Teaching Tolerance

We’ve all heard them; lazy assertions from lazy people making lazy claims based on lazy assumptions. When it comes to the issue of religion, and society, or religion and society, you can pretty much take your pick: Christians are homophobes, people of faith believe in flying spaghetti monsters, Catholics defend paedophile priests, Jesus would hate the Catholic Church, religion is a natural source of sectarian division in society, religion is responsible for more bloodshed than anything else in the history of humankind, yadayadayada.

And, on the subject of education, perhaps the most frequently blurted out of these inanities goes something like ‘faith schools are divisive and are bad for community cohesion, since they divide society along sectarian lines and emphasise differences, thereby increasing potential for conflict in our multicultural and multifaith society.’

Whilst beyond the point of directly addressing such claims, thereby casting yet more pearls into the sty, the argument seems to me entirely redundant of reflective thought. Religious schools, by their very nature, are (or should be) bathed within an ethos that appeals to a common spiritual seam running through the various cultural and faith traditions;  many religious schools are themselves bastions of multiculturalism in their very make-up and intake; and nearly all religious schools would reject conflict and divisiveness in the very fabric of their belief and practice. Or, to put it more succinctly, if faith schools did their job properly then ‘community cohesion’, as we now refer to it, ought to flow naturally as water from a spring. Makes sense, when you think about it.

Well, there’s yet more research to back up this most axiomatic of arguments. Researchers at Warwick University have found that, in a study of 1500 girls who were practicing Christians, some 93% agreed that we must respect all religions, compared to 47% of those who claimed to have no religion. Additionally, those who identified as practicing Christians were rather more likely to be supportive of their Muslim peers and the various issues they face in contemporary society, as compared to those of no religion.

Interesting, that.

One mustn’t take too much from these results, obviously. But, when combined with a raft of research often drawing similar broad conclusion, it might just lead one toward the direction of thinking that perhaps the issue is not really about religious people or faith schools at all, or at least not in the manner that their cultured despisers would have it. Indeed, Professor Leslie Francis charts a rather different course,

Young people from different religious backgrounds clearly show respect for each other.

But the challenge facing schools today is to enable those young people who do not come from a religious background themselves to gain insight into how their peers from religious homes feel about things.

The tables continue to turn, it seems.

Crowds waving their national and regional flags in St Peter's Square, Vatican City.