunities to their student teachers and, by implication, to learners in primary schools. We were therefore open to the concept of diversity taking on a variety of forms in the experiences and understandings of the teacher educators, including race, class, language, gender, disability, poverty and unemployment, as well as customs, religion, age and ability to pay school fees (as in a study from the University of the North, 2001). We sought to explore, with these teacher educators, their ‘curricula and ways of organizing learning’ (Booth et al., 2003, p. 2) and in so doing, to better understand how teacher education was contributing to the skills and understandings of future teachers who would work in a context of diversity.

4 Methodology of the Original Research Study Qualitative data were obtained through a combination of semi-structured focus group and individual interviews. A total of twenty-two lecturers teaching at the three higher education institutions offering dedicated primary school teacher education programmes in the Western Cape were interviewed. Lecturers were asked what they understood by the concept diversity, and how preparation for diversity in classrooms and schools was included into the teacher education curriculum. These questions were aimed at understanding what they thought teacher education programmes needed to do to be responsible for, and responsive to, the challenge of national reconstruction. The institutions chosen were those which focused on the preparation of teachers for the primary school, for a number of reasons. Primary school offers a generalized and more holistic experience for school learners, as opposed to secondary school, where individual subject teachers offer a more fragmented and academically based pattern of instruction. The prospective teachers in these teacher education programmes would be preparing to teach children in primary schools in 2004 and beyond. Their learners’ experience of schooling would have been wholly located in the post-apartheid policies and frameworks described above. As a result of the closure of teacher education colleges in the mid-1990s, and the incorporation of some of their programmes and staff into higher education

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institutions, the teacher education faculties in this study were part of the three formerly ‘white’ higher education institutions in the Western Cape. The two formerly ‘black’ higher education institutions in the Western Cape did not offer dedicated5 primary school teacher education at the time this study took place. The participating institutions were spread over four sites in the Western Cape. Two of these were Afrikaans-medium, and two English-medium. Data on the poverty index of schools in the province were derived from information provided by the Western Cape Education Department. Demographics on the teacher educators were obtained from their institutional databases or websites and the respective Faculties/Departments of Education provided data on the racial composition of their student teacher enrolment.

5 Findings and Original Analysis: The ‘Who, How and What’ Levels The findings in this study revealed that a range of initiatives were being undertaken to address the issue of diversity, but these initiatives displayed little sense of coherence or of operating within a commonly understood framework, even within the same institution. Differences in the programmes were usually a function of how the different faculties of education, and more particularly the lecturers themselves, formulated their courses. Teacher educators also indicated that who their students were, informed to some degree what they chose to teach in relation to diversity, but also influenced how they chose to deal with this topic. The lack of a common framework was not unexpected, in that lecturers in all the institutions indicated that there was much freedom and leeway to choose what they were going to teach within the broad policy framework of the Norms and Standards for Educators (Department of Education, 2000), which only stipulates various components and expected outcomes for teacher education. However, in the light of deepening understandings of the discourses around diversity in the previous sections of this chapter, this lack of a common framework is in itself worthy of analysis, a point to which we will return later. However, the first level analysis of findings pointed to three important and consistent elements that impacted on the question of preparation for diversity in pre-service teacher education programmes. These elements were: • The ‘who’ element: demographics of the lecturers and students in the Education faculties or departments in each of the three participating institutions • The ‘how’ element: namely, the various orientations to diversity of the teacher educators in the three institutions. The ‘how’ connected in many ways to the 5 Graduates

of the other two higher education institutions in the province do sometimes end up teaching in primary schools. However the teacher education programme at these two institutions was not specifically geared for the primary school situation.

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‘who’ element, both to the lecturers and also to the particular students they were teaching and the contexts in which they were teaching. These ‘orientations’ were expressed by one lecturer as “how you come at it”, and related to the individual’s particular socio-political positioning, an aspect that will be explored in more detail in this chapter. • The ‘what’ element: the specific topics, methods and areas the teacher educators were utilizing in their curricula to address diversity-related issues.

6 ‘Seeing the Same Things Differently’6 Building on some of the theoretical discussion in the earlier part of this chapter, we attempted to ‘come at’ the findings from another set of vantage points or ‘lenses’. The first of these is Griffiths’ (2003, pp. 51–54) ‘(provisional, unfinished) theory of social justice’, which asserts that ‘social justice is a dynamic state of affairs. . . So getting it is a matter of resolving possible tensions about the well-being of individuals, of whole societies, and of social political groups.’ Specifically, ‘the view that the self is constructed in and against relationship with various social groupings, which are themselves constructed by relationships with individual selves’ (ibid, p. 54) provides a good formulation and overview position from which to relook at the findings and theorizing on the earlier case study. Keet (2008) has adapted a model from Thompson (1993)7 which puts forward three levels of analysis – ‘Structure, Culture and Personal’ – to name some of the intersecting dynamics and relationships that need to be considered in a South African context. Table 1 below sets out the multiple levels and features of these dynamics: Within the original discussion of the findings, the ‘who, how and what’ elements, several additional features can be explained through the three-level model tabulated above.

6.1 Structural Level Firstly, the demography of the institutions within the case study could be seen through the lenses of the features outlined here. Table 2 summarizes the lecturer demographics in the original findings (Robinson & Zinn, 2007, p. 68).

6 This

is also the title of an article by Donald Freeman. original model refers to the PCS model (Personal, Cultural, Structural). For various reasons, Thompson emphasized the “personal” level. Keet therefore converted his PCS model into a SCP model.

7 Thompson’s

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Table 1 Three levels of analysis Level

Features

Level 1: structure (S)

The structural features of South African society are shaped by a set of socio-political and economic relationships Discriminatory structures and institutional practices of discrimination are ‘sewn into’ the fabric of society There are socio-political and economic dimensions with interlocking patterns of power and influence A network of social divisions exists Ideologically grounded belief-value systems are in place and there is assumed consensus about ‘normality’ These are rooted in notions of superiority of culture(s) Popular notions of ‘white/black’, ethnic differences, cultural deficits, etc exist These sustain discriminatory and oppressive cultures through praxis/socialization Personal and individual levels of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and actions, including prejudices Racial and other forms of hate-violence Intolerance and discrimination manifesting in schools, universities, sport arenas, etc. Exclusionary practices re-invented in new forms/guises

Level 2: culture (C)

Level 3: person (P)

Table 2 Lecturer Demographics (2004) % Age Faculty/Department over 40 of Education Total Male Female years

‘Coloured’ ‘African’ ‘Indian’ White

Institution A Institution B Institution C TOTAL

3 0 9 0 8 1 22 = 19%

18 45 54 117

13 20 26 59

5 25 28 58

95% 90% 85% Average approx 90%

Blacka

0 0 1

15 36 44 95 = 81%

a This

demographic category can be broken into three historical divisions: ‘Coloured’, ‘African’ and ‘Indian’.

The researchers (ibid) commented: A number of interesting features emerge from this data. First, it is evident that in 2004 the racial profiles of staff reflected the racial origins of the three participating institutions as formerly white; the closure of the former black colleges of education clearly having had the (unintended) consequence of limiting black staff numbers in the sector. Secondly, it is noteworthy that over 90% of all the lecturers in the study were over 40 years of age. They were all raised, educated, and taught in schools in a period characterized by strictly enforced segregation. The general context of their lived experience was a highly racialized and politicized existence in South Africa. In contrast, the students in the study averaged 20–25 years of age. They were in primary schools in the 1980s and early 1990s, and would have been too young to make meaning of the political and education unrest of the

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D. Zinn and A. Keet time. These students would have attended high school post 1994, when apartheid legislation was being dismantled.

Looking at these findings not simply as ‘who’ data, but also through the lenses of ‘structure’ (S) level, provides insight into the dynamics at play that necessitate working with the tensions that such diversity throws into play in the context of these teacher education classrooms. Similarly, the ‘who’ aspects of the student teachers, described in the original findings as follows, can be re-viewed through the “(S) level” lenses: 6.1.1 Student Teachers The student teacher demographics in the Western Cape at the time of the research are summarized in Table 3 below. The figures show clearly that young black people (particularly those formerly classified as ‘African’) were not entering the teaching profession at primary school level at the same rate as ‘white’ students. These figures could be seen as a reflection of broader societal changes, such as an opening up of a range of opportunities for Africans in the formal economy, an increase in extra teacher posts created by the school governing bodies of formerly white schools (Crouch & Perry, 2003, p. 483), or of a suspension of the bursaries formerly offered to study teaching, or a poor perception of conditions in schools and in teaching. The scope of this research and constraints of this chapter do not permit exploring or elaborating these issues here. Table 3 Enrolment in B.Ed. and PGCE General Education and Training/primary school programmes in the Western Cape, 2005 Demographic categories Black, which can be subdivided into: Institutions

White

Coloured

African

Indian

Total

Institution A Institution B Institution C Total %

26 414 937 1,377 80

3 26 254 283 16

4 1 69 74 4

0 0 6 6 –

33 441 1,266 1,740 100%

Source: Enrolment figures from Faculties/Departments of Education

The significance of these figures is that the student profile is likely to be closely linked to the kind of schools in which the student teachers will probably end up teaching once they have graduated. This is a matter of great concern in a province where about 5% of the province’s 1,106 schools fall into the lowest or second lowest quintile of poor schools in the province. A national study on teacher shortages notes the same concern, arguing that “White students are not known for having a particular interest in teaching in black schools in particular. But even if they were interested,

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they would be constrained by an inability to teach in the mother tongue, as is the requirement in Foundation Phase” (DoE, 2005, p. 68). So, while the original discussion is framed through a ‘who’ or personal lens, we can see that the following structural aspects of South African society – that is, a set of socio-political and economic relationships, discriminatory structures and institutional practices of discrimination ‘sewn into’ the fabric of society, socio-political and economic dimensions with interlocking patterns of power and influence, and network of social divisions exist – are deeply embedded in the picture of the ‘who’ presented here.

6.2 Cultural Level What is considered ‘normal’ is linked to patterns of socialization. Take, for example, the following description in the original findings and analysis: “They were all raised, educated, and taught in schools in a period characterized by strictly enforced segregation. The general context of their lived experience was a highly racialised and politicized existence in South Africa. In contrast, the students in the study averaged 20–25 years of age. They were in primary schools in the 1980s and early 1990s, and would have been too young to make meaning of the political and education unrest of the time. These students would have attended high school post 1994, when apartheid legislation was being dismantled.” (ibid, p. 68)

Despite the changed political dispensation for the student generation, the study also reported that “A national study on teacher shortages notes the same concern, arguing that ‘White students are not known for having a particular interest in teaching in black schools in particular. . . ’ (DoE, 2005, p. 68)” (ibid, p. 69). This raises the question, if the political structures of the time are not shaping the ‘ideologically grounded belief-value system’, what is? Jonathan Jansen researched this phenomenon in depth, and reports on it in his book Knowledge in the Blood. A review describes a central issue in the book as follows: How is it that young Afrikaners, born at the time of Mandela’s release from prison, hold firm views about a past they never lived, rigid ideas about black people, and fatalistic thoughts about the future? (Jansen, 2009)

The answer to questions like these is that socialization and proxis extend beyond the structural conditions into a cultural environment that sustains discriminatory practices and belief systems. The combination of lived experiences, the structures in a particular period and individuals’ families’ and communities’ responses to these, make for a dynamic that cannot be separated out into discrete strands and analysed in order to respond in specific and pointed ways to either ‘fix’ attitudes or prepare for encountering them. Thus, examining issues through lens of these socio-cultural aspects embedded in a diverse classroom, points to the need for teachers to have in their awareness not specific ‘cultural’ differences of their students and how to educate others about them, but cognizance that one cannot predict how these influences have shaped individuals’ consciousness and praxis.

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The issue of ‘institutional biographies’ is referenced in the original analysis made by Robinson and Zinn (ibid, p. 70), in the form of ‘what [lecturers] bring to their understandings of the topic of diversity’. Britzman refers to teachers’ ‘implicit institutional biographies – the cumulative experience of school lives. . . which inform their knowledge of the student’s world, of school structure, and of curriculum’ (Britzman, 1986, p. 443). In the shared terrain of the teacher education programme, it needs to be remembered that teacher educators and prospective teachers will bring from this ‘cumulative experience’ different definitions, different values and different data sources, as they consider topics in their curriculum (Holt-Reynolds, 1992). This includes how to deal with issues of diversity. Thus the ‘who’ element contains within it not simply a personal orientation, but also structural and cultural levels of interaction based on both lived and assumed experiences of self and others.

6.3 Personal Level The lens of ‘personal and individual levels of thoughts’ which includes feelings, attitudes and actions, including prejudices, racial and other forms of hate-violence, intolerance and discrimination manifesting in schools, universities, sport arenas, etc. as well as exclusionary practices re-invented in new forms or guises (Keet, 2008) invokes, in the teacher education terrain, Clandinin and Connelly’s notion of personal practical knowledge, which forms part of the substance of what teachers (and prospective teachers) bring to teaching: Personal practical knowledge is in the teacher’s past experience, in the teacher’s present mind and body, and in the future plans and actions. . .. It is, for any one teacher, a particular way of reconstructing the past and the intentions of the future to deal with the exigencies of a present situation (Clandinin & Connelly, 1988, p. 25).

In the original study, the ‘how’ element focused on orientations to diversity. Keets’ ‘SCP–model’ illuminates how all three levels – structure, culture and personal – are operating at the same time to inform this ‘element’. An example from the case study findings illustrates this: Included in the orientations of lecturers was an aversion to terms that have negative connotations, not in and of themselves, but in the context of the language of South African politics. For example, Joe explained: Words I also don’t like are ‘multicultural, multiracial, multi-religious’. Euphemisms. Just using another word for “those guys are different from me”. I might as well say, ‘they are another race’. The implicit negative connotation of being ‘another race’ is embedded in South Africa’s history of racism. What is embodied in these explanations, these ways of making sense of diversity, and the language used to describe it? For educators who have come from particular personal and institutional histories, for whom terms like ‘multicultural’ and ‘multiracial’, in their lived experience, were used in ways that signified domination of one group by another, in oppressive, racist ways, it appeared hard to separate out a neutral, let alone positive, connotation to these terms. Ambivalence towards particular notions of diversity needs to be

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viewed against the political, socio-historical realities of South Africa’s recent past, a past that continues to impact strongly on present realities and orientations. (ibid, pp. 70–71)

Through the lens of the ‘personal level’, it is also possible to see evidence of new exclusionary practices in play in the case study. One example is highlighted in the research report: Julie, a black lecturer in a predominantly and historically white university, talked explicitly of experiencing “talking into a context that has changed”, where there was “resentment to talking politics”, with some of her students becoming angry, seeing it as the lecturer’s “baggage”. A lecturer at another institution recounted a similar reaction from some of his students: “[in a core module] where the discussions were around injustices, some students just don’t want to go there – no politics.” Julie remembered a time in the previous political dispensation when teachers were not allowed to ‘talk politics’, a transgression that could have had serious consequences for the teacher. In this period, she explained, lecturers have to be “more compromising” in how to raise the same issues that would have been eagerly and defiantly taken up in the 1980s and 1990s. (ibid, p. 71)

These examples in the extract speak to a phenomenon that is significant in several ways, and requires pause. Besides being evidence of exclusionary practices that take on new guises, they also highlight an aversion in these contexts to engagement with issues that invoke discomfort. This could be any number of reasons for this discomfort (guilt, reluctance to take responsibility, etc.). The challenge in the context of diversity is how to deal with the discomfort that inevitably arises, and that shuts down engagement with ideas or the development of dispositions that could lead to understanding. Samoff and Carrol (2007, p. 10) reminds us that “transformation. . . is often disquieting” and urges that “schools must energetically develop, not avoid, consciousness of inequalities and efforts to reduce them. Schools must identify, not avoid threats to democracy and strategies for protecting it. That can be discomforting.” Taking up the challenge of transformation and action is mediated by the structure, culture and personal levels of the dynamic interrelationships between individuals, groups and their contexts. As Griffiths indicates, ‘where action is started by one person or. . . by a collective, the individuals who are joining in do so as individuals, with their own strengths and weaknesses, preferences, histories and socio-political position’ (ibid, p. 114). She also asserts (ibid, p. 32) For equality to work, it is important to see that the problems of justice that groups face will not necessarily be amendable to similar solutions in terms of voice, recognition and material redistribution. Nor will one view represent all members of a group. The first requirement is for an equal say, in order that different points of view can be expressed.

This brings us back to the notion of social justice and the development of a common framework. Is such a framework viable? In the next section we pick up on Giroux’s (1997) formulation of ‘difference within rather than against unity’, and the issue of what constitutes and enables feasible action in the context of diversity.

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7 Diversity, Difference, Solidarity and Social Justice Dealing with diversity within the context of socio-economic inequalities is a constituting element of social justice, and teacher education is in need of a ‘social justice’ response to diversity. In addition, a pedagogical framework and orientation needs to situate this response so that its place in teacher education is foregrounded. Giroux (1997, p. 196) speaks to the capability of a “politics of difference” to be a “form of radical social theory” only if it is able to analyse “difference within rather than against unity.” The emancipatory interest of critical pedagogy as a formative narrative “that provides the basis for historically and relationally placing different groups or narratives within some common project” (ibid, p. 195) is important to distinguish a focus on difference and diversity within the parameters of a solidarity that may serve the objectives of social justice. McLaren (1995, p. 197) argues that “in order to develop forms of consensus which take seriously a common recognition of social ills and the necessity of their transformation, solidarity must be established first.” This radicalized notion of solidarity is one that first respects and then takes pleasure in the difference of the other, and at the same time weaves the different experiences of human suffering and deprivation together. Significant here is Derrida’s (2003, pp. 161–164) notion of ‘hospitality’ (as a reworked Kantian notion); it is a notion that is inclusive of difference that is unexpected, uninvited and unknown, and allows us to transcend the legal notion of equality which focuses on favoured and known differences. It infinitely enriches the concept of diversity and the possibility of human agency in the interest of social justice. This hospitality works against the unequal power relation that is set up by the notion of ‘tolerance’. Derrida explains: “tolerance remains a scrutinized hospitality, always under surveillance, parsimonious and protective of its sovereignty. . .. only on the condition that the other follows our rules, our way of life, even our language, our culture, our political system, and so on.” (Borradori, 2003, p. 128) In this chapter, notions of the “difference within rather than against unity” espoused by Giroux, and ‘solidarity’ as the linking concept, provide a conceptual framework for investigating diversity in relation to teacher education/training. The framework locates diversity within social justice as a heuristic. It enables the interpretation of diversity as a relational marker between individuals and groups and as an operating principle for solidarity to advance social justice and challenge systemic socio-economic inequalities. How does one take these ideas forward? For, as Griffiths (ibid, p. 113) entreats: “Action is needed because analysis and understanding are not enough”. Here the centrality of teachers and teacher education has to be acknowledged in explicit ways. For example, going back to the South African policy and Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy (DoE, 2001), where are the sites of implementation, and who takes responsibility? Samoff and Carrol (2007, p. 4) comments on the consistent phenomenon across Africa (and often in other parts of the world as well), to ‘bypass the teachers’. He points out how, ironically, this is seen as a strategy to improve education quality. The intrinsic deficit notions within this strategy, as well

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as the short-sightedness in terms of strategic and qualitative growth are obvious, yet there can be no doubt that these implicit and explicit notions inform interventions and approaches to quality improvements in teaching and learning arenas, no doubt also influenced by financial considerations about what is feasible or efficient. Samoff and Carrol (ibid, p. 5) makes the simple and obvious point: “teachers are critical to the learning process. That makes them critical to effective education reform.” The challenge then extends to teacher education: How does one develop a critical consciousness and orientation to create environments in which “schools (and therefore teachers and teacher educators) energetically develop, not avoid, consciousness of inequalities and efforts to reduce them”? How does one develop notions of ‘hospitality’ as opposed merely to ‘tolerance’, a notion that includes the ability to accept and accommodate those who come “neither expected nor invited. . . non-identifiable and unforeseeable, in short wholly other” (Derrida in Borradori, 2003, pp. 128–9) in spirit and with a praxis that allows full respect and acceptance of their humanness? The lessons drawn from theories explored in this chapter can deepen understandings and practices. But Melanie Walker cautions: “Education teaches stuff, but not everything. Our patchwork selves will include blind spots and privileged places, so we need the linkages of action and adjudicating social justice theories” (Walker, 2003 in Griffiths, 2003, p. 124). In order to see ‘social justice as a verb’ as Griffiths entreats, in other words it is something we do, not simply observe or talk about, means that we need to look for continuities and contiguities that create linkages of solidarity, to see difference within the context of unity. In the “absence of shared memory” (Robinson & Zinn, ibid), it is part of the social task of teacher education to create experiences that connect the ‘little narratives’ to the ‘grand narratives’ and create ways of making meaning and facilitating human agency.

8 Conclusion Research on diversity in education and “consciousness about social diversity has grown at a phenomenal rate” (Nkomo & Vandeyar, 2009). Pedagogical configurations, such as diversity education, multi-cultural education and anti-discrimination education, flooded the educational landscape over the past 20 years. They are informed by and conform to an array of understandings of social justice and equality that oscillate between the personal, the cultural and the structural. In South Africa, research on diversity in education has more or less focused on the “interpersonal” relationships between human beings with different diversities (ibid). As this research agenda played itself out, South Africa’s gini coefficient index officially shows that we are from September 2009 the most unequal society in the world. If this pattern is compared to the high number of equality complaints and acts of discrimination recorded by the South African Human Rights Commission over the past 10 years, the link between the structural reproduction of inequality and interpersonal discriminatory behaviour cannot be questioned. Research on diversity in education cannot afford to pay scant consideration to this any longer.

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This chapter is an effort to contribute to new frames for investigating diversity in education and to show how these frames can be applied. It provides a Derridian conception of difference, diversity and hospitality but rearticulates it with the political purposes of social justice and solidarity. It further shows that research on diversity in education should focus on the structural, cultural and personal levels to enhance its own utility value.

References Booth, T., Nes, K., & Stromstad, M. (Eds.). (2003). Developing inclusive teacher education. London: Routledge Falmer. Borradori, G. (2003). Philosophy in a time of terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. London: University of Chicago Press. Britzman, D. (1986). Cultural myths in the making of a teacher: Biography and social structure in teacher education. Harvard Educational Review, 56, 443. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, M. F. (1988). Studying teachers’ knowledge of classrooms: Collaborative research, ethics and the negotiation of narrative. Journal of Educational Thought, 22(2A), 269–282. Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity and social justice in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). The new teacher education: For better or for worse? Educational Researcher, 34(7), 3–17. Cochran-Smith, M., & Fries, K. (2001). Sticks, stones, and ideology: The discourse of reform in teacher education. Educational Researcher, 30(8), 3–15. Cochran-Smith, M., & Fries, K. (2005). Researching teacher education in changing times: Paradigms and politics. In M. Cochran-Smith & K. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Crouch, L., & Perry, H. (2003). Educators. In A. Kraak & H. Perold (Eds.), Human resources development: Education, employment and skills in South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press. Department of Education (2000). Norms and standards for educators. Government Gazette, 415(20844). Department of Education (2001). Manifesto on values, education and democracy. Pretoria: Government Printers. Department of Education (2005). Teachers for the future. Meeting teacher shortages to achieve education for all. Pretoria: Government Printers. Derrida, J. (2003). In G. Borradori (Ed.), Philosophy in a time of terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. London: University of Chicago Press. Freire, P. (1993). Foreword. In P. McLaren & P. Leonard (Eds.), A critical encounter. London: Routledge. Gewirtz, S., & Cribb, A. (2002). Plural conceptions of social justice: Implications for policy sociology. Journal of Education Policy, 17(5), 499–509. Giroux, H. A. (1997). Rewriting the discourse of racial identity: Towards a pedagogy and politics of whiteness. Harvard Educational Review, 67(2), 285–320. Giroux, H. A., & Shannon, P. (1997). Education and cultural studies: Toward a performative practice. London: Routledge. Griffiths, M. (2003). Action for social justice in education: Fairly different. England: Open University Press. Holt-Reynolds, D. (1992). Personal history-based beliefs as relevant prior knowledge in course work. American Educational Research Journal, 29(2), 325–349. Jansen, J. (2009). Knowledge in the blood. Standford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Keet (2008). Understand, value and respect. Human rights lecture, University of North West, April 16, 2008. MacIntyre, A. (1992). Justice as a virtue: Changing conceptions. In S. Avineri & A. de-Shalti (Eds.), Communitarianism and individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McLaren, P. (1995). Critical pedagogy and predatory culture. New York: Routledge. Nkomo, M., & Vandeyar, S. (2009). Thinking diversity, building cohesion. Amsterdam: Rozenberg. Papier, J. (2008). Policy, practices and persistent traditions in teacher education: The construct of teaching and learning regimes. Journal of Education, 45, 7–28. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Robinson, M., & Zinn, D. (2007). Teacher preparation for diversity at three South African universities. Journal of Education (UKZN), 42, 61–81. Samoff, J., & Carrol, B. (2007). Education for all in Africa: Still a distant dream. In R. F. Arnove & C. A. Torres (Eds.), Comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the local, 3rd edn. (pp. 357–388). Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield. South African Human Rights Commission (2008). Annual report. SAHRC: Johannesburg. Thompson, N. (1993). Anti-discriminatory practice. London: Macmillan. Walker, M. (2003). Best practice: The dynamics of justice. In M. Griffiths (Ed.), Action for social justice in education: Fairly different. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Blind Spots and Privileged Places Response to Denise Zinn and André Keet Kerstin von Brömssen

1 Introduction In response to your interesting chapter, I will especially focus on three areas that you address, namely the different concepts and discourses in circulation around the globe in relation to ‘diversity’ and social justice, the research presented, and the challenges for teacher education, which will be a problematization much in line with your own argumentation.

2 The Concept of Diversity in Perspectives of Social Justice Your chapter is formed around the title ‘Diversity and teacher education: Explorations of a social justice framework’. When reading the title it at once struck me that you don’t only use the title ‘Diversity and teacher education’, but you also add ‘Explorations of a social justice framework’. I think this title, and your following argumentation is brave and much needed, especially in times when discussions on education are intrinsically linked to neoliberal and neoconservative discourses around testing, accountability, objectives, standards, performance, effectiveness and competition (Anagnostopoulos, 2005; Apple, 2006, pp. 468–489; Ball, 2006). This has among other things led to the “boy turn” in the educational debate at least in Western and Northern developed economies (Arnot, 2009a, p. 145; WeaverHightower, 2003), as well as the systematic playing down of social and welfare purposes of education, as Ball points out (1998, p. 126). Your work is related to the South African context, which is of course different from a Swedish and European context, but the complex powers of globalization and marketization affect us all (Arnot, 2009b, pp. 118–120; Burbules and Torres, 2000). As is shown in work by Akooje and McGrath (2004, pp. 31–34), the impact of

K. von Brömssen (B) Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, Göteborgs University, Göteborg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

93 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_9, 

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globalization and the processes of socio-political transformations often contradict stated goals of equity in education and training, also in South Africa. Your commitment is shown through the research and discussions in your chapter, where you link the education and training of teachers to the social task of teaching. I myself interpret this in line with what, for example, Zeus Leonardo (2009, p. xiii) is pleading for, namely “the importance of writing with courage”. I think this is extremely important for educators all over the world today as the world is massively constructed through unequal social relations. And we certainly know that there is a high risk of educational underachievement for children who come from low-income households and/or from nations where there are low investments from the state into education (Huston, 1991; Sen, 2006). There is a link in your chapter from social justice theory to education where you use a quotation from Melanie Walker (Walker in Griffiths, 2003, p. 124): “Education teaches stuff, but not everything. Our patchwork selves will include blind spots and privileged places, so we need the linkages of action and adjudicating social justice theories”. I think your research especially problematizes “blind spots and privileged places”, which is an interesting way of putting what we need to work with in the field of education, not least in teacher education. As is underlined in the work Preparing teachers for a Changing World. What teachers should learn and be able to do (2005) “the goal must be to design programs that make attention to diversity, equity, and social justice centrally important so that all courses and field experiences for prospective teachers are conducted with these important goals in mind” (Banks et al., 2005, p. 274). Likewise, you state the importance of framing teacher education in a social justice framework and critically examine the ‘who’, the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ element, as well as the structural, cultural and personal levels at which both students and teachers are embedded and which shape their consciousness and praxis. I think you show the importance of this in your presented chapter. Here I would suggest comparative research that could draw on your already existing findings, to widen the discussions on a social justice framework and ‘diversity’ in education transnational. We need to link and work even more globally in the educational arena, articulating and taking counteractions in “the Education Market Place” (Ball, 2006, p. 13).

3 Articulations of Diversity First, I will dwell upon one of these blind spots, namely ‘diversity’. As is stated in the beginning of your chapter: “the concept of ‘diversity’ as a topic of interest, concern and debate has ‘swept’ into the pedagogical vernacular over the past two decades, picking up on discourses coming predominantly from northern countries, particularly the United States”. Well, diversity – what about diversity? As an Indian friend of mine asked: “Why are you in the West so occupied with diversity? For us it’s obvious.”

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‘Diversity’ is a concept that I would suggest, with good reason, can be called an empty or floating signifier (cf. Lechte, 1994, pp. 26–27, p. 64, p. 73). Floating signifiers mean different things to different people and may stand for many things, or may even mean what interpreters want them to mean (Chandler, 2001). From this analytical standpoint and the concept of ‘a floating signifier’ we can explore different and many-voiced chains of articulations and discourses that are connected to ‘diversity’ in different contexts. We can explore the intersecting play of diversitydiscourses in different national contexts and/or in different political contexts and in line with these explorations analyze what kind of dominating and/or marginalizing discourses are in play (cf. Wetherell, Taylor, & Yates, 2001). This is a social view of language and a focus of power in language, where: “language is as it is because of its social function – and the individual chooses within the potential of the system” (Kress, 2001, p. 35). In a South African context the concept of ‘diversity’, as you discuss in your chapter, is embedded in discourses of difference and separatedness originating from severe inequalities. You make us remember that South Africa “still carries the scars and ravages of the Apartheid era” and as we all know, political, cultural and socio-economic conditions are tenacious structures. These are not changed or transformed in a short time, especially when major regimes of power are in play. As is also pointed out in your chapter, the challenge of diversity is “not because of the ‘diversification’ of the classroom, because these arenas have always been diverse”. Instead, you are searching for new and critical understandings of ‘diversity’, dealing with differences within the context of politics; that is, to focus on socio-economic inequalities and a social justice response to diversity. Most societies today are wrestling with particular varieties of diversity, though with very different histories. In a Swedish context diversity often nowadays refers to ‘cultural diversity’ and has become an ethnified or racialized concept.1 Ethnified discourses within articulations of ‘culture’ and/or ‘diversity’ carry strong notions of ‘the other’. It is immigrants, refugees and exiles who constitute and ‘have’ ethnicity, and are therefore treated as outsiders. In an educational context in Sweden, discourses connected to ‘multicultural schools’ bear a meaning of schools for “the other (ethnic, no Swedish) children” (Bunar, 2002). This goes in line with discursive constructions in relation to the specific racialized space where many Swedish suburbs are located (Molina, 1997). When it comes to the concept of diversity, an interesting distinction has been drawn by Homi Bhabha (1994). He distinguishes cultural diversity from cultural difference in order to develop a non-essentialist reflexive critique of specific cultural practices that allows transformation and change. Bhabha argues that the concept of diversity treats culture as an object of empirical knowledge; as static, totalized and historically bounded, as something valued but not necessarily lived. The latter, cultural difference, is the process of the enunciation of culture as ‘knowledgeable’,

1 About

the concept of ethnicity and ethnic identity formation, see, for example, Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2007, pp. 31–62).

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as adequate to the construction of systems of cultural identification. This involves a dynamic conception of culture, one that recognizes and incorporates its ongoing fluidity and constant changes (cf. May, 1999, p. 33). In line with the above reasoning in relation to the concept of ‘culture’, you also seem to avoid the concepts of multicultural and/or intercultural education as these in the South African context still signify separation and domination of one group by another. The battle over the conceptualization of ‘multicultural’ and ‘multiculturalism’ is ongoing and quite heated. Some researchers in Europe claim that the concept of ‘multicultural’ can be used as a heuristic device and as a lens of comparison for most countries (Cornwell & Stoddard, 2001). Just as an example, Tariq Modood argues in his work from 2007 that multiculturalism offers an understanding of civic equality that “ought to be a basis for civility, political reform and social research” (2007, vii). At the other end there are politicians and journalists who claim that “Multiculturalism is dead. Hurrah?. . . Multiculturalism suggests separateness. We are in a different world from the ’70s” (Anthony, 2004; cf. Allen, 2007). So what about all these concepts and struggles over words? Well, we have to remember that discourses are constructed within power struggles and have to be fought for. Only the concept of ‘multiculturalism’ can be used within discursive constructions coming from different political spheres. McLaren’s analyses show how ‘multiculturalism’ is articulated from different standpoints: as conservative, liberal, left-liberal and critical and resistance multiculturalism (1994, pp. 46–58). Also Nederveen Pieterse argues regarding this issue that we need to “highlight diversity within multiculturalism” (2007, p. 106).2 Thus, words and especially floating signifiers are used for political standpoints and political struggles. Therefore I would like to underline the importance of analyses and deconstructions of words and concepts in line with James Paul Gee. He argues that meanings of words are not fixed and settled once and for all; they are tied to cultural models and have to be negotiated (2008, p. 10). Gee writes: “Words are consequential. They matter. Words and the world are married” (2008, p. 15).

4 The Line of Argumentation The aim of the argument in your chapter is to show that ‘diversity’ in teacher education needs to be connected to and situated within a framework of social justice. You claim that “teacher education needs to search for a ‘social justice’ response to diversity” and that “teacher education/training is thus not simply aimed at managing the expressed or demonstrated diversity in the classroom, but rather at how to engage with diversity as an operative notion for social justice.” And ironically, as you also point out, South Africa’s ‘Big Five’ are not the lion, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the buffalo or the leopard as are constructed in the tourist business. The ‘Big Five’ are

2 For

a mapping of multicultural education, its theoretical perspectives and different approaches, see James A. Banks (2009).

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instead socio-economic inequalities and unemployment, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, poverty, discrimination and prejudice, and crime. This kind of diversity embedded in the classroom points to the need for the teachers, you suggest, to have in their awareness not specific knowledge about “cultural differences of their students and how to educate others about them, but cognizance that one cannot predict how these influences have shaped individuals’ consciousness and praxis.” I do agree with a lot of empathy and frustration, that we need analyses of social injustices in the area of education. I think this is one of our “blind spots”. Structural as well as cultural and personal aspects are important to analyze and be aware of, as these “are ‘sewn into’ the fabric of society, socio-political and economic dimensions with interlocking patterns of power and influence, and of course are in play in the classroom”, as you articulate in your chapter. Thus, both lecturers and student’s socialization and lived experiences, and their “life worlds” have to be taken up for the challenge of transformation and action. Teaching is not a neutral activity and “the personal is political”. But how to do that? What methods and activities are interesting and challenging “privileged places” without colonizing the selves and/or hurting people? Or maybe you cannot avoid discomfort as you also discuss in your chapter. You refer to Samoff (2007) who states that “transformation. . . is often disquieting” and “schools must energetically develop, not avoid, consciousness to democracy and strategies for protecting it. That can be discomforting”. In other words, and I think you are right, it can be discomforting to challenge privileged places.

5 The Theoretical Framework – Critical Pedagogy In order to locate your work you make use of critical pedagogy and works by educators like Michael Apple, Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren.3 Critical pedagogy is heavily influenced by the works of the Brazilian-born educator Paulo Freire (1921– 1997), probably the most well-known critical educator. According to his writings, Freire encourages students’ ability to think critically about their education, the idea being that this way of thinking allows students to recognize and understand connections between individual problems and experiences and the social contexts and structures in which these are embedded. Michael Apple, Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren are among other important contributors to the field of critical pedagogy and they draw on theoretical traditions from Marx and Freire. All three are great critics of neoliberalism, the school as a marketplace and the attacks against public schools and the social state (e.g., Apple, 1995, 2006; Apple & Buras, 2006; Giroux, 1994, pp. 325–343, 2008; McLaren, 1994, pp. 45–74, 2002; McLaren & Suoranta, 2009). So, social theory here would have the implicit goal of advancing the emancipatory function of knowledge. It

3 For

an introduction and mapping of critical education, see Michael W. Apple, Wayne Au, and Luis Armando Gandin (2009).

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would promote critical thinking and search for transformative knowledge. Critical social theorists have produced many interesting and relevant critiques of educational processes, such as parental involvement (Lareau, 2000), curriculum formation (Apple, 1990, Apple & Buras, 2006), and knowledge of new constructions of identity within a post-colonial context (Dolby & Dimitriadis, 2004). In this work, challenges regarding “blind spots and privileged places” are being articulated, but sadly enough, the structural inequalities in relation to women and children are often mostly forgotten. We certainly need to add a critical “gender gaze” (Arnot, 2009b, p. 129) or as Sporre puts it in one of her books titled To See with Alternative Eyes (Sporre, 2007). I find the use of the concept hospitality from Derrida (Borradori, 2003) especially intriguing in your work. Thank you for bringing it into the discussion. This notion of “hospitality,” and I quote from your chapter, “is inclusive of difference that is unexpected, uninvited and unknown, and allows us to transcend the notion of equality which focuses on favoured and known differences”. I think this concept really hits discourses on diversity (and our ‘lists’ of diversity categories from sociology), our scientific language and knowledge transmission. Thus we have to challenge our own work and our privileged places. Finally, the concepts of culture, diversity and multiculturalism often hide structural inequalities due to class/socio-economics, gender, religion, age, or sexuality. As I have tried to argue, words and the use of concepts are important and I really feel empowered through your chapter where you use the concept and framework of social justice. It points, I think, to radical, meaningful, and conscious work. But remember, social justice also has to be deconstructed. As Griffiths points out: “However, unhappily, it (social justice) may have gained some of its currency because it can be used to speak in very general terms, sliding over difficult political, practical issues. No wonder that some activists prefer to stick to specificities like ‘racial equality’ or ‘gay pride’” (Griffiths, 2003, p. 41; cf. Bhatti, Gaine, Gobbo, & Leeman, 2007, p. 4). So, I conclude with a question, again from Stephen Ball (1998, p. 128) who encourages us in these times to ask “whose interests are served?”

References Akoojee, S., & McGrath, S. (2004, March). Assessing the impact of globalization on South African education and training: A review of the evidence so far. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2(1), 25–45. Allen, C. (2007). Down with multiculturalism, bookburning and fatwas. Culture and Religion, 8(2), 125–138. Anagnostopoulos, D. (2005). Testing, tests, and classroom texts. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(1), 35–63. Anthony, A. (2004) Multiculturalism is dead. Hurrah? The Guardian, Thursday April 8, 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/08/religion.race [Online 090910] Apple, M. W. (1995). Education and power, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. (2006). Producing inequalities: Neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, and the politics of educational reform. In H. Lauder, P. Brown, Jo.-A. Dillabough, & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Education, globalization and social change (pp. 468–489). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Apple, M. W., Au, W., & Gandin, L. A. (Eds.). (2009). The Routledge international handbook of critical education. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W., & Buras, K. L. (Eds.). (2006). The subaltern speak. Curriculum, power and educational struggles (pp. 1–39). New York: Routledge. Arnot, M. (2009a). Educating the gendered citizen. Sociological engagements with national and global agendas. London: Routledge. Arnot, M. (2009b). A global conscience collective? Incorporating gender injustice into global citizenship education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 2009(4), 117–132. Ball, S. J. (1998). Big policies/small world: An introduction to international perspectives in education policy. Comparative Education, 34(2), 119–130. Ball, S. J. (2006). Education policy and social class. The selected works of Stephen J. Ball. London: Routledge. Banks, J. A. (2009). The Routledge international companion to multicultural education. New York: Routledge. Banks, J., Cochran-Smith, M., Moll, L., Richert, A., Zeichner, K., & LePage, P., et al. (2005). Teaching diverse learners. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world. What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 232–274). San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass Education Series. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge. Bhatti, G., Gaine, C., Gobbo, F., & Leeman, Y. (Eds.). (2007). Social justice and intercultural education. An open-ended dialogue. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Borradori, G. (2003). Philosophy in a time of terror. Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bunar, N. (2002). De andra (s) skolor (na). In S. Amir, M. Dahlstedt & I. Lindberg (Eds.), Det slutna folkhemmet. Om etniska klyftor och blågul självbild (pp. 136–151). Stockholm: Agora. Burbules, N. C., & Torres, C. A. (Eds.). (2000). Globalization and education: Critical perspectives. New York: Routledge. Chandler, D. (2001) Semiotics for beginners. Modality and representation. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02a.html [Online 091013] Cornwell, Grant, H., & Stoddard, E. W. (2001). Global multiculturalism. Comparative perspectives on ethnicity, race, and nation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Dolby, N., & Dimitriadis, G. (Eds.). (2004). Learning to labor in new times. New York: Routledge Falmer. Gee, J. P. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies. Ideology in discourses, 3rd edn. London: Routledge. Giroux, H. (1994). Insurgent multiculturalism and the promise of pedagogy. In T. G. David (Ed.), Multiculturalism. A critical reader (pp. 325–343). Oxford: Blackwell. Giroux, H. (2008). Against the terror of neoliberalism: Beyond the age of greed. Boulder, CA: Paradigm. Griffiths, M. (2003). Action for social justice in education. Fairly different. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Huston, A. C. (Ed.). (1991). Children in poverty. Child development and public policy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Kress, G. (2001). From Saussure to critical sociolinguistics: The turn towards a social view of language. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. J. Yates (Eds.), Discourse theory and practice. A reader (pp. 29–38). London: Sage. Lareau, A. (2000). Home advantage. Social class and parental intervention in elementary education, 2nd edn. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Lechte, J. (1994). Fifty key contemporary thinkers. From structuralism to postmodernity. London: Routledge. Leonardo, Z. (2009). Race, whiteness, and education. New York: Routledge. May, S. (1999). Critical multiculturalism and cultural difference. Avoiding essentialism. In S. May (Ed.), Rethinking multicultural and antiracist education (pp. 11–41). London: Falmer.

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McLaren, P. (1994). White terror and oppositional agency: Towards a critical multiculturalism. In T. G. David (Ed.), Multiculturalism. A critical reader (pp. 45–74). Oxford: Blackwell. McLaren, P. (2002). Critical pedagogy and predatory culture. Oppositional politics in a postmodern era. London: Routledge. McLaren, P., & Suoranta, J. (2009). Socialist pedagogy. In D. Hill (Ed.), Contesting neoliberal education. Public resistance and collective advance (pp. 242–264). New York: Routledge. Modood, T. (2007). Multiculturalism. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Molina, I. (1997). Stadens rasifiering. Etnisk boendesegregation i folkhemmet (Racialization of the city. Ethnic residential segregation in the Swedish Folkhem). Uppsala: Diss. Uppsala Universitet. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2007). Ethnicities and global multiculture. Pants for an Octopus. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Samoff, J. (2007). Institutionalizing international influence. In R. F. Arnove & C. A. Torres (Eds.), Comparative education. The dialectic of the global and the local, 3rd edn. (pp. 47–77). Oxford: Rowman – Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Sen, A. (2006). Conceptualising and measuring poverty. In D. B. Grusky & R. Kanbur (Eds.), Poverty and inequality. Studies in social inequality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sporre, K. (2007) Att se med andra ögon. Feministiska perspektiv på kunskap i ett mångkulturellt samhälle. Stockholm: GEM-rapport nr. 5, Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm. Weaver-Hightower, M. (2003). The “Boy Turn” in research on gender and education. Review of Educational Research, 73(4), 471–498. Wetherell, M., Taylor, S., & Yates, S. J. (2001). Discourse theory and practice. A reader. London: Sage.

Part II

Religious and Moral Education in Changing Societies

Worldviews of Today Teaching for Dialogue and Mutual Understanding John Valk

1 Introduction Higher learning is about increasing knowledge, enhancing critical thinking, and developing skills and abilities. Yet, it is about much more. It is also about nurturing in students a sense of meaning and purpose, obligation and responsibility, right action and behaviour, and hope for the future. In essence, it is also about engaging the existential questions of life, those that befit the human as human (Connor, 2006; Jones, 2000; Smith, 1990). Wrestling with these weighty matters is no easy task. Engaging the existential questions is not limited to the academy or secular thinkers. It has preoccupied the great religions, many of which established universities to aid them in greater understanding of their visions of life and ways of life (Newman, 1982; Schwehn, 2005). As such the link between religion and education has been long-standing, for both have common interests and shared concerns. Higher education has, however, undergone monumental changes over the past century and more, and on at least two important fronts. First, the worldviews of choice in the academy have changed significantly – from the religious to the secular – as many universities drifted from their earlier moorings (Burtchaell, 1998; Marsden, 1994). The secularization of the academy has had a considerable impact on religious matters and not least the approach to studying them (Hart, 1999; Jacobsen & Jacobsen, 2007; McIntire, 2007). Theology, once regarded as “queen of the sciences”, has been reduced to a sub-section of religious studies if not eliminated from the university altogether. Second, with the emergence of the modern research institution, disciplinary specialization has come to characterize the university and subject areas are readily segregated from one another. As a result, the university has moved away from questions of ultimate meaning and separated religious/spiritual engagement to other areas of academic studies (Kronman, 2007; Roberts & Turner, 2000; Schmalzbauer & Mahoney, 2008). J. Valk (B) Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] This chapter builds on and expands ideas contained in an earlier, shorter work (Valk, 2009a).

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All of this has come with a cost, and on a variety of levels. First, many of the universities’ denizens, especially faculty, find themselves intellectually estranged from or indifferent to religious communities which founded the universities. Yet, they are not without beliefs and values, and often incline themselves toward spiritual yearnings of some sort, however novel, exotic or different (Gross & Simmons, 2007; Lindholm & Astin, 2006; Wuthnow, 1989). But many faculty members feel inadequately prepared to engage in these matters with students, who in increasing numbers are “searching for deeper meaning in their lives” and “express a high level of interest in spiritual matters” (Astin, 2004; Lindholm, 2007, p. 10; Walvoord, 2007). Second, religious illiteracy is on the rise and all too many students graduate with high level degrees yet have entertained few, if any, religious ideas (Nord, 1995; Prothero, 2008). This leaves some wondering whether students can, “without reference to organized religion”, really “make sense of the culture and politics of the present age” (Wright, 2004, p. 166). Can they adequately discuss existential challenges, citizenship responsibilities, meaning and purpose – all of fundamental importance to humans in the twenty-first century – without reference to the great religious traditions (Napier, 2005)? The real challenge for today’s colleges and universities, especially of the secular variety, is to enhance dialogue dealing with religious and spiritual matters. Third, where religious ideas and traditions still form part of the university’s curriculum, the approach taken to their investigation is all too often compartmentalized. Relegating religious ideas and notions exclusively to Religious Studies Departments segregates religious beliefs, values and principles from other areas of study. It excludes them from economic, political, social or educational engagements, initiatives or policies (McIntire, 2007; Schumacher, 1989). Hence, secular beliefs, values and principles can dominate by default, be uncritically assumed, or go undetected (Audi & Wolterstorff, 1997). Fourth, focusing exclusively on the great religious traditions ignores the increasing influence of secular traditions. These have come to hold powerful sway in various parts of the world, particularly in the West. Failure to take a more inclusive approach, one that recognizes and explores worldviews, religious and secular, uncritically accepts and fails to examine forces operative in life that are as powerful as religion. As our interactions with people of various ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds increases, generating respect for those who are different becomes vital. Mutual respect is enhanced when opportunities for dialogue and understanding increases; lack of knowledge of the other leads only to distrust and disrespect. Engagement leads to an awareness of others: an embrace of similarities and a respect for differences. Finding a means to enhance interaction will serve to break down barriers and create opportunities to explore the cultural and spiritual wealth and wisdom possessed by religious and secular communities far and wide. This chapter looks at some of the challenges to religious education and then explores an approach that may be more conducive to teaching for dialogue and mutual understanding, one that is inclusive of both religious and secular

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perspectives. It further puts forward a pedagogical/curricular model that engages students in knowing self and others: exploring beliefs and values of self and others. Lastly, it introduces worldview frameworks and worldviews types as means to assist in identifying, describing and analyzing various worldviews of today, be they one’s own, those of others, or those that hold sway in the public square.

2 Challenges to Religious Education While higher education has links that go back to the ancient Greek academy, Western universities were by and large rooted in and founded by the ecclesiastical institutions that dominated the history of Europe and North America. For centuries academic pursuits centred largely on a common Christian understanding of a vision of life and a way of life. Established not only to meet the needs of an expanding socio-economic, political and cultural context, the universities were also places to investigate the larger questions of life. The purpose of the university was to gain a greater understanding of the nature of God and the relationship between God and humans: theology stood as central. Around it revolved other academic enquiries, serving to shed light on the handiwork of God and to train men and women in the service of God, all within the context of the Christian religion. One encountered aspects of the Christian religion in all subject matter, for the academy affirmed a Christian universe. In the second half of the twentieth century matters changed significantly and on a number of fronts. An earlier unified understanding gave way to increasing diversity and multiple voices – the university became a multiversity. In regard to religious education, many universities with theology departments renamed them religion or religious studies departments, especially in Canada and the United States. Further, neither the expectation nor the assumption could any longer be made that students, let alone faculty, of those department embraced the Christian faith or a traditional faith of any kind. Denominationalism decreased, confessionalism declined, and a generic Christianity surfaced among those who still embraced it. The study of religions other than Christianity also became increasingly attractive. Students became fascinated with the religions of the East, and Religious Studies Departments struggled to become more multi-religious. But that impact may have been limited, for the larger university increasingly marginalized traditional religion, if not religion in general, in its embrace of secularism (Marsden, 1994). This shift had earlier concerned theologian Harvey Cox who regarded secularism as a “closed worldview” which “seeks to impose its ideology through organs of the state”, with higher education having the most powerful influence (Cox, 1965, p. 18). Smith felt that a secularized academy had begun to bar the examination of particular truths and Goldman asserted that God could no longer be found even at Harvard Divinity School (Goldman, 1992; Smith, 1990). Reuben indicated that the search for moral truth was no longer the central preoccupation of the modern university, resulting in a secularization of the intellectual life – from the religious to the scientific to the

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humanistic (Reuben, 1996). Ammerman noted this impact on one particular discipline: “no single field has so clearly articulated and embodied the secularization of the academy as sociology” (Ammerman, 2002). While a generation ago religion often “passed off the radar screens as a subject of study” for many, it now appears to be making a comeback (Sterk, 2002, p. 78). Theories predicting its demise proved to be short-sighted: “the world today is massively religious, is anything but the secularized world that had been predicted by so many analysts of modernity” and that “those who neglect religion in their analysis of contemporary affairs do so at their great peril” (Berger, 1999, pp. 9, 18). In a globalized world where inter-religious tension continues to surface, British educator Robert Jackson argues that society benefits “if pupils in our schools are conversant with [religious] language” (Jackson, 2004, p. 139). Carter boldly states that “only religion possesses the majesty, the power, and the sacred language to teach us all, the religious and the secular, the genuine appreciation for each other on which a successful civility must rest” (Carter, 1998, p. 18). As such, there appears to be a turning point, not to a former confessional or mono-religious past or a non-conformist multi-religious model, but to what Jackson and others have termed a “mixed system” or “inter-religious” model (Jackson, Miedema, Weisse, & Willaime, 2007; Pollefeyt, 2007). There are stronger voices appealing for a more central role for religion or spirituality in the academy in general and liberal education in particular (Jacobson & Jacobson, 2007; Jenkins & Burish, 2006; Lindholm, 2007). Some even argue that theology should once again become central to the university (Sommerville, 2006; Ward, 2004). Such endeavours have limited prospects, however, if the kinds of ultimate questions raised by religion remains the domain of or confined to religion courses or Religious Studies Departments. Even though educating into religion, about religion, or from religion is in advance, use of the term religion excludes those who have no religious compulsions or inclinations. It also neglects surrogate religions and secular perspectives from the same critical and comparative analysis as directed to traditional religions. Further, it assumes that the ultimate or existential questions are addressed only by traditional religions. It ignores the fact that all people have ultimate beliefs of some sort from which they view the world, understand the nature of life, and develop a vision for life. From ultimate beliefs flow particular thoughts and actions, leading to ways of life that encompass rituals, symbols and behaviours that frequently parallel or mimic traditional religions. Teachings, stories, rituals, and symbols are not the exclusive domain of traditional religions, nor are they confined to the private sphere (Babik, 2006; Bauer & Barreau, 2008; Cox, 1999; Kainz, 2006; Loy, 2003). What is required in today’s changing world is a more inclusive term that levels the playing field. A more encompassing term to that of religion is worldview – it incorporates both religious and secular perspectives. A worldview or vision of life is a framework by which we order our existence. It is the glasses or filter from which we view the world. Worldviews are mental models that shape our thinking

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and acting. They are the means by which we “find our way through the social landscape surrounding us” (Olsen, Lodwick, & Dunlap, 1992), and serve to orient or ground people individually or communally (Peterson, 2001). They are “frameworks of larger meaning” and “maps of the mind” which battle for our hearts and define “who we are as human beings” (Lappé & Lappé, 2003, pp. 9–10). Worldviews assist us in making sense of our lived reality. Synonymous terms such as “frame of orientation”, weltanschauung, “plausibility structures”, “great unifying systems” and “visions of life” are used interchangeably to point to the various perceptions of that reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Lappé & Lappé, 2003; Naugle, 2002). A more inclusive approach to that of religious study is worldview study. It investigates both religious and secular worldviews as drivers of human thought and action. It includes both religious and secular beliefs, values and principles and their impacts, which becomes all the more important in a secular age (Taylor, 2007). It stresses that ultimate or complete knowledge and certainty is beyond the scope of the human, and hence all people (religious and secular) necessarily take a “leap of faith” of some kind to ground their vision of life and way of life. All humans – theist, atheist and agnostic alike – have beliefs of some kind which play out in their thoughts and actions (Valk, 2009a, 2009b). Hence, all students become involved in the learning, for all have a worldview. Worldview study is interdisciplinary in its approach. Questions pertaining to a vision of/for life and a way of life are not to be confined to one particular disciplinary area of study. These questions span the scope of what it means to be human which is then played out in all areas of life, including our social, communal, political and economic activities. Not to link those larger questions to these activities is to uncritically accept or assume one vision or way of life. Worldview questions are as much the domain of politics and economics as they are of Religious Studies (Hurd, 2008; Nelson, 2001; Schumacher, 1989). Worldview study rejects the secular notion that religious beliefs can be relegated to the private sphere. No religious perspective of merit advocates privatization of beliefs. Beliefs, values and principles, religious or otherwise, are indeed personally held, but they are far from private. Worldviews impact the daily lives of people in all aspects of their lives. Further, these religious and secular beliefs can serve as “social capital.” Religious and secular institutions and organizations contribute to the stability and well-being of local communities. Both enhance the common good as they instruct their adherents to responsible and active citizenship (Furbey, Dinham, Farnell, Finneron, & Wilkinson, 2006; Jackson et al., 2007; Johnston & Sampson, 1994; Patel & Hartman, 2009; Putnam & Campbell, 2010; Weithmann, 2002). Lastly, worldview study examines the beliefs, values and principles of others as an important aspect of the educational journey. But it affirms that an intense examination of the beliefs, values and principles that motivate the self is equally important in the learning process. Identifying and describing one’s own worldview and reflecting on how it plays itself out in one’s own thoughts and actions becomes as important as identifying and describing the worldviews of others and how these influence their thoughts and actions. The study of worldviews becomes not just the

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study of the other; it also becomes a study of the self. The challenge of the teacher is to engage learners in such a manner that they become knowledgeable about the other as they grow to a deeper knowledge and understanding of the self; and knowledge of the self cannot be gained apart from knowledge of the other.

3 Knowing Self and Others: A Pedagogical/Curricular Model In our globalized world cultural and religious diversity has become part of our everyday lives, most particularly in the West. Such diversity impacts us at a variety of levels – at work, in our communities, in our schools, even in our families – and can be enriching, as interactions with the other deepens an understanding of the self. Not least we become aware that while people think and act the same in some ways, they do so quite differently in others. A model focusing on a Knowing Self and Others learning outcome might be a considerable advantage in leading us in a direction that enhances an understanding of those similarities and differences in the exploration of worldviews – our own and those of others. Knowing Self and Others is one of six learning outcomes adopted by Renaissance College, an undergraduate Interdisciplinary Leadership Studies Program established at the University of New Brunswick in September 2000 (Roderick et al., 2006). In this outcome students explore various worldviews as they reflect on their own, in order to “enhance their understanding of life as, among other things, an intricate set of relationships between individual, community and beyond – across the domains of the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual” (Valk, 2009a). They become aware of the contexts, circumstances and experiences that have shaped their own personal beliefs and values and those of others. This learning outcome is central to a number of program courses, such as Worldviews, Religions and Cultures; Leadership Foundations; Integrative Forums; Leadership in Cross-Cultural Contexts; Public Policy Forums; and International Internships. Students begin their studies by exploring worldviews as visions of life and ways of life. They come to recognize that their view of the world comes to expression in their everyday thoughts and actions. They sense that worldviews have formative influence on the lives of individuals, communities, groups and especially those in positions of leadership. Students investigate the spiritual dimension of human life as both inward journey and outward expression, recognizing that spirituality continues to have relevance for contemporary life and plays out in individual and communal thoughts and actions. They learn that spirituality can be grounded not only in traditional religious perspectives but also in new emerging forms, heightening their appreciation for the diversity of faith expression and experience in society (Valk, 2009a). To level the playing field, students study both religious and secular worldviews, including not only traditional religions such as Native Spirituality, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, but also secular worldviews such as Exclusive Humanism, Atheism, Scientism and Consumer Capitalism (Valk, 2009a). Though not exhaustive, this array not only impresses on students a diversity of perspectives but also

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impacts all areas of life; they are not only confined to the private sphere but impact the public square as well. The social, economic, political and communal spheres are shaped by different perceptions of the world we want and how we should live in it. Experiential learning is an important aspect of education and through it students engage in learning beyond the confines of the classroom. Students visit sacred places and spaces and come into contact with religious or spiritual communities. Here they come to see that these communities have long wrestled with the larger questions or concerns of life. They see that responses to these questions are revealed in stories, espoused in teachings, championed by leaders, embraced by the faithful, and expressed in service to others. They hear spiritual leaders or teachers speak about the beliefs, values and principles that animate them, and see how religious and secular communities nurture, support and encourage adherents to deepen their own understandings and perspectives. Students experience the enriching power of symbols and sacred space, and learn of a tradition’s sense of justice and equality. They also come to see that values and actions, beliefs and behaviours are not always consistent, either in their own lives or those of others (Valk, 2009a). Students greatly value visits to sacred places and these leave an indelible mark on them, often radically altering their understandings and perceptions. These experiential endeavours become educational enhancements to classroom engagement, dialogical encouragement and reflexive learning. They assist in anchoring or situating searching students. They also teach them that the great religious traditions “encourage adherents to become informed, responsible and engaged citizens” (Furbey et al., 2006). Interestingly enough many experience changes in perceptions regarding religious worldviews, particularly Christianity: “they no longer see these as relics of the past but embraced by living, breathing communities making important contributions locally, nationally and internationally” (Valk, 2009a). Students also begin to see how their increased understanding and awareness of others enhances and deepens their understanding of self, as they reflect on the central tenets of various worldviews. They begin to wrestle with their own religious or secular convictions and the communities of origin from which their convictions and their moral visions of life emerge. For some, however, identifying and describing their own worldview becomes a difficult exercise. Schooling readily enhances students’ knowledge of the other but less so of the self. A deeper reflection of their own beliefs, values and principles is a new experience for some. Students also “come to realize that universal concepts of justice, equality, right and wrong, honesty and truth can be understood in radically different ways based on one’s particular perspective on life. They see that religious and secular worldviews exercise considerable influence in the public square, serving as both conservative and progressive agents of social change” (Valk, 2009a). Students learn that individual and collective thoughts and actions, even enhanced citizenship, emerge from these religious or spiritual communities which permeate and impact the larger society in general and often influence and shape public policy in particular (Connor, 2006; Jackson, 2004; Putnam & Campbell, 2010; Sterk, 2002; Valk, 2007). Berger spoke of these as “living sub-cultures” and that from them societies draw “moral sustenance” and individuals derive “meaning and identity” (Berger, 1977, p. 139).

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Charles Taylor felt that respect for others, a sense of dignity and notions of what makes a full life emerge from particular frameworks, not least of which are religious (Taylor, 1989). Robert Bellah argued that society’s drift towards individualism can be overcome by the nurturing of particularized religious identity – membership in “churches, synagogues and other religious associations” (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1991, p. 281). These tendencies have been observed in my own students (Valk, 2009a). Students come to realize that worldviews as “visions of life” and “ways of life” stress community, address the whole person, expect adherents to think, interpret life and death in specific ways, have great interest in the public square, and hold hope for the future. In their readings, they come to learn that great leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Aung San Sui Kyi, emerge from one or another of the great religious or secular traditions. Students reflect on the moral principles and values that motivate these leaders to great acts of social justice that in turn have given freedom and dignity to others. At the same time they become aware that people can also be motivated by ideologies or worldviews that result in horrific acts of human brutality, political oppression and environmental destruction (Glover, 2001). Students come to recognize that particular perceptions of reality, whether Marxist, Secularist, Islamic, or Christian, shape public policy, and on a variety of levels and in a variety of areas. Worldviews can also be perceived as agreeing on particular public policy, yet arrive at those policies from radically different perspectives (Banchoff, 2007). Even that which is often regarded as inherently opposed – faith and reason, science and religion – can be seen as giving fuller explanation to human life. Students learn that most issues are complex and often so because of diverse worldview perspectives. They realize that consensus is difficult to attain on controversial moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage because of radically different perspectives. In the process they not only deepen their understanding of particular positions on these issues, they also examine and deepen their own worldview and moral understanding. Such heightened awareness precludes easy dismissal of others and puts focus properly on policies proposed, all indicative of enhanced critical thinking. Moral neutrality is virtually impossible to maintain: thoughts and actions have consequences because they emerge from perceptions of what is important and worth doing (Budziszewski, 1993). Internship travel in countries different than their own confronts them with worldview traditions different than their own, and cause them to question previously held assumptions: different perspectives lead people to take different positions on issues that confront them.

4 Worldview Frameworks and Worldview Types To increase their knowledge and awareness students are taught worldview frameworks and worldview types to assist them in identifying, describing and analyzing various worldviews. Worldview frameworks assist in distinguishing the ideas,

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functions, structures and features common to all worldviews. Worldview types assist in classifying worldviews in terms of similarities and differences.

4.1 Worldview Frameworks One worldview framework is the “ultimate or existential questions” framework (Naugle, 2002; Olthuis, 1985; Sire, 2004). The large questions of life, generally the domain of philosophers and theologians, also preoccupy ordinary individuals, albeit in less philosophic concepts and terms. This “ultimate or existential questions” framework focuses on those larger-than-life queries such as meaning and purpose, responsibilities and obligations, discerning right from wrong, existence of a higher power/being/force transcending humans, and life after this life. Such questions are common to all worldviews yet render responses that map out the basic parameters of a worldview and indicate that views pertaining to these questions can be considerably different. Theistic and atheistic worldviews differ radically, for example, regarding the existence of God and even life after this life. Positions taken for one side or another do not necessarily reflect muddled thinking, as some argue, but more so radically different views that are extremely difficult if not impossible to reconcile. Further, reflective individuals and communities of individuals by their very nature continually refine their thinking to give greater depth to the beliefs and values they embrace in light of challenges that come their way, from either the harsh realities of life or in response to those who embrace radically different perspectives (Valk, 2008). A second framework to deepen students understanding of worldviews is the “ontological and epistemological” framework (Daniels, Franz, & Wong, 2000; McKenzie, 1991). Though again largely philosophical in nature, this framework assists in exploring how people understand the nature of being (ontology) and also asks of them the nature of their knowing (epistemology). Appropriately raised, such questions can be of great assistance to inquisitive minds seeking greater understanding into the nature of the reality they experience. Ontological questions become foundational questions and depict a distinct worldview type. Naturalism, Marxism and Darwinism, for example, regard the ultimate nature of being as physical (material) and hence reject any concept of a transcendent God. Native Spirituality, Hinduism and Ecospiritualities, on the other hand, view reality as a combination of the physical and spiritual, yet distinguish themselves from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which affirm that the nature of reality necessarily consists of the integration of the physical and the spiritual because of the creative acts of a transcendent God. Epistemological questions push students and others even further in discerning their beliefs. Questions concerning what we know and how we know what we know challenge all to reflect on the sources from which comes one’s certainty. Discovering the sources of their knowledge and concepts of truth, and the nature of the authority given to those sources, challenge students to reflect on what they accept with certainty and the reasons for doing so. Here, in particular, students come to

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realize that no one stands at a pinnacle or mountaintop able to discern with ultimate knowledge or certainty the nature of reality: we all take a “leap of faith.” A third framework to enhance student understanding of worldviews is the “worldview dimensions” framework, modelled after that first used by Ninian Smart (Smart, 1983). A worldviews dimension framework explores beliefs, values and principles as conveyed through narratives or stories, teachings, rituals, social engagements and experiential opportunities. This framework gives students an opportunity to see how a vision of life and a way of life are transmitted or reinforced in religious or secular communities or institutions. Each of these dimensions plays out in different ways with different worldviews and in different contexts. Teachings from the Bible, the Qur’an or Mao’s Red Book instil particular beliefs in their adherents. Rituals such as July 4th Parades, Baptisms, Boxing Day sales, Sun Dances or Summer Solstice celebrations communicate or reinforce particular worldview beliefs and values. A “worldview dimensions” framework conveys the notion that all worldviews attempt to transmit a particular social, moral and spiritual universe to adherents and followers in structurally similar ways in order to encourage or reinforce loyalty and devotion.

4.2 Worldview Types Discussions regarding worldviews, and their nature, composition and characteristics lead to a next step of identifying and describing varying kinds or types of worldviews. While many speak about worldviews, even characterizing certain ones, the result is that they are frequently ill-defined, and categories attempting to type them are rare (Marshall, Griffioen, & Mouw, 1989, p. 83). Hence the need arises for a methodology to type worldviews. Typing worldviews allows students to recognize specific similarities and differences which can be explicated using the three earlier mentioned worldview frameworks. Worldview types are ideal types: classifications for the purposes of gaining a clearer understanding of specific worldviews. They are used for description rather than prescription; for analysis rather than evaluation. As with specific worldviews, worldview types are also dynamic and capable of development and change. They evolve in response to critical examination and reflection and are not final in an absolute way. Yet they are less dynamic than personal worldviews in that they have been shaped by a longer history. While personal worldviews may be a blend of many things, worldview types reveal defining and distinctive features. Typing worldviews is not meant to be exhaustive, but strives to be comprehensive in identifying various types and their numerous sub-types. A first worldview type is monotheism within which are included the three wellknown monotheistic sub-types: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Students come to see that within each of these sub-types are further and numerous divisions. The most basic or distinguishing feature of this worldview type is the embrace of a monotheistic God, yet understood differently by each of its sub-types. Students

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also see further features or characteristics which include affirmation of the creation of the universe by an all-powerful God, scriptural revelation, the reality of sinful human nature, the need for human redemption, and belief in life after death. All narratives, teachings, ethics, rituals, symbols, and social and experiential aspects emanate from the foundational belief in a monotheistic God. While the public mind frequently focuses on the rituals, monotheistic worldviews also have well-worked out philosophical systems – ontology, epistemology, eschatology and cosmology – all grounded in the basic belief in a monotheistic God. Students also come to see that the monotheistic worldview, especially Judaism and Christianity, has given formative shape to the history of the West (Cahill, 1998). It has influenced education, economics, politics, science, literature, and social and communal life. Students also learn that the influence of the Judeo-Christian worldview has not, however, been limited to the Western world; its impact has been worldwide. Islam has been a formative influence in numerous non-Western societies and cultures, shaping as well education, economics, politics, science, literature, and social and communal life, and not least Islamic theology. Its influence has also been worldwide and increasingly so in the Western world as Islamic immigration extends to Europe and North America. A second worldview type is polytheism/non-theism. Within this category are included not only other world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Indigenous Spiritualities, but also new movements such as Eco-Spiritualities and Eco-Feminism (Kearns & Keller, 2007). Students come to recognize characteristic features of the polytheistic/non-theistic types that distinguish it from monotheism, such as an affirmation of spirituality and a spiritual force, which only some loosely call God, but grounded within or immanent in the universe or the earth and can be known or perceived through nature. In some sub-types, the environment is deemed sacred and the earth deified as a self-regulating, living system that is mother to all of life. Characteristic to Eastern religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism is belief in numerous gods, or the promotion of the god within, with the desire to rid oneself of all negative thoughts and actions. Some forms of Wicca have seen resurgence of late in the increasingly popular Solstice and Equinox celebrations. Students come to learn that polytheism/non-theistic worldviews stretch far back into the early history of humankind. Their popularity has increased, especially in the West, with the influx of Eastern religions, the wane of Christianity and heightened awareness of the vulnerability of the earth. In many ways this worldview type and its sub-types have been on the forefront of the environmental movement, regarding the earth as more than a resource for human consumption. They bring to conscious awareness that humans need to limit their destructives ways of life and leave a softer and gentler footprint on the earth. Complete with its own ontology, epistemology and cosmology, this worldview type impinges on all aspects of life. A third worldview type that assists student understanding is exclusive humanism. Students learn that this type, predicated on the belief that humans are self-sufficient, accepts “no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing” (Taylor, 2007, p. 18). It is entirely secular, with an exclusive focus on the “here and now” (saeculem) and no notion of life beyond

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this life here on earth. All notions of transcendence or dependence on a power, force or entity greater than the human are rejected; the human is autonomous – the highest arbitrator of all things. Reason, not revelation, is the highest authority and truth is garnered by methodological naturalism. Sub-types of exclusive humanism are individualism, rationalism, secularism, atheism, existentialism, naturalism, scientism, various forms of scientific socialism (Marxism, Leninism, socialism and communism) and certain types of environmentalism. The exclusive humanistic worldview type, as students come to recognize, has gained a strategic hold in the Western world and has exercised a formative influence today in the public square: in education, economics, politics, literature, science, the media, and social and communal life. Secularism, arguable the most prominent subtype, has been highly effective in privatizing or marginalizing traditional religion, most especially in Europe. States that embraced atheistic, communist philosophies, such as the former Soviet Union and China, became quite dogmatic in their own teachings and took active steps to secularize society by eradicating institutional religion, only to find that religious faith had survived quite intact (Froese, 2008). Today a vocal atheism, spearheaded by strident scientists and philosophers, has gained media attention in its attempt to undermine traditional religion. But while many within exclusive humanism stridently oppose traditional religion, many more simply ignore it with the result that the religious voice is often muted in the public square. A fourth worldview type is consumerism/capitalism. This worldview type, which includes sub-types such as consumerism, capitalism, corporatism, economism and globalism, focuses on the consumption of goods and services, the exploitation of natural and human resources, and the maximization of profit. Students recognize that humans have always been consumers of goods and services to meet basic needs, but consumerism/capitalism, through the use of market strategies, has succeeded in providing goods and services for people in ways generations before could never have imagined. It has increased both the standard and cost of living in many parts of the world, and increased the variety, availability and technical sophistication of numerous material products around the world. Enhancements in communications technology, medical research, transportation systems and food distribution can be attributed to consumer capitalism. What makes consumerism/capitalism a worldview type, however, is its all consuming features: it mirrors all the characteristics of a worldview. Consumerism/capitalism has become a “vision of life” and a “way of life” whose impacts are felt throughout the world and on a variety of levels. When students read works such as “The Religion of the Market” (Loy, 2003), “The Market as God” (Cox, 1999), “Economics as Religion” (Nelson, 2001) and “One Market under God” (Frank, 2001) they begin to see comparisons to traditional religions, and come to understand why some argue that it is the “dominant faith system of our times”, complete with its own narratives, priesthood, missionary activity, message of salvation, cathedrals and ethics (Akerlof & Shiller, 2009; deChant, 2002; Foltz, 2007; McDaniel, 1997). It too comes complete with its own ontology, epistemology and teleology and has formative influence on politics,

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economics, education, ethics, science and social and communal life (Campbell, 2004; Song, 2003; Twitchell, 1999). These worldview frameworks and types present students with an opportunity to level the playing field. They come to sense that there is no worldview neutrality, for worldviews impact all of life in greater or lesser degrees. Worldviews, religious or secular, are all-encompassing and have huge impacts on various levels of human existence. They give students not only a sense of shared ideas, beliefs and values but also where their own beliefs and values may radically differ.

5 Conclusion It has been argued here that worldview study enhances education. Raising the ultimate or existential questions and examining worldview structures and functions give opportunity for students to reflect upon and articulate their own worldview. Experiential learning engages students in dialogue with spiritual leaders and teachers and exposes them to living traditions that animate people and give meaning and purpose to their existence. Probing ontological and epistemological convictions of others cause them to wrestle with and deepen their own beliefs and values. Mostly, they come to recognize that all people embrace beliefs and values of some kind (Astin, 2004; Hurd, 2008; Jackson, 1997). What is the value of all of this? It has been argued that studies in religion lead to a more heightened multicultural awareness (Cush, 2007). O’Grady indicates that interfaith dialogue increases self-understanding (O’Grady, 2005). Pille Valk argues that religious studies positively influence students’ attitudes regarding religion in general and Christianity in particular (Valk, 2006). Worldview study, because it is more inclusive, has the propensity to engage an even broader spectrum of students for the reason that we all have beliefs and values of some kind. From the foregoing certain conclusions can be drawn. One, worldview study gives students an opportunity to study a variety of beliefs, values and principles which serve as a mooring and orientation for individuals and groups of individuals. They learn that these cannot be relegated to the private realm but surface implicitly or explicitly in all areas of life, including education. Students come to recognize that everyone comes to embrace beliefs and values of some kind, implicitly or explicitly. Two, worldview study teaches that thoughts and actions stem from perceptions of what is truthful, important and worth doing. Students come to recognize that their beliefs and values are given shape by the communities – religious or secular – from which they emerge. But these beliefs and values are also dynamic. They have the potential to change in greater or lesser degrees when contexts and circumstances change – we are impacted by our involvements, environments and our learning. Three, worldview study increases critical thinking. Enhanced knowledge and awareness gives one greater understanding and perception of others. Examining the beliefs, values and principles of others also assists greatly in developing and articulating one’s own – all of which is crucial for the human journey.

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Four, students benefit from worldviews study because it is inclusive and interdisciplinary in nature. Religious communities are presented as living and vibrant, able to offer direction, wisdom and insight into some of life’s most difficult challenges. Students recognize that not all religions or religious individuals are the same; neither are secular individuals and/or communities. All offer direction, wisdom and insight into some of life’s most difficult challenges. The hallmark of the educated person is recognition that the human is complex, and worldview study gives students glimpses into that complexity.

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Vital Issues, Worldviews and Religions Challenges to Religious Education Today Sven Hartman

1 Introduction In the Middle East in times of old the number forty was filled with special symbolic power. For 40 years the Children of Israel wandered in the desert, forty days is still the period of fasting, and the Ali Baba story tells of a treasure hidden by forty thieves in an inaccessible cave. Forty years have passed since the Swedish compulsory school received the first curriculum to include a serious attempt at breaking away from the traditions governing religious instruction in schools. The classical educational ideal dominating the first half of the twentieth century was replaced with a socially oriented democratic progressivism. The goal of reproducing a given cultural and religious tradition was replaced with the goal of providing the best possible conditions for the individual pupil’s personal development. Similar reforms were introduced in the Nordic countries during the same period (Hartman, 2005).

2 The 1969 Swedish Curriculum and Religious Education For religious education in Sweden the 1969 curriculum was a somewhat paradigm shift, giving an existential turn to our way of approaching the world of religions. The most important change was perhaps not the change of the subject’s designation from ‘Christianity’ to ‘Christian Knowledge’ but the fact that the pattern of activity in the learning processes was directed into new channels. The pupils’ own experience and reflections were to be given a new and prominent role. The study of religious documents had long been central to the teaching. Now this approach was to be leavened with a firm placing of the pupil in the centre. These guidelines were refined further in the curriculum development in the 1970s. S. Hartman (B) Department of Education in Humanities and Social Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

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I would designate this way of working ‘Livsfrågepedagogik’. A literal translation into German would be ‘Lebensfrage-pädagogik’ or perhaps ‘Didaktik des Lebensfragens’. English is more difficult; ‘Religious education based on existential questions’, or ‘Vital-issues centred education’ could perhaps be a suggestion. In my opinion, developments in Sweden reflected international influence in theology and religious education, primarily from England, via Denmark. There the existential slant had always been present, ever since Kierkegaard’s day (Böwadt, 2009). In time, the corresponding shift reached Norway as well (Gunnarsson, 2008). The 1969 curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school included the following: Life’s fundamental issues of a personal and social nature are experienced strongly by children and young people. . . It is important that for them such essential issues concerning attitudes to life and ethics should be subjects for a comprehensive study. . . With this point of departure the teaching should afford insights into fundamental contemporary issues of life philosophy and ethics, and bring out questions regarding facts and value judgements. Fundamentala livsfrågor av personlig och social natur upplevs starkt av barn och ungdom. . . Det är angeläget att sådana för dem väsentliga frågor av livsåskådningsmässig och etisk art blir föremål för ett allsidigt studium. . . Med denna utgångspunkt bör undervisningen ge inblick i nutidens livsåskådningsmässiga och etiska grundfrågor och aktualisera frågor angående fakta och värderingar.

The phrase “With this point of departure” expressed the new outlook: pupils’ own vital issues could be introduced as a legitimate starting point in religious education. This change, then, was introduced in Sweden 40 years ago. Since then there have been maybe forty investigations and evaluations reporting that pupils still don’t like RE but are very interested in vital issues. What is the reason why this outcome emerges from Swedish research? What about the relation between pupils’ vital questions and RE?

3 Religious Education, Pupils’ Perspectives and Subject Matters Empirical data on young peoples’ vital questions are extensive (Hartman, 1986; Hartman, Pettersson, & Westling, 1973; Monstad & Saetre, 1975; Ronnås, 1969; Tamminen, 1988). Children are reflecting on their lives. They are struggling to broaden their horizons and to comprehend their lives and existence itself. In short, young people are interested in vital issues. Why then don’t they like RE very much? We don’t know for sure, since Swedish evaluations are not very specific nowadays in the decentralized school system. But these explanations could be worth trying out: – Teachers don’t obey the guidelines given in the curriculum. Vital issues are not treated in RE. – Vital issues are too controversial and difficult for RE teachers to handle in the classroom. – Vital issues lose their attraction for young people when presented in school.

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– Young people don’t recognize their own vital questions when they are introduced in the classroom. – Vital issues are too private to be treated in public.

Some of us who were around 40 years ago thought that, by founding religious education on existential questions, we had found the password, an ‘Open Sesame’ to the cave of religious education where so much treasure lay concealed. We thought in those days not so much of the forty thieves but more of all the pupils who had been ill at ease with traditional religious instruction. The 40 years that have passed give us reason to look into the past and into the future. Current in those days was the notion in educational issues that, by and large, scientific development always moved ‘forwards’, a more recent version of the curriculum was always ‘better’ than an earlier; and that in this way we were involved in a joint project of enlightenment where we together and continuously ‘rose towards the light’. Today it is harder to see matters in this way. We see how the common state-comprehensive school project is being dissolved through decentralization, neoliberal (sic) economic control and privatization. At the same time the debate on educational policy has lost substance and become superficial, now driven by rapid political manoeuvres without grounding in scientific knowledge. This is obviously an international tendency (Gewirtz, Ball, & Bowe, 1995; Sennett, 2006). We need to seek other perspectives if we are to capture what is going on today in the world of education. When curricular development goes from a classical educational ideal directed to the handing down of tradition to ideals that focus on pupils’ personality development, this does not necessarily involve a progression from something more primitive to something more developed. Nor need one, as I myself have done sometimes, view the development of Swedish life-questions teaching during the past halfcentury in terms of progress and checks: Christianity in the 1962 curriculum as material-centred and traditional; Christian Knowledge in the 1969 curriculum as introducing the pupil perspective; Religious Knowledge in 1980 as consolidating the pupil-centred approach; Religious knowledge in 1994 as a return, a backlash, a compromise between earlier viewpoints. Similar changes in designations and subject matter have also occurred in other places, not least in Norway (Hartman, 1996).

4 Polarization or Dialectic Interaction I believe this should not be viewed as an intradisciplinary theological and educational change. It reflects, rather, on the one hand the relationship between the fundamental factors of all education: social development and educational policy. On the other hand there is the classroom situation and the relation between the material to be taught and the learner. This swing or shift in the centre of gravity between subject matter and pupil perspective that we are seeing in the RE subject in Sweden and

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other countries is no new phenomenon, but rather a matter of fundamental educational circumstances observable in all learning processes. Back in 1902 John Dewey wrote about ‘The Child and the Curriculum.’ He considers that the educational debate has often got stuck in the contradictory relationship between pupil/child and subject/curriculum. As is his wont, he argues in three stages: thesis – antithesis – synthesis; keep away from polarization – seek dialectic interaction. From these elements of conflict grow up different educational sects. One school fixes its attention upon the importance of the subject-matter of the curriculum as compared with the contents of the child’s own experience. . .. Is the life of the child egoistic, self-centered, impulsive? Then in these studies is found an objective universe of truth, law and order. . .. As educators our work is precisely to substitute for these superficial and casual affairs stable and well-ordered realities; and these are found in studies and lessons. Not so, says the other sect. The child is the starting-point, the center, and the end. . .. To the growth of the child all studies are subservient; they are instruments valued as they serve the needs of growth. Personality, character, is more than subject-matter. . . . we have here conditions which are necessarily related to each other in the educative process, since this is precisely one of interaction and adjustment. Hence, the facts and truths that enter into the child’s present experience, and those contained in the subject-matter of studies, are the initial and final terms of one reality. To oppose one to the other is to oppose the infancy and maturity of the same growing life. . . (‘The Child and the Curriculum’, John Dewey 1898).

The old educational philosopher is urging all of us educationalists to enter education’s field of tension and dissolve the polarity between the factors that make up the educational process between child and curriculum placing them, instead, in dialectical relation to one another. Thus may people and traditions meet and sweet music arise.

5 The Child or the Curriculum But most often it is not like this. Different categories of teacher, researcher or politician often chose to place the centre of gravity at one pole or the other: the child or the curriculum, the pupil or the subject matter (Table 1). Table 1 Recurrent arguments in the educational debate according to John Dewey (1902) in ‘The Child and the Curriculum’

Goals

Teacher education Accused for

Child

Curriculum

Interest Freedom and initiative Spontaneity Change and progress Child study Psychology Chaos and anarchism Neglect of authority

Discipline Guidance and control Rationality Cultural and academic heritage Scholarship Logic Inertness and routine Suppression of individuality

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Professional training and union traditions play a large part here. Teachers in the lower school tend to stress the child; those working with the higher ages place the emphasis on the subject. In my opinion this is both objectively warranted and based largely on unreflected convention. Just as much subject-theoretical acuity is needed to select small subject matter for small pupils as to make a selection for grown youths. Nor does the old argument that as long as you know your subject you make a good teacher hold good, either. But research, too, through specializing, tends to become one-eyed. As I see it, Swedish vital-issues pedagogic, existential RE, was founded chiefly on sociological studies of children and young people. There was no room for theoretical subject analysis, and with an imbalance of this kind the risk is great that the teaching content will wither in the bud, like a flower lacking nourishment (Hartman 2000). We have recently seen how the tendency towards polarizing arguments has become manifest in international discussions. Andrew Wright (2008) has spoken for the task of religious teaching to bring out what is essential to the subject area, criticizing Robert Jackson for working all too contextually in his religious education. I discern in this debate a parallel with the fundamental polarity against which Dewey protested so long ago; or maybe that Wright stands on the curriculum side in his plea for an essential RE and Jackson (2008) is looking for the dialectical position recommended by Dewey. And let us not forget the Goldman era; it was mainly marked by a child perspective founded on development psychology, but the theological analysis was weak, as far as I can see. The child perspective dominated over the curriculum. So where do we stand; the child or the curriculum, or both in discourse? In Swedish teacher training mention is often made of the didactic triangle of teacher– pupil–subject matter. This triangle houses the risk of the polarity of which Dewey warns. In this perspective the teacher’s role becomes to create a classroom working environment where interaction is generated, not polarity and stagnation between child and subject matter. What happens in the didactic triangle, in the relation between pupil, subject matter and teacher, does not happen independently of the situation in the immediate community or the wider society. Swedish experience shows that what happens to curricula and to life in the classroom must be understood in context. Vital-issues pedagogic might be used as a strategy for circumventing what was at the time an acute social and educational problem, namely the requirement for objectivity in religious teaching in schools. By starting from the pupils’ own life questions one could, so to speak, individualize away the cramping objectivity prevalent in many a classroom. In a similar manner a new subject designated ‘Life Knowledge’ seems to be in the offing in certain Swedish schools. Here I see large similarities with the situation in the 1970s. The new subject is based on observations of young people’s existential questions. The subject-theoretical basis, however, is diffracted and unclear, as are the contents. This time, too, it appears that the new angle represents an attempt to get round an acute educational problem: the task of accommodating the cultural, religious and ethnic diversity in Swedish metropolitan schools (Skeie et al., 2009).

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What line should one take as an educationalist to the whole field of tension set up when the various components of the phenomenon religious education are related one to another? There is hardly an incantation, an ‘Open Sesame’, to unlock the hiding place where the pedagogical treasure lies and let the pupils out from the cave into the life-giving light. It is a complex task within an ever-changing context. It is hard work, sometimes leading to satisfaction, sometimes to sorrow. But with the aid of the Polish-Jewish physician and pedagogue Janusz Korczak’s humanistic outlook I would urge respect for both the child and the curriculum, both the pupil and the traditions. As researchers we do this by continuing to penetrate our special studies; but we do so aware of the dynamic interaction between the child, the curriculum and the ever-present influence of the surrounding community. As a teacher I must strive to find the balance between the needs of the children and the requirements of the curriculum; neither may stifle the other. This is no easy task. Some of us find support and comfort in these words of Janusz Korczak: I own a treasure that I can’t entrust to my neighbour, I am afraid that no one should understand, but despise it and laugh scornfully. Standing erect I demand, but not for myself. Give children a good life, help them in their efforts, bless their toil. Lead them on the road, not the easiest but the most beautiful. And as a gift in return, receive my only treasure: sorrow My sorrow and my work. (Present author’s translation from Janusz Korczak ‘The Teacher’s Prayer’ in Alone with God, Prayers by People who do not Pray. 1922/2004).

References Böwadt, P. R. (2009, January). The courage to be: The impact of Lebensphilosophie on Danish RE. British Journal of Religious Education, 31(1), 29–39. Dewey, J. (1902/1971). The child and the curriculum. Eleventh Impression 1971. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Gewirtz, S., Ball, S., & Bowe, R. (1995). Markets, choice and equity in education. Buckimham: Open University Press. Gunnarsson, G. J. (2008) “I don’t believe the meaning of life is all that profound”: A study of Icelandic teenagers’ life interpretation and values. Doctoral Thesis in Education at Stockholm University. Hartman, S. G. (1986). Barns tankar om livet. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. Hartman, S. (1996, Summer). Uniformity and pluralism in Swedish school curriculum development. International Journal of Comparative Religious Education and Values, 1. Hartman, S. G. (2000). Så formades religionsämnet. i Almén (red.). m.fl. Livstolkning och värdegrund: att undervisa om religion, livsfrågor och etik. Linköping: Linköpings universitet, Skapande vetande. Hartman, S. (2005). Det pedagogiska kulturarvet. Traditioner och idéer i svensk undervisningshistoria [The cultural heritage of education. Traditions and ideas in the Swedish history of education]. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. Hartman, S. G., Pettersson, S., & Westling, G. (1973). Vad funderr barn på? Ett försök att inventera mellanstadieelevers tankar och frågor inför tillvaron och omvärlden (SÖ:s FoU-rapport 3). Stockholm: Skolöverstyrelsen. Jackson, R. (2008, January). Contextual religious education and the interpretive approach. British Journal of Religious Education, 30(1), 13–24.

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Korczak, J. (1922/2004). Ensam med Gud, böner av människor som inte ber [Alone with God, prayers by people who do not pray]. Stockholm: Verbum. Monstad, B. J., & Saetre, L. (1975). Sentrale tanker hos barn. En undersøkelse om hvilke tanker som upptar elever i 4. og 6. klasse, med særlig vekt på religiøse tanker. Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo. Ronnås, J. (red.) (1969). Tonåringen och livsfrågorna. Elevattityder och undervisningen i livsåskådning och etik på grundskolans högstadium. Stockholm: SÖ-förlaget, Skolöverstyrelsen. Sennett, R. (2006). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Skeie, G. (2009) Creation of a school subject from below? An investigation of the emerging school subject ‘livskunskap’ in Swedish schools. (A research application.) Tamminen, K. (1988). Existential questions in early youth and adolescence. Helsinfors: University of Helsinki. Wright, A. (2008, January). Contextual religious education and the actuality of religions. British Journal of Religious Education, 30(1), p3–p12.

Namibia and South Africa as Examples of Religious and Moral Education in Changing Societies Christo Lombard

1 Introduction This chapter is based not only on theoretical reflection but also on personal involvements in and experiences of various educational processes in Namibia and South Africa. These experiences have been not only in different capacities (such as learner, school teacher, university lecturer, curriculum designer and academic administrator), but also in different disciplines (such as Philosophy, Biblical Studies, Religious Studies, Theology and Ethics). However, the focus here will not be on contextual details, informative as they may be, but on main approaches which could hopefully facilitate our conversation. I trust that the selected ideas and materials from the “South”, will nevertheless help to stimulate discussion across various boundaries. This contribution further rests on the assumption that we, from North and South, East and West, fundamentally share a common humanity, even while dealing with different contexts. Some of the challenges that we from Southern Africa are facing only now, have been on the agendas of our partners from the North for decades, even centuries, while some of our present challenges may unexpectedly appear, or re-appear, on their agendas. In line with our conference theme, I report on how the enormous changes in our societies in Southern Africa, miraculously wrought from history, have been met in primary, secondary and tertiary education, especially in the field of Religious and Moral Education. I have enjoyed the contributions of my colleagues in this section of the book, coming from the European and North American contexts. Apart from reporting from the South, this contribution is thus done in dialogue with especially the chapters of Sven Hartman and John Valk, representing Scandinavian and North American perspectives. The arguments, problems and fears in regard to religion in education, with which they are dealing, resonate with my experiences in various teaching fields

C. Lombard (B) Department of Religion and Theology, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

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in the markedly different Southern African context.1 One such experience, which became fundamental to my own approach to religion and value education, has been the alternative and liberative reading and application of the Bible (in comparison with the so-called “Apartheid Bible”), at the University of the Western Cape during the seventies and eighties.2 Many of these insights and experiences were put to good use with the establishment of a University, and a Department of Religion and Theology, in Namibia, during the years of struggle for that country’s independence (Lombard & Smit, 1990, pp. 51–58). After Namibian independence, in 1990, new school curricula for Religious and Moral Education and Religious Studies were developed. In terms of the discourses of Valk and Hartmann, this represented a move from the classical to the progressive, from the content to the learner, from indoctrination to dialogue (Lombard, 1996, pp. 63–81).The new curricula were launched within a totally new paradigm for the teaching of religion in a changing society, an approach which can be typified as multi-faith, learner-oriented, experiential, comparative, critical and self-exploratory (Lombard, 1992, pp. 230–251; Lombard, 1997, pp. 111–121). Underlying the curricula were positive assumptions about the links between “worldviews” and “ethics”. Involvement with the Ecumenical Institute for Namibia strengthened a focus not only on human rights and the need for reconciliation after an atrocious and drawn-out war, but also on further educational development of the new school curricula. Included in the latter was multi-faith dialogue as a way towards better mutual understanding and testing the viability of our curricular work.3 At the University of the Western Cape, where I am again teaching since 2005, a new Department of Religion and Theology has been developed, with Ethics as a major subject within the B.A. and B.Th. curriculum. Ethics is taught not merely as a philosophical subject but also in close vicinity of what normally features as Religion/Religious Studies. Our first year programme in Ethics (dealing with ethical theory, worldview theory, moral codes of the world’s religions and ethical decision making) attracts large numbers of students from across the university curriculum, a process which prompted the Department to also develop a full masters programme in Ethics. At UWC we also carry out a research project on Moral formation towards a human rights culture. Some of the aspects included in this project are theories of moral formation, school curricula in Life Orientation and Religion Studies, sexual ethics, human rights, and the role of media in regard to various moral issues.

1 For

details of this journey through the many changes of one generation in our subcontinent, in South Africa and Namibia, see Lombard (1990a, pp. 174–194, 1990b, pp. 78–89). 2 This process resulted in peaceful mass democratic action and the famous Belhar Confession of 1986, in which reconciliation and justice are seen as crucial to a future of unity and peace – see Lombard (2009, pp. 69–96). Cf. Loubser (1987) for the “Apartheid Bible”. See Smit and Cloete (1982). 3 Influential in our programmes was the concept of dialogue as developed educationally by Lohmann and Weisse (1994), and Weisse (1996). When the crisis of 9/11 struck, a diverse group of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Baha’is had been meeting weekly at the Institute for quite some time.

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2 Contexts and Challenges of Change in Namibia and South Africa The overarching theme for the conference behind this book was: Changing societies – Values, religion and education. Teaching in the new South Africa, and coming from the new Namibia, I can confirm that in these contexts we are confronted with many similar changes and challenges as those related by John Valk in his plea for “worldview teaching” in the North American context.4 Much of what Sven Hartman has shared, about the trends and turnabouts in “Livsfrågepedagogik” in Scandinavia during the last 40 years,5 is now also witnessed, at an accelerated pace, in our very different context. In order to grasp the extraordinary pace and scale of change in Southern Africa it may be useful to briefly refresh our memories. Namibia received its independence from South African hegemony only in 1990, after a miraculously peaceful transition from a 23-year war (Lombard & O’Linn, 1986; see also O’Linn, 2003). Through facilitation by the United Nations, the country implemented a model Constitution, hailed as one of the most progressive ever written. Soon thereafter South Africa followed suit by breaking the shackles of Apartheid and implementing an equally progressive Constitution and Bill of Rights (De Waal, Currie, & Erasmus, 2001). Given the centuries-long violent European history, and the emergence of the American dream via a bitter civil war, it is difficult to assess the earthshaking changes in Southern Africa in proper historical perspective. We entered the human rights world via “third generation rights”: the right of nation-states to “fraternité ”, to participate in the universal right to security, development and sustainable future. There was no time to steadily reap and assimilate the fruits of various “revolutions” (such as the British one of 1689, the French one of 1789, the American one of the same time or the awakenings of the Renaissance); or to absorb the implications of the discovery of the individual and reason, and thus assimilate the “Enlightenment”.6 There was simply no time to reach a state of readiness for first generation rights (“liberté ”), let alone the second generation “workers’ rights” which Scandinavia integrated into the new experiment of the “welfare state”. These elusive “egalité ” rights, are in line with Ubuntu philosophy (Shutte, 2001), but millions of South Africans are missing, and angrily demanding, them through activist parties and trade unions, while still feeling left out of the “global order”.7

4 See

Valk, chapter “Worldviews of Today”. Hartman, chapter “Vital Issues, Worldviews and Religions”. 6 The dilemma in Southern Africa is that people who have not yet fully gone through the industrial revolution, are now faced with the double challenge of the Enlightenment: Rushing through the “gains” of Modernity (with its faith in reason and certainty) and ending up in the disillusionment of Post-modernity (with its faith in “nothing”). For a succinct survey of the three generations of rights, cf. Goetz (1990, pp. 658–660). 7 Protestant churches in Germany and South Africa are currently engaged in a joint project, The Challenge of Globalization to the Churches, in which the inter-related issues of “Empire”, economic injustice and ecological destruction worldwide are addressed. A series of publications by the Beyers Naude Center for Public Theology is forthcoming. 5 See

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It was interesting to see how both Valk and Hartman address the strong dialectical reactions within Modernism in their chapters. Hartman mentions the vacillating between an “existential turn” (including “pupil’s own experience” and “socially oriented democratic progressivism”), and “the classical educational ideal” (“the material to be taught” or “curriculum”). It is remarkable that this backlash, or return, to “conservative” approaches, has been part and parcel of a natural skepsis inherent in the cultures of Southern Africa and their “way of life”, against what is increasingly also identified by leading Western scholars as the dangers of individualism, materialism, consumerism and secularism.8 In this regard Hartman’s plea that the teacher, as part of the “didactical triangle”, should create an educational environment of interaction and “not polarity and stagnation between child and subject matter”, is important.9 What is needed, however, is not merely a negative hermeneutic of suspicion vis-à-vis secularism, but deeper understanding of the reasons why a one-sided (rationalist, individualist, consumerist) approach cannot in the long run work in any context. In this regard the emphasis on spirit (versus “matter”) and community (versus “individualism”) in African philosophy is important, as indicated by Shutte (1993). John Valk, focusing on dilemmas in higher education, mentions the modernist move towards “differentiation”, “compartmentalization”, “specialization” or “privatization” within a “closed worldview” of secularism. This he juxtaposes over against “interdisciplinary integration”, “shared social capital”, and the “search for deeper meaning” which may be enhanced through open dialogue between people from different worldviews, in contexts of free discourse. Valk presents a compelling case for a comeback of “theology” within an “inter-religious model”, against the hegemony of “sociology”.10 In dealing with the specific changes and challenges in the South’s educational programmes, we thus need to incorporate some lessons learnt vicariously, by partners from the “North”/”West”, driven as they were by forces of modernity. However, there are also other contextual changes that need to be faced specifically. In Europe and the USA, awareness of new challenges came about recently through the effects of, especially, “migration”. It is interesting to note that the brochure, spelling out the rationale of our conference, states: “At present societal changes take place due to global migration processes. . .. citizenship issues are tightly linked to migration. . . Through migration the patterns of religious activities also change.” In Southern Africa the unchecked migration of people from different parts of Africa

8 See

Taylor (1991) (“an ethics of authenticity”); Brennan, 2003 (“the terrors of globalization”); MacIntyre, 1993 (“loss of traditions of virtue”); Berger, 1999 (“de-secularization”). 9 See Hartman, chapter “Vital Issues, Worldviews and Religions”. See also Jackson (1997, pp. 121–143) regarding his interpretive approach in religious education. 10 See Valk, chapter “Worldviews of Today”. This corresponds closely with Hartman’s chapter “Vital Issues, Worldviews and Religions”: “But research, too, through specializing, tends to become one-eyed. . . and with an imbalance of this kind the risk is great that the teaching content will whither in the bud, like a flower lacking nourishment.”

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has also become worrisome, and last year led to violent explosions of xenophobia.11 However, for any objective observer it should be evident that there are many additional factors exacerbating the scope and speed of change: the rampant HIV/Aids pandemic; extreme poverty; the dire lack of jobs, housing, running water, sanitation, health care and quality education; and the cynical legacy of violence from the past, which makes armed robbery, assault, theft, rape, and domestic violence part of the culture, featured daily in the media.12 Another serious threat is the reckless culture of “entitlement” of new elites who have taken over political and economic power, leading to massive corruption, self-enrichment, nepotism, abuse of power and privilege, and a dangerously growing gap between rich and poor. This has led to repeated warnings, inter alia from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of a “time bomb” ticking away. . . President Nelson Mandela’s call, shortly after his release from prison, for a “moral regeneration of the nation”, now sounds like a far-off cry. Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of a few consistent moral voices of authority, has become a favourite target of ANC ideologues. His repeated calls for a responsible ethos, especially amongst leaders, are regularly met by deliberate ridicule. In the face of these serious challenges, the ecumenical movement has seemingly fallen silent. Recently, at the annual Desmond Tutu lecture at UWC, Dr Tinyiko Maluleke, President of the South African Council of Churches, openly admitted that the ecumenical churches have lost their courageous prophetic voice, and are facing a steep journey back to a relevant public theology. He spoke on: A post-colonial (South) African church: Problems and promises (2008, pp. 1–2). In spite of the break-away from the ANC by COPE (Congress of the People), and the fact that one Province out of nine is run by another Party (the Democratic Alliance), South Africa will probably remain in the grip of intra-ANC struggles for some years to come – under the dubious ethos of “carrot and stick”, reward and punishment, for politically correct/incorrect behaviour. In South Africa the Truth and Reconciliation Committee has dealt with atrocities of the past, but an authoritarian culture of leadership prevails, which problematizes the important process of democratizing the fruits of the struggle. In Namibia the SWAPO government refuses to accede to a similar truth and reconciliation process, while serious human rights abuses by the liberation movement towards its own followers are covered up (see Lombard, 1999). Sadly, this unresolved case is now serving at the International Criminal Court, after appeals to the SWAPO government and the churches, and civil society action by various groups, and even attempts to bring the matter to parliament, failed time and again. In both contexts an overriding priority is the consistent implementation of the principles of democracy and accountability guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. 11 The

extent of the problem became apparent at an international conference on Religion and Xenophobia, at the University of Cape Town, 17–19 November 2008. 12 One of the foci of the UWC project on moral formation deals with weekly clippings from the leading critical voice in the media, the Mail and Guardian, which has an active website: www.mg.co.za.

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Another serious concern is the issue of gender justice and sexual orientation. The predominant patriarchal culture prevents women, children, young people and gays to participate meaningfully in the public sphere, which is still being dominated by older men. “Partriarchy” is consistently identified as the underlying ailment.13 If the study of “worldviews” and “values” is part of a possible solution for our conundrum, then the current socio-political climate in Southern Africa is not very conducive. Departments of Religion are underfunded, especially for research, and bursaries for studies in the Humanities are few and far between. Yet, what follows is intended as support to those who still believe that there are ways of unleashing “the power of myth”14 in our educational processes. In spite of many disappointments and obstacles, even short-sightedness of policy-makers, it remains a worthwhile cause to continue seeking ways of engaging with values, religion and education, amid all the changes and challenges of our different contexts. In this regard we need to face an important question: how can the fruits of our conferences and research be translated into “educational material”, especially for primary and secondary education, where the real debate about religion in public schools is raging? The point is that these formative stages in life are where changed perspectives and attitudes can lead to major breakthroughs in terms of real understanding, respect and shared humanity (Fowler, 1995; Kohlberg, 1981). An interesting question within the ongoing secularization debate, posed by Berger, needs clarification. Is his earlier typification still relevant: that “Christian Europe” has inculturated the moral values of Christianity within its broader humanist tradition, while steadily abandoning the external symbols and rituals of this tradition, but that, in contra-distinction, “Christian America” still treasures the symbols and rituals, while increasingly living, in daily praxis, on pure secularist assumptions? (See Berger, 1979; Berger & Luckmann, 1995; Woodhead, Heclas, & Martin, 2001 for interesting twists in the journey in the sociology of religion.) Another question deals with African culture. How could interaction with African culture, which is still thoroughly religious and largely “anti-modern”, but simultaneously extremely pluralist and syncretistic, become a fruitful dialogue vis-à-vis value education? Can Ubuntu (“I am a human being through other human beings”) develop global appeal, or do we from North and South (not to speak of East and West!) really inhabit “different worlds” and different philosophies? The question about the philosophy of Ubuntu ties in with what John De Gruchy is now calling the agenda of rediscovering our humanity, or humanness (De Gruchy, 2006). An important question on inter-cultural dialogue is whether the “mix” between the gospel and the cultures of Asia and Africa (Van Ruler, 1989, p. 216) can bring some healing to the ailments of the “global village”, especially when it becomes apparent that

13 This

issue was scrutinized at an ecumenical conference at Stellenbosch, organized by IAM (Inclusive and Affirming Ministries): The evil of Patriarchy in the Church, Society and Politics in South Africa, 5–6 March 2009. 14 See Bill Moyers’ interviews with Jospeh Campbell on the power of myth (Campbell, 1988).

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“neglected” Africa is eagerly appropriating benefits of globalization (Nike, i-pod, MTV, satellite communication), while still blaming the West for its exploitation!

3 Namibian Curriculum Efforts in Religious and Moral Education In December 1990, less than 9 months after Namibian independence, a Curriculum Committee for Religious and Moral Education delivered a complete multi-faith syllabus, with notes on literature, methodology, teacher training, learning objectives, assessment, scope and sequencing of material. This subject would henceforth replace the ideologically fraught Biblical Instruction which had its origins in South Africa and, which, in spite of positive points, smacked of indoctrination and proselytization.15 “RME” would henceforth follow a learner-centred, multi-faith approach. The purpose would not be to study world religions in depth, but to share interesting details about different worldviews, on themes chosen for their relevance in terms of the moral formation of learners and their development towards maturity as individuals and as citizens. In grades 8–10 the focus is mostly on themes requiring moral reasoning and decision making. Seven weeks, in turn, are allocated to themes that deal with personal values, interpersonal relations, national responsibilities and international issues. The Curriculum Committee immediately also started working on new curricula for grades 1–4 (junior primary) and grades 5–7 (senior primary). In 1992 new syllabi for grades 1 and 4 were implemented, with the next grades (2 and 5) the following year, until the curriculum was fully operational in 1995. Replacing the matriculation subject Biblical Studies, a new option, Religious Studies, developed in cooperation with the international Cambridge school system, was offered. Its focus is on Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with an additional module for African Religion. This subject now became an elective for grades 11 and 12 as part of the new Namibian matriculation curriculum, initially administered by Cambridge, but soon spawned from it.

3.1 Grades 1–7: Religious and Moral Education The paradigm for RME in these lower grades is based on and supplementary to the one for RME, grades 8–10, the ice-breaker of the new curriculum. Some key elements are simply mentioned here. The focus is on the basic stories, festivals, places and practices in the major religions, especially on fostering understanding and respect for one’s own tradition and simultaneously the worldviews of one’s classmates. The subject seeks to enable learners to express their own spirituality 15 At

this point some caution should be sounded to over-ambitious “worldview” proponents: Apartheid was also a (very powerful) worldview, forced upon a whole generation educationally, socially, politically and economically!

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among learners who express it in other ways, thus experiencing religions as powerful forces in character building and value education. Learners are encouraged to work through ethical problems using their own scriptures, wisdom and rituals, discovering that all religions teach values such as honesty, respect, trust, tact and reliability. RME in the lower grades is expected to also support healthy school discipline and family life. The aims are to develop specific abilities of learners, such as to appreciate and practise their own religions with respect for people of other convictions; live by the moral standards appropriated through their religions; learn from learners belonging to other religions; draw comfort, hope and encouragement from religion; use their imaginations as stimulated by religion to think and act creatively; reflect upon the meaning of religious festivals on the calendar; actively learn tolerance of others, including those choosing not to follow a major “tradition”. Some of the recurring themes are religious texts, phases of life, special places, personal values, festivals, values in society, self-selected values or concepts. The themes are approached from different perspectives: learner experience, religions represented in the class, other religions, African perspectives, secular and humanist ideas, and “other” (alternative) perspectives. An important aspect of implementation is regular workshops with teachers, to help them find the proper mix of content and perspectives, and to involve the learners and their own experience. Shared experiences and “difference” feature throughout as a background for fostering respect and tolerance, as well as deeper understanding of own ideas and ideas of the other. The new teachers’ guide (Minney, 2005), published by the National Institute for Educational Development (NIED), was actually based on regular workshop sessions with selected grade 1–4 teachers.

3.2 Grades 8–10: Religious and Moral Education An important aspect of the rationale is formulated as follows: “Learners will be given the opportunity to reflect constructively and critically on the function of religion and morality in their personal and interpersonal lives, as well as in Namibian society and the world community.” It is further explained that RME cannot and should not replace religious education at home or in faith communities. The secular setting in a public school prohibits mission, conversion or proselytization. Simultaneously, it is recognized that religion, secular ideologies and value systems function as sources of moral conduct, and that all people perceive, interpret and act upon reality in terms of their own value horizons, shaped by their religious and ideological beliefs. While these worldviews may function as dividing factors in society, it is desirable to seek the unifying powers of these forces guiding the lives of people. RME, by focusing on common approaches to life, could foster holistic strategies for dealing with the realities, conflicts and crises in society. Real life experiences and processes become the focal point of reflection. Religion is thus not studied as a body of doctrinal truths, but as what people believe and do about their perceived purpose in life (Religious and Moral Education Syllabus, 1991).

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One set of aims is formulated as follows: “To stimulate within the individual learner an awareness of the importance of spirituality as a vital source of moral living; to develop a liberated and positive relationship between the learner and his/her concept of God or the highest values; to provide opportunities for developing moral character and competence; to foster critical appreciation and self-definition of the learner’s own religious and ideological framework, and a tolerant understanding of other people’s frameworks and value systems.” Other aims deal with supplementing education at home and in faith communities with responsible educational perspectives; providing a forum for values and ideas on which a societal ethos can be based; learning the various skills of dealing with religious texts, symbols and realities; and providing meaningful links to related subjects and topics. Content-wise, the themes for each year are arranged under four headings (personal values, interpersonal relations, national responsibilities and international issues) – each with five sub-themes (not all detailed here): 3.2.1 Grade 8 “Being a person” (creation, personhood, morality, values) “Handling basic relations” (nature, peers, friends, parents) “Working and playing together” (recreation, health, art, culture) “The ecumenical agenda” (racism, nepotism, corruption, gender)

3.2.2 Grade 9 “Individual in society” (sharing, myths, rituals, celebration) “Friendship, sex and love” (ethos, sex, love, friendship) “Being a good citizen” (civil society, accountability, protest) “A culture of care” (environment, consumerism, global threats)

3.2.3 Grade 10 “Freedom and responsibility” (maturity, purpose, job, disappointments) “Family and parenting” (marriage customs, children’s rights) “Human dignity and rights” (Bill of rights, reconciliation, justice) “Political and economic systems” (social justice, economic systems, apartheid)

3.3 Grades 11–12: Religious Studies Religious Studies is an elective for matriculation, with a focus on the following aspects of three world religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and with course work on African religion: places and forms of worship; festivals, fasts, special days; pilgrimage; sacred writings; rites of passage; major divisions; religious leaders; the family; poverty/wealth; and local communities. Among the aims of religious studies are: promoting an enquiring, critical and sympathetic approach to the study of religion; introducing learners to the

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challenging and varied nature of religion as reflected in experience, belief and practice; helping learners to explore questions about the meaning of life; encouraging learners to reflect on religious responses to moral issues; enabling learners to appreciate the contribution of religion in the formation of patterns of behaviour (Summarized from the Religious Studies Syllabus for Namibia, 1998). 3.3.1 Brief Assessment It should be evident that the Namibian choices reflect an awareness of the dilemmas posed by debates on “content vs. learner”, “doctrine vs. experience”. Even though the model provides for a study of plurality at the highest school level, very few schools have opted for RS, since the churches/communities did not have experience of and were not convinced about the benefits of the new multi-faith approach. It may have been strategically better to stretch RME into the two final school years initially and at a later stage implement the RS option in selected schools, until the paradigm became familiar. The fact that many workshops were done with teachers and attractive materials were developed for RME, and that this compulsory subject was implemented in stages, made its acceptance more successful. At the University, where some of the teachers are trained, new curricula in RME, African Religion, Ethics, Human Rights and Moral Formation were developed to back up the training aspect. Within college curricula, through which most teachers are still being trained, the academic culture dealing with worldview and moral issues still needs to be developed. Proper funding and “political will” are probably the most important aspects determining success in this regard.

4 New Paradigms as Developed in the New South Africa It is ironical that after intense debates in religious, academic and educational circles, and after much research to clarify various teaching models, the South African authorities decided on a “soft option”. What is now implemented in the new South Africa is a “safe” choice, avoiding many of the real issues involved in the important debate which is picking up worldwide: on the relationship between the teaching of values, religion, education, human rights, justice issues and change.16

4.1 Life Orientation (Grades 1–12) A distinction is made between GET (General Education and Training: grades 1–9), and FET (Further Education and Training: grades 10–12). For both a new subject has been created to deal with “the kind of citizen that South Africa’s education and 16 For

an assessment of some of these debates on Life Orientation, cf. Steyn (2000) and Roux (1998).

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training system should aim to develop”, and thus “the skills, knowledge, attitudes and values that all learners should develop through their learning experiences”.17 In GET there are eight learning areas: Languages, Mathematics, Arts and Culture, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Technology, Economic and Management Sciences, and the new subject Life Orientation, into which bits and pieces of “religion” is also sprinkled. The development outcomes envisage learners who will be able to use a variety of strategies to learn more effectively; participate as responsible citizens in the life of the local, national and global communities; be culturally and aesthetically sensitive across a range of social contexts; explore education and career opportunities; and develop entrepreneurial opportunities. “Social development” is a prime outcomes area in which religion could possibly play a role: “The learner is able to demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to constitutional rights and responsibilities and show an understanding of diverse cultures and religions”. Another area where religion education could play some role is that of “personal development”: “The learner is able to use acquired life skills to achieve and extend personal potential to respond effectively to challenges in his or her world”. Other key areas are health promotion, physical development and movement, and orientation to the world of work and career choices. The basic syllabus remains the same during these 9 years, and it is left to publishers to add flesh to the skeleton.18 In some cases very interesting materials have been produced, but it is still too early to assess the whole process properly. What is clear at this stage is that the real potential of deeper understanding of diversity, otherness, cultural differences and the sense-making power of religions and worldviews are not explored properly, at least not beyond the point of usefulness for an ideology of “responsible citizenship”. In FET (the senior grades, 10–12) there are also eight learning areas and Life Orientation is placed within the fields of Human and Social Sciences. The rationale is described in similar phrases as with GET: “Life Orientation is not about teaching theory or facts to learners, but about applying a holistic approach in order to develop learners on many different levels. The focus is on self-in-society. . . Life Orientation needs to give learners tangible and practical ways of approaching life. They need knowledge, skills and values that will empower them to make responsible decisions. . . and contribute towards a just and democratic society, a productive economy and an improved quality of life for all.” As a tentative assessment we can ask one question: What role does religion really play: when it becomes a mere servant towards the ideal of the steadily progressing human individual and omnipotent “Society”, requiring productive and obedient

17 This

sounds like a “Confucianist version”, where “authority” determines what will be taught, which outcomes are sought, and the process to be followed, versus a “Taoist version” with an accent on freedom of expression, experience and development of “nature” – an old Chinese version of the educational choices we face today! 18 Sue Heese et al. (2004–2006) and Coe, Haden, & Raubenheimer (2004–2006), seems to follow the intentions of the curricula imaginatively.

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citizens; when there is little mention of service, self-sacrifice, reciprocity, love, fairness, justice for all, or a transcending reality which cannot simply be reached by “productivity”, or participation in the market? In comparison with the Namibian Religious and Moral Education, this option of incorporating, in utilitarian style, a few bleak drops of religion, seems like a very soft option. In terms of this paradigm for “religion in school”, very few of the concerns which actually do form part of the educational agenda can be addressed at a deeper level of understanding of our complex humanity, even though learners may be “equipped” with a hat full of “tricks”, called “life skills”.

4.2 Religion Studies (Grades 11–12) Like in Namibia, at matriculation level, the subject Religion Studies has been introduced. It is not called “Religious Studies”, since this may still bear hints of “religious formation”, which is avoided at all costs within the “secular paradigm”. Has South Africa thus chosen to be a “secular state”, with all that entails, including the privatization of religion? From the American debate we can learn that this easily results in the myth of a “naked public square” (Neuhaus, 1984). The debate on the Constitution, which makes provision for religious freedom, including the public practice of religion, and control by local communities of the school ethos, continues. This debate, dealing with the assumptions of modernity, the secular state and its foundations, the tasks of public education, the role of religion in the public sphere, and the right of parents in the education and moral formation of their children, is vital, but it seems, at least for the time being, that the “safe choice” for a consistent secular approach has been made; and will be contested. . . This does not mean that such a matriculation elective is not meaningful and cannot contribute significantly towards changing perceptions about worldview impacts on people’s daily choices and actions in the world. The principles of the National Curriculum (2005), which also function within this subject, are praiseworthy in many respects: social transformation, outcomes-based education, integration of knowledge and skills, progression, valuing indigenous knowledge systems, human rights, inclusivity, and environmental and social justice. The kind of learner envisaged is described as “one who will be imbued with the values and act in the interests of a society based on respect for democracy, equality, human dignity and social justice, and who will demonstrate achievement of critical and developmental outcomes”.19 The purpose of the subject is described in interesting detail, such as: it enhances the constitutional values of citizenship, human rights, and freedom of conscience; it contributes to the holistic development of the intellectual, physical, social,

19 The

website of the Western Cape Education Department is updated regularly and is a reliable source on the new National Curricula: www.wced.wcape.gov.za. The information used here was accessed on 2009/03/28 from http://curriculum.wcape.school.za/ncs/index/lareas/view/26

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emotional and spiritual aspects of the learner; it fosters creative thinking about the perennial religious concerns of humanity; it stimulates reflection of values, morals and norms; and it encourages informed and responsible personal choices. A separate section also describes how this subject can contribute to “an open and democratic society”. A thorough assessment of Religion Studies cannot be offered here. However, after reading the neat formulations about the usefulness of Religion Studies, for the individual and for society at large, one is tempted to ask: is religion, as a living reality, really to be packaged so safely and easily? If it can be such a powerful force towards better understanding and civility, can it really so easily be tamed in terms of the objectives of the secular state, which is supposed to be based on a non- or a-religious understanding of the world? Or is it possible for this whole debate to be re-opened quite honestly, at least in the freedom of academia, so that it may also appear where it really belongs: on the agendas of school councils, meetings with parents, and thus eventually again: political parties? Many questions need attention, for instance regarding training of teachers, appropriate materials and communication with communities.

5 Religion and Ethics at Tertiary Level (Offerings at UWC) For the purposes of our inter-continental dialogue I shall conclude by briefly typifying the teaching paradigm implemented at UWC, since this is how we as academics can contribute educationally – via praxis-interacting “theory”. These few pointers are based on a mix of institutional practice and personal conviction: • Theology is taught ecumenically. Students from all traditions are welcome to explore their own traditions in tasks tailored for that purpose. However, what is taught is intentionally not based on narrow denominational approaches. Students are challenged with many different perspectives and asked to critically position themselves. • Theology is taught within the bigger framework of “Religion”. Christianity is not given a privileged position (as “pure faith” in the Barthian sense), as though the other religions are “merely religion”. This makes it possible to understand the major tradition in our country (Christianity) also in a way comparable to other living faiths. These faiths all have: myths or stories conveying truth (credo); rituals in which these truths are acted out (cult); a sense of organization (community); moral values purposefully promoted (codes); and public influence (culture). In this I am following Monk (see Monk et al., 1994, pp. 1–19). • Religion is not taught in a purely phenomenological, comparative way. The focus is on the main ideas, especially the link between worldview and ethos. On this point, all of us grappling with the idea of “a common humanity” face a crucial question: Is worldview study, as such, enough? Should we not stretch such studies to the point of enquiring into “the way of life”, the ethos, the religion-in-practice,

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with all its ramifications for “public life”?20 Instead of merely promoting good citizens, is this not the bigger vision: to produce human beings who are fully human? • Within such a constellation of teaching religion (religion–religions– theology/theologies–values/ethics–ethical systems), we can dialogue within the humanities and social sciences to make specific religious, theological or ethical contributions, using the “common language” of these disciplines, to address, for instance, globalization, human rights, gender issues, economic justice, the environment and development. • What remains important, though, is not to neglect the heart of religion, which is also central to all good theology: humanity’s need of “transcendence”, “man’s search for meaning”, our “ultimate concern”, our sense of “deep and utter dependence”, the sense of “the holy”21 – those quests of the spirit (identified by our Rector as the task of universities) to “make sense” of this wonderful garden given to us and to live in it joyfully, without destroying it or one another, with a spirituality of love and care, justice and peace. But are these not the core issues of religion and theology, education and morality?

References Berger, P. (1979). Facing up to modernity: Excursions in society, politics, and religion. New York: Basic Books. Berger, P. (Ed.). (1999). The desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1995). Modernity, pluralism and the crisis of meaning. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers. Brennan, T. (2003). Globalization and its terrors. Daily life in the west. London: Routledge. Campbell, J. (1988). The power of myth (with Bill Moyers). New York: Doubleday. Coe, C., Haden, R., & Raubenheimer, S. (Eds.). (2004–2006). The New Africa series of teacher’s guides. Claremont, CA: New Africa Books (New Africa Education). Grades 4–6. De Gruchy, J. (2006). Confessions of a Christian humanist. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. De Waal, J., Currie, I., & Erasmus, G. (2001). The bill of rights handbook. Cape Town: Juta. Fowler, J. W. (1995). Stages of faith. London: Harper Collins. Goetz, P. W. (Ed. in Chief). (1990). The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Vol. 20, 15th ed.). Chicago: Encycplopaedia Britannica, Inc. Heese, S., Lands, M., Siwayi, A., Solomon, P., Townsend, B., & Yon, E. (Eds.). (2004–2006). The New Africa series of learner’s guides. Claremont, CA: New Africa Books (New Africa Education) Grades 7–8.

20 Is

Hans Küng’s quest for a “global ethic” (Küng & Kuschel, 1993; Küng, 1997) not relevant at least in this respect: That the credos, cults, communities and cultures exert important influence on people’s thinking and behaviour, and that they are significantly different, but that they all eventually serve a common purpose, to motivate people to live according to basic moral rules (codes), which are also confirmed historically by common sense, law traditions and constitutions. They affirm the life-giving maxims of reciprocity: Not to kill, steal, lie, commit adultery, covet or disrespect authority. 21 The concerns which made Heim, Frankl, Tillich, Schleiermacher and Otto ikons of this discourse.

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Jackson, R. (1997). Religious education. an interpretive approach. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development, Volume 1. The philosophy of moral development. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Küng, H. (1997). A global ethioc for global politics and economics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Küng, H. and Kuschel, K. (Eds.). (1993). A global ethic. the declaration of the parliament of the world’s religions. New York: Continuum. Lohmann, I. and Weisse, W. (Eds.). (1994). Dialog zwischen den Kulturen. Münster and New York: Waxmann. Lombard, C. (1990a). White African in Namibia. In M. Hofmeyr et al. (Eds.), Wit Afrikane? In gesprek met Nico Smith (pp. 174–194). Bramley: Taurus. Lombard, C. (1990b). A Namibian liberation. In B. C. Lategan and H. Müller (Eds.), Afrikaners tussen die tye (pp. 78–89). Bramley: Taurus. Lombard, C. (1992). Research priorities in religion and society in Namibia. In K. K. Prah (Ed.), Social science research priorities for Namibia (pp. 230–251). Cape Town: CODESRIA/University of Namibia. Lombard, C. (1996). Religious and moral education in independent Namibia. In W. Weisse (Ed.), Interreligious and intercultural education. Methodologies, conceptions and pilot projects in South Africa, Namibia, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany (pp. 63–81). Münster: Comenius Institut. Lombard, C. (1997). Contextual and theoretical considerations in the Namibian curricular process. In T. Andree et al. (Eds.), Crossing boundaries. Contributions to interreligious and intercultural education (pp. 111–123). Münster: Comenius Institut/Utrecht University. Lombard, C. (1999). The role of the churches in the reconstruction of Namibian society: The churches, the new kairos and visions of despair and hope. Journal of Religion and Theology in Namibia, 1(1), 38–87. Lombard, C. (2009). Belhar as public theology – Honouring Jaap Durand. In E. Conradie and C. Lombard (Eds.), Discerning God’s justice in church, society and the academy (pp. 69–96). Stellenbosch: SUN Press. Lombard, C. and O’Linn, B. (Eds.). (1986). The choice: Namibia peace plan 435 or society under siege. Windhoek: NPP 435. Lombard, C., & Smit, D. (1990). Theological training in Namibia? Journal for Theology in Southern Africa, 71, 51–58. Loubser, J. A. (1987). The apartheid bible. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman. MacIntyre, A. (1993). After virtue. A study in moral theory. London: Duckworth. Maluleke, T. (2008). A post-colonial (South) African church: Problems and promises. The Desmond Tutu Lecture at the University of the Western Cape, 26 August 2008, as reported in On Campus, September 2008, pp. 1–2 (also in www.uwc.ac.za archives). Minney, R. P. (2005). Religious and moral education. Teacher’s guide. Windhoek: NIED. Monk, R. C., Hofheinz, W. C., Lawrence, K. T., Staney, J. D., Affleck, B., & Yamamori, T. (Eds.) (1994). Exploring religious meaning (4th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. National Curriculum. (2005). Website: www.wced.wcape.gov.za. Information about the National Curriculum Statement, September 2005, was accessed on 2007/03/28 and taken from http://curriculum.wcape.school.za/ncs/index/lareas/view/26 Neuhaus, R. J. (1984). The naked public square. Religion and democracy in America. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. O’Linn, B. (2003). Namibia. The sacred trust of civilization, ideal and reality. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan. Religious Studies Syllabus. (1998). IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education), Syllabus for Examination in 1998 for Centres in Namibia, University of Cambridge, Local Examinations Syndicate. Religious and Moral Education Syllabus. (1991). Junior secondary phase: Religious and moral education, WindhoekMinistry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. Roux, C. D. (1998). The need for a paradigm shift in teaching religion in multi-cultural schools in South Africa. South African Journal for Education, 18(2), 84–89.

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Shutte, A. (1993). Philosophy for Africa. Cape Town: UCT Press. Shutte, A. (2001). Ubuntu: An ethic for the new South Africa. Cape Town: Cluster Publications. Smit, D. J., & Cloete G. D. (Eds). (1982). A moment of truth. The confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Steyn, C. (2000). Religion in life orientation. Pretoria: UNISA. Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Van Ruler, A. A. (1989). A theology of mission. In J. Bolt (Trans. & Ed.), Calvinist trinitarianism and theocentric politics. Essays towards a public theology (pp. 199–226). Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. Weisse, W. (Ed.) (1996). Vom Monolog zum Dialog. Ansätze einer interkulturellen dialogischen Religionspädagogik. Munster/New York: Waxman. Woodhead, L., Heclas, P., & Martin, D. (Eds.). (2001). Peter Berger and the study of religion. London: Routledge.

Part III

Towards the Future

Emerging African Perspectives on Values in a Globalizing World Catherine A. Odora Hoppers

1 Values, Norms and the African Perspective In its substantive form, “values” is a term that refers to beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an emotional investment. It is the principles of right and wrong that are accepted by an individual or a social group. Norms are formalized out of what are considered as appropriate values. Both values and the norms that emerge from it are not static. They shift relative to pressures brought upon it at different points in a society’s evolution. Power relations play a great part in determining the level of impact that a group pushing for new directions makes on the common value trove that a society possesses, and on the existing value hierarchy that obtains. The power issue is best captured by the question: whose value counts? In turn, values influence behaviour in society. Transitions have the effect of leaving recognizable disjuncture between behaviours and norms, and values. Triggered by events, particular sets of values rise to ascendance relative to other clusters of values. When this happens, the content of those ‘uplifted’ values may appear contradictory or even offensive to people outside of the particular society but who are affected negatively by it. Different groups within the same society may also experience absorption tensions as the nature and implications of the new values are ingested. Time may also bring changes to people’s perception of some values and may generate tensions over validity and legitimacy of an old set of values. In other words, the mirroring effect between a given set of values and the society is not a steady or fixed one. For example, at a given point in time, it was quite normal to flog children; contain women in the home; deny women various basic rights; and have bustling, exclusionary “democracies” with the societies in question pronouncing themselves as “progressive” and “developed”. Millions of people of African origin could be

C.A. Odora Hoppers (B) South African Research Chair in Development Education, University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

147 K. Sporre, J. Mannberg (eds.), Values, Religions and Education in Changing C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Societies, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9628-9_13, 

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shipped, sold, and de-humanized, and the countries that do this would call themselves quite civilized. Similarly, there have been values related to the superiority of the white race; values related to inviolability of private property; values underpinning the relationship between people, and that between the citizen and the state, and the like. All these have been flowing in ebbs and tide over the centuries, and have left their imprints and sediments across the different parts of the world, the most pungent of which period being during the age of imperialism and colonialism. Thus it can be said that no fixed benchmark appears to exist to assess the correspondence between a set of stated values and the actual daily condition of a given society. The difficulty of benchmarking is particularly complicated by the power differentials in society, which makes (following George Orwell), “all animals equal, but some are more equal than others”. Recent events in post–September 11th world order illustrate the fluidity of the interpretation and ranking of certain values. Normative shifts in the sense of changing domestic or international rules about what is deemed acceptable or unacceptable behaviour have been quite stark, especially in the United States, and have even led to controversial military action against sovereign states elsewhere. The invasion of Iraq, for instance, has been contested within the United States, by allies in Europe and by many in the world at large. The questions that come to mind are therefore: To what extent is the international human rights regime adequate to its task taking into account historically entrenched systems of violation and violence against human dignity on the one hand, and the high velocity centrifugal force generated by the present globalization trajectory on the other? In a world that appears to be spinning out of control under corporate power, how are societies in regions such as Africa, which have been on the receiving end of the historical systems of structural and cultural violence, contemplating the question of values as a central pillar in societal reconstruction? As it stands at present, the world has as the cornerstone of its values, the human rights system, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) – a common standard, which recognizes the inherent dignity, equality and fundamental rights of all people in all nations. This customary international law is considered to be the single, most authoritative source of human rights. From a distant document that was cited in abstract preambles of chapters and political speeches, the UDHR has gradually become translated into a substantive policy instrument constituted through what is presently referred to as the Human Rights Approach (HRA). As a policy instrument, the Human Rights Approach is poised to become cross-sectoral criteria for benchmarking the implementation of development policy particularly in the developing countries. However, posited against the backdrop of nearly 500 years of structural violence, historical exploitation and abuse of human dignity of people of the developing countries (by the very countries busy wielding the human rights stick) on the one hand, and the current circuit of untrammelled profit seeking for a few (by corporations owned by those very countries) on the other, the human rights system occupies a contradictory, if not controversial, position indeed. The first level of contradictions arises from the genesis of the Human Rights Declaration itself at the end of

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World War II and into the Cold War era. The ambiguous positions taken by key stakeholders then, still haunt international processes up to today, with the ambiguity intensifying as the asymmetry in the power relations at the global level between the West and those numerous others dubbed “developing countries” deepens. It is argued here that although the UDHR contains the signature of all countries of the United Nations, the global human rights system can be said to express the emancipation side of the West, whose other side is the cruel, dehumanizing and exploitative imperialism (Latouche, 1993). It is argued further, that the human rights regime appears woefully inadequate when called upon to respond to the question of redress of historical abuses committed by the countries in the West against other peoples. This state of affairs has given a somewhat bad scent to the governance mechanisms surrounding the international human rights system. At the same time, a continent such as Africa has to contemplate new values upon which it can anchor its own visions for the future, and make its own unique contribution as part of the rapidly globalizing world.

2 The African Perspective in a Violent World Order Africa’s position as a ‘wounded healer’ in Nouwen’s (1972) usage of the term is explored, stressing the emergence of indigenous knowledge systems within which philosophies such as Ubuntu, systems of jurisprudence such as restorative justice, traditional systems of mediation and arbitration such as Gacaca, and reconciliation mechanisms such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are finding their articulation. The African perspective is valuable in that it delineates a distinctive analytical lens, and demarcating a mental position or plane of projection from which the question of values in a globalizing world is viewed. But it is also valuable in that it helps us make some new points of departure in responding the roots of the present global system. Jonathan Sacks cites Alfred North Whitehead who once said that Western philosophy was a series of footnotes to Plato. Sacks wished Whitehead had put it more strongly. It is not just philosophy, but also Western religion, that has been haunted by Plato’s ghost. The result is inevitable and tragic. If all truth – religious as well as scientific – is the same for everyone at all times, then if I am right, you are wrong. If I care about the truth, I must convert you to my point of view, and if you refuse to be converted, then beware. From this flowed some of the greatest crimes of history (Sacks, 2002, p. 20).

According to Sacks, Western civilization has known five universalist cultures: ancient Greece, ancient Rome, medieval Christianity and Islam, and the enlightenment. Three were secular, two religious. They brought inestimable gifts to the world but they also brought great suffering: to Jews; to Africans; to non-Christians; to indigenous knowledge systems; and to African, oriental and other systems of science. Today with globalization, we are going through yet another universal order. It is the first to be driven, not by a set of ideas, but by a series of institutions, among

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them the market, the media, multinational corporations and the Internet. The threat to diversity, and thus to democracy and to true civilization, is very real (Korten, 1999). The colonial partition of Africa fragmented the continent into a mosaic of unrecognizable entities and made these into sovereign states. The colonial processes itself perfected the procedures for acquiring, distributing and exploiting land; established the policies for domesticating ‘natives’; and put in place structures and strategies for subverting and suppressing of ancient forms, cosmologies and modes of production. This resulted in the domination of physical space; the reformation of the native’s mind; and the integration of local economic histories into the Western perspective (Mudimbe, 1988). The projected and forced metamorphosis had the cumulative effect of profound dislocation and loss of cultural reference points, and instituted a development paradigm that turned billions of the world’s population into an inverted mirror of other’s reality, a mirror that belittled them, and sent them to the back of the queue (Esteva, 1992). Academic disciplines that took the European perspective as a given, doodled with minutiae and left intact the framework of violence, violation and fundamental injustice inherent in colonialism. Most of them are still at a loss as to what to do when the native came to town, or when the “savage” became an active, knowing participant on equal terms. Latouche has argued that as the vitality of a culture resides in the capacity of culture to give (both symbolically and materially), receipt of a gift (whether this be willing, inadvertent or forced), is a prima facie evidence of its valorization by the recipient. The gift, and the capacity to give, and to have the gift received is what signifies the existence and potency of the donor as an active agent in the world. By monopolizing the very terms by which value is conceived, the ‘backward’ societies are then evaluated by the standards of the West in which, for instance, it is GDP per capita or individualism, and neither sharing and caring, nor Ubuntu, is the key indicator. The deculturation of the dominated societies is shown by the fact that increasingly, they exclusively voice their predicaments and aspirations in terms of the developmentalist categories of the invading culture. The total effect is that Western culture has imposed the obligation of acceptance on the invaded cultures, with the natural consequence being the cultural asphyxiation of the recipient culture, and the loss of vitality and coherence of the indigenous cultural forms would then have been a matter of universal concern (Latouche, 1993). The canvass thus brings to relief profound injustices in the forms of violence that the continent has endured. Johan Galtung has identified three forms of violence that are broadly identifiable in the experience of Africa: direct violence, structural violence and cultural violence. Direct violence kills quickly, and is intended to do so. Its victims are counted in terms of the maimed, and in body counts. Slavery, the atrocities of colonial conquest, and that of apartheid sit in this category (Boahen, 1990; Mbuende, 1986, Minter, 1994; Rodney, 1972; Zinn, 1999). Structural violence denotes the situation in which the violence that is inbuilt into the structures does not give the citizens equal power and life chances. Other

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manifestations of structural violence can be identified in paternalistic and selective development which deprives arbitrarily certain areas of possible development; systems of slavery and colonial oppression (including ghettoes in contemporary society; violence of the status quo, meaning the routine oppression and racism by the ‘good humour society’ which systematically robs and marginalizes people in everyday life situations; structural violence of apartheid, institutionalized through racial legislation unilaterally imposed by whites on non-whites). Even peaceful laws and practices which help to maintain this order can be seen as instruments, masks or guises of violence (Galtung, 1996). The empirical analyses of the scale of this has been undertaken by generations of scholars (Boahen, 1990; George, 1976, 1988; George & Sabelli, 1994; Havnevik, 1987; Havnevik & van Arkadie, 1996; Hoogvelt, 1982; Hoogvelt, Phillips, & Walker 1994; Loxley & Seddon, 1994; Mkandawire, 1996; Olukoshi, 1996; Rodney, 1972). By ‘cultural violence’ is meant those aspects of culture, or the symbolic sphere of our existence that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence. It is epistemic in the sense that it violates the cognitive space while providing a knowledge base for legitimizing the other violences. Cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look, and even feel right, or at least, not wrong. Cultural violence highlights the way in which the act of direct violence and the fact of structural violence are legitimized and thus rendered acceptable in society. According to Galtung, one way in which cultural violence works is by changing the moral colour of an act from wrong to right or to some other intermediate meaning palatable to the status quo. Another way it works is by making reality opaque, so that we do not see the violent act or fact, or that when we see it, we see it not as violent (Galtung, 1996). Some of these include: preventing consciousness formation (conscientization), penetration and conditioning of the mind from above, and segmentation, with those below getting a limited vision of reality; and preventing mobilization, organization of those below (i.e., fragmentation), splitting those below away from each other, marginalization, and setting those below apart from the rest. Blocking conscientization and mobilization means preventing the processes needed to transform the interests in a structural conflict into consciously held values. A mere act of benevolence from above blunting repression and exploitation is primarily insufficient. A more benevolent structure with the above characteristics intact is still violent (Galtung, 1996; see also Ekins, 1992; Escobar, 1992; Esteva, 1992; Gronemeyer, 1992; Hanlon, 1984, 1991; Hayter, 1971; Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Latouche, 1993; Mohan, 1994; Odora Hoppers, 1998; Sachs, 1992). Responding to the depth of this situation requires something more than the formulations that are provided in the UDHR, which mentions neither healing, forgiveness nor reparations in any coherent manner. An atrocity, Visvanathan has argued, cannot be understood in the usual opposition of academic sociology between functional and conflict theory. To understand an atrocity we should not merely study the sociology of conflict, but attempt to understand evil and a phenomenology of humiliation which standard sociology has so far not captured. An atrocity as a victim’s narrative often falls afoul of the expert because the victim’s testimony is often in discordance with the expert’s assessment. Calibrating an

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atrocity with standard sociological tools, Visvanathan argues, often leads to surreal results. In other words, an atrocity cannot be domesticated as a mere human rights violation. It has to be a theory of freedom where literature and political theory combine in a new way. This is because freedom comes prior to rights, and goes beyond equality as a measure. Each new act of freedom is a new beginning (Visvanathan, 2001)

3 Reconciliation, Ubuntu and Healing: Illustrations from South Africa Under apartheid, a small white minority had monopolized political power, which gave it access to all other kinds of power and privilege, using pigmentocracy to justify its actions, a delusion they readily absorbed from Aristotle, who claimed that human personality was not a universal phenomenon enjoyed by all human beings since slaves were devoid of it (Tutu, 1999). The Nationalists developed the separation of races into a fine art – in which people were segregated residentially, at school, at play and at work. Three and a half million people were forcibly removed in a heartless piece of social engineering as the apartheid system conspired and effectuated the most pernicious system of destroying the self-worth of entire peoples. The face presented by white authority was one of war against people who were disenfranchised, and human dignity was the casualty. April 27th is respected in South Africa as Freedom day, and is a public holiday. It was the day that the first democratic elections were held in South Africa. People like Desmond Tutu had to wait until he was 62. Mandela had to wait till he was 76. In the decades and centuries prior to that, various levels of violence had settled in as the norm, a norm against which people had continued to fight, shed blood and lose lives. South Africa followed its unique ‘third way’ when it ended apartheid. The country reasoned that for a successfully negotiated transition, the terms of the transition required not only the agreement of those victimized by the abuse, but also those threatened by the transition to a democratic society based on freedom and equality. To those who had committed gross violations of human rights, it offered amnesty in exchange for public disclosure of the truth about their crimes; and to victims, it gave an unusual opportunity to be heard, as well as hope for reparations. In the words of Desmond Tutu, the Commission was sometimes able to reach truth when the judicial systems had been unable to. The Commission was deeply rooted in the conviction that our relationship to others is central to our existence as human beings. Tutu reveals the underpinning of this ‘Third Way’ as drawing directly from the African philosophy and world view (Weltanschauung) known as ubuntu in the Nguni group of languages, or botho in the Sotho languages (Tutu, 1999, pp. 34). It is the essence of being human. A person is said to have ubuntu if they are caring, generous, hospitable and compassionate. It means that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound in yours – in other words, we belong in a bundle of life. A person is a person through other people. It is not ‘I think therefore I am’, but rather;

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I am human because I belong. Harmony, friendliness and community are the greatest good. Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competition subverts, undermines and are corrosive of this good. Ubuntu means that, in a real sense, even the supporters of apartheid were victims of the vicious system which they implemented and which they supported so enthusiastically. Furthermore, the legal basis for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) drew from African traditional systems of jurisprudence. The work of the TRC demonstrated that retributive justice that is the notion of justice that underpins jurisprudence in the Roma Dutch and English common law, and in which an impersonal state hands down punishment with little consideration for victims, and hardly any for the perpetrator – is not the only form of justice. The situation called for something deeper, and so, a different kind of justice, restorative justice, which was characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence, was needed. In the latter, the central concern is not retribution or punishment, but the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances and the restoration of broken relationships. This kind of justice seeks to heal both the victim and the perpetrator, who can be given the opportunity to reintegrate in the community he/she has just injured (Tutu, 1999, p. 51). In the Foreword to the Spirit of the Nation: Reflections on the South Africa’s Educational Ethos (Mandela, 2002, in Asmal & James, 2002), former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela led a reflection as to how values, education and democracy can complement one another and exemplify the spirit of the movement that emancipated a wounded and fragmented nation. Looking at the struggle against apartheid as one of the great moral struggles of the twentieth century, the subsequent triumph against that aberration can be seen as a triumph of humane values, an assertion of a common humanity of a people and an affirmation of human dignity as a primordial order of things. The country’s history enjoins its people and the rest of humanity to find ways of living and working together to create the conditions for realizing the ideals of equality and dignity for all. It is this approach to nation building, and the subsequent institutions created to support the consolidation of this democracy, that set South Africa apart. But institutions as a system of elements or rules are expressions of democratic intent. Core social values do not propagate themselves. Adults have to be reminded of those values and children must acquire those values (Mandela, ibid, p. ix–x) in order that appropriate interventions that support those institutions are generated and structured in an ongoing basis. The challenge is therefore to move society from routine injustice to constitutionally ordained justice, enter boldly into the realm of moral conduct, accommodate diversity and embrace the notion of active compassion and reciprocal human caring (Asmal & James, 2002). These principles and values are deeply entrenched in African traditional philosophies and worldviews. It is here that the significance of Ubuntu assumes special significance. By drawing on this philosophy that emphasizes human dignity, combining the practices of compassion, kindness, altruism and respect, South Africans could call for reparation rather than retaliation, adopt a posture of understanding rather than vengeance and practice Ubuntu rather than victimization (Gevisser & Morris, 2002, p. 193).

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Equality might require us to put up with people who are different; non-sexism and non-racialism might require us to rectify the inequities of the past, but Ubuntu goes much further. It embodies the concept of mutual understanding and the active appreciation of the value of human difference. It requires you to know others if you are to know yourself, and if you are to understand your place – and others’ – within a multicultural environment (Gevisser & Morris, 2002, ibid). This is best captured in a quote from a poem written by Chief Tecumseh entitled Shawnee. “So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, make beautiful all things in your life.” (Tecumseh, n.d.)

4 Conclusion: Beyond Vengeance The insurrection of the African world view onto the world stage by towers like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu show how African philosophies could turn narratives of persecution and victimization into that of healing and reconciliation. This reversal can permit both victim and perpetrator to contemplate the theme of love and transgression together (Verges, 2002). Such philosophies demonstrate that one’s goal cannot be the formal unity of the self but an equilibrium between competing impulses, and teach us that there are things that we will never know, things that are already there, déjà là, and that as we are born, we are already caught into a web of determinations, a network of filiations. Systems of knowledge that are not based on the idea of a rational individual reveal that there may be losses that are irretrievable, that there may be no total reparation of a wrong. We have to live with the loss of a loss; there is no conceivable return to a pre-loss state. Reparation then is not only a problem of justice, but also about revenge, about a desire for completeness that exists in every human being. At the same time, reparation is both about justice that is reasonable, measurable, and about revenge that is often absurd and never complete. According to Verges, the saying “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is about justice that is revenge. In the shadow of the rational demand for reparation lures the impassioned demand for revenge. The stat and, the community devise rules of reparation, and yet we witness many instances of the discontent of the victim. It is never enough and one can understand the desire for revenge, one can understand the consuming fire of anger. . . Indigenous systems of therapy know that and their practitioners have devised forms of therapy that merge prayers and songs, words of love and hatred in order to support the individual whose suffering cannot be expressed, said in the words used in daily communication (Verges, 2002, pp. 178–179).

But we need more than reparation. We need to commit to building new futures of a different kind. According to Kahane (2004), opening our minds ultimately means opening our hearts, and wills. The path forward out of any situation is not just about becoming more clever. It is about becoming more human.

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It is about transcending our fears of vulnerability, not finding new ways of protecting ourselves. It is about how to act in the service of the whole, not just in the service of our own interests. If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way they are, then logically we have no basis at all – zero leverage, for changing the way things are – except from the outside, by persuasion or force. We can never address a problem situation from a comfortable position of uninvolved innocence. In order to solve tough problems, we need more than shared ideas. We also need shared commitment. We need a sense of the whole and what it demands of us. What this approach tells us is that there is not ‘a’ problem out there that we can react to, then dash and fix. Rather, there is a “problem situation” of which each of us is a part – the way an organ is part of the body. We affect the situation, and it affects us. The best we can do is to engage with it from multiple perspectives, and try, in action-learning mode, to improve it. . . more like unfolding a marriage than it is fixing a car.

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