Exploring Studies in Meaning

The Post-Modern challenge to Religious Education

Over the last few decades post-modernism has influenced the way we see the world. It has moved us past a simple view of the world whereby our thoughts, ideas and theories simply mirror an objective reality. Rather, we are coming to see that reality is a joint endeavor between the external world and our own filters, perspectives and interpretations. Knowledge is the product of an interaction between our ideas about the world and our experience of the world.

As Clive Beck points out,¹

'Postmodernist insights require a major shift in our conception of inquiry. No longer should we see ourselves as seeking to uncover a pre-existing reality; rather, we are involved in an interactive process of knowledge creation. We are developing a “working understanding” of reality and life, one which suits our purposes. And because purposes and context vary from individual to individual and from group to group, what we arrive at is in part autobiographical; it reflects our “personal narrative,” our particular “site” in the world. '

In recent years these post-modern insights have led to a critique of Religious Education. Books such as Andrew Wright's Religion, Education and Post-Modernity² and Gavin Flood's Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion³, have begun the process of questioning the philosophical and theological modernist foundations of the way Religious Education is currently taught. According to these and other post-modern educationalists it turns out that we may have been building the foundations of our Religious Education on the shifting sands of modernity. Before we can develop a method of Religious Education that makes sense to and appeals to the current generation of students we need to consider a post-modern critique of the major methods currently used in Australian schools.

Current methods of Religious Education

1. The Catechetical approach

The catechetical approach seeks to educate students in their assumed religious tradition. It is most often used in Catholic schools where many students identify with belonging to their particular religious tradition, although it is also adopted in Islamic and Jewish schools. The focus is on the elements of being part of that religion – rituals, beliefs and scriptures – and it seeks to educate students in their faith tradition. It is seldom used in non-Catholic private schools because of the great diversity of religious and non-religious backgrounds of the students particularly where belonging to the religious tradition is not part of the social identity as it is in Catholicism. It works to the degree to which the student does identify with the faith community but often alienates those who do not as it can foster a sense of being outside and may prove particularly difficult for young people who are testing the limits of belonging. This approach, if compulsory for students, can set up resistance among those who can feel, in this age of choices, that faith is being thrust upon them.

2. The Kerygmatic approach

The key feature of the kerygmatic approach to religious education is the proclamation of the good news of the Christian gospel (kerygma). This approach is taken in many Independent Schools and some Catholic schools and a strong emphasis is often placed on teaching of scripture with the idea that scripture has the power to communicate the essence of the gospel. This is sometimes mixed with a study of religion approach in traditional church schools. This method tends to offer students a choice of one, emphasis is placed on the student's willingness to accept or reject the message of the gospel. It is clearly modernist in its approach as it presents religion as a meta-narrative, an all encompassing world view which seeks to explain everything important in life. This approach tends to assume that students will find meaning once they adopt the faith.

Many students do not necessarily feel ready to make the all or nothing choice often offered by this approach and can feel some pressure especially if this is mixed with apologetics. They are perhaps justifiably cautious in an environment where they receive a lot of mixed messages and will tend to put off decisions and commitments. This putting off of commitment often leads the students to a functional agnosticism. It can also tend towards polarization among students and and us and them type of mentality.

Furthermore, when students study the bible they bring with them a number of techniques and assumptions from their world view and from their other subject studies. One question they are taught to ask from their short understanding of history is, “Did it happen?”. They also bring from science a skepticism concerning what may be considered miraculous. Within an enlightenment context where the role of reason is elevated and physicalism is most dominant the miracles of the scriptures seem to belong to another world and the questions addressed by the scriptures seem far from the concerns of the students. Nor does this methodology help students understand their current unexamined belief framework.

A six year study by students of Christianity is not necessarily a pretty sight. Our faith contains many moments of injustice, spiritual bullying, confusion and it requires a deep maturity to put all that in perspective. This is a task best left until later. The more appropriate task of the student should be the adoption of a personal meaning system.

3. The Experiential Approach

Influenced by psychology and anthropology this approach emphasizes experience; both the experience of the student and the religious practitioner are on centre stage in this methodology. Under the umbrella of this methodology the student may try meditation in the classroom, study religious experience, undertake self examination of their current belief and value system and explore the question of “Who am I?” and their own experience of prayer and faith. The danger with this approach is that it provides too little content preventing students from taking it seriously and seeing it as a soft, “touchy-feely” subject. There are also limits on how much students at their age can reflect on what is a limited experience. Furthermore it does not address the meaning gap in their lives.

4. Liberation and Justice Approach

Justice education takes a central place in a number of Religious Education courses. Often drawing on the work of Thomas Groome, this approach emphases filling the gap between what the gospel calls us to be and the reality of the world. Focusing on poverty, the environment and charity, this approach highlights the work of the gospel in the world. Although students can see the value of this method it often left them feeling that parts of the church weren't always on the side of justice and it had difficulty maintaining the interest of students on what is predominately ethical issues. It is very much immersed in the world of shoulds and oughts. Nor does it necessarily give meaning to their ordinary lives unless they adopt a mission to bring justice. This methodology needs to take more into account the stage of students lives and the need to develop a meaning structure out of which they can make a contribution to justice and the world.

5. The study of religions (phenomenological) approach

The study of religions is sometimes called the phenomenological approach as it aims that students become familiar with the various historical manifestations of religious phenomena. Religion is situated in a cultural and historical context and one aim is to provide young people with the intellectual tools they need to understand social and political events that have religious dimensions and that are regularly covered by the media.

Although phenomenology can be traces back to Kant and his contemporaries it has been made popular for Religious Education by Ninian Smart who posited seven dimensions of religion such as beliefs, rituals, religious experience, myths and rites of passages. This approach to religion became the basis for most texts used in Religious Studies departments firstly in England where it gained great popularity and then subsequently in Australia. The adoption of this approach in schools led to students studying the myths and rituals, beliefs and religious experiences of the major world religions in class. The goals of the phenomenology of religion were the hope that students would be able to understand how religion operates in society and in the life of the individual and that that understanding would foster empathy. However the attainment of these goals is now being called into question through a growing post-modern critique of this methodology along the following lines.

• Adoption of a personal meaning system is only a by-product of the phenomenology of religion and requires a high level of thinking from students, to take the phenomena, extrapolate meaning and apply within their culture. Meaning is culturally based. Students find it hard to make the shift from the phenomenological study of religion to their own existentialist situation.

• The study of religions tends to reflect the assumptions and values of modernity and specifically the enlightenment. It presupposes the neutral stance of the interpretor and seeks to suspend the judgments of the student. This suspension of judgment is not really possible nor is it desirable because the student needs to understand their own value system rather than pretend it is not there. The reasoned objective study of religion is impossible! It is enlightenment wishful thinking. The only study of religion that is possible is subjective study.

• Gavin Flood points out that in developing typologies of religious phenomena the explanatory level is usually left out, be it cultural, psychological or other explanation.⁴

• It is assumed that bracketing together religious phenomena will produce empathy on the part of the student as they will find similarities with their own experience. However this empathy may well be overstated in the case of students with their own faith who may highlight difference and absent from students without faith who often feel there are entering an alien world of religious experience and myth.

• It presupposes that the core of religious ideas is accessible through a study of their so called beliefs or rituals and that there is somehow a one dimensional thing that can be studied called religion. It is biased towards a content approach to religion whereas religion may be just as aptly described as a process, a way of being in the world.

• The goal of religion is not religion but life. The phenomenological approach focuses too much on religion itself and not enough on how religion aids people in living their lives.

• It describes rather than analyses. Phenomenology fails to get to the underlying nature or pattern of things.

• Religious studies has withdrawn from the world's debates to study religion as an isolated topic.

• The phenomenological approach leads to a grab-bag approach to religion, many features of which are irrelevant to the hearer.

The situation of the student

Ninian Smart commented that the phenomenological study of religion becomes “methodological agnosticism” and this methodological agnosticism easily becomes personal agnosticism. That agnosticism tends to lead also to a sense of meaninglessness as it speaks to what the world is not rather than what it is. Flood concurs, “In the end, the discourse of religion is either from within, in which case the entailment of existence is implicitly accepted or from without in which case it is denied; there cannot be both an acceptance and a non-acceptance of an existence claim”⁵

The phenomenological approach does not require the student to do or believe or commit to anything whereas the studies in meaning approach requires them to make meaning for their lives. The kerygmatic approach shares a similar problem in that it invites the student to consider the claims of the gospel from the perspective of the outsider studying the way an insider perceives the faith – a very difficult process, the difficulty of which is indicated by the very very small number of students who actually come to faith. Furthermore that outsider perspective is often the materialistic and rationalistic enlightenment attitude which the students picks up from other subjects at school. It is the perspective from which religion is studied that is reinforced not the religion itself. Effectively the way we are teaching Religious Education currently has a strong tendency to produce agnosticism and atheism in students as it encourages either methodological agnosticism or forces students into a choice based on accepting what they have been taught conflicts with rational thinking.

Flood's solution to the problem is the study of religion using dialogue in which the student recognizes their own position within its historical context and enters into a dialogue with other traditions. While this may be appropriate for the mature student, teenagers have little understanding of their own fluid personal position which is still being formed. The position that the student needs to take then is sojourner, creator of meaning – they mine religion for meaning – which requires them to understand the meaning of that faith in context. They are given a reason to visit the world of faith – sometimes they will stay. The student learns that the meaning is dependent of the social and historical context in a way phenomenology doesn't encourage because its typology seeks to take it out of its historical context. For instance take the story of the Incarnation, from a phenomenological perspective it is studied as a myth of Christianity comparable to myths in other religions such as the avatars of Krishna in Hinduism; in that context an agnostic stance is taken toward whether it is real. In the kerygmatic approach it is taken as a central claim of Christianity to either be believed by the student or rejected. The student compares these claims with what they have learnt in history and science and often concludes that virgin births do not happen. Within Studies in Meaning the incarnation may comes up in the context of the issue of what does it means to be human, that we are both physical and spiritual, or what is God like, not aloof and distant but manifest here among us. The step of looking at the incarnation for meaning requires the student to step inside the world view of the first hearers and assume for a while its reality. Then the student needs to evaluate the meanings – how true is it that God can be present in human form, how true is it that we are both human and physical and yet spiritual and “of God”? The issue of to what extent it happened in a historical or scientific sense is then secondary and comes under the issues of the nature of reality and is dealt with separately.

A note on the five strand approach of Peter Vardy

The most dominant approach to the religious Education in Australian independent Schools is that promoted by the the theologian and vice principal of Heythorp Jesuit college, Dr. Peter Vardy. His five strand approach is not so much a new approach as a combination of a number of different approaches. It includes the study of Christian scriptures, ethics, philosophy of religion, the study of major religions and the practise of meditation. The first strand is kerygmatic, the second and third philosophical, the fourth phenomenological and the last experiential. Vardy's approach is very traditional and its most notable feature is the combining of a number of these methodologies, however each part suffers from the critiques above and this seems a case of the whole not being greater than the sum of the parts.

Civics education

A number of educators have advocated that the teaching of civics or citizenship as part of or an adjunct to Religious Education. If this type of citizenship is trying to merely inculcate the student into the dominate social narrative then it is going to be resisted by the student. For example Richard Rorty⁶ believes that “lower education” (primary and secondary) “is mostly a matter of socialization, of trying to inculcate a sense of citizenship.” It “should aim primarily at communicating enough of what is held to be true by the society to which the children belong so that they can function as citizens of that society. Whether it is true or not is none of the educator’s business, in his or her professional capacity.”

As Baumeister points out society does not need the individual to acquire a deep sense of meaning.⁷ All that is required is enough meaning to make them a functional member of the community. In fact as there are many jobs that must be done even if they offer no meaning to the individual. Students often understand that civics may have an implied agenda that requires the sacrifice of the individual for society as a whole. Such an approach can only really succeed if a meaning system is established first. In this sense civics can sometimes be at odds with spirituality which has a questioning role toward the dominant culture and Religious Education needs to be careful not to align itself too closely with the unquestioning philosophy of teaching civics.

Furthermore young people systematically question convention from the age of about two, a tendency which is essential for cultural renewal. Religious Education should support this tendency and maximize individual meaning making. We ought not give students something to push against – it wrecks the teaching and prevents them doing any meaning or spiritual work. They become so busy being against the system that they never do the work of finding their own beliefs.

We are too concerned that if given the freedom students would choose against faith and society so in our lack of trust we preach to them, get resistance and create the very thing we fear. But we have nothing to fear except fear itself! Most students when putting together their meaning system will take elements from the very pool of ideas we may wish to foist upon them anyway. Here it is important to remember that the medium is the message and if we model an open classroom we will get a student who is respectful and engaged in life's spiritual quests.

A Post Modern religious Education Programme

The need for meaning

Our teenagers have a great number of needs at their stage of life, a need for a sense of identity, for a competent place in world, for significant relationships and for meaning in their lives. It is particularly the latter need that a good Religious Education programme can address. All humans have a need for meaning in their lives – we are meaning making creatures. We use meaning every time we speak or act or imagine acting. Whatever happens to us we find and assign meaning to it. Our lives are filled with attempts at giving meaning to our relationships, our work, our recreation and our difficulties.

Our students' lives are bombarded with meanings from parents, media, friends, school, the internet as well as from their own imaginations. This does not necessarily mean that students will have an integrated overarching meaning system, rather it is likely to be fragmentary and changing especially at that age. Nor may it at that stage entail the affirmation or adoption of an already existing overarching meaning of life, a meta-narrative, such as that provided by religion or a school of philosophy. Many students do not feel ready to adopt an overarching meta-narrative but none the less are still engaged in putting together fragmentary meanings. Roy Baumeister in his book Meanings of Life⁸ identified four common human needs for meaning, a purpose in life, a sense of what we value, sense of usefulness and a sense of self-worth. These he argued are essential to a fulfilled and balanced life and teenagers are constructing meanings to meet these needs continually.

If a sense of meaning is so central to an individual's well being it is important for us as educators to ask where, within their school experience, students are given an opportunity to examine the meanings already attached to their lives by their society and to explore and develop their own sense of meaning. There is no doubt that values are offered in the school context often centred around honesty, respect, learning and care for others. However these values still need a meaning structure to lend support to them otherwise they can appear arbitrary and fail to be integrated into the students own view of life. There is also no doubt that meaning is sometimes addressed in English Literature, History and Science but overall these references tend to be fleeting and occasional. Generally speaking schools have abandoned the task of exploring meaning as too hard and focused their attention on occupational subjects, the arts and literature. The two main contenders for teaching in our independent schools may be Philosophy and Religious Education but issues of meaning are often occasional to the study of epistemology, ethics and ontology for the former and phenomenology of religion for the latter. During the first half of the twentieth century while Sartre was discussing the meaning making needs of humanity and Heidegger exploring the nature of being Wittgenstein was teaching that meaning was something which grew out of our social behaviour and was primarily a linguistic phenomena – it seems in our schools at least that Wittgenstein won the day.

This meaning making aspect of religion is not its only one, of course. Religion is also engaged in religious experience, worship, morality and ritual. However few of these are appropriate to the classroom though some may be addressed in chapel. This can lead to a sense of disconnectedness in students: they study aspects of religion in class that they do not have access to. It is the meaning making aspect of religion that is most applicable and accessible to students and the most appropriate for the classroom. This meaning making element also runs through all other aspects of spirituality as it gives shape to and explains why rituals are formed and what interpretation is given to experience. It also adds a great deal of depth to religious education, just the study of the phenomena of religion can be frustrating to students; to describe a religion without an attempt to understand it leaves students with a sense of confusion and often alienation toward religion. They may not agree with the answers a religion gives to certain problems but they need to understand the questions and basic human needs which are addressed by that answer.

Students do not come to this search for meaning without significant presuppositions. Haing grown up in a post-modern context they tend to be attracted to what French thinker, Jean-François Lyotard, called micro-narratives rather than one over arching theory which attempts to explain everything. It is my experience that they will work with the teacher who enables this search and integration of micro-narratives and against the teacher who seeks to impose their own or the teacher who has none. Added to this it must be remembered that students are schooled within the enlightenment ethos where reason is seen as paramount and where there is a bias towards for physicalism (everything that exists can be explained in terms of the material world). What tends to happen is that Religious Education re-enforces this Enlightenment world view as it is the critical unexamined philosophy from which religion is studied. As the rational enlightenment philosophy starts with a view of religion as irrational, historically questionable and scientifically unprovable, the whole study of religion will often be seen by the student as supporting this hypothesis.

Australian social researcher Hugh McKay has labeled this generation the choices generation because in an era of pluralism and consumerism their lives are bounded by the making of choices from amongst the products, lifestyles and philosophies on offer. Furthermore they have become sophisticated consumers and choosers. They are also experts at mixing and matching and as much as their elders may want them to adopt a particular set of values or beliefs by nature they tend to pick and choose. It is not that they are not interested in issues of meaning but that they want to determine the basis on which they acquire it. As educators it is wise for us to work with our students in this task.

A Studies in Meanings (SIM) approach to Religious Education

The Studies in Meaning approach to Religious Education is based on students asking a number of significant questions and looking, with the assistance of the teacher, through the history of human thought for some answers. The basic questions addressed are of concern to most people. They can include:

What happens when I die?

What is the good life?

How did everything begin?

What is the nature of love?

What is beauty?

Where does human worth lie?

What is mean by the idea of God?

Is there any meaning to suffering?

As can be seen the questions do not necessarily always appear to be overtly religious but that is because both faiths and philosophies provide the answers to many life-centred questions and not just religious questions. This approach allows students to explore the significant issues of life and develop their own world view firmly steeped in the wisdom of the ages. For example when studying the question of what happens when we die Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Materialist, near death experiences all need to be explored for students to get a rounded view. Because the area of study begins with a question it usually develops an open inquiring approach within the classroom. Students are encouraged to “try-on” ideas and see how they fit with their goals and with their experience so far. This approach also lends itself to a variety of teaching techniques. These basic questions of life can be explored in film, poetry, songs as well a religions and philosophies and the way different peoples and societies have approached these questions can provide a breadth to the studies as well as the depth of the question of meaning.

In a manner more reminiscent of Jesus' teaching style than St. Paul's this pedagogy is designed to confront the student with the meaning of their own lives. It seeks to deconstruct the world views that they may currently hold in a similar way in which Jesus shed light on the religious and political assumptions of his day, but not in order to disorientate his hearers but to help them confront what is important in their lives. It goes far beyond moralizing or preaching at people and helps them to sift through their inherited meaning system and make realistic choices based on considered thought and study.

The advantages of the Studies in Meaning approach.

• It changes the role of teaching from either apologist for Christianity (Kerygmatic approach) or knowledge provider and interpreter to guide.

• It is an excellent foundation for further philosophy and Religion and Society studies.

• It promotes conceptual thinking. Much of students learning is on the descriptive level or the learning of facts or techniques. Studies in meaning asks the student to consider symbolism and meaning.

• It allows the student to explore ideas. A sense of freedom is essential in learning.

• It is the search for meaning that is itself transformative. The search for meaning is a sacred task in itself and this search may be a students first taste of the sacred. It is not just the answers to these questions of meaning which are sacred.

• The medium is the message. Studies in meaning models a spirituality which is open to the spirit and inquisitive and is respectful of peoples' ideas and choices. Faith is a way of being in the world. It includes a radical openness to the truth.

• It engages students in the task of theology rather than in learning about other people doing theology.

• The studies in meaning approach places the student on a quest for meaning – it gives motivation and purpose to the religious Education task which is often lacking.

• It promotes continual learning. Studies in meaning promotes a micro-narrative approach which considers that truth emerges out of a large number of smaller meanings. The model is the tangential circle. The more ideas that go into making up a students meaning system the closer it approximates to reality. The student is therefore encouraged to continue learning. This is in contrast to a meta-narrative approach whereby once the “truth” has been ascertained no further learning is required, only a filling out of the narrative.

Studies in Meaning and Philosophy

The question arises as to what extent studies in meaning falls within the realm of philosophy. There is no doubt that meaning from time to time becomes the study of philosophy but as Baumeister has pointed out the study of the meaning of life has been out of fashion in philosophy for a long time.⁹ It is perhaps rightly an interdisciplinary concern, for philosophy has also many other interests which may only be of tangential interest to studies of meaning such as ontology and epistemology. Philosophy perhaps most naturally studies the work of philosophers which is but a part of the studies of meaning. Nor is Studies in Meaning approach is not the same as Philosophy of religion. The traditional subject matter of philosophy of religion includes arguments of the existence of God and theodicy and these usually only provide limited assistance in students finding meaning.

Studies in Meaning and Jesus' teaching method

Although it would be difficult to directly apply Jesus' teaching methodology to the classroom, a few observations could be made. Firstly unlike the Pharisees, to whom Jesus as a teacher was often compared, Jesus neither taught an exegesis of scripture or a systematic philosophy or theology. Instead Jesus seemed concerned to confront the meaning of the lives of those individuals who crossed his path in the light of their social and intellectual environment. What does it mean to be happy, to give taxes to Rome, to love, to be healed? Who is my neighbour, what is the truth, what makes you free, how do I live eternally? All these questions forced his hearers to look at the meanings they and others around them placed on their lives. And as Jesus' disciples followed him they saw people who met Jesus confronted by these issues. They learnt a great amount from him, not through a systematic study of religion but through an encounter with the God and the meaning of each individual's existence. The religious Education teacher could do no better for their students than to imitate the way Jesus helped each person he met grapple with the what it means to be God's creation set into this world of meanings.