Chapter 37 — What Children Are Taught Now

A comparison between the religious teaching of my childhood and present-day Australian religious education, asking what changed and what remains.

More Than Sixty Years Later

The previous chapter left me with a straightforward question.

What are children being taught now?

More than sixty years separate the religious education of my childhood from the classrooms of today.

That is enough time for teaching methods to change.

Language can change.

Theology can be presented differently.

Schools can become more aware of psychology, child development, safeguarding and the diversity of the children sitting in front of them.

So I did not want to assume that the Catholic education I experienced was simply continuing unchanged.

The evidence says that it is not.

There Is No Single Australian Curriculum

The first thing I had to correct in my own thinking was the idea that there is one present-day Catholic religious-education curriculum for Australia.

There is not.

The National Catholic Education Commission provides a national framework and describes broad purposes for religious education.

Individual dioceses develop their own religious-education curricula.

That means a child in Brisbane may not receive exactly the same program as a child in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth or another diocese.

For that reason, I decided that the most useful place for me to begin was Brisbane.

It is the system closest to where I now live and the one whose current curriculum can be examined directly.

A Very Different Starting Point

The language of the current Brisbane curriculum surprised me.

Since 2008, classroom religious education in the Archdiocese of Brisbane has been described as using what it calls a reconceptualist approach.

The distinction is important.

The classroom is described as operating from an educational framework rather than simply a catechetical one.

That is already a considerable distance from the world of the Green Catechism.

The stated purpose is not simply:

Here is the answer.

Learn it.

Repeat it.

Avoiding Presumptive Language

One of the current principles particularly caught my attention.

Avoidance of presumptive language.

The present Brisbane approach explicitly recognises that teachers should not automatically assume that every student identifies with Catholic belief.

That may sound like a small change.

To me it is not.

The difference between:

“We believe this,”

and:

“Catholic tradition teaches this,”

can be enormous for a child who does not share the belief.

The first can absorb the child into an identity the adult has already chosen.

The second can leave some space between the child and the proposition.

Teaching About the Tradition

The current Brisbane model also speaks explicitly about teaching about the Catholic tradition.

Again, I notice that small word.

About.

A child can learn about Christianity without being required to believe Christianity.

A child can examine a biblical text without first accepting that every statement in it is historically or scientifically literal.

A child can learn why Catholics hold a belief without having to pretend that the belief has been independently established as fact.

That is much closer to education as I understand it.

Inquiry

The curriculum also promotes inquiry.

Students are expected to interpret.

Compare.

Evaluate.

Think critically.

Consider context.

Examine texts.

By the secondary years, students are explicitly considering different religious traditions and questions about God, meaning, belief and human experience.

That is very different from a system in which the question arrives with the authorised answer already attached.

Human Authors

Another difference struck me when I looked at the way Scripture is now described.

Students encounter references to the human authors of biblical texts.

They are encouraged to consider audience.

Purpose.

Historical setting.

Literary form.

By the senior years, biblical interpretation can include distinctions between different kinds of truth and attention to the intentions of human authors.

That language would have been enormously important to me as a child.

It introduces the possibility that reading a sacred text requires interpretation.

It acknowledges the human layer.

The Human Layer Again

That connects unexpectedly with the method of this book.

Who wrote this?

When?

For whom?

Why?

What kind of text is it?

What did the author know?

What did the author believe?

What was added later?

How has the meaning changed through interpretation?

Those are familiar questions.

They are questions about layers.

What Has Clearly Changed

There are therefore changes which I think should be acknowledged rather than ignored.

The current curriculum is not simply the Green Catechism printed in a new typeface.

There is greater recognition of religious diversity.

There is more explicit attention to critical thinking.

There is recognition that students may not personally identify with Catholic belief.

Scripture is studied in historical and literary contexts.

Other religions are encountered.

Contemporary issues are discussed.

Those are substantial differences.

And Yet It Is Still Catholic Education

The other side of the comparison must remain visible.

The curriculum explicitly describes itself as reflecting a Catholic Christian worldview.

Students learn Catholic beliefs.

They learn Catholic understandings of God.

They encounter prayer.

They encounter the sacraments.

They encounter Christian moral teaching.

They learn about Jesus as understood within Christianity.

They encounter Scripture as a central source within the tradition.

The shift toward inquiry has not turned a Catholic school into a secular comparative-religion department.

Religion Is Not an Occasional Subject

In Brisbane Catholic schools, religious education is not an occasional visit from a chaplain.

It is part of the curriculum from Prep through Year 12.

The current administrative requirements provide substantial classroom time for religion.

That matters when considering influence.

A proposition heard once is one thing.

A worldview encountered repeatedly throughout childhood is another.

The amount of time does not tell us whether that influence is good or bad.

It does tell us that it is significant.

Education and Formation

There is also another distinction in present Catholic education which deserves attention.

Religious education and faith formation are not quite the same thing.

The classroom can be described as educational and inquiry-based while the wider Catholic school also has prayer, liturgy, sacramental life, spiritual formation and a religious identity.

Those activities surround the classroom.

For a believing child, they may form a coherent and welcome community.

For a child who does not believe, the experience may be more complicated.

Participation and Belief Are Not the Same Thing

A child can participate respectfully without believing.

That distinction matters to me.

Standing quietly during a prayer does not prove belief.

Attending a liturgy does not prove belief.

Knowing the words of a prayer does not prove belief.

Completing a religion assignment does not prove belief.

A student may be learning.

Participating.

Complying.

Being polite.

Trying not to stand out.

Or genuinely believing.

Those things should not be confused.

What About Hell?

That brings me back to the question which began this part of the book.

Hell.

In the present Brisbane curriculum material I examined, Hell is not foregrounded in the way I associate with the religious education of my childhood.

The curriculum language I found places much greater emphasis upon love, dignity, freedom, relationships, mercy, social justice and critical engagement with religious tradition.

That is an important change.

But Hell itself has not disappeared from Catholic doctrine.

The Doctrine Remains

The current Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to affirm the existence and eternity of Hell.

It describes Hell principally as definitive separation from God through a person's own free choice.

But it also retains the traditional language of eternal fire.

That matters.

The imagery may be interpreted more carefully.

The theological explanation may emphasise human freedom.

But the ultimate proposition remains:

a person can face an eternal consequence.

Freedom Beneath an Infinite Consequence

That returns me to the problem raised in Chapter 31.

What does freely chosen mean when the alternative is described as an eternal consequence?

For an adult theologian, the argument may be sophisticated.

A person freely rejects relationship with God.

God respects that freedom.

Separation follows.

But what does a child hear?

Believe.

Or something terrible may happen forever.

The distinction between theological nuance and childhood reception is important.

The Child Hears the Consequence

Adults often concentrate on the explanation.

The child may concentrate on the consequence.

An adult can say:

“God does not send people to Hell. They freely exclude themselves.”

The child can still hear:

“If I get this wrong, I may suffer forever.”

That is why changing theological language does not automatically remove the psychological question.

Can a Child Freely Reject God?

There is another problem.

The modern explanation relies heavily upon freedom.

But children do not possess the same independence as adults.

Their beliefs are still developing.

They depend upon adults.

Their understanding of death is developing.

Their understanding of eternity is developing.

Their ability to evaluate metaphysical claims is developing.

So I am cautious whenever adult theology describes a child's religious response as though it were simply the exercise of fully informed freedom.

Freedom Requires More Than a Choice

A meaningful choice requires more than two possible answers.

It requires understanding.

Information.

Alternatives.

The ability to disagree safely.

And freedom from consequences designed to overwhelm the choice.

That is why the current emphasis on non-presumptive language matters.

It creates at least some conceptual room for the child not to be assumed into the belief.

How Much Room?

The next question is practical.

How much room does the child actually have?

Can a student say:

“I don't believe this”?

Can the student say:

“I don't want to pray”?

Can the student question the existence of God without being treated as a problem?

Can the child challenge a moral teaching?

Can the child refuse a religious identity while remaining fully included in the school community?

Those questions cannot be answered merely by reading a curriculum document.

The written curriculum tells us what is intended.

The lived classroom tells us what happens.

The Policy and the Person

That distinction has appeared repeatedly throughout my life.

A policy can be excellent.

A person can still behave badly.

A policy can be poor.

A compassionate person can sometimes reduce the harm it causes.

The written rule matters.

The person applying it matters too.

That is why I would not infer from a modern curriculum document that every child in every Catholic classroom now has the same experience.

The Teacher Still Matters

Tone matters.

A teacher can say:

“Catholics believe this.”

Or:

“This is what will happen to you.”

The words may concern the same doctrine.

The psychological experience is completely different.

A teacher can invite a question.

Or humiliate the person asking it.

A teacher can make a student feel safe saying:

“I don't know.”

Or make uncertainty feel like moral failure.

No curriculum eliminates the importance of the adult in the room.

The School Culture Matters

The classroom is also not isolated from the rest of the institution.

What happens at assemblies?

What happens during prayer?

What happens at Mass?

What happens when a student identifies as atheist?

What happens when a family belongs to another religion?

What happens when a child says that a religious teaching frightens them?

What happens when a child disagrees with a priest?

Those responses may tell us as much about genuine freedom of thought as the words in the curriculum.

A Significant Improvement

I do not want to minimise the change I can see in the current material.

Avoiding presumptive language is sensible.

Teaching about a tradition rather than simply demanding assent is better.

Teaching children to consider historical context is better.

Acknowledging human authorship is better.

Critical thinking is better.

Encountering different religions and secular perspectives is better.

If those principles are genuinely practised, they provide children with intellectual protections which were largely absent from the religious education I remember.

But Better Is Not the Same as Finished

Improvement does not end the inquiry.

A system can improve enormously and still contain unresolved questions.

What happens when Catholic doctrine and a child's developing autonomy conflict?

How is Hell taught, if it is taught?

At what age?

How are sin and damnation explained?

How is sexual morality presented?

How is disbelief treated?

How are children protected from adults who ignore the careful language of the curriculum?

Those are legitimate safeguarding questions.

Critical Thinking Has Consequences

There is also something almost amusing in a religious school formally teaching critical thinking.

If you genuinely teach a child to evaluate claims, eventually the child may evaluate yours.

If you teach students to examine context, they may examine the context in which religious texts were written.

If you teach them to identify human authors, they may ask which parts of a text are human.

If you teach inquiry, somebody will eventually inquire into God.

That is not a failure of education.

It is what education does.

The Right to Reach a Different Answer

For me, that becomes the real test.

Can the student use the critical-thinking tools supplied by the school and reach a conclusion the school does not share?

Can the student examine Christianity carefully and conclude:

“I don't believe it”?

Can that conclusion be respected?

If not, the inquiry has a boundary.

And it is worth identifying exactly where that boundary lies.

Teaching Children to Think

I would have benefited enormously from being taught that disagreement and thought were different from disobedience.

I would have benefited from hearing:

“This is what Catholics believe.”

Then:

“This is why they believe it.”

Then:

“Here is what other people believe.”

Then:

“Here is what we know.”

Then:

“Here is what remains a matter of faith.”

And finally:

“You may think about it.”

Faith Does Not Need a Frightened Child

If a religious belief is valuable, it should be capable of being presented without terror.

If it is true, a child's question cannot make it false.

If God exists, a child's doubt cannot make God disappear.

If Christianity has a good argument, it does not need Hell as leverage against a child.

A belief freely reached after inquiry would seem to me far more meaningful than one produced by fear.

The Modern Contradiction

That is perhaps the most interesting feature of the present system.

The old certainty has not entirely disappeared.

Catholic doctrine remains Catholic doctrine.

The Church still makes claims about God, Jesus, sin, salvation and the afterlife.

But the educational method now contains tools which allow those claims to be questioned.

Inquiry sits beside doctrine.

Critical thinking sits beside faith.

Non-presumptive language sits beside a Catholic worldview.

That tension may be productive.

It may also expose questions which earlier forms of religious education could avoid.

What I Would Like to Know

The curriculum gives me one layer.

I would like more.

I would like to see the actual classroom resources.

Teacher guides.

Student worksheets.

Online lessons.

Assessment tasks.

Material concerning Hell.

Sin.

Satan.

Confession.

Sexual morality.

Death.

Judgement.

And what teachers are told to do when a child says:

“I don't believe any of this.”

Not a Historical Question

That is why this is not merely an exercise in comparing my childhood with a more enlightened present.

The underlying question remains current.

How should adults speak to children about claims which cannot be independently verified?

What responsibilities arise when those claims concern eternal punishment?

How much freedom does a child have to refuse?

When does religious formation become pressure?

When does pressure become coercion?

And when does coercion become abuse?

What Children Are Taught Now

The evidence I have examined so far shows real change.

I think that change should be acknowledged.

The religious classroom described in the current Brisbane curriculum is not the catechism classroom of my childhood.

It contains substantially more room for inquiry, interpretation and difference.

But the doctrines have not all disappeared.

Nor has the power relationship between adult and child disappeared.

So the question I began with has changed slightly.

It is no longer simply:

“What are children taught?”

It is:

“What may adults legitimately do with those teachings in the life of a child?”

That takes the discussion beyond curriculum.

It takes it into child protection.

And that is where the next chapter begins.