ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to interact critically with Matthew Clayton and David Stevens’s recent critique of non-confessional religious education, constituted as a separate, compulsory subject in the school curriculum. Three different critical arguments are considered: the contention that religious education is an unsuitable vehicle for fostering toleration and mutual understanding; their framing and application of an ‘acceptability requirement’ to religious education, which states that government principles and policy should be justified by reasons that cannot be rejected by reasonable citizens, and which they believe religious education fails; and finally, their rejection of the view that religious education fulfils a democratic purpose in providing pupils with the competences to consider and assess religious claims to truth. Religious education is defended against all three charges.

摘要

本文的目的是与马修克莱顿和大卫史蒂文斯最近对非忏悔宗教教育的批判性互动，在学校课程中构成一个单独的必修科目。考虑了三种不同的批评论点：宗教教育不适合促进宽容和相互理解的论点；他们对宗教教育的“可接受性要求”的框架和应用，该要求表明政府的原则和政策应该以合理的公民不能拒绝的理由来证明，并且他们认为宗教教育失败了；最后，他们拒绝接受宗教教育在为学生提供考虑和评估宗教对真理的主张方面的民主目的的观点。