Vida Barnett, Roger B. Howarth, Paul Williams
Shap Journal 1992/3–Foreword
Vida Barnett, Roger B. Howarth, Paul Williams
The very best programmes of religious educationin schools are no longer centred around the pupillearning from the teacher. Arguably the mostsuccessful approach to teaching in schools andcolleges today focuses on the pupils investigating,exploring and learning from a whole host ofdifferent sources. The abilities of pupils to seekinformation, to test their opinions, to evaluate apiece of evidence and to hypothesise are allcommon place ways of learning. It is thereforeno surprise that in religious education the samesorts of approaches can be adopted by pupils andteachers alike - the subject of RE often has tostand the test of scrutiny from those pupils whowill always ask the same questions about thethings they are asked to learn. Many of thequestions are about truth and include “Is it true?”“Do you believe that?’ “What difference does itmake if I believe something different?”
This year’s Journal seeks to bring together a series of articles on the theme of Religion and
Truth - the compilation of which has shown to us how important, yet complex the question of
Truth is to all who seek answers to the mystery of human and religious experience. Thecontributions provide insights into Buddhism,the Baha’i faith, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism,Judaism, Sikhism and Humanism.
Each author was invited to explain, through their article, an answer to the question, ‘What is Truthfrom the perspective of a . . . . ?’ This compilationtherefore is a contribution to the search for Truth.It must be recognised that in most cases theauthors speak about Truth from their own perception and understanding of it within thetradition or stance to which they belong. We are grateful to all the contributors for sharing theirexpertise and knowledge in this particularlysignificant area. In this Journal we have acollection of articles which offer a resource tothose involved in teaching religious education atall levels.
The examples from the classroom come at the beginning of the Journal and again are differingperspectives on the way in which Truth and truths have been a part of the teaching andlearning in a variety of differing religiouseducation lessons. They are offered as ideas andto provide stimulus and discussion on how bestthe question of Truth can be approached in RE.
Regular readers of this Journal will notice that we are now publishing the Journal ourselveswith the expertise and facilities of Riadh El-Droubie, a member of the Shap Working Party.We are grateful to Hobsons who have been ourpublishers for the last two years and have served
us well. The Editors also extend their thanks toHeather Collins who has been tireless in hercommitment to organising the administrativeaspects of the Journal. Heather’s work with the
National Society’s RE Centre at Kensington comes to an end this year and we wish her everysuccess in the future.
Sadly and with much regret we note the death of Ken Oldfield who contributed to Shap Journalsin the past. His contribution to the world ofReligious Education will be greatly missed
Requests for use or re-publication of these reviews should be made (via Shap if necessary) to the writer, who retains copyright. If re-published in part or full elsewhere, the article’s publication in World Religions in Education 2008/9 should be acknowledged. The transliteration of specialist terms and the opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, not of the Shap Working Party.