Abstract
This text is a volume in the series ‘World Library of Educationalists’. The aim of this series is, as stated, that international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces, so the world can read them in a single manageable volume.
I really hope that ‘the world’, broadly speaking, will read this book, because I have experienced that, notwithstanding his great impact in the UK and Europe, some religious educators around the globe are still unfamiliar with this author’s work. Robert Jackson is Professor Emeritus in the Centre for Education Studies at the University of Warwick, UK and he is the Founding Director of Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit (WRERU). He is expert advisor to the European Wergeland Centre, a Council of Europe related centre in Oslo, Norway, and since 2016 Visiting Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Education at the University of Stockholm, Sweden.
This book is divided in five parts: General introduction; Empirical research; The interpretive approach to religious education; Religious education and plurality; and Human rights and international policy developments. All selected texts have been published earlier as chapters in books edited by others or in the author’s own monographs, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (1997; 2nd edn 2016) and Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy (2004), or in the academic journals Religion & Education, British Journal of Religious Education and Social Inclusion. Every part starts with a new introduction in which the author provides a contextualization of the texts in that part as well as his short meta-reflection on these texts.
The first part, the ‘General introduction’, is very insightful, because it not only outlines the author’s professional and academic trajectory, but also makes the selection and the sequence of the four other parts comprehensible. The author began as a teacher of religious education and then became an empirical researcher and theoretician. He developed his interpretative approach in religious education with three key concepts: representation, interpretation and reflexivity, with edification as a sub-concept of reflexivity. Leading notions for him are plurality, intercultural, moral and citizenship education and the distinctive natures as well as the intertwinement of these different modes of education. From 2002 onward his focus has been primarily on international policy development in connection with human rights education under the auspices of the Council of Europe as well as the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. This has resulted respectively in co-authorship or authorship of the Toledo Guiding Principles about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools (2007) and Signposts—Policy and Practice for Teaching about Religious and Non-religious World Views in Intercultural Education (2014).
In a couple of these pieces he explicitly discusses some criticism he received from his UK colleagues in education and religious education. He strongly opposes, in chapter 10, David Hargreaves’ view and critiques his inadequate idea of the homogeneity of religions instead of their intra-plurality. He argues that owing to secularization and pluralization of society, religion as a second language should only have a place in the home, the faith community and the faith-based school. Instead of replacing religious education by citizenship (and moral) education, religious education has, according to Jackson, ‘a vital contribution to make to various aspects of education for citizenship in the common school’ (p. 198). In chapter 8 he also convincingly parries along argumentative lines Andrew Wright’s presentation – while using all kinds of rhetorical tricks – of Jackson’s work as dualistic, nominalist, as postmodern radical constructivist and as not genuinely hermeneutical. In the final chapter, chapter 14, he reacts to Liam Gearon’s criticism that Jackson as well as the REDCo project (2006–2009) led by Wolfram Weisse, along the path of supporting citizenship and social cohesion, have arrived at the politicization and securitization of religious education. Jackson is able to reconstruct a particular, but not always explicitly stated, aim of religious education in Gearon’s view – that is, genuine religious education as initiation into the religious life. He characterizes this as a highly contestable view and presents an alternative perspective.
As stated above, this is a book that should be read by all who are interested in the relationship of education to religion and worldview. Although the author gives us a glimpse into the future in some places, I should have liked to see him elaborate far more on his ideas on the future of religious and worldview education. Nevertheless, this text addresses issues that should be high on the agenda, and with the Covid-19 experience this need is only reinforced.