An approach to teaching religious education in relation to socio-political divergence and the climate crisis

This paper will examine the significance that an approach to teaching religious education might have in relation to increasing sociopolitical divergence in the UK and beyond. A consideration of the increasing socio-political polarisation and its impact on education will lead to a discussion of why this means that a focus on knowledge alone, however this is conceived, will be insufficient to address such challenges. A discussion of what it is that religious education, and education more broadly, should seek to achieve will allow an alternative proposal. This, put simply, is the development for a capacity of discernment within the reality of a plural class and society. It will be proposed that this is a crucial element in what education should seek to accomplish if it is to begin to negotiate the increasingly divergent public life we experience. Living Difference IV, the Locally Agreed Syllabus for Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton will be used an example of a syllabus which seeks to illustrate what this might look like in practice. The significance of this position on teaching religious education in relation to the climate crisis will be presented highlighting new practical implications of this approach.