An Interview with Graham Haydon: Faith in Education

Michael F. Shaughnessy - 12.7.09
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

1) Professor Haydon, you have just edited a book on "Faith in Education". What led up to this book?

The book arose from a very sad event: the unexpected death of Terence McLaughlin at the height of his career.  I organized a series of memorial lectures in celebration of his work.  The book project was an expansion from that lecture series.

2) Tell us about Terence McLaughlin, to whom this book is dedicated. What did he do and when did he do it and why is he well known?

Terry had been well known in the international philosophy of education community for many years, partly because he was so very active – a leading figure in the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and a constant contributor to international conferences, journals and edited collections – and partly for the special qualities of his work.  His philosophical approach was analytic, paying careful attention to the meaning of terms and making careful distinctions between different arguments, but never doing this just for the sake of it: he was very much concerned to illuminate practical issues and controversies in education. 

Such controversies are always liable to misunderstanding and confusion because people may use terms such as, ‘autonomy’, ‘indoctrination’ or ‘citizenship’ in different ways.  

Terry worked on a wide range of topics, so that his writing was as well known to, say, scholars of citizenship education as it was to proponents of faith schools. At the time of his death he was Professor of Philosophy of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, after a career based mostly in Cambridge University.

3) I interviewed Harry Brighouse a while back and I see he is still hard at work. Why did you choose him in particular to write an essay for this book? 

A few years earlier Harry had given a presentation about faith schools in a conference in London, and Terry had engaged him in discussion about this, leading Harry to change one aspect of his argument.  Harry had said he wanted to develop his earlier essay on the subject in more detail.  That seemed an excellent idea for a contribution to this book.

Harry’s view is distinctive – and has already attracted some attention in the educational press in England – in that, unlike many secular liberals, he thinks there should be public funding of faith schools, on the grounds that learning about religion in a faith school can help develop a student’s autonomy, and that the drawbacks of faith schooling are less when the school is regulated by the state (in return for public funding) than when it can entirely go its own way as a private school.   

4) What was Eamonn Callan's chapter about? He recently did a chapter in one of my books, published in South America!

Eamonn is reviving a debate that he had with Terry McLaughlin in print in the 1980s.  The specific question in this chapter is whether an upbringing that initiates a child into a religious faith – putting the child on the inside of the faith - can give that child a kind of understanding of religion that it is impossible for anyone to have as an observer from the outside. This is obviously relevant to the question of whether an education within a faith enhances or diminishes the child’s potential for autonomy.

5) What is specifically different about being educated in a faith based or parochial or catholic school?

This is large question, complicated by the fact that different faith schools may have rather different rationales.  In the UK there are many schools that were established by the Anglican Church (Episcopalian in US terms) for charitable educational motives, to be open to all regardless of their parents’ religion or lack of it; such schools are not specifically trying to initiate their students into Christian faith. There are also many faith based schools – Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic and others – that do expect their students to come from a specific faith tradition and see themselves as reinforcing the religious upbringing that their students will be getting from their parents.  And quite apart from the question of any specifically religious upbringing, faith schools have something of a reputation for offering a clearer framework of values than is possible in a secular school.  There is a lot there that is debatable, naturally.

6) Since children cannot think logically and make independent decision until late adolescence, should parents force them to attend a faith based school?

Now you are asking me for my own position – something I tried to keep out of this book, as I am only the editor.  First, I would question the term ‘force’.  If we set aside home schooling in this interview, it is compulsory for all children to attend a school, and the child is no more or less forced in attending a faith based school than in attending a secular one. 

Second, the ability to think logically and make independent decisions, at least as regards many aspects of life, can come a good deal earlier than late adolescence. 

Third, whenever this ability comes, a child’s way of seeing and thinking about the world will already have been influenced before that point.  As Harry Brighouse argues, the influence of a secular way of thinking is not necessarily less pervasive or less dangerous to autonomy than the influence of a religious way of thinking. The crucial question about a child’s upbringing and education is whether that upbringing and education are conducive to autonomy or not; and that distinction does not align with but cuts across the distinction between secular and faith-based schooling.

And so far as one can judge from personal experience, there are many religious believers who do not in the least appear to be non-autonomous people, and many non-believers who appear to be just following the crowd.  

7) I guess the central question behind this book, is “Why should the government support faith based schools.” Briefly, what do you say?

Well, one could say the central question is actually about understanding the nature of an upbringing within a faith.  But I agree with you so far as practice and politics are concerned.  My answer is that the government should support faith based schools because:

a)  the government of a liberal society must give recognition to all cultures and faith traditions among its citizens; it is hard to do this if support is given only to secular schools;

b)  the government in the interests of children as (future) citizens and on behalf of the whole community must exercise some regulation over the form and content of children’s schooling; it can do this much better in schools that it supports and funds than in schools that operate only as a private contractual arrangement between parents and providers. 

8) Richard Pring has asked in the title to his chapter "Can Faith Schools Serve the Common Good? What does Professor Pring have to say on this topic and how does he define "common good"

Richard Pring does not exactly offer a definition of ‘common good’ here but he has been very much influenced by John Dewey’s arguments for the common school as a route to the common good.  At the same time he considers that Dewey did not give enough weight to the ways in which distinctive traditions can enhance the common good.  In societies such as the UK and the USA which were formed out of many cultural strands, we can no longer see schooling for the common good on the ‘melting pot’ model.  Instead, we must recognize that individuals bringing with them the confidence of a firmly rooted identity may contribute more to the common good than people caught between different identities. So, faith schools can have advantages as well as dangers for the common good. The best route forward, Pring suggests, may be through the breaking down of barriers by collaboration between faith schools and secular schools.

9) Where can philosophers of education and interested scholars get a copy of this book?

I hope it will be widely distributed, so try your usual book supplier.  But if you have any problems, contact Sally Sigmund at the Institute of Education, London: s.sigmund@ioe.ac.uk

10) What have I neglected to ask?

You have asked me about some of the individual contributions but not about how I see the book overall. I’d say it is more than the sum of its individual parts, because of the debate that it reflects and carries forward.  So let me say a little about the other contributions.

Gerald Grace, a sociologist involved, like Terry McLaughlin, in Catholic schooling, gives a helpful introduction to Terry’s work in that field.  Hanan Alexander, a well known scholar of Jewish education, writes a response to Callan’s view of religious understanding: Alexander emphasizes the experience of relationship to the divine, rather than a belief that an entity does or does not exist. 

J. Mark Halstead, who has done a lot of work on Islamic education, gives a very useful overview of the debate over faith schooling, and defends it against objectors.  Finally, my colleague Michael Hand comments on the other contributions, taking a critical view of the arguments in favour of religious upbringing.  So, it is truly a discussion in which diverse voices are heard.  The debate is going on all the time in the wider society, but too often with a polarization between secularists and believers. In this book we see the concern to listen to and understand in depth all sides of the question.

Terry McLaughlin would have approved.