A group of Jewish religious education specialists has warned that a new approach to teaching the subject risks misrepresenting Judaism by downplaying the core aspect of peoplehood.
In one case, the group discovered that the word “Israel” had been omitted altogether from the proposed Judaism content in one syllabus.
It comes amid moves to create a national curriculum for RE in schools rather than local authorities overseeing the content of courses, as they do now.
Dr Shira Solomons, co-ordinator of the newly set up Association of Jewish Religious Education Professionals (AJREP), said there were “both significant opportunities and risks” in a national RE curriculum.
What has prompted concern is the increasing adoption of the “worldviews” approach to RE teaching, which was advocated in 2018 by a commission established by the Religious Education Council of England and Wales. One of the motivations for that was to accommodate non-religious outlooks such as humanism.
According to current legislation, RE should reflect Christianity’s status as the UK’s main religion in the UK, while taking into account the country’s other “principal” religions.
The problem was not in looking at worldviews within religion, Dr Solomons explained, but if religions were primarily treated primarily as belief systems “with practices and cultures treated as secondary”.
The issue, she said, “is when religions themselves are reduced to views of the world, as this erases essential elements of Judaism and other ethno-religions that are embedded in (often ancient) civilisations for which propositional beliefs are less central than in Protestant Christianity”.
A national standard, she said, could “help eliminate unvetted, inaccurate materials and ensure Judaism is taught properly, as currently we are forced to play whack-a-mole dealing with these in individual local authorities.
“But the national syllabus also creates a risk – activists might use the opportunity to embed the religions-as-worldviews framework nationally.”
A national RE curriculum was one of the recommendations made last year by the government’s review of the school curriculum as a whole.
In a submission to the head of the task force looking at the national RE proposal, Dr Vanessa Ogden, the AJREP said the worldviews approach “discriminated” against Judaism and other ethno-religions.
The AJREP includes a number of Jewish teachers experienced at teaching Judaism in general schools.
In its submission, the AJREP also highlighted gaps in the teaching of Judaism, saying that many children learn about it in key stage 1 (aged 5 to 7), then “do not encounter it again until the Holocaust” in key stage three (11 to 14), creating “a profoundly distorted view”.
Meanwhile, GCSE courses focused on beliefs such as life after death or the Messiah but neglected the “God-Israel relationship”, the AJREP said. Questions in worldviews syllabi “ignore how traditions organise time, dietary laws, clothing, pilgrimage festivals, prayer direction, matters central to many religions but perhaps not to Protestant Christianity”. AJREP is calling for Jewish RE experts to be involved in writing the Judaism content of courses, and not just consulted.
Dr Solomons – who runs the Jewish Community of Berkshire with her husband Rabbi Zvi Solomons – said: “A huge range of unvetted resources exists, many not created or reviewed by Jewish subject experts. It’s a bit of a ‘wild West’.”
When non-Jewish children learn about Judaism, she said, “they need authentic information that can inoculate them against antisemitic misinformation they may later encounter – from media coverage of Gaza, for example. Without this foundation, for many children, the only things they know about Jews are the Holocaust and news stories about conflict”.
Dr Ogden has recently had meetings with Dr Solomons and also with Jewish members of the local committees – known as SACREs – that vet RE courses.
The Board of Deputies – which is in talks with Dr Ogden and supports the work of Jewish SACRE members – said it was “pleased to be involved in the consultation process on the proposed move of RE to the national curriculum”.
Dr Ogden told the JC: “An outstanding religious education provision for every child, which creates religious literacy and the capacity to build reciprocity based on understanding and respect for what it means to be human, must be at the heart of any school curriculum.
“We must actively teach children in all our schools how to identify and counter the myths, misconceptions and malign representations that are circulating about Judaism and other religions. No one should live in fear because of hate based on faith and identity. RE is the space in the curriculum for this nation-building work, eradicating antisemitism and creating the capacity for our society to rejoice in its diversity. I am grateful to be engaging a significant number of different members of the Jewish community in this work.”
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