School of Religious Education, and
Cardinal Clancy Centre for Research in the Spiritual, Moral, Religious and Pastoral Dimensions of Education.
Spiritual, Moral and Religious Education is a key area for Teaching and Research in Australian Catholic University

Religiuos Education as the critical interpretation of culture

By Graham Rossiter

Religion and culture are inextricably connected.   Each affects the other.   Both are of fundamental importance for religious education, particularly the interaction between religion and culture.

Critical evaluation of culture has long been a core concern of Catholic religious education.   This emphasis was central to the encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi (Evangelisation in the modern world) by Pope Paul VI in 1976, and has remained prominent in religious education in various contexts (schools, youth ministry, adult education, theological education) ever since.

Hermeneutics or interpretation also has a long history in education  --  and in religious education.   Interpretation as the process of seeking to understand the meaning of events and processes;   it tries to identify what have been the shaping influences on events;   it seeks to uncover the political and historical forces at work, and to identify who stands to gain or lose;   it ‘deconstructs' the components of a piece of writing so that it can be understood within its specific context;   it looks for the underlying economic and commercial interests that affect a situation;   it highlights justice and environmental issues;   it calls ideologies to account.

Within recent years, much has been written about education as a process of critical interpretation of culture.   Scholars like Ricoeur, Habermas and Gadamer have influenced contemporary thinking about hermeneutics.   Critical theory and hermeneutics, from the perspectives of philosophy and sociology, have highlighted the importance of the process of interpreting what is going on in culture.   And in turn, this is proposed as a task for public education.   Professor Brian Hill from Western Australia used the term “interrogation of one's cultural conditioning” to describe this educational process.

All of this reinforces the conviction, already held by many religious educators, that critical interpretation and evaluation of culture is central to their discipline.   It needs to enter into the practice of religious education at all levels, in all contexts.   This is not the only concern of religious education, but it is an important one (handing on the religious tradition, experience of prayer and liturgy, theology, scripture etc. are all important).   There is always a need for balance in the content for religious education.   But if critical evaluation of culture is missing, then there is a danger that a crucial element  --  contemporary relevance  --  will suffer.

Hence this journal is introducing the regular feature on “Religious Education as Cultural Interpretation”.   An alternative name might have been “The Religious Educator as Cultural Interpreter”.   The related concept of “critical evaluation” is also implied  --  making judgments about situations in the light of stated values, evaluation from a Gospel perspective etc.   In teaching religion creatively, the religious educator takes on the role of modelling critical evaluation of culture for pupils.   There is good anecdotal evidence that this has been successful in Catholic school religious education.

The idea of critically interpreting and evaluating the culture to discern its shaping influence on peoples' beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviour needs to be more prominent in the rationale and aims for school religious education.   This is in keeping with the concept of ‘raising critical consciousness' or ‘conscientisation' which was prominent in the discussions of catechesis by South American Catholic Bishops in the 1960s and 1970s.   Their documents had a world wide influence within ministry and religious education.   It paralleled the impact on education by Paulo Friere's ideas on “praxis” (shared reflection and action) and the “pedagogy of the oppressed”.   These themes were reflected in Thomas Groome's approach to religious education called Shared Christian Praxis.   Through these and similar influences, Catholic religious education today retains prominent motifs of liberation and social justice.

Interpretation of culture in the classroom involves ‘social analysis'.   It seeks to understand the meaning of developments and practices in culture and it tries to identify their influence.   It can help young people become more critical and discerning of what is happening in politics and culture.   They are naturally very critical, but may be somewhat naïve as regards a ‘critical' interpretation of culture.

Critical interpretation can be a starting point for what the scholar Michel Warren has called “cultural agency” (cf. M. Warren,  1992, Communications and Cultural Analysis:  A Religious View, Bergin and Garvey, New York).   Drawing on the work of Welsh sociologist Raymond Williams, Warren proposed that one of the aims for religious education is to encourage and skill young people to go beyond being ‘passive consumers of culture' to become ‘active constructors of culture'.   Culture is taken to be socially constructed and open to evaluation --  not something that is a given and hard to change.   This view tries to educate people towards responsible contributions to the evaluation and development of culture.

Within this feature section, the Journal of Religious Education will try to promote an ongoing discussion of the role of religious education in the critical interpretation of culture.   It will include items which are intended to inform and to stimulate thinking about issues that should be addressed in religious education or elsewhere in the curriculum.   If teachers have clarity in their own information and understanding of issues, this will automatically flow into the language and ideas they use in their educative conversations with young people, both in the classroom and in other contexts.   The better the background thinking that teachers bring to issues, the more effective they will be in promoting the development of critical skills in their pupils.

Our aim is to reinforce the consciousness of educators in Catholic Schools that interpretation is an important, even a fundamental part of religious education.   But this is not limited to religious education.   Increasingly in education, values, the ‘deconstruction' (or critical analysis into components) and interpretation of meaning are becoming important in learning areas like English, history, geography, economics and social science.   So what is treated here should have wider educational relevance.

We invite readers to submit material that is relevant to this theme to promote ongoing discussion and responsive practice.

 

The principles of “Fair Dinkum”

In one of his mid-term examination papers, a young second year law student, from an Asian country, wrote the following sentence:   “in dismissing the Whitlam government in November 1975, Sir John Kerr went against the principles of Fair Dinkum”.

Even a foreign student in Australia on a temporary basis, had managed to pick up something distinctive about Australian culture  --  even if his writing could be faulted for the unwitting use of a colloquialism.   He identified a number of prominent themes in Australian culture — egalitarianism, mateship, giving everyone a fair go, and that lifestyle and culture need not be excessively influenced by one's ethnic origin.

Interpreting themes in Australian culture can lead to the identification of some of the virtuous characteristics of this society, while at the same time, highlighting problems like “the tall poppy syndrome” and the “she'll be right, jack” attitude.   The generalisations can be useful in describing trends, while recognising that generalisations have limits as explanations, and that there will always be exceptions.

If education (Religious Education) is to be involved in the interpretation and evaluation of culture, then cultural trends and characteristics will be important to consider.

The “principles of Fair Dinkum” therefore warrant identification, analysis and evaluation.   This involves looking at the myths and beliefs in popular Australian culture which can have a shaping influence on the way people think and act.   Such cultural dispositions can be positive or negative;   they should not be taken for granted.   They may not always be substantial, but people can invoke them to give a type of justification for particular actions.   One can behave in a way that is tuned to a semi-popular stereotype  --  it seems to give vague support to what is done, a reason for the action  --  without that stereotype being evaluated for its moral worth.   For example:   One teenager noted that when in Australia, there was a level of general acceptability about “going out with the boys on Saturday night and getting drunk”.   When he spent a year at school in Italy he found that such an attitude was so culturally abhorrent in that country that it strongly inhibited this sort of behaviour.

Cultural stereotypes provide a useful starting point when contrasting Australian culture with that of another country.   The important thing is to go “beyond” cultural stereotypes.

For example, there is the question of class:   Class has not had anything like the same influence on the development of Australian society as it has in a country like the United Kingdom.   Classification of people according to accidents of birth into nobility or peasantry has not been a characteristic of Australian society.   However, the so called ‘egalitarian' Australian society is not without its classes.   The differences are more along economic lines — the rich, the middle class, the working class, the poor, the casual workers, the unemployed etc.   The indigenous community still carries evidence of punishing divisions along the line of birth and race.

We are often told that its multi-cultural and multi-racial qualities are valuable characteristics of Australian society.   However, these need to be more than nice sounding, taken-for-granted clichés.   They have to be analysed, understood and promoted.   Education needs to highlight the values of multiculturalism and racial equality.   Their definition has to be clarified and a number of issues related to multiculturalism and racial equality need investigation and evaluation.   There will be situations where Australian culture scores well, and other instances where it does poorly.

Education also needs to help students to get these questions into historical perspective.   An authentic reconciliation with Aborigines in Australia needs citizens with an historical awareness of the atrocities as well as the general negativity in European-Aboriginal relationships over the past 200 years.   One of the principles of Fair Dinkum is the idea of giving all peoples and ethic groups a fair go in this country, including its traditional owners.

While racial antagonism and some racial violence (even to the level of bullying in schools) remain evident in Australia, the racial tensions between ethnic groups do not seem to be as intense as in the ‘mother' countries.   The violence that has for many years characterised Protestant/Catholic relationships in Northern Ireland is not so evident amongst the Irish in Australia (even though antipathies have been evident in Australian history over two centuries.)   While there remain tensions between Australians who originated from different countries in the Balkans, the level of conflict has been considerably softened.

Making a fresh start in a new country which has democratic values and is committed to respect for all has mitigated some of the racially violent attitudes that have been brought into the country.   (This is not to imply that all of the racial tensions in Australia have been ‘imported'.)

To give a precise example, the sorts of question that can be asked here are:-   why would a Bosnian Serb and a Bosnian Muslim be less likely to fight each other here in Australia than would be the case in Bosnia itself?   What are the characteristics or experiences of Australian culture that possibly contribute to this changed situation?   How do implied definitions of the identity of others affect violent attitudes?   Do religious components of identity in oneself and for the perceived identity of others contribute to violent attitudes towards particular groups?   Does Australian culture affect the way ethnic/religious groups define themselves and others?   Finding the ‘right' answers to the questions is not the point of the exercise, but thinking about the issues is educative.   It may be that in Australia there is ‘space' — and groups which have harboured hatred and dislike for each other for centuries have more room to make a life without close, antagonising interaction.   Coming to a new country means a fresh start;   in the new context, the cultural assumptions about proper behaviour are different.   Negative stereotypes of ‘others' are not supported by the multicultural society as they tend to be in a relatively mono-cultural situation, particularly where this is reinforced in an ethnic enclave or neighbourhood.   While there may well be ethnic neighbourhoods in Australia, the old prejudices may not be so firmly entrenched;   less account is taken of past differences;   the old history is supplanted by a ‘new' history.   Two formerly antagonistic groups now find themselves as minorities in a larger cultural mix.

*       *       *

 There are a number of valuable thematic components to Australian culture.   Giving everyone a fair go, being authentic, mateship etc. have values that need to be identified as common ground.   Becoming more conscious of both the humanising and non-humanising themes in culture is a good basis for helping individuals think through their own position and hopefully take some action to enhance the positives and diminish the negatives.

 In Strathfield near the Australian Catholic University Campus there is a small restaurant with the intriguing name, “The Fair Dinkum Chinese Restaurant”.   It is a good place for stimulating thinking about the educational implications of multiculturalism in Australia.

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