From Interreligious Learning to Interworldview Education 9042950250, 9789042950252

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FROM INTERRELIGIOUS LEARNING TO INTERWORLDVIEW EDUCATION DIDIER POLLEFEYT

FROM INTERRELIGIOUS LEARNING TO INTERWORLDVIEW EDUCATION

BIBLIOTHECA EPHEMERIDUM THEOLOGICARUM LOVANIENSIUM

EDITED BY THE BOARD OF EPHEMERIDES THEOLOGICAE LOVANIENSES

Louis-Léon Christians – Henri Derroitte – Wim François – Éric Gaziaux Joris Geldhof – Arnaud Join-Lambert – Johan Leemans Olivier Riaudel – Matthieu Richelle (secretary) Joseph Verheyden (general editor)

EDITORIAL STAFF

Rita Corstjens – Claire Timmermans

UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE

KU LEUVEN LEUVEN

BIBLIOTHECA EPHEMERIDUM THEOLOGICARUM LOVANIENSIUM CCCXXXII

FROM INTERRELIGIOUS LEARNING TO INTERWORLDVIEW EDUCATION

EDITED BY

DIDIER POLLEFEYT

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2023

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-429-5025-2 eISBN 978-90-429-5026-9 D/2023/0602/47 All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated data file or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. © 2023 – Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Didier POLLEFEYT – Kelly DEBURCHGRAEVE – Moishe MUND (KU Leuven) Introduction: From Interreligious Learning to Interworldview Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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PART I: FUNDAMENTAL APPROACHES

Laurent BASANESE (Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome) Teaching a New Culture of Brotherhood for a Complex World

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Ilham NASSER (International Institute of Islamic Thought, Herndon, VA) – Mohammed ABU-NIMER (American University, Washington, DC) Interworldview Competencies in Worldview Education: The Path to Unlocking Our Own Narrow Confessional Worldview .

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Ephraim MEIR (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan) Towards an Interreligious and Interworldview Education . . . . .

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PART II: CRITICAL APPROACHES

Marianne MOYAERT (KU Leuven) Critical Interreligious Education and the Deconstruction of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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San VAN EERSEL (Windesheim College, Zwolle) Taking a Full Dialogical Stand: Approaching Worldview Education from an Inclusive Dialogical Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Gerdien BERTRAM-TROOST (VU Amsterdam) Integrating Attention to Religious Identity Development, WellBeing, and Interworldview Competencies in Dutch Secondary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 PART III: CONFESSIONAL COURSES

Jürgen METTEPENNINGEN (KU Leuven) Interworldview Dialogue and the Roman Catholic Religious Education Course in Secondary Education in Flanders . . . . . . . 137

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Michael BAKKER (Radboud University, Nijmegen) – Sacha BAKKER (Soul Nederland, Rotterdam) Unity and Diversity in Interworldview Education . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Helma TON (Center of Worldview Education, Utrecht) The Blessings of Silence in Class: A Critical Dutch Buddhist Perspective on Interworldview Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Mark P.C. COLLINSON (School of Mission, Winchester) A Confessional Contribution to Interworldview Competencies and Education from an Anglican Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Mark SAEY (Team Active Citizenship, Antwerp) Education for a Post-Secular Society: Interworldview Dialogue and Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 PART IV: PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION

Stefan ALTMEYER (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz) “How Dare You?” The Ecological Crisis as Task for Interworldview Competence: Conceptual Groundings and Exemplary Concretions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Hannah J. VISSER (VU Amsterdam) Evaluating the Impact of Interfaith Learning on Participants’ Interfaith Competences: Definitions and Challenges . . . . . . . . . 245 INDEX OF NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 INDEX OF TOPICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

INTRODUCTION FROM INTERRELIGIOUS LEARNING TO INTERWORLDVIEW EDUCATION

In 2007, we published in this series a volume on interreligious learning1. Fifteen years later, in 2022, we present this new book on interworldview education. The changing titles between both books also reflect changes in theology and religious pedagogy itself over the years. In this introduction, we present some significant shifts we have seen in the past fifteen years and how they are reflected in the structure and the different contributions of this book. The movement from ‘interreligious learning’ to ‘interworldview education’ reflects both an individualization and broadening of education in faith and worldviews. The most fundamental change we see in classrooms all over the Western world is that fewer and fewer pupils identify with one institutional faith tradition as a consequence of the growth of secularization and pluralization. If they do identify, then it is mostly in a partial way – revealing the increasing diversity in faith traditions inside and outside the school. It is increasingly more difficult to see religious education as a space at school where ‘religions’ encounter each other, as the term ‘interreligious’ seems to suggest. Of course, many pupils are still initiated in a certain religion. They show loyalties towards it, but we see polyphonic correlations between personal worldview experiences and the resources that religious traditions offer2. There is also a growing group of pupils that take an agnostic, atheist, or indifferent stance concerning topics in religious education. Therefore, ‘interreligious learning’ does in many cases no longer capture the reality of the classroom, not even in classes with a clear confessional frame of reference. Because of this new context, the term ‘worldview’ (Dutch: levensbeschouwing; French: philosophie de vie; German: Weltanschauung) is used more and more instead of ‘faith’ or ‘religion’. In her contribution in this book, Gerdien Bertram-Troost defines a ‘worldview’ as “an individual’s system of implicit and explicit views and feelings in relation to human life”. It is seen “as being continuously subject to change”. Or, to put it in a simple, stipulative definition: ‘A 1. D. POLLEFEYT, Interreligious Learning (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 201), Leuven, Leuven University Press – Peeters, 2007. 2. D. POLLEFEYT – M. RICHARDS, The Living Art of Religious Education: A Paradigm of Hermeneutics and Dialogue for RE in Faith Schools Today, in British Journal of Religious Education 41 (2019) 313-324.

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worldview is a way one looks at life’. All authors in this book agree that not only do all pupils have such a worldview (implicitly or explicitly), but it is also the obligation of the school system to offer its pupils (and parents) a worldview formation as well as an interworldview education. Of course, such an interworldview approach is only one approach to religious education among several other models, especially the monoreligious and multireligious models of religious education. In many countries inside and outside Europe, a confessional model is still operational, and it presents and initiates pupils systematically in only one religion or worldview. Such a model creates a barrier against growing de-traditionalization and religious illiteracy but is confronted increasingly with processes of secularization and pluralization. Another model that receives more and more support among pedagogues and politicians is the multireligious model. It presents religions and worldviews one after the other, or in comparison with each other, but from an outside perspective and without a confessional engagement by the teacher. Such a model wrestles with the question of the possibility and desirability of a neutral position from a methodological and educational perspective. This volume does not discuss these two alternative models, but goes deeper into the dialogical model. An interworldview approach to religious education has several advantages. It starts more from the perspective and point of view of all pupils. It allows a heterogeneity of positions within different faiths and philosophies of life and invites everyone to engage in interworldview dialogue in the classroom. Interreligious learning remains an important part of interworldview learning, but the latter also makes room for, e.g., atheism and Buddhism. That is why this book also contains contributions from a non-believing perspective and from a Buddhist point of view. It is evident that the concept ‘interreligious learning’ is a problem from an atheist perspective, but it has also been challenged in recent years by Buddhism. As Helma Ton clarifies in her contribution of this book, Buddhism is not a belief system, and Buddha was not a god. Buddhism is a set of practical guidelines to be practiced personally according to time and place. So, for Buddhism, interreligious learning is too narrow, and not inclusive enough. As Ephraim Meir argues in his contribution from a Jewish perspective, interreligious learning is not excluded from interworldview education but becomes a subcategory. Van Eersel describes, in his contribution, the goal of interworldview education as ‘ideological becoming’: “the acquisition of a more complete image of ourselves and the realization of human fullness by appropriating the ideological viewpoints of others”. Several authors in this book describe the competencies that pupils need to acquire to engage in such an ideological becoming. In the words of Stefan Altmeyer: “the

INTRODUCTION

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abilities to name differences, to draw relations and to change perspectives”. At the same time, van Eersel rightly warns against defining interworldview education too quickly in the form of ‘competencies’. “The downside of this term is that it creates images in our minds of independent techniques or skills that pupils can develop with the help of a wellstructured curriculum”. In the words of Parker Palmer: “Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher”3. And one could add, also oriented towards the pupil’s identity and integrity. For this purpose, many authors argue for a strong foundation of interworldview education in confessional anthropology and theology. Interworldview learning is clearly distinguished from multi-worldview learning. Such interworldview education is not just a neutral and objective juxtaposition of worldviews, placing the one next to the other. It always recognizes that teachers and pupils are already engaged in a particular worldview. As Michael Bakker and Sacha Bakker say in their contribution, dialogue always starts from one’s roots. In interworldview education, all are participants, and no one holds a privileged observer position. There is no interworldview education without recognizing and appreciating the differences between worldviews; and their respective engagements. Central to interworldview education is therefore granting hospitality to the other in one’s own religion or worldview and accepting the invitation of the other to be their guest. This is based on the common anthropology that we are not independent and self-made beings, but that we owe, as the Russian philosopher Bakhtin argues, our identity to the living relations that we maintain with others. From a believing perspective, such anthropology (and pedagogy) also has a theological foundation of the human being created in God’s image. In such a framework, interworldview learning is a process of translating between worlds driven by the power of dialogue. It works in three movements: it starts with one’s own developing worldview and preparing for the encounter with the other, it crosses over to the hermeneutical space of others, accepting their hospitality, and it comes back home transformed by the encounter with others. This learning process happens under the guidance of a teacher or a group of teachers who can speak with authority from their faith or worldview tradition, who have appreciation for other worldview perspectives, and who can moderate such a process of ‘crossing over’ and ‘coming back’, especially when pupils encounter prejudices, frustrations, and even conflicts in the classroom4. 3. P. PALMER, The Courage to Teach, San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass, 1998, p. 104. 4. D. POLLEFEYT, Religious Education as Opening the Hermeneutical Space, in Journal of Religious Education 68 (2020) 115-124.

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This book develops such understanding of interworldview learning in four parts. The first part presents fundamental approaches to the topic of interworldview education by looking successively to the theological, pedagogical, and philosophical foundations of this new approach of (religious) education. The second part critically approaches interworldview learning. It deals in three contributions with the impact of power in the learning process among different worldviews, the dominance of authoritative discourses in education, and the role of religious identity development of young people. In part three, the book presents how interworldview learning can be realized within different confessional courses: Catholic religion, Orthodox religion, Buddhism, Anglican religion, and in cross-curricular approaches. The fourth and final part of this volume elaborates on the practical implementation of interworldview education. It concretizes interworldview education dealing with the topic of the ecological crisis. It finishes the volume with challenges to evaluate the impact of interworldview education on the interworldview competencies of pupils. The book ends with the presentation of its contributors, and an index of names and topics. This book consists of twelve contributions that will confront the reader with most aspects of interworldview education, including different confessional perspectives. The opening contribution by Laurent BASANESE (Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy) describes from a Roman Catholic perspective the worldwide identity crisis of schooling, especially education at the university, but also in primary and secondary schools. Education is increasingly imprisoned in a market-driven logic with utility and urgency as the sole imperatives and fragmented in disciplines that no longer communicate with each other. In other words, the institutionalization of education has become harmful for education itself. Education is no longer a place to acquire organic and formative knowledge and critical dialogue in a fraternal spirit. Basanese shows in this way why and how religious and interworldview education are under pressure. He warns that this sort of education can also fall victim to formal institutionalization, e.g., encyclopedism, formalism, and abstract knowledge, presenting worldviews only objectively the one next to the other. Inspired by pope Francis’ document on Human Fraternity (2019), Basanese proposes a new model for education driven by the memory of the past, intellectual benevolence, and adaptive flexibility. In such a model, pupils and teachers learn once again how to communicate between disciplines and ideological backgrounds, in a desire to re-establish knowledge, wisdom, peace, and justice. In order to create an interworldview dialogue, we have to be aware of the precondition for the encounter, namely that we are linked and interdependent, not wholly different, not entirely the same.

INTRODUCTION

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In their contribution, Ilham NASSER (International Institute of Islamic Thought, Herndon, VA, USA) and Mohammed ABU-NIMER (American University, Washington, DC, USA) argue from a Muslim perspective that every pupil deserves to develop their worldview and religious beliefs, from an early age, in dialogue with others. Moreover, interworldview education is a critical strategy in advancing peaceful multicultural societies. They describe the processes that happen in such education in terms of re-reading and re-interpreting one’s worldview in the dialogical encounter with the other, as well as the obstacles and difficulties teachers face when moving from an exclusive to an inclusive attitude of pupils. Among the many competencies that are needed, empathy is a central skill that allows the pupil to temporarily delve into the perspective of the other and establish a unique connection with that individual. Ephraim MEIR (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel) presents from a Jewish perspective an interreligious theology as the foundation for interfaith education, which he considers a subcategory of interworldview education. His work is inspired by the Jewish philosophers Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas and their ethical understanding of dialogue (Buber) and the alterity of the other (Levinas). He develops a new concept: ‘transdifference’, that considers both the difference and the commonality, the concrete particular and the interaction. In trans-difference, one recognizes the specific and rises above it. Dealing with trans-difference requires six competencies: hospitality, listening, translating, acknowledging, presence, and overcoming bias. Marianne MOYAERT (KU Leuven, Belgium) looks at interfaith dialogue and interworldview learning from the lens of critical theory. She confronts the reader with the process of ‘Othering’ that often – consciously or unconsciously – occurs in our relations with ‘other’ religions and worldviews. In such a process of Othering, the identity of those who stand different in the encounter is marginalized, problematized, or exoticized. Moyaert proposes a shift from focusing on differences between religions to helping pupils to see religious normalcy: what is considered in religion as normal and what is, by contrast, abnormal? Interworldview education, therefore, asks for critical self-reflection and an awareness of oppressive religious structures at work in interreligious encounters. In such a way, dialogue becomes part of the solution rather than part of the problem of social marginalization in the classroom and the dialogue fatigue it creates. San VAN EERSEL (Windesheim College, Zwolle, the Netherlands) argues for a radical dialogical form of interworldview teaching and learning in all school subjects. He develops the ideas of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), who sees dialogue as the core structure of

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human nature. He describes the three main aspects of a robust dialogical approach to worldview education: a dialogical mindset, a dialogical pedagogy, and a dialogical communication. He emphasizes an internally persuasive discourse as opposed to an externally authoritative address. This first form of language and dialogue depends on the responsibility of pupils, teachers, school administrators, and policymakers. Van Eersel warns against the reduction of dialogue and interworldview learning to independent techniques and skills structured in a fixed curriculum. He prefers the term ‘qualities’ instead of ‘competencies’ as goals of education, as ‘qualities’ is a more suitable word to describe the totality of the subjects involved in such dialogical encounters in the classroom. Interworldview education has more to do with wisdom than knowledge. In this way, his vision can contribute to new educational aims for individual and social flourishing. Gerdien BERTRAM-TROOST (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands) aims at integrating attention to religious identity development, well-being, and interworldview competencies in education. She starts her analysis by observing that diversity does not automatically lead to interreligious exchange and learning. An increasing amount of pupils are not aware of their worldview. The author offers a ‘provocative pedagogy’ that integrates attention to religious identity development and interworldview competencies to higher well-being of pupils, especially in Dutch Protestant schools for secondary education in the Netherlands. Such a pedagogy offers an answer to the homo optionis, the subject who is more and more under mental pressure because he or she (always) has to choose. Interworldview competencies serve both to stimulate the individual development of young people and enhance their well-being and life together in a diverse society. Bertram-Troost clarifies how this form of guided openness does not have to lead to relativism in which ‘everything goes’. Provocative pedagogy means that pupils are challenged and feel encouraged to ‘let go’ and to ‘connect’. The book also contains reflections from five confessional courses in which interworldview learning can be integrated: Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Anglicanism, and Interworldview Dialogue and the WELT-approach to transversal project work. Jürgen METTEPENNINGEN (KU Leuven, Belgium) shows how interworldview learning is structurally part of the current curriculum of Roman Catholic Religious Education in Flanders. Michael BAKKER (Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and Sacha BAKKER (Soul Nederland, Rotterdam, the Netherlands) explain how the goal of ‘unity in diversity’ in religious education can only be reached by knowing your own (in casu Orthodox) roots and learning

INTRODUCTION

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to listen to others. Helma TON (Center for Worldview Education, Utrecht, the Netherlands) offers a unique and critical Buddhist perspective on interworldview learning, especially by showing that the way in which the Buddha taught should also be reflected in the teacher’s competencies in Buddhist religious education. Mark P.C. COLLINSON (Winchester School of Mission, Church of England) offers an Anglican, missiological perspective on interworldview learning by incorporating the dynamics of crosscultural engagement as the essence of the message of Christ. Mark SAEY (Team Active Citizenship, Antwerp, Belgium) advocates for the development of a combination of interworldview competencies and citizenship competencies so that both secular and religious young people can learn reciprocally to help counter polarization and extremism. How to make interworldview education concrete? Stefan ALTMEYER (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany) highlights the ecological crisis as the most relevant example of an interworldview challenge. In dealing with a practical didactical example, he shows how competencies for interworldview learning include the ability to name differences, draw relationships, and shift perspectives between one’s own religious or worldview orientation and that of others. The final contribution evaluates the impact of interfaith learning on the interfaith competencies of the participants. Hannah J. VISSER (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands) presents the possibilities and challenges in evaluating interfaith initiatives. Central to this are questions of ‘how’ and ‘what’ we want to evaluate in interfaith learning. The author makes it clear that ‘how’ we measure runs the risk of reducing interfaith learning to what can be measured, at the expense of elements that are not easily measured. The analysis clarifies ‘what’ we best measure in interfaith education: recognizing the uncertainty and nuance of religious and non-religious worldviews; building interfaith relationships, perspective taking and code-switching; communicating across differences, empathizing with the other while refraining from judgment, and attention to power and privilege. This book brings together the voices of fifteen scholars on interworldview learning, coming from the fields of pedagogy, philosophy, and theology, from seven different confessional perspectives and seven different Western countries. The contributions were written during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the book was finished during the Russian war against Ukraine. It is a time in world history when we became more aware of our global and vulnerable interdependency, and of the fact that the possibility of war, and even religious war, has not left the European continent forever. There are several points on which all authors of this

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book agree. (1) Diversity is a given, and it is everywhere: between religions and worldviews, within religions and worldviews, and within any human person’s lived religion or worldview. (2) Dialogue is not only a necessity in such a context but is also an intrinsic element of human existence. (3) No longer can anyone claim a ‘helicopter-perspective’ in the dialogue; we are all participants in the interworldview encounter. Neutrality is not an option, or, even in the best case, an option among other options. (4) Dialogue is not an event that is free of power; on the contrary, it can reproduce and even strengthen the power imbalances among worldviews and their adherents. (5) Education offers unique opportunities to engage pupils in a movement of ‘crossing over’ and ‘coming back’, to create an interworldview identity. (6) Interworldview education is only possible when education as an institution transforms itself (again) towards a formation of the integral human person. We hope that this book will inspire the reader to reflect on the many and often complex aspects of this transformation of education, in preparation for another world in which diversity is an opportunity and a source of richness, rather than a source of intolerance, violence and war. Didier POLLEFEYT, Kelly DEBURCHGRAEVE, Moishe MUND Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Center for Academic Teacher’s Training in Religion Sint-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

PART I

FUNDAMENTAL APPROACHES

TEACHING A NEW CULTURE OF BROTHERHOOD FOR A COMPLEX WORLD If they please, let them suppose I played at tables for my diversion […] For what injustice is it that when we allow every course of life its recreation, that study only should have none1.

I. INTRODUCTION The Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, published on 4 February, 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb, is much more than another Islamic-Christian declaration. In fact, the words ‘Islam’ and ‘Christianity’ do not appear in the text2. Inviting a concrete renewal of the discourse and style of interfaith encounters, moving not only from words to deeds but also from political correctness to healthy confrontation and true cooperation, the Document is in fact a remarkable milestone in the history of dialogue between peoples and cultures in general, with a view to rethinking together ‘brotherhood’, that is, the future of humanity: “believers and non-believers, and […] all people of good will”. Despite the inevitable criticisms regarding the ambiguity of some terms or pointing to the risk of sentimentalism and irenicism, the Document is a true call “to unite and work together” for a “culture of mutual respect”, a culture where “the values of peace, justice, goodness, beauty, […] and coexistence”, but above all religious and spiritual values, would counterbalance the consciences anesthetized by “individualism accompanied by materialistic philosophies”. This common desire of Pope Francis and Imam al-Tayyeb is addressed in particular “to intellectuals, philosophers, religious figures”, and “sound education” is mentioned as a privileged means “to confront tendencies that are individualistic, selfish, conflicting” that animate “the hearts of new generations”, and not only them. How can “religious institutions” and “leading thinkers” respond, explicitly called to translate the intuitions and principles of this Declaration “into policies, decisions, legislative texts, courses of study and materials to be circulated”3? In this essay, I would like to point out some 1. Desiderius ERASMUS, The Praise of Folly, trans. C.H. MILLER, New Haven, CT – London, Yale University Press, 2008, Epistle to Thomas More. 2. L. BASANESE, Our Concern for the Future: One Year on from the Signing of the Human Fraternity Document, in La Civiltà Cattolica, English Edition 4/3 (2020) 40-49. 3. Quotes from Pope FRANCIS – Grand Imam A. AL-TAYYEB, Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, 4 February, 2019; https://www.vatican.

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of the paths necessary to rethink, in this spirit, the function of education and the structure of our formative institutions: everything has been inviting us for decades to “the challenge of envisaging a new humanity”4 and to realizing this “radical paradigm shift”, this “bold cultural revolution”5, desired by Pope Francis also for academic circles in order to make our world truly ‘other’ and fraternal. II. THE LESSONS

OF AN

ACADEMIC HISTORY

1. From the West … Without making a complete assessment or a detailed status quaestionis on the function and structure of academic institutions around the world, there is one thing on which all educational experts agree: things have to change. The modern Western University in particular, conceived as Universitas Scientiarum since the nineteenth century, i.e., a gathering of all knowledge, is experiencing an identity crisis and is seeking its place in a complex and changing world. This should not be surprising when one knows that any living or social system must constantly redefine itself in order not to fall into repetition of the same, to become rigid and disappear. In this regard, the University must be like the Church, Universitas semper reformanda, if it wants to be a living human – intellectual – community. Created precisely in the context of the Gregorian reform at the turn of the eleventh century in Bologna and Paris6 from the schools of the cathedrals and monasteries, the Western University was already intended, as a corporation of teachers and students, that is to say Universitas Magistrorum va/content/francesco/en/travels/2019/outside/documents/papa-francesco_20190204_ documento-fratellanza-umana.html. 4. Pope FRANCIS, Fratelli Tutti: Encyclical Letter on Fraternity and Social Friendship, 3 October, 2020, no. 127; https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/ papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html. 5. Pope FRANCIS, Veritatis Gaudium: Apostolic Constitution on Ecclesiastical Universities and Faculties, 19 January, 2018, no. 3; https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/ en/apost_constitutions/documents/papa-francesco_costituzione-ap_20171208_veritatisgaudium.html. 6. First Bologna around 1088, then Paris, Salamanca and Oxford around 1160, Toulouse in 1229, etc. The Carolingian reform from the eighth century onwards already profoundly renewed culture and studies in the West: Alcuin (ca. 724-802) founded, e.g., in 796 in Tours an Academy of Philosophy and Theology so innovative that it was nicknamed “Mother of the University”. This reform was prepared by the reintroduction of Boethius’ Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) by Bede the Venerable (ca. 672-735), added to the already existing Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics). But the legal term Universitas only appeared in 1208 for the University of Paris, and around 1215 for the University of Bologna. There was also a medical school in Salerno in the ninth-tenth century.

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et Scholarium, to be a cultural response to the new challenges of the times, such as the growth of the cities, a reformulation of the political and religious balances, and the rediscovery of the ancient Eastern sources. It was essentially a studium, a place of secondary and higher education, according to current terminology, with its first Faculties, not primarily a place of research, which was practiced rather clandestinely and unconnected to the University7. But it was a major place of freedom through its system of confraternity, a ‘communitarian’ or fraternal environment, which counterbalanced the authoritarian aspects of feudalism and hierarchy. It enjoyed a certain internal autonomy (in the choice of its recruitment and its organization) and external autonomy (its financing capacity). However, this freedom and independence, all relative, which made it so attractive, was also its weakness: while it kept for centuries a monopoly on teaching, it also ran the risk of rigidity, and in modern times, when the more and more centralized states were constituted and fought against all counter-powers, the University was taken over by politics and was downsized into simple ‘professional training centers’ at the service of states, with the aim of providing clerics, jurists, and doctors to society8. The original medieval model of the University deteriorated over time: the loss of its autonomy, the explosion of scientific knowledge from the Renaissance onwards, the gradual emergence of ‘learned societies’ and ‘academies’ also sponsored by the states, and finally the creation of professional schools of higher learning in the eighteenth century, which entered into direct competition with it, highlighted its lack of adaptation and ended its existence. In France, at the time of the Revolution, the confraternities were abolished, as was the University, replaced by a network of central and special schools where ‘applied sciences’ could have free rein9, that is to say, a productive and useful knowledge for a new and more materialist society, ready for other revolutions, industrial, technical and cognitive. 7. J.-L. DE MEULEMEESTER, Quels modèles d’université pour quel type de motivation des acteurs? Une vue évolutionniste, in Pyramids 21 (2011) 261-289. The first Faculties were those of Arts (now secondary education), Law, Medicine and Theology. 8. This social role of the universities, supported by the states, is underlined in particular by J. VERGER, Les universités au Moyen Âge, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1999. The state develops and maintains the universities, lavishes them with official honors and offers job opportunities to their graduates, but in exchange, these universities had to function regularly, support the action of the governments, train competent clerics, jurists, and doctors, and not become hotbeds of intellectual, social, political or religious disorder (see p. 171). 9. In 1666, Leibniz in his De arte combinatoria already called for the sciences not to be purely theoretical, but also practical (theoria cum praxi), and in this sense he supported the creation, outside the universities, of academies based on this principle. He himself was the first president of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1700.

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But many Faculties were dying and were only waiting for the revolutionary ‘coup de grâce’10. The same was true in Germany, though without a revolution: a decline, with the closure of half of the universities between 1792 and 1818 due to very low attendance and a profound state of obsolescence, to the point that some publicly called for their abolition11. Several new visions of education were proposed or implemented in Europe during the nineteenth century, such as the Napoleonic model from 1806 onwards: public and uniform education, control of the training of elites by the state, research carried out in ‘learned societies’ or at the Collège de France. Or the Idea of a University of Cardinal John H. Newman, presented between 1852 and 1858, in view of the creation of the University of Dublin: training of the ‘gentleman’ and not primarily of the virtuous or Christian man. But it is the Humboldtian proposal, named after the Prussian Minister of Education Wilhelm von Humboldt, which undoubtedly saved this age-old institution with the creation of the University of Berlin in 1810, and which served as an example of balance for many modern academic institutes throughout the world: teaching oriented to disinterested research within a single institution financed by the state and protected from the demands of profitability. The professional training necessary for the functioning of society is provided separately in distinct special schools (technical colleges, etc.), while the professors at the universities, who are supposed to be driven solely by the search for truth, have full freedom of teaching and research, without utilitarian concerns. In principle, the new Universitas should also bring together all academic disciplines, with the Faculty of Philosophy as the unifying and regulating heart, replacing the Faculty of Theology, which was often downgraded or even suppressed as a result of the processes of secularization and autonomy from the Churches. Until the Second World War, the ideal of the Humboldtian University had the strongest influence, attracting many foreign students12 and exporting its model to the United States and then to the entire world13. 10. Before their abolition by the Revolution, France had 22 universities, but some Faculties only welcomed a few dozen students (30 law students in Angers, 18 medical students in Caen, 20 ‘artists’ in Douai, etc.). See L. LIARD, L’enseignement supérieur en France, 1789-1889, Paris, Hachette BNF, 2017. 11. Twenty-two German universities closed during this period, including Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt, Münster… There were 38 students in Duisburg, 43 in Erfurt. See J. MITTELSTRASS, Die unzeitgemäße Universität, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1994, quoted by A. RENAUT, Le modèle humboldtien, Centre International de Philosophie Politique Appliquée, 2006; http:// cippa.paris-sorbonne.fr/?page_id=1071 (accessed 29 September, 2021). 12. Such as Jean-Paul Sartre for philosophy, or Talcott Parsons for social sciences. 13. Like Harvard University, reorganized by the chemist Charles William Eliot in 1869, or the foundation of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1876, etc., which for the first time centered their teaching system on research and scientific creation.

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However, with the explosion of the industrial and economic sector, this last ‘Platonic’ and neo-humanist model was forced to evolve again, especially with the increase in the cost of scientific investigations, which had to rely more and more on private funds: research would thus be conditioned by reaction itself and would make the University lose its original ideal and its impartiality. Moreover, its inability to react to the rise of Nazism or Stalinism, or to other threats to humanity such as the economic crisis of the 1930s or poverty, highlighted its elitism, even its conservatism, and its isolation from world issues. This fact points to a cognitive blind spot of an institution unable to perceive and positively critique major historical events while apparently possessing all the intellectual tools to carry out accurate discernment. The Humboldtian University model would also show its inadequacy after the war in the face of massive democratic needs for access to knowledge, and its complete disconnection from an extremely expensive science (Big Science) that would henceforth develop its own ‘culture’, for better or for worse. Public funds for the University would steadily decrease, as state control grew stronger in order to force it to achieve economic and social policy objectives. All this would lead to another model, almost the opposite of the original intuition: Si, dans le modèle humboldtien, l’État a financé les universités pour les abriter du monde extérieur, considérant qu’il s’agissait là de la meilleure garantie pour créer un climat propice à la recherche et à l’innovation (un horizon de temps long, pas de conditionnalités aux financements, des professeurs jouissant de l’emploi à vie et d’une très large liberté académique), dans le nouveau modèle, l’objectif est de faire rentrer l’université dans le monde au nom d’un principe d’accountability. L’université étant financée par les citoyens, elle doit rendre des comptes et aussi prouver régulièrement son utilité sociale au travers de diverses évaluations14.

2. … to the East and vice versa In the Muslim territories, scientific institutions followed more or less the same development. There were of course, before Islam, academies in the East which spread Hellenism, the best known being those of Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa and Nisibis15. They were rather libraries or schools of 14. DE MEULEMEESTER, Quels modèles d’université (n. 7). The judgment is severe: universities are becoming like private companies where the terms ‘visibility’, ‘transparency’, ‘measurability’, and ‘efficiency’ are the key words, radically transforming the atmosphere of academic circles. The ‘college’ of the research community is being transformed into a mere ‘workplace’ where professors behave like senior civil servants regularly evaluated and aligned with the private sector. 15. There was higher education in Constantinople as early as the fourth century from Constantine onwards. The University of Constantinople or Pandidakterion (Πανδιδακτήριον)

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translation linked to these intellectual centers or around the Syriac monasteries16. Later, and mostly linked to the Syrian-Eastern Church, another theological school was founded in Baghdad in 830, almost at the same time as the Bayt al-Ḥikma, the House of Wisdom of Caliph al-Ma’mūn17. ‘Houses of Science’ (Dār al-‘ilm) multiplied in the Muslim East in the ninth to eleventh centuries and took up the torch of the spread of Hellenistic knowledge, but precisely to the extent that Shiite doctrines favored their development18. In general, they consisted of a library and a reading room. The most famous institution of this period was al-Azhar, founded in Cairo in 1005 by the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim, even though it had been teaching Ismaili law for some years: with him, al-Azhar became a real center promoting the development of a culture that was both religious and profane19. However, this teaching in accordance with Shiite doctrines was suppressed from 1171 onwards, when Saladin and the Ayyubids came to power and transformed this cultural center into an official Sunni madrasa. was founded in 425 by Theodosius II and is considered the first University in the world with a body of 31 professors (philosophy, medicine, arithmetic, etc.). 16. Greek philosophy appeared in Syria from the third century onwards, and Edessa (al-Ruhā / Urfa) became the most intense focus of Aristotelianism, mainly through the theological work of St. Ephrem (ca. 306-373). The school then moved to Nisibis at the end of the fifth century in the Sassanid Empire. On the schools in the Syriac Churches, see P. BETTIOLO, Scuole e ambienti intellettuali nelle Chiese di Siria (Schools and Intellectual Environment in the Syrian Churches), in C. D’ANCONA (ed.), Storia della filosofia nell’Islam medievale (History of Philosophy in Medieval Islam), Torino, Einaudi, 2005, vol. I, 48-100. Other schools, directed in part or entirely by Syrian-Eastern Christians, were founded, such as those of Balad to the north of Mosul or of Arbele (Erbil) further east, the best attested being those of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Gundeshapur, in the Sassanid Empire. 17. The Bayt al-Ḥikma of Baghdad has been greatly downsized by Dimitri Gutas: it was not a center of translation or an academy, but simply a palace library (that of the caliph Hārūn al-Rašīd) that fostered an intellectual ‘climate’. See D. GUTAS, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society, London – New York, Routledge, 1998, and C. MARTINI BONADEO, Le biblioteche arabe e i centri di cultura fra IX e X secolo (Arab Libraries and Cultural Centers between the 9th and 10th Centuries), in D’ANCONA (ed.), Storia della filosofia (n. 16), 261-281. 18. A Sunni Dār al-‘ilm is said to have been founded in 1010 in Fustāt (Cairo) very briefly, see D. SOURDEL, Dār al-‘ilm, in B. LEWIS et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam: New Edition, Leiden, Brill, vol. II, 1991, p. 127. 19. J. JOMIER, Al-Azhar, in LEWIS et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam (n. 18), vol. I, 1986, 813-821. In the Muslim empire there was also the Zaytūna (Tunis), perhaps as early as the eighth century, which would make it “the oldest centre for instruction in the Arab world” according to the historian Hassan Hosni Abdelwaheb, but the knowledge dispensed was solely religious and apparently unstructured (see K. CHATER, Zaytūna, in LEWIS et al. [eds.], Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. XI, 2002, 488-490). Or al-Kayrawān in the ninth century, also in Tunisia, which was one of the main cultural centers of Islam for Qur’anic exegesis and law (see M. TALBI, Al-Kayrawān, in LEWIS et al. [eds.], Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. IV, 1997, 824-832). Some also mention Cordoba in the late tenth century, around the figure of the bibliophile caliph al-Ḥakam II al-Mustanṣir bi-Allah (961-976).

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In Arabic, although ‘Ğāmi‘a’ (‘University’) also corresponds “in popular and semi-official usage [to] traditional institutions of higher religious education, officially it is restricted to the modern university, established on western models”20. For this reason, al-Azhar was not considered a University in 1958 under Nasser, at the beginning of the United Arab Republic. In fact, the first use of ‘Ğāmi‘a’ in this sense is found among some Egyptian intellectuals and reformers when they thought, from 1906 onwards, of founding a University under the model of Western universities: a Napoleonic-type institution coupled with ‘Kulliyyāt’, Faculties or technical teaching establishments, with a utilitarian intention similar to European policies. It is interesting to note a parallel nominalism with France where, until today, the Republic does not allow the Catholic University of Paris, which notably inherited the former Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne, to be called ‘University’, but simply ‘Institute’21. In the Muslim world, madrasas have always had the function of transmitting only religious knowledge. Though from the eighteenth century onwards, al-Azhar became, following the almost total disappearance of the other schools under the Ottomans, the main Islamic institution in the world, a refuge for the Arabic language and Muslim sciences, especially non-mystical ones, the teaching there was considered to be sclerotic and impervious to the changes of time by many. The shock of Bonaparte’s expedition (1798-1801) and the efforts of governments, such as that of Muhammad Ali Pasha, to modernize the country, left al-Azhar indifferent or hostile: it was said to have an irresistible force of inertia, a passive resistance for fear of being contaminated by European ideas22. As a result, University reforms were all political decisions outside the academic institution, through the gradual addition of modern subjects to the curriculum or the creation of separate institutes. In fact, the Azharist and secular studies curriculum are still absolutely separate.

20. C.K. ZURAYK, Djāmi’a, in LEWIS et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam (n. 18), vol. II, 1991, p. 423. 21. Lyon being further away from centralized French power, the Catholic University of Lyon is more easily presented publicly under this name. 22. Until the nineteenth century, ‘science’ for al-Azhar consisted solely of learning by heart a traditional repository weighed down by successive generations: “general culture was non-existent”. See JOMIER, Al-Azhar (n. 19), p. 817. In fact, technical and professional education began in Egypt with Muhammad Ali Pasha (d. 1849), with the aim of training an army and an administration on modern bases. In 1827, a medical school was founded, followed in 1906 the National University, then called the State University in 1925 (with the Faculties of Letters, Law, Medicine, and Sciences), and finally the University of Cairo since 1952. At the same time is also created the American University of Cairo in 1919.

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III. THE FRAGMENTATION

OF

KNOWLEDGE

Today, as the Islamologist Jacques Jomier said in 1960, it is appropriate to ask “what exactly al-Azhar’s real mission is with respect to the needs of the Muslim community of the twentieth century, and further whether the intellectual and moral instruction that it provides is adapted to these needs”. This is a cultural question about the raison d’être of a strictly religious academic institution. But conversely, “Azharis reproach their adversaries with forgetting the needs of the Muslim community”23. Yet it is precisely these needs, which we can assume are essentially ‘spiritual’, that are mentioned in the Document on Human Fraternity signed in Abu Dhabi: a view of faith concerning the world and the “other” to be considered henceforth as “brother”, values of peace and justice against individualism and materialism, criticism of a “desensitized” conscience, of the distance “from religious values”, of a “deterioration of ethics”, of “extremism”, and the desire to “re-establish wisdom”. Do we find here a new conflict between faith and reason, in which religions ally themselves against a generalized secularization in response to its postmodern aggressiveness? I do not think so: the Document is an invitation to go beyond this binary vision, but it is easy and common to fall back into polarization. In his dialogue with Jürgen Habermas, Joseph Ratzinger, quoting Kurt Hübner, also spoke of “historical blindness, which considers that [faith] no longer has anything to say to modern man because it would oppose his humanist idea of reason, of Aufklärung and of freedom”, and called for “a necessary form of correlation between reason and faith, reason and religion”, and even for a “polyphonous correlation”24 with world cultures. His language prefigures the “polyhedron” and the “multifaceted culture of encounter”25 of Pope Francis. On the academic level, however, it appears that everyone is dissatisfied: followers of religions complain that they are often sidelined in serious debates about the evolution of societies and the future of the world, still 23. JOMIER, Al-Azhar (n. 19), pp. 820-821. To this day, the reform of the curriculum of studies in the Muslim world is a delicate subject, regularly confronted by political authorities and different thinkers: see L. BASANESE, Controversies on Recent Reforms in Islam, in Islamochristiana 44 (2018) 227-236. 24. J. RATZINGER, Démocratie, droit et religion – Les fondements prépolitiques de l’État démocratique, in Esprit 306 (2004) 27-28 (my translation). 25. Pope FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World, 24 November, 2013, nos. 220 and 236; https://www.vatican. va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_ 20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#:~:text=Evangelii%20Gaudium%20%3A%20Apostolic %20Exhortation%20on,(24%20November%202013)%20%7C%20Francis&text=1.,sorrow %2C%20inner%20emptiness%20and%20loneliness.

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accused of dogmatism and pre-scientific prejudices, while academic reflection has become a cacophony because it has been fragmented for a long time, incapable of being a prophetic voice for our societies, accused of professorial dogmatism and obvious myopia. In German idealism and its academic implementation by the Humboldtian University, Philosophy, through its Faculty, should have been this superior and critical voice with respect to the other disciplinary branches, in a vision where the University was thought of as an ‘organic totality’, a coherence in front of the multiplicity of sciences: Universitas Scientiarum. Immanuel Kant was one of the first to defend the high cultural function of this institution, affirming the primacy of general culture (the philosophical view) over specializations, while denying the capacity of humans to achieve a systematic unity of knowledge because of human finitude26. Louis Liard, reformer of French education at the beginning of the twentieth century, also stressed the importance of higher education, serving to raise minds above detailed knowledge, and thus making them capable of that high dignity which is the faculty of judging by oneself and of producing personal ideas, without sinking into specialism or encyclopedism27. In fact, Habermas has long recognized the inadequacies of human reason, its shattering into fragmented rationalities, and the risk that technological developments may lead to tragedies, i.e., that they may ultimately prove to be clearly against reason; on this point, he would agree with Joseph Ratzinger28. To prevent technical and economic disciplines from becoming uncontrolled or abandoned to the arbitrariness of an individual or a group, leading to new barbarities and dictatorships, he always advocated for the University, the existence of a reflexive science, one that is capable of taking a step back from the scientific results achieved, and of asking questions about the social and political purposes or implications. 26. Immanuel KANT, The Contest of Faculties, in H. REISS (ed.), Kant: Political Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 176-190. 27. A. RENAUT, Les révolutions de l’Université: essai sur la modernisation de la culture, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1995. Louis Liard (1846-1917) was convinced that the defeat of the 1870 war had ‘intellectual’ causes, linked to the underdevelopment of a sleepy and sclerotic Sorbonne. It was he who in 1896 gave back to France the title of ‘University’, which had disappeared since 1793, although Faculties had been recreated by Napoleon I, in 1806, under the aegis of an ‘Imperial University’ (in reality the French Administration in charge of education): Medicine, Law, Letters, Sciences, Theology. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Faculties of Economics and Political Science were created from the Faculty of Law, and from the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculties of Pharmacy and Sports Science. After the May 1968 movement, the Edgar Faure law once again abolished the Faculties to create Teaching and Research Units (UER), which were then called Training and Research Units (UFR) in 1984. 28. See J. HABERMAS, Theory and Practice, trans. J. VIERTEL, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1973 (original German 1963).

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In order to offer all knowledge this look at itself and to remove it from the sole imperatives of utility and urgency, the contemporary University should have a special type of training, alongside the immediately professional schools (engineering, medicine, law, economics, etc.). Theology had lost its rank at the time of the French Revolution, and Philosophy can no longer be at the top of the University edifice following the dissipation of the metaphysical dream of encompassing all knowledge in one system. Which discipline or group of disciplines could embody this critical model of reflexivity, making it possible to manage the conflicts between Faculties, to orientate human beings and to avoid many pitfalls and obliviousness? For Habermas, this would be the ‘human sciences’. Unfortunately, these relatively recent sciences have already, in a short time, manifested a claim to ‘absolute knowledge’, revealing new faces of dogmatism. IV. EDUCATIONAL IMPASSES

AND THE

SEARCH FOR

A

WAY OUT

If the Universitas Scientiarum has been transformed more and more, in recent decades, into a private enterprise where it is a question of ‘producing knowledge’ but without unity or compass, of being competitive in the (academic) market in order to prove its immediate usefulness or profitability; if the Faculties no longer communicate with each other in view of an organic and formative knowledge but are simply juxtaposed in a chaotic and purely administrative way to limit costs or for advertising reasons; if finally several ‘sciences’ are excluded from the University for historical, ideological or financial reasons, one can wonder what is the raison d’être of this kind of institution which has become, as in the Middle Ages, a simple Universitas Studiorum, or similar to the Special Schools and other nineteenth-century professional training centers. Why, indeed, not abolish it again, insofar as science develops largely outside of it, that it presents itself as a duplicate of already existing places of culture, and that training has been decentralized for a long time, even delocalized and ‘online’? The theses of the philosopher Ivan Illich are generally known. According to him, the institutionalization of education (but also of medicine, etc.) has, moreover, alienated people and has become harmful to education itself (to health, etc.). For the institution, when it is not open and well-articulated in its internal structure, leads to exclusivism, tends to impose and spread a single form of thought, that is, a monism that recognizes only one model of scientificity. The French higher education of the Third Republic (18701940), which borrowed heavily from the positivism of Auguste Comte, shows how difficult it is to be innovative and to think differently from

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the academic canons, even to imagine or create other disciplines, such as human sciences, now widely recognized, but not everywhere29. Illich therefore pleads in favor of a clear distinction between school and state and a de-schooling of society, denouncing the illusory monopoly and conformism, in matters of knowledge, of academic institutions that mutilate human beings’ natural capacities to teach and learn in a diversified way. Instead, networks of cultural exchange should be created, within the framework of an ‘educational web’: “the right to teach any skill should come under the protection of freedom of speech”30. On the other hand, faced with the increase in information, total encyclopedic knowledge has simply become impossible today, and even professors and researchers rely heavily on networks and computer programs linked to new technologies to support and disseminate their teachings and theses, but also to make new discoveries, which are often rediscoveries or proposals for models and theories. This intellectual production is itself generally integrated and recycled in more or less accessible “data banks”31. How can we find our way in this scientific magma, this web of information, knowing that not all disciplines and skills are equally worthy of engagement because of the different paradigms of scientificity that structure them? Learning to build an ‘other’ world in an era where technoscience reigns, and not only pure science or high philosophy/theology, is certainly what everyone wants, and this general orientation could be the driving force of a new academic institution, the vision of a metamorphosis of the educational system. Moreover, it is not enough to be able to manipulate a multitude of tools and to have beautiful projects, it is also necessary to know what universe we want to inhabit, to consider well if these projects are part of a perspective that is both widely shared and respectful of 29. Auguste COMTE (1798-1857) refused, for example, to consider astronomy as a physical science distinct from mathematical determinism and geometry. See Traité philosophique d’astronomie populaire, Paris, Fayard, 1844, 1985. Even today there are still lively debates about whether Psychology is a branch of the Social Sciences, whether the Social Sciences depend on Philosophy, whether Missiology or Spirituality are Departments of Theology, etc. 30. I. ILLICH, Deschooling Society, New York, Harper & Row, 1972. Ivan Illich (19262002) was also a priest and former student of the Pontifical Gregorian University. The poet and philosopher Paul Valéry (1871-1945) was equally radical in declaring that “the diploma is the deadly enemy of culture […], a strange and detestable preparation for intellectual and civic life. […] The aim of education being no longer the development of the mind but the acquisition of the diploma, the required minimum becomes the goal of study. It is no longer a matter of learning Latin, Greek, or geometry. It is a matter of borrowing not of acquiring, of borrowing what is needed to get the baccalaureate”: P. VALÉRY, The Outlook of Intelligence, trans. D. FOLLIOT – J. MATHEWS, New York – Evanston, IL, Harper & Row, 1962, pp. 149-150. 31. See the free-culture movement as well as the debate on intellectual property, copyright and, more recently, copyleft or Open Source.

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disagreements, and if the University is able to make its contribution in this enterprise that exceeds it. Jürgen Mittelstrass speaks of a “Leonardian” universe to illustrate our current complex world – which may appear Kafkaesque – where Leonardo da Vinci, a polytechnician, engineer, architect, artist and scientist, is the symbol of this homo faber, a person who is the craftsman of a universe that he actively builds. For this, he pleads for a “Leonardian University” which would replace the Humboldtian ideal where it was only a matter of making the world intelligible and interpreting it, in the manner of Leibniz32. The Napoleonic academic vision of wanting to impose a single way of thinking on the whole world is, for its part, a claim that is now largely disqualified in a multicultural and multireligious world. Certainly the Document on Human Fraternity aims far, and the desire of Pope Francis, who shares with us his dream of another, more fraternal humanity, calling on academic circles to contribute to it by achieving a radical change of paradigm, does not consist of simple adaptations of programs, in the creation of new specialized formations, even interreligious ones, which would contribute to the further fragmentation of knowledge33. Rather, the future will call for transdisciplinary skills, as combinations of knowledge are needed today to confront problems that arise at the intersection of various disciplines. Faculties, institutes or programs of Global Studies are already flourishing on all continents, with the aim of better understanding the new challenges of the contemporary world in their entirety. In all these courses, religions are absent or considered as ‘subjects’ among others, approached from a sociological or peripheral point of view. The lessons of history, however, whether it be the conflictual history of Europe and the East, or that of the educational system, teach us how important it is to consider the human person in his complexity, that is to say, to apprehend him not only as homo economicus and politicus but also as homo religiosus and mythologicus, a man driven by beliefs and passions that he expresses even when he considers himself to be only faber and sapiens. The fact that Christianity and Islam, whose history is strongly marked by ideological competition and wars, have managed, through the mouths of two of their most important leaders and thanks to a unique Document, to reverse the deterministic belief in their age-old rivalry, is a sign of the freedom of human beings to be passionate together yet differently for a common cause. This ‘passionate’ capacity to propose 32. MITTELSTRASS, Die unzeitgemäße Universität, quoted by RENAUT, Le modèle humboldtien (n. 11). 33. For example, Alain Renaut lists more than 4,000 areas of specialization currently in use in German higher education.

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a different direction in the course of history should also be integrated into the global studies currently being developed. That is to say, its spirit could be invaluable for academic pursuits. It seems that the education the world needs today must indeed be Leonardian, “by making it possible for each human being to shape his or her own future”34. But in order not to “fall victim to cultural sclerosis”, it must also be global, in the sense of being complex, articulated by multiple approaches, because “there is a growing conviction that, together with specialized scientific advances, we are in need of greater interdisciplinary communication. Although reality is one, it can be approached from various angles and with different methodologies”. Pope Francis often repeats: “No one is saved alone; we can only be saved together”. It is, in fact, important to rediscover that spirit of freedom that will allow us to get out of dead ends, to think and imagine other ways to form the man and woman of tomorrow, in a benevolent and fraternal spirit, decidedly pro-active towards the multiple cultures and ways of thinking. For What happens when fraternity is not consciously cultivated, when there is a lack of political will to promote it through education in fraternity, through dialogue and through the recognition of the values of reciprocity and mutual enrichment? Liberty becomes nothing more than a condition for living as we will […]. This shallow understanding has little to do with the richness of a liberty directed above all to love.

It is this ‘fraternal’ quality applied to the academic world that I would now like to develop more specifically. V. CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEW ACADEMIC PARADIGM The meeting of Pope Francis and the Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb in Abu Dhabi was highly symbolic and shows that if there are conflicts of civilizations, symbioses of civilizations are also possible. Contrary to all expectations, and especially contrary to a linear – and therefore erroneous – vision of history that would affirm a permanent conflict between Islam and Christianity as an immutable law35, it has been shown to the world that we are able to escape confrontation and break ideological and socio-political shackles. I am not sure that we have realized this. No longer the confrontational resolution of problems, but the fraternal resolution. 34. Throughout this paragraph, quotes from Pope FRANCIS, Fratelli Tutti (n. 4). Emphasis added. 35. See S.P. HUNTINGTON, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1997.

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No longer behavioral rigidity, but adaptive flexibility, without falling into realpolitik or Machiavellianism. How to transcribe this intuition and this fraternal attitude to the level of the communication of ideas? 1. Taking the Best from the Past Immediately, considering the past and its conflicts, the ‘Faculty conflicts’ already mentioned and the need for arbitration between them, now generally absent, come to mind, as well as the school conflicts also managed by the vagaries of history, finances and influences36. In my opinion, to get out of this by creating other more encompassing and perhaps more economically powerful disciplines that want to make all the trends interact or even reconcile them, such as Global Studies, would only reproduce micro-universities (Universitas Scientiarum) on the current postHumboldtian model, certainly concerned with studying phenomena by multiple approaches, but with the same risk of disciplinary disjunction, i.e., without final unity and without purpose, and probably with less rigor. But the collective ‘globalizing’ intention, involving several methodologies and fields of study, is commendable. It indicates, in any case, a dissatisfaction with current practice, in which the disciplines are fragmented, isolated, separated from the systemic tissue of knowledge, and no longer responding to the needs of the time. The disciplines do not, in fact, communicate with each other or rarely do; the educational organism is frozen, automated, and divided within itself. The common search for knowledge was, however, concretely at work in the confraternities of the medieval University, Universitas Magistrorum et Scholarium. The pedagogy of seminars and common studies between teachers and students had been updated and developed in the Humboldtian model, underlining the value of companionship and intellectual fraternity. Today, the temptation to undifferentiated standardization, decided ‘from above’ and in an authoritarian manner, is strong: it is the sign of simplistic thinking and provokes just resistance, the quest for human-sized groupings and ‘oases of fraternity’, including intellectual ones, even if it is good to continue working on the concepts of equality and citizenship. Against the great calculating, algorithmic machine, reducing human life to its technical-economic dimension which ignores human affectivity – happiness and unhappiness – and which is driven by the obsessive and 36. In reality, in the ecclesiastical universities, the Faculty of Theology always plays this role of arbitration.

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demented search for maxima37, contemporary man reacts, even involuntarily, and rebalances this hubris by the quest for friendship, sharing and gratuity. It is indeed a question of balance: to hold together the need for equitable access to knowledge stemming from the capacity of each and everyone to think rationally and the reality of their diversities in culture and in the methodological assumptions with which they are familiar. In the past, this was reflected in confraternities, today in the syndicates, the particularisms, the claims of community identities and the school spirit. Knowing that teaching is relational by nature, this is a point that should be particularly considered, and which strongly questions both the democratization/ uniformization of teaching and its digital delocalization through online learning and research. On the other hand, if the goal is to recover intellectual passion, which hardly ignites on its own but rather with others and in a favorable climate, another lesson from the past that could certainly revive it concerns the formative model of research for unity or coherence of ideas, as it was conceived of in the Humboldtian University. The German intuition was that the University could not have as a direct vocation immediate professional learning, but only indirectly, through training in an attitude to research. Its aim was to provide a meta-professional education, that is, a culture. Once again, it seems that this style of education has been pushed to the background by the massification of education, but why should it be reserved only for an elite? Do we necessarily have to wait until the second or third cycle of higher education to venture into research, i.e., thinking, because the foundations are deemed insufficient? Initiating an ‘intellectual experience’ should, on the contrary, be considered a common good for all ages, cultivating curiosity, in a benevolent and open spirit towards the unknown, by abandoning the aggressive and binary posture of the warrior or ‘of conquest’, and by resolutely adopting “a culture of dialogue as the path, mutual cooperation as the code of conduct, reciprocal understanding as the method and standard”38, as early as elementary school.

37. E. MORIN, La fraternité – Pourquoi?, Arles, Actes Sud, 2019, p. 45. The author mentions as “places of depollution and detoxification of lives” teenage gangs, parties, “licit or clandestine loves”, communions of sports spectators, projections-identifications with the heroes of film, novels, theater… 38. Pope FRANCIS – Grand Imam AL-TAYYEB, Document on Human Fraternity (n. 3). And elsewhere: “Identity and dialogue are not enemies. Our own cultural identity is strengthened and enriched as a result of dialogue with those unlike ourselves. Nor is our authentic identity preserved by an impoverished isolation” (Pope FRANCIS, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, 2 February, 2020, no. 37).

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2. Intellectual Benevolence One of the positive aspects of globalization is that it brings to light not only our similarities as human beings, but also our cultural, religious or ideological differences. Moreover, these differences which delimit us, and which are part of our identities are precisely what make the encounter possible: the cultural/religious/ideological limit is the condition of intersubjectivity and confrontation, which can be lived in a benevolent, open and courageous way. We are discovering more and more, in the encounter, that we are all linked and interdependent, and at the same time diverse, without being so radically different that we necessarily want to exclude one another, as has happened so often in the past in the forms of excommunications and wars. We are also discovering that there is much that we do not understand. On the intellectual and educational level, it is an invitation to go beyond both simplistic thought, which reduces the unknown other to fragmentary knowledge that is essentially bookish, as well as holistic abstract thought, which seeks to assimilate ‘the different’ to something already known, but without any real reflection, and which is also reductionist thought. All cultures and civilizations are now permanently interconnected, and the challenge is to understand the other and to live together without being afraid of the difference. Theoretically, educational institutions should be the best equipped to deal with the diversity of reality and peoples, but the history of thought as well as daily experience shows that this is not the case. On the contrary, we are all wrong when we approach this reality unilaterally, and intellectuals err even more when they take their theories and other systems of ideas and methods of approach for the only true ones. The philosophers of the Frankfurt School insisted on this point: the enemy of reason is rationalization, that is to say, taking a mode of organization of knowledge, an ideology, for reality39. The evolution of science has, moreover, shown the relativity of the criteria that allow us to define what is scientific and what is not. In fact, as Edgar Morin says, true rationality – not rationalization – is deeply tolerant towards mysteries, and the new unity of science takes its meaning with the return of the expelled of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, integrating the uncertainties (the religion and the myth), the environment (the cosmos), the subject or subjectivity in academic considerations40. Conversely, religions, religious systems 39. M. HORKHEIMER – T.W. ADORNO, The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. G. SCHMID NOERR, trans. E. JEPHCOTT, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2002. Adorno says it lapidary: totality is un-truth. 40. E. MORIN, Introduction à la pensée complexe, Paris, Seuil, 2005, pp. 70 and 156. Two scientific revolutions of the twentieth century prepare the ‘reform of thought’. “The

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and other human sciences should consider in a benevolent way the contributions of other disciplines and approaches to reality so as not to remain in or in turn fall into myopia, excessive rationalization and unilateralism of creeds. In order to allow this learning of intellectual benevolence, a first step would be to recognize the presuppositions of our methodologies and therefore their limits, which would prevent sclerosis of thought, invite openness to otherness, and stimulate ‘curiosity’ to seek and find a higher coherence. In mathematical logic, this is Gödel’s theorem applied to systems of ideas according to which in a set of concepts, there exists at least one undecidable proposition, which opens a breach in any formalized system, indicates an impassable barrier to the completion of knowledge and creates a call to think differently through a meta-system41. A second step would imply moving away from learning through the standardized, mechanical and vertical repetition of information communicated from the teacher to the student. Practiced in an exclusive and systematic way, it is counterproductive and even traumatic. This way of doing things is not formative and is an obstacle to intellectual flexibility and therefore to benevolence. As for the teacher, transformed into a simple transmitting automaton, increasingly overwhelmed by a growing flow of data, now so easily accessible online, this unhumanistic practice is a degradation of his or her vocation, and strongly calls into question his or her credibility and even social utility. It is finally the opposite of intelligence for all, teachers and students. It is not such repetition that was intended by St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises nor in the Ratio Studiorum of the Roman College42. If there is to be repetition, it is to allow for a ‘rereading’, that is to say, an awareness, an understanding, not an first one (beginning of the 20th century) marks the end of the linear Laplacian universe and of the deterministic dogma with the discoveries of microphysics, Boltzmann’s thermodynamics and Schrödinger’s quantum physics: introduction of uncertainty and of the role of the observer in scientific knowledge (Bachelard, Popper, etc.), dialogical relation between order and disorder, etc. The second (from the 1960s onwards) emphasized the complexity of organized entities (nature, the cosmos, mankind, etc.) with the theory of systems (Von Bertalanffy) and then thanks to the development of cybernetics, information theory, and the concepts of self-organization and autonomy: opposed to the reductionist knowledge of explanation by the elemental, this second revolution favored the development of transdisciplinary disciplines and systemic sciences (ecology, earth sciences, cosmology)”. 41. The incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) was then taken up by the logician and philosopher Alfred Tarski (1901-1983): no system is able to explain itself totally, nor to prove itself, except in a meta-system. 42. The Ratio Studiorum (1599) of the Roman College, now the Pontifical Gregorian University, became The Characteristics of Jesuit Education (1986), supplemented by Ignatian Pedagogy – A Practical Approach (1993) and more recently Jesuit Schools: A Living Tradition in the 21st Century (2019).

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assimilation necessary only for the time of an ‘examination’, also traumatic. Rereading is a fundamental step in taking a step back, learning to think and initiating the intellectual experience of elaborating and proposing. Explaining by repeating or reformulating concepts taken from a defined system of thought is not enough to understand43. Using all the objective means of knowledge is even insufficient to understand a person as subject, and even less cultures or complex systems. This is why it is necessary to contextualize, globalize, take time, put in relation, which is the objective of the rereading that could also be called ‘reliance’. Finally, a third step towards an academic fraternal benevolence would be a retroactive or verification criterion, obliging the thinker to reflect on the way of reasoning and of acting, to promote the effective friendliness of the person who makes himself or herself available intellectually, both in the exposition of thought and in ordinary life. In an era of globalization but also of renewed closure of borders, the role of the thinker is to fluidify, to make possible a different and satisfactory understanding for all, a metacomprehension, not simply for his clan. Here the Kantian criteria of discernment can be recalled44. As for the Christian, being lovable is not an option: As an essential requirement of love, ‘every human being is bound to live agreeably with those around him’ (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 114, art. 2, ad 1) […] Loving kindness builds bonds, cultivates relationships, creates new networks of integration and knits a firm social fabric. In this way, it grows ever stronger, for without a sense of belonging we cannot sustain a commitment to others45.

A fortiori, for those who want to go into a teaching and research career, or for professors who are already working, intellectual flexibility and the ability to dialogue with students and with colleagues, that is, with the whole corporation or the ‘Corps of professors’, must today, in the current highly polarized context, be a discriminating criterion for admission or promotion. The world needs people who are both intelligent and personable46. 43. See the distinction between ‘explaining’ and ‘understanding’ of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) for whom the ‘sciences of the spirit’ are as objective as the sciences of nature, but have a different approach to their object. 44. I. KANT, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. First practical principle of the will: act as if the maxim of your action were to be set up by your will as a ‘universal law of nature’; second practical principle of the will: act in such a way that you treat the human being as well in your person as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, and never simply as a means. 45. Pope FRANCIS, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia on Love in the Family, 19 March, 2016, nos. 99-100; https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/ apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en. pdf. See also Fratelli Tutti (n. 4), nos. 222-224: “Recovering kindness”. 46. Pope FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate on the Call to Holiness in Today’s World, 19 March, 2018, no. 37: “A person’s perfection is measured not by the

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3. A Flexible Body for a New Uni-versitas Certainly the Church does not promote the model of an agnostic multiculturalism and does not support a supposedly ‘neutral’ intellectual reflection where all the studied or researched proposals would be equivalent and equally supportable47. The same could be said for all the religions that already have a proposal or a vision for humanity and its future, as well as for political philosophies and secular messianisms: all of them try to put forward their projects that they consider better and to make them credible in the eyes of all. As for sciences and technologies, their power is still extremely strong in our societies, but scientists have recognized, for about a century now, that they also have their dogmas, their models, their beliefs that they try to promote: the relativity of their ‘objectivity’, of their vision on the world, and their dependence on their methodology and on their own subjectivity are now admitted, even if many still have a ‘blind faith’ in them. We are therefore all “in the same boat”48, including the academic one, in a sea of confrontation of projects and ideas for the future of humanity. I think that our ‘one and multiple’ world needs today an original place that is different from both professional schools (training of technicians, lawyers, doctors, priests, imams, etc.), cultural centers (exhibition and perspective of philosophies, arts and religions of the world) or specialized institutes (general mainstream research, but also alternative). A place that would allow a global, serious and deep understanding, a critical and dialogical connection of all human disciplines, thanks to which intellectual curiosity and benevolence towards different methodologies would be cultivated. It would promote not an additive knowledge, impossible today, in the manner of Pico della Mirandola, but a flexible one, driven by a structure of truly intellectual fraternal thought, a new paradigm for the general reconstruction of knowledge, in the image of Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nova49. If this place should still bear the name of ‘Uni-versitas’, information or knowledge they possess, but by the depth of their charity. ‘Gnostics’ do not understand this, because they judge others based on their ability to understand the complexity of certain doctrines. […] In the end, by disembodying the mystery, they prefer ‘a God without Christ, a Christ without the Church, a Church without her people’”; https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_ esortazione-ap_20180319_gaudete-et-exsultate.html#:~:text=Gaudete%20et%20exsultate%3A %20Apostolic%20Exhortation,(19%20March%202018)%20%7C%20Francis&text=1., for%20which%20we%20were%20created. 47. See International Theological Commission, Religious Freedom for the Good of All – Theological Approaches to Contemporary Challenges, 2019, nos. 53 and 70; https:// www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20190426_libertareligiosa_en.html. 48. Pope FRANCIS, Fratelli Tutti (n. 4), nos. 30 and 32. 49. Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) proposed a general science that must establish the articulation between physics and life, order and disorder, the biological and the human.

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it should be in its etymological sense – ‘one’ as a unit forming a whole –, its regulating principle would be that of reliance and rereading, distancing itself from the Cartesian method that separated philosophy (the thinking subject, ego cogitans) from science (the extended thing, rex extensa)50, and its objective must aim at the common construction – and not only at the multidisciplinary analysis – of a world habitable for all. This new academic body would be transdisciplinary and transversal to the existing educational institutions: it would not suppress them but would fill a currently glaring gap, resulting from the bodily or ‘emotional’ intelligence of things being rendered deficient by a lack of fluid communication of the ideas, skills and talents in which our humanity abounds. Not only would this body be nourished by the different fields of knowledge of peoples and cultures, but it would link them by introducing play between reasons and passions, i.e., by establishing a permanent dialogue between the mind, which never ceases to create logical structures, and the real world or life. This idea of play and the ‘strategies’ that would be its driving force is much more than a metaphor in that it can be found at the heart of our understanding of nature. Here, it is a question of setting in motion great ensembles, scientific conceptions, biological determinisms, ideologies, religions, families, cultures, economic systems, civilizations, in order to grasp the complexity of the world and of our existences, and to contribute to their elaboration51. Thus, Eastern and indigenous societies that emphasize the importance of social ties, of gratuity, of everything that cannot be measured – joy, love, suffering, dignity, faith –, or of the special relationship that people have with nature, would balance a West that promotes order, that compartmentalizes and calculates everything, even time, and therefore has great 50. Edgar Morin speaks of a “paradigm of simplification” that mutilates knowledge and disfigures reality, at work above all from Descartes, who posited clear and distinct ideas as the principle of truth, whereas “everything is fuzzy and interconnected”. The consequence is the “logical delirium of coherence” which ceases to be confronted with experimental reality and, in the West, the illusion of infinite technological conquest in view of the mastery of reality. Against a disjunctive, reductive and abstract thought that separates and isolates, he defends a reform that is both epistemological (passage to a thought that distinguishes and unites) and reflexive (return to examination and self-criticism) to apprehend the complexity of the world. See E. MORIN, La voie pour l’avenir de l’humanité, Paris, Hachette, 2012, p. 240. 51. The linguist Noam Chomsky has also emphasized the value of inventiveness, creativity and the role of beliefs as basic anthropological phenomena. More broadly, by reintroducing the subject (and thus the body and the passions) into science, we move from a science of necessity, which has been at work since Newton, to a science of the game, which imposes new epistemological attitudes with respect to the classical questions of the universal and the particular, of the laws and the uncertainties of nature, etc., and allows us to speak of ‘strategies’ or flexibility with respect to the rules of the game.

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difficulty in understanding fundamental, global and passionate problems. Conversely, Western societies, with their strong humanist traditions, critical and self-critical thinking, democratic principles and human rights, would balance the East’s strongly traditional, wait-and-see, even tribal, cultures, which are concerned with international issues only peripherally or without problematizing them. This body for a new Uni-versitas, currently non-existent, would not only fill a gap in current formation but would also contribute to the peace, both personal and communal, that our divided and disoriented world so badly needs52. The Catholic proposal for a new super partes Global Educational Pact is in this perspective53. It should help to build bridges by fostering networking and placing the most vulnerable people and cultures at the center of its vision. More generally, the academic structure of this new body would have to be particularly careful not to fall back into the shortcomings of old and contemporary institutions and its members would have to be given a strong authority, so that they can be seen to be serving the intelligence of all. Puisqu’on continue de rêver, c’est que la création n’est pas achevée Roger Bastide

Pontifical Gregorian University Piazza della Pilotta, 4 IT-00187 Roma Italy [email protected]

Laurent BASANESE

52. “La Pacem in terris denuncia già quella grave frattura tra fede e impegno temporale, che pure la Gaudium et spes invita a superare, e ne addita la causa nella lacunosa formazione cristiana, particolarmente carente per quanto riguarda la dottrina sociale della Chiesa. Cinquant’anni dopo, la lacuna formativa permane o cresce in molte regioni di antica tradizione cristiana. Di qui l’urgenza di attuare un’ampia proposta educativa, radicalmente innovativa, che sappia rispondere al diffuso bisogno di pace, coniugandolo con l’annuncio del Vangelo. […] La scuola e l’università sono chiamate a ricostruire uno spirito di fraternità tra le persone e le Nazioni, ad integrare la dimensione individuale con la dimensione relazionale e comunitaria nella ricerca delle soluzioni ai problemi”: Card. P. PAROLIN, Educare alla pace – Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on the Relation of the Catholic Church with Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate, Roma, Pontifical Gregorian University, 2015. 53. See the Global Compact on Education launched by Pope Francis on 15 October, 2020.

INTERWORLDVIEW COMPETENCIES IN WORLDVIEW EDUCATION THE PATH TO UNLOCKING OUR OWN NARROW CONFESSIONAL WORLDVIEW

I. INTRODUCTION Studies have not yet suggested whether there are differences in educational impact in school systems that implement a policy of separation between religion and state versus those that adopt religious education as part of their curriculum. In fact, in many instances, it is not up to the school system to decide but it is for policy makers, religious figures, and politicians. Nevertheless, it is worth examining forms of spiritual learning, including worldview education, to increase the educational benefits to learners and meet their needs. The arguments behind the call to democratize and modernize religious education in Muslim countries may also be applicable in Western countries that offer a narrow orientation of religious and/or worldview education. The idea behind a worldview education is that every pupil deserves to develop their own worldview including their faith and religious beliefs. According to G. Bertram-Troost (in this volume, 113-134) this process is developmental and changes as young people interact with others and develop their own religious identity. When examined closely, citizenship education holds a set of competencies that we may agree are important for functioning in secular and democratic societies as well as religious ones. Nevertheless, in the context of religious education, a core question around the competencies that are most essential is a legitimate one. We argue that the sets of competencies needed in frameworks such as ethics and moral education, psychosocial competencies for well-being, socio-emotional learning, multiculturalism, or multi-worldviews are essentially similar. This is not a new idea as a 1996 UNESCO report highlighted the ‘learning to be’ as one of four pillars of education along with the learning to know, learning to do (competencies), and learning to live with others. In fact, interworldview competencies may offer a middle way between the two systems: the secular system that separates between religion and state and the religious education and worldview education models that exist in some countries and educational systems where pupils have the right to learn their religion

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within the public school system, sometimes referred to as worldview education. Interworldview involves the ability to look inward and outward and to be smart in intrapersonal as well as interpersonal skills; it is what van der Kooij and colleagues name as organized or personal worldviews1. The organized worldviews belong to the group belief systems while the personal worldviews belong to the individual. In other words, it is education of the whole person we seek so that human beings can achieve psychological well-being, health, and spiritual well-being2. Whether they reach that through organized religious education or a secular education is open to discussion and should be a personal decision. Developing interworldview competencies, as opposed to one worldview, is a key strategy in advancing multicultural and multireligious education. It is at the heart of building and sustaining a healthy and inclusive society where diversity, including religious, is acknowledged and respected. A competency-based education is used as a generic term to include a set of skills that all stakeholders will agree are important for life in the twentyfirst century. Whether we call those socio-emotional learning skills, multicultural, or interworldviews, the competencies are similar and essential, and they need to be named. For example, cognitive competencies such as problem solving and emotional ones such as self-regulation (self-awareness in the model below) are needed in any framework. The challenge we see is in pedagogy and curriculum and the ability to teach those skills and systematically integrate them into any set curriculum. Many other competencies may be associated with interworldviews, such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and forgiveness. However, regardless of the number of necessary competencies that young pupils and adult students in formal and informal education settings need to acquire, the social, political, religious, and cultural systems and structures that shape the context of young peoples’ lives often determine their willingness and ability to engage in a process of interworldview learning. There is a serious challenge of introducing these competencies and having institutional entry or access to address them in confessional worldview education systems.

1. J.C. VAN DER KOOIJ – D.J. DE RUYTER – S. MIEDEMA, Can We Teach Morality without Influencing the Worldview of Students?, in Journal of Religious Education 63 (2015) 79-93. 2. A. BOŻEK – P.F. NOWAK – M. BLUKACZ, The Relationship between Spirituality, HealthRelated Behavior, and Psychological Well-Being, in Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2020) 1-13; https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01997.

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II. INTERWORLDVIEW COMPETENCIES Is it possible that education and learning essential socio-emotional skills can offer a needed entry point for interworldview education?

Figure 1: https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/

Studies have suggested that socio-emotional skills are integral to education, human development, and to preparing the younger generation for a complex world. It is also positively linked to academic achievement3. An educational framework based on years of research by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), defines socioemotional learning (SEL) as the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel, and show empathy for others, establish, and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions4. 3. J.A. DURLAK – R.P. WEISSBER – A.B. DYMNICKI – R.D. TAYLOR – K. SCHELLINGER, The Impact of Enhancing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions, in Child Development 82 (2011) 405-432. 4. https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/.

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There is weight to the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of human development and learning when addressing interworldviews as part of a SEL framework that should also include education (SEEL), hence adapting the SEL to include education and more specifically worldview education (see adapted Figure 1 based on CASEL). In contexts where there is a challenge to introduce an interworldview perspective and/or gain access in a confessional worldview environment, SEEL may provide an institutional entry point, especially because it bypasses the controversies around the purpose of education. SEEL competencies may replace the call for moral education (character or value education) which was prominent in the 1980s. According to Thornberg and Oguz, a value is “an overarching concept that includes areas such as moral education, character education, ethics education, civic education, and citizenship education”5. And, as Lickona suggests, it is also a drive to help humans live together and in community with others6. For us, universal values are macro principles for the common good that guide a person or a group on how to expand beyond themselves to meet others who have other faiths and belief systems. Competencies that are part of SEEL are very specific for the individual and the collective (the interaction between the individual and the group). Still, value-based education has re-emerged as a prime focus in the curriculum in some school systems and higher education institutions, to develop “ethical reasoning” and decision making as part of the twenty-first-century educational outcomes7. In the Muslim context, calls among Islamic educators to bring values back into the classroom because of their universal relevance and Islamic grounding have intensified. For example, Yap contends that including Islam’s universal values as an alternative framework provides another avenue for exploring the more prominent moral and ethical aspects of educational decision-making8. In addition, Zeiger et al. posit that universal values are also seen to prevent and counter extremism9. Our argument 5. R. THORNBERG – E. OGUZ, Moral and Citizenship Educational Goals in Values Education: A Cross-Cultural Study of Swedish and Turkish Student Teachers’ Preferences, in Teaching and Teacher Education 55 (2016) 110-121. 6. T. LICKONA, The Return of Character Education, in Educational Leadership 51/3 (1993) 6-11. 7. O. ACAR – L. TURKEMEN – A. ROYCHOUDHURY, Student Difficulties in Socio-Scientific Argumentation and Decision-Making Research Findings: Crossing the Borders of Two Research Lines, in The International Journal of Science Education 32 (2010) 1191-1206. 8. S.F. YAP, Beliefs, Values, Ethics and Moral Reasoning in Socio‐Scientific Education, in Issues in Educational Research 24 (2014) 299‐319. 9. S. ZEIGER – A. ROGELIO – J. HERRERA (eds.), Enhancing Women’s Roles in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) (NATO Science for Peace and Security Series – E: Human and Societal Dynamics, 144), Amsterdam, IOS Press, 2019.

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is that values are critical for the human development and learning and hence should be part of any interworldview education, especially when 84 percent of the world’s population claims a specific religion/faith and/ or a spiritual belief system10. We further argue to explicitly weave valueworldview education in schooling as part of SEEL competencies expressed in Figure 1 above. III. TRANSFORMATION TO ACHIEVE AN INTERWORLDVIEW: EXAMPLES FROM MUSLIM CONTEXTS Changing one’s own worldview and adopting a new multi-worldview perspective is a painful, long, and nonlinear process. The process encompasses two pillars or skill sets for information processing and regulating emotional reactions. This section shares some lessons learned in the context of interfaith and interreligious dialogue and education in Muslim societies to illustrate the dynamics of introducing interworldview competencies in this context. For example, in a series of social media trainings for interreligious and intercultural dialogues conducted with Middle Eastern and African groups, the organizers introduced religious diversity and faith-based values of compassion, solidarity, justice, peace, etc. The participants were young fellows from religious and civil society organizations, who learned how to utilize religious texts, scriptures, symbols, rituals, and other religious identity components to spread the message of diversity and nonviolence in their societies. In such informal educational setting, the incorporation of interreligious worldview was not only a useful tool to effectively engage a wider audience in the Arab (Muslim and Christian) communities, but it was accepted and expected as a necessary narrative and vehicle to introduce an interworldview that is suitable to the context. In a workshop with secondary religious education teachers in Jordan on critical thinking and problem-solving skills, one teacher refused to respond when a dilemma on gender roles was introduced to his group. He immediately claimed (using one-worldview) “this dilemma is already resolved because our religion tells us exactly how males and females should or should not interact”. This teacher did not understand or agree that even within Islam there are many interpretations and understandings of holy scriptures and that his response not only did not allow any space for critical thinking, but he also silenced his colleagues who may disagree or 10. Pew Research Center, 2012; https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/12/18/ global-religious-landscape-exec/ (retrieved in November 2021).

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have a different nuanced response. The facilitator opened the question to the group, asking if they agree or not and sure enough, they did not agree with this approach. In this scenario, the group functioned as a support system to the group leaders. Even if the teacher did not change his ideas and beliefs, the group had gained legitimacy to question people who present such a one sided and unidimensional worldview and hence can gain new skills and competencies. Another example at a workshop in East Africa with principals and lead staff at religious Islamic schools, the environment of skepticism was immediately apparent when one principal talked about the need to discipline children instead of talking to them and having a dialogue and an openended conversation. For that principal, it was clear that he does not have enough information on learning theories and child development milestones. The facilitator had to absorb the reaction expressed by the principal without judgment. She responded by explaining to the group the critical aspects of learning and safety in the interaction with adults around the learner. Otherwise, the pupil will be occupied with his or her safety. The principal politely sat down and did not comment. On day five of the training course, he stood up and shared his thoughts about what she said on learning and the brain and that he is willing and ready to try new ways. In this scenario, a lot of modelling must occur as part of the capacity building process. For example, in this training the trainer started the morning every day of the course with a reflection circle, allowing those who are standing on the fence of worldviews to move closer to the other side. Obviously, there are many factors that determine the willingness and capacity of the person to cope with a change in worldviews, nevertheless those worldviews that are rooted in religious or confessional beliefs tend to be more difficult to shift. Some sociology of religion studies have already established the functions of faith in human lives, especially in situations of fear, helplessness, and uncertainty11. Imposing confessional worldviews on others has been the objective of many wars in human history. Thus, in any encounter between people from different faiths, there is a great risk and danger associated with any attempt or hint of possible change in one’s faith. In fact, fear of conversion has been one of the main obstacles used by those who opposed the interfaith encounter12. Despite 11. V. ALAN – M. TAMIR, Fear Not: Religion and Emotion Regulation in Coping with Existential Concerns, in K.E. VAIL III – C. ROUTLEDGE (eds.), The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism, Cambridge, MA, Elsevier Academic Press, 2020, 325338. 12. M. SHAFIQ – M. ABU-NIMER, Interfaith Dialogue: A Guide for Muslims, Herndon, VA, International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2011.

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this risk, in every religious tradition throughout history, there have been processes of reinterpretation and re-examination of texts and their meanings for followers and their relationships with outsiders. This shift in confessional worldview can result in a movement in both directions, a more inclusive and relativist or multiconfessional worldview or more exclusivist and absolutist perspectives in relation to different identities. Although different in their theological ideologies, followers and leaders of ISIS, right wing Buddhist para militia in Myanmar or Sri Lanka, Jewish settlers in Palestinian occupied territories, and extreme White Nationalists in the US reflect the exclusivist confessional political worldview. In the same faith, we find groups who have adopted a multi-worldview framework or orientation that moves them to accept the notion of religious pluralism which allows them to live with those who are different without feeling threatened. To move on the below scale from extreme exclusivist position, rejecting or denying those who are different from living in the same space, towards the position of the pluralist who endorses inclusivity and sharing the public space between various worldviews, is certainly a life journey. The movement is not linear from one side to the other, but people can experience movement towards either side depending on the issue, nature of the relationship with the other, and timing of the interaction they are dealing with13. Absolutist/Exclusivist

Inclusivist/Pluralist

In a study of youth in 15 Muslim societies, additional qualities that are mostly teachable were found to potentially support the personal transformation from one worldview to multi- and interworldviews. These were identified as open-mindedness, personal responsibility, and a collaborative collective14. In the study, the three transformative qualities were defined as: • Open-mindedness is a virtue or a value that involves skills such as the ability to think things through, to adapt and maneuver in solving problems with critical thinking skills, and to examine all sides and perspectives15. 13. M.J. BENNETT, Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, in R.M. PAIGE (ed.), Education for the Intercultural Experience, Yarmouth, ME, Intercultural Press, 1993, 21-71; M. ABU-NIMER, Conflict Resolution Training in the Middle East: Lessons to Be Learned, in International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice 3 (1998) 99-116. 14. I. NASSER – M. SAROUGHI – L. SHELBY, Advancing Education in Muslim Societies: Mapping the Terrain Study. 2019-2020 Report, Herndon, VA, International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2020. 15. R.T. PROYER – F. GANDER – T. WYSS – W. RUCH, The Relation of Character Strengths to Past, Present, and Future Life Satisfaction among German-Speaking Women, in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being 3 (2011) 370-384.

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• Responsibility refers to having agency and the capability to proactively manage and control functions and actions. It highlights humans’ potential to carry on a responsibility towards the self and others. • The collaborative collective builds on the sense of community and shared values that drive the understanding that it is not sufficient to rely on the immediate community alone, but also on a broader collective that encourages interdependence for the betterment of life for all. Creating this type of classroom community can build a collective.

In the same study, young Muslim youth had the opportunity to express their views on values, faith, and personal transformation, as well as reflect on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in Muslim contexts. According to Jolliffe and Farrington, individuals who can relativize their beliefs to consider others’ perspectives – and who are ready to change their cognitive schemata if justified – may also have the capacity to empathize and feel what other persons feel, and to understand other individuals’ feelings16. Competencies such as empathy, self-regulation, and meaning making are essential to the three qualities explored and provide evidence for the importance of religiosity as a value that correlates with open mindedness, responsibility, and a sense of a collective community17. It is clear from other studies that all the mentioned qualities promote an interworldview orientation and, as a result, an overall sense of psychosocial well-being18. A unique quality that was also explored in the mentioned study and proved to be predictive of other competencies is having a strong sense of belonging to the institution, which in turn may support the community and collective orientation and motivate people to change. In the study in Muslim societies, it was important for youth to feel included, accepted, cared for, and supported19. A strong sense of belonging is suggested to be strongly predicted by social support, as social support has been found to be positively correlated with coping mechanisms, physical and socio-emotional well-being. Teachers, instructors, and religious leaders can play important roles in bringing these skills to the teaching situation. They can empower pupils to be proud of the institution and have a high sense of belonging and support. 16. D. JOLLIFFE – D.P. FARRINGTON, Development and Validation of the Basic Empathy Scale, in The Journal of Adolescence 29 (2006) 589-611. 17. I. NASSER – M. SAROUGHI – L. SHELBY, Advancing Education in Muslim Societies: Mapping the Terrain, in Journal of Education in Muslim Societies 2/2 (2021) 90-102. 18. N. LIBERMAN – D.C. MOLDEN – L.C. IDSON – E.T. HIGGINS, Promotion and Prevention Focus on Alternative Hypotheses: Implications for Attributional Functions, in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80 (2001) 5-18. 19. C. GOODENOW – K.E. GRADY, The Relationship of School Belonging and Friends’ Values to Academic Motivation among Urban Adolescent Students, in The Journal of Experimental Education 62 (1993) 60-71.

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IV. SORTING FACTS FROM ILLUSIONS: OBSTACLES TO PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION Examples from interfaith and interethnic work show some of the dilemmas and difficulties around systematic and comprehensive transformation from the exclusive to the inclusive. The shift in perspective on one social issue or problem does not mean an immediate shift in the person’s perspectives on other issues. Every person is subject to having his/her own blind spots. For example, in many encounters between Israelis and Palestinians, participants who seem to be extremely committed and inclusive and hold a pluralist view on gender issues, find themselves on the exclusivist and absolutist side on the national or religious issues. Similar dynamics took place among Christians and Muslims in Mindanao when dealing with ownership of land versus gender relations. A Muslim seemed to be able to empathize and understand the pluralist gender relations exhibited by Christians from the north, however when the issue shifted to historical grievances over land, the same person found himself denying any rights or grievances of Christians who have lived in Mindanao for over a century. Additional examples from years of interfaith work suggest difficulties in reconciling the different truths and balancing emotions because of shocking discoveries. For a young Muslim participant in a social media encounter or training to discover that his parents have indoctrinated him to think that his sectarian Sunni identity is superior to the other Muslim sects (Shia, Ahmadi, Alawi, Druze, etc.) can stir strong feelings and defensiveness. The realization of sharing overwhelming similarities with such groups can cause the young man to doubt his core beliefs that his version of Islamic interpretation is not only different but better than others. In another example, when after three days of a dialogue encounter on ethnic conflicts in south Asia, a young participant realizes that other participants who shared with him the same political views and many other religious values have different sexual orientations. This realization triggered a strong emotional reaction. Managing the emotional stress produced by these new levels of awareness is crucial for maintaining and cementing the newly acquired multi-worldview. Meeting and engaging with the worldview of the other are the core steps that everyone needs to be prepared for from an early age. Early childhood education theories provide us with ample evidence that the formation of the self is primarily dependent on the interaction with the other starting with the family, the community, and the larger society20. 20. U. BRONFENBRENNER, Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the American Family, Milwaukee, WI, Family Service America, 1990.

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Thus, there is no doubt that delaying the encounter with others and different worldviews can be limiting to a child’s cognitive and socio-emotional development in the twenty-first century21. Gaining positive and constructive experiences when meeting people with other worldviews requires specific structural conditions and individual competencies. Otherwise, the encounter can produce the opposite outcome and cause the person to acquire negative perceptions and become more defensive of his/her own worldview. It may be the case that negative worldviews develop in the absence of these conditions, especially in violent conflict zones in which there is little space for positive encounters with the other. Similarly, continuous exposure to negative media images of certain groups can influence the worldview of a child and hinder his/her capacity to respect or accept this group, based on media and social media only. The following addresses some of the individual obstacles and difficulties in the change process from one- to multi-worldviews. One should note that although these are not necessarily system-wide obstacles, they can be affected by governmental policies and political dynamics of conflicts. Nevertheless, these are individual and personal difficulties that may stand in the way of transition from the one worldview to multiple ones such as in the examples above. 1. Ignorance of the Other’s Worldviews Ignorance constitutes the core obstacle that allows people to continue and hold their own categorical prejudice and negative perception against those who hold different views. For example, in the context of interfaith dialogue, participants discover that after a brief encounter with other faith groups that the others have their own truths, and they believe in them as strongly as they themselves do. Such a discovery shocks those who suffered from a strong case of deep denial of the other truths. Admitting to ourselves that we do not know everything and that there are many truths and many perspectives on every issue that we try to analyze or understand is a first step to begin our journey in the development of a pluralist multi-worldview. Overcoming the tendency to automatically defend our own national, gender, ethnic, and religious beliefs to name a few is the most difficult, yet necessary step in this process. 21. M. ABU-NIMER – I. NASSER, Linking Peacebuilding and Child Development: A Basic Framework, in J.F. LECHMAN – C. PANTER-BRICK – R. SALAH (eds.), Pathways to Peace: The Transformative Power of Children and Families, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2014, 323-338.

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2. Inability to Differentiate between Facts and Myths In the current reality with an overwhelming amount of information, images, and data thrown at each of us constantly with or without our permission, it may be difficult to distinguish between facts and myths. Therefore, once we have taken the step towards admitting our ignorance, the next crucial step is the building or strengthening of the ability to apply analytical tools to critically sort out the information. In a conflict situation there are many social, political, media, religious, economic, educational, or other agencies who have been mobilized by each side to continue to justify violence and support existing narratives. For example, the narrative ‘they hate us’ can be maintained by media images, selective stories in newspapers, and different images and techniques on social media outlets. The term ‘they’ has been deployed by many groups: Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jewish, Hindus, Americans, Chinese, French, Germans, etc. to single out a specific group of people. Regardless of the case, certain communities in each of these groups have used the argument that other groups ‘hate us’ and we need to defend ourselves from ‘them’. This categorical generalization is a powerful tool to mobilize and polarize sides in any given conflict. Once a young person is caught up in this spiral of ‘us versus them’ it becomes extremely challenging to shift this perception. It requires certain structural conditions and competencies to untangle one’s own cognitive pull out of this web. A necessary step in the development of a constructive multi-worldview is to learn competencies, such as those mentioned earlier including problem solving and the ability to verify information. This allows one to sort out the categorical negative generalizations and propaganda (national, religious, sexual orientation, gender, racial, etc.) utilized by one’s own group as well as other groups. 3. Inability to Manage and Balance Emotions Constructively coping with the process of changing one’s own worldview and gaining a wider perspective in evaluating every issue, especially in conflicts or contradictory matters facing us throughout our lives, requires certain levels of emotional and cognitive balance that develop through processes of self and emotional regulations22. Later, the child must also acquire emotional intelligence skills such as regulation and reading others’ reactions and empathy. Such competencies enhance people’s capacity to deal with the stress associated with changing perceptions and ways of 22. NASSER – SAROUGHI – SHELBY, Advancing Education in Muslim Societies (n. 17).

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thinking about race, ethnicity, gender, and religion – especially when such perceptions are associated with loyalties to close family or peers. The focus of the SEEL model on emotional awareness and regulation suggests the importance of developing these skills early in life. 4. Lacking a Critical Thinking Orientation While a unidimensional worldview thrives on the lack of information (ignorance), continuous belief in myths, and fear and shame of changing perspectives, the lack of critical examination of our own worldview is even more limiting to our personal and professional growth. Critical thinking, especially the art of asking meaningful questions, is the basic tool that allows youth to begin unlocking their confined unidimensional ethnic, national, or religious worldviews. Learning to ask questions about one’s own faith is painful and requires a great deal of courage, especially if you are a child or teenager who has been instructed by your parents to obey elders, teachers, or authority figures. Thus, questioning the teacher becomes a revolutionary act which requires the individual to calculate the cost to him/her and assess the price they are willing to pay for posing such questions. In some Quranic schools, Yeshiva, Buddhist, and Hindu temples, and Christian Sunday schools, children are taught for many years to memorize and believe without questioning or applying reasoning to understanding the text. Rote memorization without critical thinking creates fertile soil to produce unidimensional religious perspectives that reject and deny the existence of other truths or even the right for others to exist in the same world. Educational methodologies based on indoctrination have been identified as damaging and destructive to the individual and community’s capacities to tolerate differences or live peacefully with those who think differently23. The effect of such one-sided national, ethnic, and religious indoctrination can be seen among certain segments of the communities in intractable and deep-rooted conflict areas, such as Israel and Palestine, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Nigeria, or Northern Ireland. Raising a generation of youth on the assumption that everyone from the other side is an enemy and cannot be trusted prevents them from learning new information or considering alternative perspectives, which risks continuing circles of intolerance and violence. Critical thinking is a tool that can help lift the younger generation out of this on-going circle. 23. D. BURDMAN, Education, Indoctrination, and Incitement: Palestinian Children on Their Way to Martyrdom, in Terrorism and Political Violence 15 (2003) 96-123.

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1. An Infusion Approach There is something to be said regarding the benefits of worldview education versus citizenship education in promoting a more holistic approach to development and learning. In cases, like Belgium and the Netherlands, where there is a defined worldview education (as part of religious education), it may be beneficial to include some of the above competencies (including faith-based values from other religions) that are needed to strengthen multi- and interworldviews to reach more inclusive societies and communities. These may be infused in education encounters and schooling experiences and should be authentic and localized. Few of those examples may involve the following: 1. Education for empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation, and community mindedness among others should be infused in teacher education and professional development of novice and veteran teachers and educators, including those in worldview and religious education. This is a needed investment in teachers and their tool kits. 2. Model interworldview skills and discuss relevant situations (teachable moments). Show self and emotional regulation, empathy, and gratitude as well as other virtues and competencies. 3. Intentionally offer developmentally and culturally competent and religiously sensitive instruction and community-building activities. 4. Provide the pupils in religious education with the opportunities to interact and reach out beyond their school and community and vice versa. 5. Design programs to deepen understanding of faith and strengthen the sense of belonging of youth. The goal is to live with others (similar and different) in mutual respect and advocate for justice. 6. Focus on shared values and competencies such as empathy, hope, and forgiveness (and others relevant to context) and teach them across worldview education classes. 7. Build the capacity of youth to assume leadership. This can be done through partnerships with other organizations and different faith groups. 2. Investment in Dialogue When individuals practice their own interworldview and any of the above skills, they are often faced with contextual internal and external barriers that obstruct their or their group’s capacity to carry out multi-worldview

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actions. In a conflict dynamic setting, there are systematic, institutional, social, cultural, and structural arrangements which inherently support an exclusivist worldview. When individuals or groups attempt to change or engage with the different other, especially in conflict areas, they are often faced with shaming, social sanctions, or even excommunication. Statements such as: “How can you be so blind and not see their true nature?; Why can you not see the truth on this issue? How can you consider yourself true follower of our faith? You are not a true believer? Do you want to become a traitor?”. Constructively coping with these external contextual pressures is crucial for forming and sustaining a multi-worldview. Dialogue structures and spaces can be effective and nurturing in equipping participants with useful skills and competencies to handle pressures produced by the individuals themselves or by their affiliate groups. The inconsistency of individual or group narratives in dealing with different worldviews from their own are ‘blind spots’ that block the development of a multi-worldview orientation. Shedding light on these blind spots allows the individual to become more aware of his/her cognitive and emotional inconsistencies in dealing with those who hold different worldviews. Dialogue is an effective tool that helps the discovery of these blind spots and allows the person to self-reflect and develop constructive ways to manage relationships with different identity groups. The dialogue process is about building a container or a space for individuals and groups to critically examine their current and past perceptions and judgments of themselves and others. Dialogue also deals with misperceptions and negative assumptions that fuel negative attitudes and justify exclusion and discrimination. In-depth, dialogue can unveil the fear of the other and guarantee a safe space to delve into difficult and painful issues in the relationship with the other. Such a process can gradually help in confronting fears of trusting the other and believing in the possibilities to find mutual ground and overcome animosities that are necessary to build and sustain peaceful relations. Thus, dialogue skills are a necessary competency for youth in developing multi-worldview perspectives. The dialogical encounter is a platform that allows participants to look at themselves through the other. A dialogical encounter is contrary to what many people think or describe; it is not about meeting the other. It is about meeting oneself and confronting one’s own negative images and biases of the other. The other in this process functions as a mirror to the self. For a European Christian who held many Islamophobic views, meeting and dialogically engaging with a professional Muslim woman wearing headscarf in a safe and structured space allowed him/her to question assumptions and misperceptions. When this participant found himself asking in

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a group: “Why did I think this way before this meeting? What was I afraid of?”. The answers to these questions emerged from the person rather than the other who holds a different worldview. In the encounter, the other shows us what we think and feel. The other becomes the reflection of our own feelings and asks risky questions that we would not otherwise ask if we were not forced to meet the other in a trusting environment. Moreover, a dialogical encounter pushes the participant to meet his/her own fears about those whom he/she thinks are similar or different. A meeting in which the person uncovers feelings and attitudes that have been carried over time and had been preventing the acceptance of the other, or even sometimes justifying the use of violence, is painful. For example, in a dialogue setting, when two American participants from different racial groups meet in a dialogical encounter, they will have to confront each other’s questions, fears, and perceptions about causes of their interracial relations: “Why were blacks subject to slavery in American history? What are the implications of this racial slave system on our own current reality? What is the individual responsibility of each person in this relationship? What does it mean to be non-white in the current American context?”. A dialogical encounter contains certain dynamics that facilitate a painful process of self-discovery, which has been prohibited or blocked, intentionally or unintentionally, by social agencies. In deep-rooted and intractable conflict dynamics, the blocking of such a process is done intentionally by most socialization agencies in the conflict area. For example, the formal media outlets in Sri Lanka, Philippines, or Israel and Palestine are rewarded or sanctioned for portraying the enemy in certain ways. A society with all its agencies has conspired against its members to prohibit and prevent everyone, especially children, from dialogically meeting the other and continue to hold an exclusivist confessional or nationalistic worldview. Two Iraqi Kurdish and Arab or Shia and Sunni participants who met in an encounter are victims of being raised in isolated ethnic and religious enclaves for decades. These social, political, and educational structures deprived them from meeting each other in a safe space to deepen their understanding of each other from an early age. Thus, the skills of engaging in self-critical examination regarding the other (whether it be an enemy, a different religion, or culture) are often lacking in this context. In fact, it can be highly dangerous to publicly speak about the perspective of other faith groups or their truths, especially when there is an on-going conflict with such groups. Being accused of betrayal or treason is just one of the potential consequences that a daring person can face from his/her own community (or even family). For example, if an Azeri citizen speaks

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about the Armenian perspective on the Nagorno-Karabakh War and subsequent clashes, it can cost him/her his/her own career if not citizenship. There are conditions to establishing a dialogue that is meaningful and constructive. It must be intentional, structured, controlled, and has a sustainable framework and design. Dialogue is not debate or spontaneous discussion in a coffee shop or a talk show. The setting of a dialogue process requires careful selection of the participants, methodological construction to have a clear set of steps, roles, and expectations of outcomes. In a classroom setting, the dialogue process requires the educator to have facilitation skills that allows him/her to build and encourage trust and honesty among the pupils. Such dialogue skills will allow pupils to confront controversial and difficult issues that teachers often avoid or neglect in their daily interactions with pupils. In the process of a dialogue the person’s awareness and capacities to deal with differences can be transformed. In racial encounters in the USA, there are many testimonies and much empirical evidence of participants significantly shifting their view and learning to adopt a multiracial worldview24. Similarly, interfaith dialogue processes produce effects on participants who begin to practice their multifaith orientation when dealing with controversial faith issues. For example, in Pakistan, a Sunni participant in an educational training confessed that because of his experience in the intervention program, he altered his views on relationship with Shia and Christian minorities in his town. “We even accepted them to visit our mosque”, he declared25. 3. Exercising Empathy Empathy is defined as the ability to understand others’ emotion, the willingness to care, feel, and take the perspective of others and be responsive to their needs. Empathy has been mostly studied in the developmental psychology field; scholars such as Davis emphasize both cognitive and affective perspectives of empathy26. Many cognitive theorists argue 24. R. BROWN – M. HEWSTONE, An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Contact, in M.P. ZANNA (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 37, Cambridge, MA, Elsevier Academic Press, 2005, 255-343; M. SHERIF, Superordinate Goals in the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict, in The American Journal of Sociology 63 (1958) 349-356. 25. Evaluation of Quranic schools training in Pakistan. Salam Institute 2007. See www. salaminstitute.org. 26. M.H. DAVIS, Measuring Individual Differences in Empathy: Evidence for a Multidimensional Approach, in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44 (1983) 113-126; ID., Empathy: A Social Psychological Approach, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1994.

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that empathy is grounded in social understanding and is used interchangeably with compassion for others’ welfare and state of being. Empathy is found to be a predictor of forgiveness and other prosocial constructs27. Moral and philosophical theorists, however, suggest that empathy refers to an individual’s sympathetic response to others’ suffering and deliberate effort to understand, communicate, and act based on others’ perspectives28. This understanding and responsiveness leads to development of trust and intimacy among individuals. Empathy is an important value and skill that has positive association with social and communication skills and moral judgment29. Empathy is teachable and can be included in the curriculum. Research findings show that adolescents and university students who were taught empathy showed lower levels of hostility and aggression30. Empathy is a powerful communication tool that allows human beings to connect with each other on a deeper level despite their different worldviews. To exercise empathy the person does not need to accept or endorse the values and beliefs held by those who differ from him or her, but it is a way to assure those on the other side that their pain, concerns, fears, and needs are recognized and understood. This act often opens the gates for deeper human connection and allows those who hold grievances and a sense of victimhood to listen to other perspectives on the controversial issues. Without employing empathy, the speaker finds him/herself constantly occupied in defending his/her views and investing emotional and cognitive energy in persuading the audience that his or her claims need to be heard and recognized. After accepting the principle that there are possible multiple worldviews on any given matter, especially regarding conflict issues related to 27. I. NASSER – J. CHEEMA – M. SAROUGHI – A. ALWANI, Advancing Education in Muslim Societies: Mapping the Terrain Study. 2018-2019 Report, Herndon, VA, International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2019. 28. K. HORSTHEMKE, Epistemic Empathy, in Childrearing and Education 10 (2015) 61-72; D. ZAHAVI – S. OVERGAARD, Empathy without Isomorphism: A Phenomenological Account, in J. DECETY (ed.), Empathy: From Bench to Bedside, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2011; S. GAIR, Feeling Their Stories: Contemplating Empathy, Insider/Outsider Positionings, and Enriching Qualitative Research, in Qualitative Health Research 22 (2012) 134-143; M. HOJAT, Definitions and Conceptualization, in ID. (ed.), Empathy in Patient Care: Antecedents, Development, Measurement and Outcomes, New York, Springer, 2007, 3-15. 29. E. AHMETOGLU – I.H. ACAR, The Correlates of Turkish Preschool Preservice Teachers’ Social Competence, Empathy and Communication Skills, in European Journal of Contemporary Education 16 (2016) 188-197. 30. R. CASTILLO – J.M. SALGUERO – P. FERNÁNDEZ-BERROCAL – N. BALLUERKA, Effects of an Emotional Intelligence Intervention on Aggression and Empathy among Adolescents, in The Journal of Adolescence 36 (2013) 883-892.

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ethnicity, religion, race, gender, etc., it is important to learn to exercise empathy. Identities cannot be fully experienced or achieved without the individual’s capacity to empathize with the other. Empathy is the skill that allows the person to temporarily delve into the other’s perspective or worldview and establish a unique connection based on the message “I understand and feel what you are trying to say or what you are going through”. Exercising empathy from one religious perspective to another is challenging. In a religious worldview that is based on the premise that a person’s belief system is the absolute truth and no one else’s belief can be true, empathizing with members of other faith groups is highly unlikely and can even be perceived as a sin or betrayal of one’s own faith. For example, in a dialogical encounter when a Christian participant asked members of the group in their second day of the encounter to join him in praising the Lord Jesus, most of the secular, Muslim, Jewish, and even some other Christian members refused and even found it challenging to articulate their resistance to such an act. Although there are many other factors that prevent members in an encounter from participating in joint prayers, nevertheless the lack of empathy towards the Christian participant who requested a joint prayer was clear in the resistance and the emotional reactions among many in the group. VI. FINAL THOUGHTS Despite the potential and even empirically supported impact of the above skills and competencies in shifting the individual’s orientation from a one-worldview into a multi-worldview, we cannot ignore the power and influence of economic, political, and social structures that inherently block such changes. Dialogue, critical thinking, empathy, etc. alone could not end the apartheid system in South Africa, the occupation of Palestinian territories, or the discriminatory ‘separate but equal’ system in USA, etc. Nonviolent social and political movements for resistance and change are essential components in the formula for change. Dialogue, empathy, and the curriculum are not a substitute for social and political action. In fact, the core message of most of these nonviolent movements for change assumes multi-worldview to be an outcome of their desired change. Thus, youth engagement in these campaigns can be also a tool or venue for acquiring multi-worldview. In such settings, the encounter with the ‘other’ is structured and driven by the need to change policies and build new political arrangements that satisfy the identity needs of the diverse cultural, racial, religious, gender, and sexual orientation groups. This inclusive narrative

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is the manifestation of the multi-worldview that ought to be part of every education system. This is the only path we human beings have, to preserve our own unique identities, celebrate our diversity, and live peacefully in our biodiverse ecosystem. International Institute of Islamic Thought 500 Grove St #200 Herndon, VA 20170 USA [email protected] School of International Service 211 American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW 20016 Washington, DC USA [email protected]

Ilham NASSER

Mohammed ABU-NIMER

TOWARDS AN INTERRELIGIOUS AND INTERWORLDVIEW EDUCATION I. INTRODUCTION An increasing diversity characterizes present-day society, and consequently, interworldview education is a topic that is worth exploration. There seems to be a growing consensus among scholars that pupils nowadays, both in primary and secondary education, are to be educated in methods of interworldview dialogue. I first describe the goal of such an interworldview education as well as the interworldview competencies that young people need. I further depict how these competencies contribute to the formation of a dialogical identity and to a more peaceful society. I pay special attention to interreligious education as a particular case of the interworldview education. Finally, I present my interreligious theology, based upon interreligious dialogue and inspired by Martin Mordechai Buber and Emmanuel Levinas. My working hypothesis is that educators prepare pupils to become responsible dialogical persons. Education is about creating relationships, more than about the transmission of objective knowledge, although that is important too. Education primarily aims at the creation of a dialogical being through interaction with, intensive listening to and confirmation of others. It takes seriously the fact that human existence is coexistence. In interworldview education, one bears in mind that we are all interconnected, in the words of the English poet John Donne: “no man is an island”. I will not formulate here new perspectives on intercultural and interreligious dialogue and education. I rather repeat and summarize what I wrote on the subject, in the hope that a compact survey of my dialogical thinking will be helpful for the further exploration of interworldview education1. 1. See E. MEIR, Jij zeggen met Martin Buber: Dialogische opmerkingen bij Bubers ‘Ik en jij’ (Saying You with Martin Buber: Dialogical Remarks to Buber’s ‘I and You’), Amsterdam, Amphora Books, 2006; ID., Levinas’s Jewish Thought between Jerusalem and Athens, Jerusalem, Magnes, 2008; ID., Identity Dialogically Constructed, Nordhausen, Traugott Bautz, 2011; ID., Differenz und Dialog, Münster, Waxmann, 2011; ID. – A. EVENCHEN, Between Heschel and Buber: A Comparative Study, Boston, MA, Academic Studies Press, 2012; E. MEIR, Dialogical Thought and Identity: Trans-Different Religiosity in Present Day Societies, Berlin, De Gruyter; Jerusalem, Magnes, 2013; ID., Interreligious Theology: Its Value and Mooring in Modern Jewish Philosophy, Berlin, De Gruyter; Jerusalem, Magnes, 2015; ID., Becoming Interreligious: Towards a Dialogical Theology from

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II. THE GOAL OF INTERWORLDVIEW LEARNING Globalization and migration changed our world. More than ever, we are in touch with cultural and religious others. Interworldview learning involves the cultivation of interconnectedness and development of a relational identity. Its goal is to give young people a sense of belonging. The word ‘belonging’, however, is problematic, since it relates to two different realms: it indicates pertaining to a specific group, and also denotes relatedness to universal humankind. The relation between belonging to a particular community and to the broader circle of humankind may be conflicting or harmonious. Accordingly, the Janus-face of ‘belonging’ is noticeable in exclusivist, self-isolating groups that fear and discriminate others, as well as in groups that reach out to the other, while preserving the own. The aim of intercultural learning consists in cultivating a belonging that bolsters one’s own and, at the same time, reaches out to the other. We are all specific and belong to all. Dissimilation, incommensurable particularity as well as sharing and bridging are the conditions for sound relationships. I use the term ‘trans-difference’ in order to designate differences and communication. In sound intercultural encounters, ‘we’ is no longer opposed to ‘they’; one strives to bring about a new inclusive ‘we’. In interworldview learning, pupils learn how to say ‘and’. One’s own belonging is preserved and promoted, and communication with the other is practiced. III. INTERWORLDVIEW COMPETENCIES TO DEVELOP In an interworldview education that puts ‘trans-difference’ in its center, a number of competencies will have to be developed. 1) A first competency to acquire consists in extending hospitality. One who is merely assertive and competitive, self-realizing and self-affirming remains closed to the other. The hospitable human being, in contrast, opens his or her home to receive the other, who disturbs one’s natural existence and invites one to come to a higher, more sublime order. The other challenges an exaggerated individualism and renders social indifference ethically impossible. In dialogue and orientation of the self to the other, in appreciation of different lifestyles, one goes beyond sameness and otherness, a Jewish Vantage Point, Münster – New York, Waxmann, 2017; ID., Old-New Jewish Humanism, Tel Aviv, Idra, 2018; ID., Faith in the Plural, Tel Aviv, Idra, 2019; ID., The Marvel of Relatedness, Tel Aviv, Idra, 2021.

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beyond radical dissimilation and radical assimilation. Through others, a person becomes a unique individual. In this case, the fear for the other replaces the fear of the other. Concomitantly, the other may come home with another human being. The same and the other belong together in ‘trans-difference’. 2) A ‘trans-different’ education asks further for a careful listening to the narrative of others. Narratives may be so different that at first sight no communication at all seems possible. But since we live in one world, the other’s narrative may become relevant for us, so that we leave a selfisolating position and discover the traces of the other in our selves. 3) Learning different worldviews and communication further implies learning how to translate. In the art of translation, diverse worlds are brought together. It is an eminently dialogical act, an act of peace. Each conversation in the classroom is communication between worlds. ‘Translating’ one’s own world in terms of the other and the other’s world in one’s own terms creates intercultural bridges. Through ‘translating’ one reaches out to the world of others. This is not only a possibility, it is a duty because of the value of coexistence. A good translation avoids radical assimilation without links to the own as well as radical dissimilation without bridges that allow for contact. In translation uniqueness and bridging belong together. This implies the readiness to communicate the own as well as the willingness to cross borders and enter into contact with an otherness that cannot be neutralized in sameness. 4) Acknowledging the other is more important than knowledge of the other. In intercultural education, one is required to value, support and assist the other, before epistemology. Recognition is more valuable than cognition. In interpreting texts and the world, not content, but context comes first. 5) Availability for the other or pure, agendaless presence is another competency to develop in intercultural meeting and education. The realization of such a presence without expectations or without expecting mutuality takes place in the classroom, not as a mere preparation for future life, but as a value to be lived here and now. 6) Finally, overcoming bias is part of an interworldview education. In the educational process, one may diminish prejudices, generalizations and stereotypes. All bias will never be completely blotted out. The question is how to achieve less bias. This is not about intention, as in the case that one says after having hurt someone: “I did not mean it”. Fighting bias becomes possible in a self-retreat that gives space to the other and confirms her in her existence.

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IV. CONTRIBUTION TO IDENTITY FORMATION AND WELL-BEING Education and the acquirement of intercultural competencies lead to the formation of a relational identity. One’s ‘self-transcendence’ is expressed in the openness to and dialogue with others. Even more: one’s uniqueness stems from establishing ties and making others real and special. In relation with the other, one makes the other unique and becomes unique for her. This process results in what I call ‘self-difference’. In the exodus from the self to the other, language and time become alive. Language is corrupted in populism, propaganda, rhetoric and sophistry. It is sterile in a self-satisfied and self-centered being. In the interhuman relation, it is resuscitated and blossoms. Time in the most elevated sense is the result of social interaction. In coexistence, language and time receive their highest meaning. Education is, therefore, about creating bonds. It implies the unlearning of dwarfing and shaming others. An open or dialogical identity is cultivated by leaving behind seclusion, high fences and antagonism and by making room for reconciliation, cooperation and love. The creation of bonds is beautifully described by the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. In his view, all are interconnected with all2. Thich Nhat Hanh coined the term ‘inter-being’ in order to free human beings from their feeling of isolation. We inter-are with everyone and everything3. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s transformative meditations, the boundaries between the I and the others become fluid and blurred. One does not necessarily have to adopt Thay’s unitive, non-dual view and his discourse on “one-ness”4 in order to live the loftiness of relatedness, interdependence, cooperation and reciprocity, which is the meaning of all meanings. V. INTERRELIGIOUS EDUCATION Intercultural education implies attentiveness to otherness. In religious education too, the relation with others is focal. Religions may become isolated and closed. They also may relate to others. In ‘trans-difference’ one listens to what religious others have to say about the ineffable Reality that provokes different reactions. Religion is more and more pluralized 2. THICH NHAT HANH, The Miracle of Mindfulness: The Classic Guide, London, Rider, 2008, p. 42. 3. THICH NHAT HANH, The Art of Living, London, Rider, 2017, p. 13. 4. THICH NHAT HANH, The Miracle of Mindfulness (n. 2), p. 42.

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in our global age. We have become increasingly conscious that there is a multisidedness to the Higher Reality. In interreligious education, different perspectives are present and valued. In ‘trans-difference’ one takes into account both the difference and the commonality, the concrete particular and the interaction. In this manner, one avoids assimilation that is blind to the particular and dissimilation that becomes authoritarian and reduces the human being to one’s ancestry. In ‘trans-difference’, one recognizes the particular and rises above it. A religious narrative that defines one’s own identity on the negative background of other identities becomes pathologic. It is successful when truth is constructed in dialogue with others. This does not have to lead to a confusion or fusion of collective identities. One may remain with one’s own narrative, one’s own intimate story, but accept at the same time that other narratives are possible, real and desirable. One does not have to leave one’s peculiarity when in contact with other religious accounts. Concomitantly, openness to other religious experiences makes one’s own narrative somehow relative. In relating to religious others, one contributes to the consciousness that multiperspectivism is necessary and that one’s own story is only one, although indispensable color in the multicolored garment of Joseph. Preconceived ideas about other religions lead to tunnel thinking in which one’s view becomes narrowed and deformed. Interreligious education, in contrast, leads to spiritual enrichment. Jews, for instance, may learn from Buddhists about inner peace, which is not less important than outer peace. Buddhists, in turn, may learn from peace activities of Jews that bringing peace is as important as being peace. On another level, a patriarchal conception of the Deity in monotheist religions may be challenged in contact with Hinduism, which has no problem at all in imagining the Divine as feminine. From Hindus one may further learn that Brahman is equally and identically present in all, and that a possessive attitude, hatred, and greed are finally ‘ignorance’. In recognizing the existence of other religious paths, one does not have to neglect one’s own religious specificity. Whereas confessional education elucidates a specific religious praxis, interreligious education opens the horizons to religious others. In contact with religious others, we may enrich our own spiritual life and look at our own tradition from a different angle. Dialogical Praxis In the Hamburg educational system, one teaches in the classroom ‘religion for all’. This is specific for the religious education in Hamburg and

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serves as a pilot for other regions in Germany. This is the broader context in which I worked from 2009 until 2017, when I served as the Levinas guest professor for Jewish Dialogue Studies and Interreligious Theology at the Academy of World Religions, University of Hamburg. In this excellence center, I had the occasion to work out my interreligious theology. From the beginning, I told Prof. Wolfram Weisse, Director of the Academy, that I do not want to teach alone, since one cannot hammer out a dialogical theology alone. I asked to teach together with specialists of other religions. This co-teaching allowed students to witness and participate in a living interreligious dialogue, which is the precondition for the construction of any interreligious theory. Also in Israel, where I live, interreligious encounters are of crucial importance. Jews and Arabs do not have to wait to pursue peace until the political leadership decides to make efforts to solve the conflict and achieve peace. Efforts for establishing peace grow mainly from below, from people who take interculturality and interreligiosity seriously. What is needed are people who are ready to meet each other and who engage in building and maintaining relations between the communities. Not enough has been done to use religious energy in a positive way in order to counter religious fanaticism and divisiveness. In the interreligious encounter, communication with the heart is demanded. This requires positive thinking and a vast amount of patience. Without interreligious encounters, on the academic level and in the field, dialogical or interreligious theology is impossible. Interreligious dialogue on all levels may replace frustration and archaic rage by mutual care and sympathy. VI. INTERRELIGIOUS THEOLOGY Dialogical theology that is based on interreligious dialogue reflects on the concrete conditions for dialogue between religious others who learn, appreciate and criticize each other. It has dialogue as its theme and method and strives to build a dialogical society. Rather than operating with fixed contents, dialogical theology is process-oriented, open and contextual. Truth is not absolute: it is understood as resulting from the dialogue between religious actors. Dialogical theology deals with cultural and religious diversity and reevaluates the conjunction ‘and’. It works inductively within contexts that are also investigated in cultural studies. It takes lived religiosity in a particular context as its basis and wants to critically approach and influence this praxis. Interreligious interaction eventually leads to a rereading

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and reimagining of traditions in view of social cohesion and peaceful societies. Pluralized theology grows from below, from concrete situations in which there are numerous kinds of religious belonging: one may belong more or less, and there are partial, double and multiple belongings. This new emerging theology does not see itself as unrelated to circumstances and other theologies. It functions in well-defined intra- and interreligious contexts, in a web of social relations, in which positions are relative to each other. It promotes self-criticism, and stimulates creative interaction with others. The construction of an interreligious theology as a non-violent theology of liberation is only possible on the basis of interreligious dialogue. It is a freeing vision with implications in the social, economic and political field. Interreligious or dialogical theology goes against parochialism, bigotry and self-gratification. It aims at the birth of a dialogical human being through recognition and appreciation of the religious other. It is basically an other-centered theology, in which one shapes oneself in communication with the other. In this theology differences are not removed in an all-encompassing global worldview. Specificity is preserved and interconnectedness strived at. At the same time, it is unavoidable and even desirable that changes will take place in the living contact with religious others. Parts of other worldviews may become relevant for the own worldview. In Western Europe, religions are more and more relegated to the private sphere. In the Near East, however, religions largely shape the collective identity. In Israel and Palestine, we need an approach to religions that is relevant to social and political life. Religious fanaticism centered around a holy war for the al-Aqsa mosque or around a God given territory may be countered by a growing consciousness of the interrelatedness of religions, in view of cohabitation. Instead of making religions absolute or downgrading other religions to obsolete customs known to insiders alone, religiosity could again play a role in society as the promoter of equality and human rights. A dialogical, process-oriented theology that is grounded in the dialogical praxis and that accepts religious plurality as a fact and as desirable, may once again serve the primary goal of religion: to improve society and inspire people to promote the construction of a more humane society. A dialogical theology promotes the interrelatedness of religions, in which encounter and permanent learning are central. I argue that learning from religious others is not only possible. It is necessary, in order to acknowledge the diversity of approaches towards what is experienced as the ultimate reality. Not being in touch with other approaches to what ultimately matters involves the risk of remaining in a closed identity,

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without contact with those, whose approach to ultimate meaning could be relevant for one’s own spiritual life. Attention to religious others, on the contrary, creates an open identity that has otherness in itself. As noted, I use the word ‘trans-difference’ in order to keep together one’s belonging to a particular group as well as one’s belonging to the larger world. Also in the religious domain, ‘trans-difference’ avoids two extremes: the absorbing of one’s particularity in a homogeneous totality, and being in the world without situatedness. It further avoids relativism and creates a new, non-exclusive ‘we’, that is not a mere conglomerate of various collective egos, but the product of positive interaction between people of different cultures and religions. ‘Trans-difference’ is, therefore, the possibility of making connections and contact with others, of communicating and bridging, not notwithstanding differences, but thanks to them. Inspiration My own interreligious theology is greatly inspired by Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas. In his educational thoughts, Buber did not want to prepare pupils for future life, he wanted them to live dialogically, now5. Education consisted in being present and making present. In his I and Thou, the meeting between human beings brings the Divine in perspective. The Divine, who can never be possessed as an ‘it’, is always present. In being present for each other, human beings become conscious of the presence of the eternal Thou6. I share Buber’s skepticism of an ecstatic relation with God that does not entail association with human beings. One’s relation with God is lived in relationship with other human beings. In the ‘between’ of relating human beings, the Divine becomes ‘realized’7. It is Buber’s central educational insight that religiosity as one’s relation with God is impossible outside the relationship with other human beings. Moreover, God is encountered in every act of the human being. Time and space are sanctified through the intersubjective meeting. In Buber’s believing humanism, the dialogue with God flourishes within the inter-human dialogue. Reminiscent of a biblical way of expression, he writes: “In the beginning is relation”8. According to Buber, the life of the spirit “is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood 5. For Buber’s dialogical thinking as relevant for the learn process, see K.P. KRAMER, Learning through Dialogue: The Relevance of Martin Buber’s Classroom, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, pp. 13-21. 6. M. BUBER, I and Thou, ed. W. KAUFMANN, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970, p. 123. 7. Ibid., p. 163. 8. Ibid., p. 69.

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that circulates in you, but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You”9. Buber’s dialogical view is of crucial importance for any reflection on interreligious meetings. It implies the development of religious attitudes and insights that are relevant for an interreligious pedagogy: a) In interreligious dialogue, presence comes before knowledge and experience. One does not have to ‘know’ or ‘experience’ the other. What counts is the presence of the I-you sphere, before the content of the I-it sphere10. The context of the meeting precedes the objective content of those, who meet. Sometimes I am not present, but the other makes me present. At other times, the other is less present, but I make her present. Presence of people to each other brings the always present Thou into perspective11. b) For Buber, religiosity is about relatedness. Religion may lead away from God, but it may also lead to God. Buber’s critical thought on religion as relative in comparison with religiosity, permits the dialogical theologian to be critical towards those forms of religion that are not linked to their living source. Religions frequently desire to “have God continually”12. They want God as an object, an ‘it’, instead of living the rhythm of life in “the alternation of actuality and latency”13. c) In Buber’s dialogical thinking, religious others meet. By extension, religious collectives are also required to relate to each other. In this manner, Buber offers a model of cooperation and peace rather than a logic of opposition and war. The aim of interreligious encounters is the formation of a dialogical society. Levinas is the second philosopher who inspires me in the construction of an interreligious theology. It is well known that he describes the approach of the ‘face’ as ethical14. The face is not an object of perception; it leads ‘beyond’ and commands: ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Confronted with the face, one is obliged to respond. Hence, there is a ‘height’ in the face. Unlike Buber’s symmetry in relationship, Levinas deems that asymmetry characterizes the intersubjective relationship. In the ethical relationship, one is in contact with Infinity, which cannot be contained in the finite. The metaphysical Desire brings the human being into an infinite movement towards the other. 9. Ibid., p. 89. 10. Ibid., p. 63. 11. Ibid., p. 57. 12. Ibid., p. 161. 13. Ibid., p. 162. 14. E. LEVINAS, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, ed. R. COHEN, Pittsburgh, PA, Duquesne, 1985, chapter 5.

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Of particular importance is Levinas’ remarkable view on the relationship between teacher and pupil. In continuity with the Jewish tradition, he deems that to have a student is to have children. He describes the relationship between teacher and pupil as the relationship between a parent and his or her child. If you teach, it is as if you beget children. The teacher takes responsibility upon herself for what happens. She knows that to be ‘me’ signifies bearing others in a universal responsibility. Education in Levinas’s perspective implies, therefore, bearing a huge responsibility and developing a sense of responsibility in young people, so that alienation and isolation are overcome. It is about a redeeming, messianic relationship15. The I is ‘the one-for-the-other’ in ‘non-indifference’16. Such a view on education has consequences for the interreligious encounters and pedagogy: a) Interreligious dialogue requires foremost an ethical mindset. ‘Facing’ the religious other is first of all to be confronted with her ‘face’ that expels me from my own totality. Like Buber, Levinas deems that knowing, comparing, experiencing and situating are secondary. b) Levinas defines religion as “the bond that is established between the same and the other without constituting a totality”17. With such a definition it becomes possible to criticize religions that neglect intersubjective relationships. c) According to Levinas, the aim of interreligious dialogue is the creation of nearness. Nearness is the request of the neighbor who is “the first one on the scene” and who “orders me before being recognized”18. The community with the neighbor is for Levinas the obligation to him. In this sense, he writes: “The other is in me and in the midst of my very identification”19. The command to love the neighbor is the command to bring alterity in the I by proximity to the other. d) Levinas defines ‘eschatology’ as staying under the judgment of the other20. Eschatology is, therefore, not a future that guarantees the victory of one religion. It is rather the rupture of one’s totality by the ‘infinity’ of the ethical demand that characterizes the face of the other. This again confirms that intercultural and interreligious dialogues take place under the scepter of ethics. 15. H. BEN-PAZI, Emmanuel Levinas – Educational Contract: Responsibility, Hope and Alliance [Hebrew], Bene Baraq – ha-Kibbuts ha-Me’uhad, Makhon Mofet, 2016, pp. 97-118. 16. E. LEVINAS, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. A. LINGIS, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1991, p. 145. 17. E. LEVINAS, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. LINGIS, Pittsburgh, PA, Duquesne, 1969, p. 40. 18. LEVINAS, Otherwise Than Being (n. 16), p. 87. 19. Ibid., p. 125. 20. LEVINAS, Totality and Infinity (n. 17), pp. 22-24.

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e) Levinas’ category of ‘testimony’ (in Hebrew ‘edut) revolutionizes the thought on dialogue21. In the interreligious discourse, testimony is given through the nearness to the other. By testifying to the infinity of the other’s demand in the ethical praxis, “the ‘here I am’ signifies me in the name of God, at the service of men that look at me”22. Inspired by Buber and Levinas, I approach interreligious meetings in an ethical way. Interreligious theology based upon interreligious encounters aims at the creation of a more peaceful society. It is praxis-oriented and open-ended. Whereas confessional theology is mainly the reflection on one’s own religion, interreligious theology explores the conditions for an interreligious dialogue, in which partners learn from each other, and appreciate and criticize each other. Interreligious theology is a novel way of relating to different religious groups in society and admitting that exclusivism, inclusivism and mere tolerance are problematic or insufficient. As the reflection on the praxis of faith, dialogical theology is eminently contextual. In a dialogical theology, truth is understood as resulting from dialogue. This does not mean that everything is of equal value. It means that peaceful communication is perceived as normative. Further on, in dialogical theology, core commitments are not seen as limitations, but as expressions of distinctiveness that allow for communication. Confessional theology does not become superfluous with the advent of dialogical theology, which could complement a more traditional approach, in view of the creation of a pluralistic society. Finally, interreligious theology will have to take into account the objective perspective of the sciences of religion as well as the subjective perspective of confessional theologies. Its necessity in today’s society stems from the need to create an alternative for violent ways of living. Interreligious theology unites people of different cultures and religions, without becoming a meta-religion that does not respect distinctiveness and plurality. It desires to bring a change in society by celebrating plurality and unity. This becomes possible if one heeds the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see”. Ofir 3 Mevasseret Tsion 9078503 Israel [email protected]

21. LEVINAS, Otherwise Than Being (n. 16), pp. 147-152. 22. Ibid., p. 149.

Ephraim MEIR

PART II

CRITICAL APPROACHES

CRITICAL INTERRELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION I. INTRODUCTION For several decades, education experts have been exploring the question of what types of knowledge and competencies are needed to “produce responsible citizens in a complex society characterized by diversity”1. Various theories and practices have been developed which draw on several scholarly fields, ranging from pedagogical sciences, psychology of religion, theology of religions as well as philosophies of dialogue and comparative religion. Many of these approaches emphasize the importance not only of enhancing religious literacy (knowledge about different faith and non-faith traditions), but especially of dialogical exchange, with an emphasis on personal knowledge, experience and narrative2. Such dialogical pedagogy is “student-centered, engaging, and interactive and […] meets the needs of students to address questions about meaning in a conversational and safe setting. […] [It] enables [them] to further develop cognitively, personally, and interpersonally”, and by doing so, at least that is the expectation, it may “empower them as citizens able to contribute to the social cohesion of society at large”3. Here, I choose a different theoretical lens; one which integrates recent insights from critical theory, critical epistemology, critical religion, postcolonial scholarship as well as critical secular studies into interfaith pedagogy. What these different theoretical perspectives share is the recognition “that society is stratified (i.e., divided and unequal) in significant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability” and I will add religion to that list4. Critical theorists 1. D. POLLEFEYT, Invitation to Expert Meeting: Inter-Worldview Competences in Worldview Education, 13-14 September, 2021, Leuven. 2. R. JACKSON, Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy, London, Routledge, 2004; D. POLLEFEYT, Interreligious Learning (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 201), Leuven, Leuven University Press – Peeters, 2007; M. MOYAERT, Interreligious Learning, Ricœur, and the Problem of Testimonial and Hermeneutical Injustice, in Journal of Nationalism Memory and Language Politics 13 (2019) 205-223. 3. M. MOYAERT, Three Approaches to Teaching Religious Diversity: Toward Critical Interreligious/Interfaith Pedagogy, in L. MOSHER (ed.), The Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2022 (forthcoming). 4. O. SENSOY – R. DIANGELO, Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education (Multicultural Education Series), New York, Teachers College Press, 2009, 2nd edition, eBook.

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assume that “inequality” is “deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural) and [they] actively seek to change this”5. Committed to social justice, they tend to engage in a profound examination of society with a specific focus on unequal power relations and systemic prejudice. To that end, they problematize common sense or dominant discourse (i.e., discourses that are shared widely and projected as normal and natural) by asking: what knowledge is being produced (e.g., about the relation between religion and violence)?; in which socio-political context?; and to the benefit (and detriment) of whom? Critical theorists trace back the genealogy of commonsense discourse and confront it with counterdiscourses, which express otherwise unheard and marginalized perspectives. Focusing more specifically on the topic at hand, I seek to surface how one of the key categories of interfaith education, namely religion, is a socially constructed category that in the past has been and to this day continues to be implicated in processes of social stratification6. I assume that religion, like other categories of difference (e.g., race, gender), contributes “to the process of Othering”, even when this is certainly not the intention of scholars and educators7. Collective negative prejudices about religion are deeply ingrained in the cultural archive of our society and they profoundly contribute to the power asymmetry between majority and minorities, also in the classroom. From this perspective, it is important to show that people who orient around religion differently rarely enjoy the same degree of social prestige and to understand how religious difference often translates into privilege for some and disadvantage for others. First, I will explain the strength of interfaith learning in terms of interpersonal dialogical learning. Next, I explain how insights taken from critical theory might enhance the transformative power of interreligious learning. Finally, I inject some of the insights from critical religion to develop a critical approach to interfaith pedagogy. II. INTERFAITH LEARNING AS INTERPERSONAL DIALOGICAL LEARNING Most interfaith education seeks to enable mutual respect, equivalence, and reciprocity between those of other faiths. Activities are aimed at relationality and often one will hear pleas for hermeneutical flexibility, 5. Ibid. 6. “The concept that social groups are relationally positioned and ranked into a hierarchy of unequal value (e.g., people without disabilities are seen as more valuable than people with disabilities). This ranking is used to justify the unequal distribution of resources among social groups”. Ibid. 7. A.-L. RIITAOJA – F. DERVIN, Interreligious Dialogue in Schools: Beyond Asymmetry and Categorisation?, in Language and Intercultural Communication 14 (2014) 76-90, p. 77.

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empathy, active listening, self-reflexivity and openness in order to do justice to the self-understanding of the other. Along the same lines, philosophies and pedagogies of interfaith learning tend to emphasize the transformative power of inter-personal learning and co-formation8. Pushing back against essentialisms and generalizations, interfaith educators emphasize that no one ought to be reduced to a single identity marker and that no one ought to be approached as a representative of a certain social group. Statements that follow the pattern of all, everywhere and always… have no place in the dialogical classroom. Educators might also challenge pupils to speak for themselves and make personal claims; ‘In my experience’, ‘from my perspective’, ‘I think…’ rather than ‘(All) Christians believe’, ‘Christian tradition states’, … No pupil should be approached as spokesperson for his/her tradition and no pupil may claim the authority to speak for others. This approach is in line with an understanding of religious identity as a personal journey, its concomitant value being authenticity and sincerity. Interfaith education usually gives a prominent place to critical selfreflection and self-awareness. As embodied and embedded creatures, context matters and affects who we are and how we perceive and approach our surrounding world. That is why we need the perspective of the other to learn about ourselves, and we also need the willingness to examine how our own context affects the way we see the other. Following this line of reasoning, one of the objectives of interfaith learning is that pupils discover that their understanding of the other is deeply interwoven with the context from which they speak, and that they come to realize that their perspective is always, and necessarily, colored, limited and prejudiced. Therefore, the question, ‘where do you speak from?’ (the phrase with which the French philosopher, Paul Ricœur, used to start his classes) figures prominently in interfaith learning9. The pertinent questions are: what do you believe? what do you value? how do you see the world around you? what is your experience in any given situation? what traditions (familial, religious, cultural, societal) do you cherish? how do you give meaning to your life? what resources do you draw upon? how does that compare to others and how does that affect your relation to others? 8. J.H. PEACE, Religious Self, Religious Other: Coformation as a Model for Interreligious Education, in N. SYEED – H. HADSELL (eds.), Critical Perspectives on Interreligious Education: Experiments in Empathy (Currents of Encounter, 63), Leiden – Boston, MA, Brill, 2020, 201-219. 9. M. MOYAERT, Interreligious Literacy and Scriptural Reasoning: Some Hermeneutical, Anthropological, Pedagogical, and Experiential Reflections, in M.A. PUGLIESE – A.Y. HWANG (eds.), Teaching Interreligious Encounters, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017, 79-94.

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Theoretically, this focus on the question of how pupils make sense of their life and on the sharing of personal stories (microhistories) matches with a narrative approach to personal identity. Dialogue, from this perspective, is not simply a pedagogical approach, but is in sync with a hermeneutical anthropology: the storied self is a dialogical self. Moving beyond accounts of identity that trap us in a polarity between sameness or otherness, pupils learn to recognize both difference and overlap between themselves and those of other faiths and learn to appreciate both interreligious plurality as well as intrareligious plurality10. Another theoretical perspective that this approach to interfaith education draws upon is Lived Religion11. Lived Religion (LR) also takes its cue from the personal stories of people of different faiths and what they actually believe and do in their daily lives. “A strength of LR is its ability to recognize and emphasize vast differences and particularities within religious traditions, which helps overcome the many misconceptions and stereotypes perpetuated due to essentialization”12. In addition, dialogical learning builds on insights from psychology of religion and especially scholarship that focuses on the relation between faith development/maturation and openness for religious others or the lack thereof13. Here, the understanding is that intolerance of religious difference may spring from a more fundamental personal difficulty in coping with ambiguity and plurality, hence the focus on personal maturation. From this perspective one of the goals of interfaith learning as citizenship education is to advance “the integral development of [pupils], who concomitantly grow to become strong personalities with adequate social skills necessary for living together harmoniously in plural milieus”14. Overall, the strength of this dialogical approach to interfaith education is that it really helps pupils to find their own position. It recognizes the inner diversity, permeable boundaries and contested nature of religious traditions but also the complexity of 10. M. MOYAERT, In Response to the Religious Other: Ricœur and the Fragility of Interreligious Encounters, London, Lexington, 2014. 11. N.T. AMMERMAN, Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture: Finding Religion in Everyday Life, in Sociology of Religion 75 (2014) 189-207, p. 190. 12. H. GUSTAFSON, The Vitality of Lived Religion Approaches, in ID. (ed.), Interreligious Studies: Dispatches from an Emerging Field, Waco, TX, Baylor University Press, 2020, 91-97, p. 94. 13. K. ALLEN – K. GRITTER, Achieving Interfaith Maturity through University Interfaith Programmes in the United Kingdom, in Cogent Education 3/1 (2016). DOI: 10.1080/ 2331186X.2016.1261578. 14. D.R. WIELZEN – I. TER AVEST (eds.), Interfaith Education for All: Theoretical Perspectives and Best Practices for Transformative Action, Rotterdam – Boston, MA, Sense, 2017, p. 3.

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cultural expression and change of individual and social perspectives. [It] emphasizes representation, interpretation and reflexivity [and] utilizes [pupils’] own beliefs and values as a resource and encourages their active involvement in the […] learning activities15.

III. CRITICAL THEORY Interfaith education as personal and interpersonal learning emphasizes how each person in the classroom is different in some way – each pupil has a story to tell. Next, it acknowledges that as embodied and embedded creatures, all human persons are somehow prejudiced, that is why raising self-awareness and engaging in critical self-reflection is so important. Finally, it also assumes that dialogue takes place in a safe space where pupils engage with one another in reciprocity and where all voices are different but equal. Approaching interfaith education with a critical theory lens problematizes these assumptions by bringing into focus the reality of unequal power relations between people who orient around religion differently. A shift is suggested from interpersonal learning with its focus on (individual) microhistories to a critical social justice approach which highlights the problem of systemic prejudice. While we may all be prejudiced, some prejudices are collective and become part of society’s dominant ideology: they are projected as the norm (for all) and are institutionalized into policies, practices, institutions (media, education, …), the law, …. When prejudice is “institutionalized, it is reproduced automatically and no longer depends on the intentions or awareness of individuals; it is the default or status quo outcome of [that society]”16. Those who fall outside the realm of what is projected as normal in any given society are seen as and treated as outsiders (and this to a varying degree). The outcome is the creation of a binary between insiders and outsiders. A social justice approach to interfaith education examines how society at a macro level classifies, organizes and ranks “groups into simple either/or groupings” (binaries) and goes on to analyze the unequal power dynamics between different identity groups, depending on how they relate to society’s dominant ideology17. This critical theoretical framework entails recognizing that religious identity is a socially constructed identity and that we should not think of it solely in terms of a personal project. While people give meaning and sense to their 15. A.-L. RIITAOJA – S. POULTER – A. KUUSISTO, Worldviews and Multicultural Education in the Finnish Context: A Critical Philosophical Approach to Theory and Practices, in Finnish Journal of Ethnicity and Migration 5 (2010) 87-95, p. 92. 16. SENSOY – DIANGELO, Is Everyone Really Equal? (n. 4). 17. Ibid.

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own identity (who one is and what one does and believes), it is also true that, based on the dominant and normative assumptions which circulate in society, meaning, value, and direction are ascribed to one’s identity in a manner that does not necessarily overlap with one’s self-understanding, and this may impact one’s positionality in society. 1. The Norm of Sameness and Difference as Deviation We are all born in a particular time and place, where certain values and norms are widely shared. Some of these values and norms are visible, but most function as unwritten standards; they are taken for granted and are only made explicit when they are questioned or challenged, for example by people who do not organize their lives according to the same rules. These unwritten rules are what in any given society is perceived as normal18. What is normal comes across as natural, ordinary, common, and unremarkable. That is why the idea of normalcy intersects with that of neutrality. What deviates from the norm is abnormal and therefore remarkable. It may be experienced as interesting, strange, incomprehensible, ridiculous, problematic, inappropriate, fascinating, but also as repulsive, original, disruptive, attractive, and so forth. Furthermore, there is a push in society towards the reproduction and perpetuation of these written and unwritten norms. To a large extent, this push functions through self-governance. Those who follow the rules of society and conform to the norm receive ‘social, psychological, and material rewards’, those who deviate from societal norms are more likely to be ‘punished’ – they are looked upon strangely, receive signs of disapproval, meet with suspicion, ridicule, or aversion. Consequently, patterns of behavior that are perceived as normal tend to be reproduced “through societal expectation, peer pressure, propriety and at times politics of shame”, and the status quo is maintained19. Besides this, in any given context, there may be people who embody the norm (sameness), while others stand out as different or other because of bodily markers, visible symbols, and specific practices, or simply because of the language they use, their gestures, or tone of voice. While some differences are small and hardly noticeable, others are so significant that they impede people from quietly blending in. Sometimes differences intersect and accumulate. As a result, “some others are more other than others 18. Ibid. 19. N. DHAWAN – E. FINK – J. LEINIUS – R. MAGEZA-BARTHEL, Normative Legitimacy and Normative Dilemmas: Postcolonial Interventions, in IID. (eds.), Negotiating Normativity, Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2016, 1-23.

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– the points of outsiderhood or deviance, the ‘wrong kind of’ differences can accumulate. It is not as comfortable for those who are positioned outside normality, and who need to try to pass as ‘normal’, as it is for those who do not need to even try because they are directly assumed to be ‘normal’”20. That is why we say that difference is not simply variety; difference is deviation from the norm, and this may translate into exclusion and marginalization. 2. Hegemony, Privilege and Oppression While we may be individuals, we are also members of different social groups that are organized around various identity markers, like gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, ability, and religion… For example, when we are born we are socialized according to whether we are male or female, rich or poor, able-bodied or with a disability. While group divisions are not in reality this clear-cut, the macro level of society organizes groups into simple either/or groupings (called binaries). For every social group, there is an opposite group. One cannot learn what a social group is, without also learning what the group is not21.

What we think we know about these social groups (and their counterparts) is socially constructed through the norms and values that are dominant in society. Indeed, we attribute certain characteristics to people, harbor certain expectations, and explain behavior based on group membership. It is typical for women to… as opposed to men, homosexual people tend to… as opposed to heterosexual people, poor people versus rich people… Such essentialized categorization is also a stratification: positive qualities tend to be ascribed to those who embody society’s norm, negative qualities are ascribed to those who deviate from that norm. The norm functions as the default position against which everything is implicitly or even explicitly measured and valued: normal/abnormal; appropriate/inappropriate; wise/foolish; admirable/repulsive… Socialization into society’s hegemonic norm “influences every aspect of our perceptions and evaluations, both of ourselves and others”22. It leads people to hold prejudices (positive or negative) and to discriminate 20. I. JUVA, Who Can Be ‘Normal’? Constructions of Normality and Processes of Exclusion in Two Finnish Comprehensive Schools, Academic dissertation to be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki, for public examination in seminar room 229 at Aurora (Siltavuoren penger 10) on 8 November, 2019 at 12 o’clock, p. 22. 21. SENSOY – DIANGELO, Is Everyone Really Equal? (n. 4). 22. Ibid.

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between people almost instantaneously and associatively. While this dynamic happens on a personal level, critical theorists point out that this is also a process that happens at the macro level of society, and this in multiple ways. A social group, which has power access to society’s institutions (think of the media, the school system, the government, the legal apparatus), is able to disseminate and impose its ideas to such an extent that they become ‘commonsensical and intuitive’. The laws work in their interest, media airs their perspective, movies and literature represent their perspective, scholarship represents their knowledge, new initiatives are taken in line with common discourse… Even those who personally do not agree with this mainstream worldview are exposed to it (e.g., via education, books, newspapers, television, laws, stories, public rituals, holidays…)23. In Critical Theory, this process is called hegemony. Hegemony affects how we see society, ourselves and others, how we make sense of what happens in society. It shapes our gaze, frames our knowledge, and affects the societal position of those who embody the norm and those who (to a greater of lesser degree) deviate from it. This power differential is reflected in the difference between marginalization and privilege. Those who deviate from the norm may be placed in the position of having to ask for exemptions to the rule or having to explain themselves and their behavior, or even to defend themselves over against what is perceived to be the norm. If they want their perspective or counternarrative to be heard, they still have to relate to the hegemonic discourse, thereby at once reiterating and reproducing it. Because they do not have the same access to institutional power, it is furthermore difficult to challenge the dominant worldview and change their societal position. Hegemony thus also implies inhibition of “the dissemination or even the articulation of alternative ideas”24. Thus it may be difficult to communicate what the world looks like from a subaltern perspective. Especially when hegemonic imagining depicts people who belong to a certain social group which deviates from the norm as less qualified or even potentially problematic (cf. deficit theory), they may experience all sorts of (unjust) obstacles to realizing their life goals and ambitions. In contrast, those who embody society’s norm – the dominant group – are advantaged25. They enjoy the privilege 23. It may very well be society’s institutions make certain choices in life simply impossible or more difficult to achieve (e.g., marriage and adoption for gay couples, or parental leave for fathers, access to the job or housing market, …). Or the rule that states that one may not wear a headscarf when working for the government or going to public school. 24. B. ROSAMOND, Hegemony, in Encyclopedia Britannica 6 (2020); https://www. britannica.com/topic/hegemony (accessed 14 October, 2021). 25. P. MCINTOSH, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, in Peace & Freedom Magazine 10 (1989) 10-12, p. 12.

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of not having to think twice about how to behave, move, dress, talk properly or worry about how they might be looked upon by others. They do not have to deal with collective negative stereotypes. They are represented in all layers of society and what is important to them receives sufficient airtime. In brief, the system works for them (e.g., accessibility for abled people versus disabled people)26. Consequentially, while interreligious dialogue might be projected as a space of equality and reciprocity, it can also be experienced by those who stand out as different as a space of othering – their identity might be marginalized, problematized, or exoticized over against those who embody the norm (i.e., what is regarded as normal). An exchange of personal (micro-)stories may simply not suffice to do justice to the discrepant experiences of those who embody the norm and those who deviate from it. Furthermore, even when we think of ourselves as people who do not discriminate between people based on their difference (we claim to be color-blind or gender-neutral…), the process of socialization may have left many assumptions/associations deeply embedded in the cultural archive of society, where they may operate at the level of unconscious belief (and implicit bias). Without an explicit critical framework focused on examining ‘normalcy’ and the provision of analytical tools to deconstruct normalcy, this will not change.

IV. CRITIQUE OF RELIGION Race and gender are socially constructed. Scholars operating in the field of Critical Religion argue that this also pertains to religion: what is recognized and labeled as ‘religious’ at any given time is socially constructed27. They add that the negotiation of the conceptual boundaries of religion goes hand in hand with the process of drawing the boundaries of non-religion. Put differently, when we circumscribe what religion 26. Privilege can take different forms. We may distinguish between (1) privilege as spared injustice (this is the absence of an injustice, an experience that needs to be extended to others), (2) privilege as unjust enrichment, (here “privileged groups receive perverse benefits from injustices done to others”, this needs rectification) and (3) majority privileges (which do “require attentiveness and adaptation of majority groups towards various kinds of minorities”) (see A.S. LAUWERS, Religion, Secularity, Culture? Investigating Christian Privilege in Western Europe, in Ethnicities, 2022; https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968221106185). 27. As Fitzgerald explains, “Critical Religion is shorthand for the critical historical deconstruction of ‘religion’ and related categories”. T. FITZGERALD, Critical Religion and Critical Research on Religion: Religion and Politics as Modern Fictions, in Critical Research on Religion 3 (2015) 303-319, p. 303.

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properly understood is, we immediately define what religion is not. This process of demarcation is also one of legitimization/delegitimization: the effort to bolster a certain religious norm goes hand in hand with the effort to delegitimize religious deviance. Indeed, too often, in “discourses of religion […] the other is constructed in our image before he or she is permitted […] to respond”28. Finally, when such delegitimization goes together with significant socio-political power, the category of religion contributes to the stratification of people. It may lead to discourses as well as practices that exclude people explicitly or implicitly. This even happens in societies where laws prohibit discrimination based on religious adherence. As Davidson explains: Religious inequality only occurs in societies where there are two or more religious groups and when adherence to one religious tradition provides social, economic, and political benefits that are not available to members of other faith groups. […] If the benefits of adhering to one religious tradition […] become incorporated in the social fabric of society, religious inequality will persist over time, producing religious stratification. […] [R]eligious adherence might be incorporated into aspects of culture, such as values, beliefs, and other social institutions, and ideologies. These values and beliefs might be promulgated through families, schools, sports teams, neighborhood groups, civic organizations, churches, and business groups. To the extent that they are, they become a part of an ideological framework (religionism, or whatever one might call the religious equivalent of racism or sexism) that justifies the unequal distribution of scarce resources29.

Interreligious educators committed to social justice will want to find out and explore what constitutes the ‘religious norm’ in any given sociopolitical context. This is a shift: rather than focusing on difference, I suggest that educators and pupils examine religious normalcy, explore the histories, contexts, and systems which formed this norm, and scrutinize how it affects people’s current societal positionality. What is perceived to be normal when it comes to religion and what, by contrast, is abnormal? What goes by without being noticed, and what, on the other hand, draws our attention and captures our gaze? Who, to use Peggy McIntosh’s words, can swim like a fish in the water (privilege) and who, in contrast, is confronted with obstacles, due to systemic prejudice? To that end, critical interreligious educators have to engage in a deconstruction of the way religion as a social category has contributed and continues to contribute 28. J.J. THATAMANIL, Comparative Theology after Religion, in S.D. MOORE – M. RIVERA (eds.), Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality and Theology, New York, Fordham University Press, 2011, 238-257, p. 246. 29. R.E. PYLE – J. DAVIDSON, The Origins of Religious Stratification in Colonial America, in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42 (2003) 57-75, p. 58.

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to the creation of stratified societies. Where do our understanding of religious normalcy and our sense of deviance come from? What are the roots of our images of religious difference and the way we ‘other’ religious deviance? To understand this, we have to trace back past patterns of religionization and explore how they are perpetuated in the present. 1. Tracing Back Patterns of Religionization Throughout history, some kind of expression of Christianity modeled what religion is and functioned as the norm over against which nonChristians were deemed non-religious or religiously deviant. To this day, when we speak about religion (as a generic category), we are still, to a certain extent, talking about Christianity (albeit transformed and transcended)30. Understanding this (Christian) genealogy of religion may help us understand what I call religionization, which entails the various processes by which people, based on what they believe and practice, are named, categorized, stratified and governed by those who claim to embody the Christian religious norm in society31. From the start, Christian normativity was constructed in a polemical context in conversation with and in opposition to various imagined others. Those singled out as deviating from the Christian religious norm were given denigrating and scornful names, e.g., pagans, Saracens, heretics, Jews, paganopapists, and so forth. The given names were not intended to do justice to the identity of Christianity’s others, these names, au contraire, renamed and hence redescribed their identity so that it would fit into a Christian (often biblical-theological) framework. Next, certain derogatory collective characteristics were attributed to Christianity’s ‘others’. Often different qualitative attributes interlock and reinforce one another until an entire community is essentialized as fundamentally different. Jews are imagined as stubborn, greedy, legalistic, and carnal; Muslims as violent, untrustworthy, sly, and power-hungry; pagans as stupid, immoral, and uncivilized. Such negative depictions do the work of legitimizing/delegitimizing people and their traditions; reversely, they serve the purpose of enhancing, solidifying, and superiorizing Christian self-understanding, while weakening, subordinating, and inferiorizing ‘the other’. 30. J. DAGGERS, Thinking “Religion”: The Christian Past and Interreligious Future of Religious Studies and Theology, in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78 (2010) 961-990. 31. M. MOYAERT, Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other: A History of Religionization, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming.

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Besides this, characteristics assigned to non-Christian groups functioned as a legitimization of how these groups were to be governed: they needed to be educated, civilized, disciplined, controlled, domesticated, sanctioned, or separated from those who embodied the norm and occupy a position of power, which they wished to maintain. In fact, throughout history, a wide variety of “practices, institutions, and structures”, were put in place to help delineate self and other and to establish a stratified society (e.g., prohibition on mixed marriages or restriction in inheritance law)32. The gradual “ascendancy of Christianity in Europe – […] spread by missionaries, travellers, and a variety of military and cultural colonizers – made it seem natural that Christianity” would “be taken up in the European cultural milieu as the frame of reference […] to encompass, understand, and dominate the multiplicity”33. Thus, imaginaries of Christianity’s others were also circulated, reproduced, and adapted beyond Europe. To this day, this ‘storehouse of ideas, practices and affects’ functions between ‘our ears, in our hearts and minds’, and like other social constructs, religion too continues to impact the way we perceive and approach those who deviate from the Christian religious norm34. Even in our ‘modern emancipated age’, Europe continues to be influenced by these patterns of religionization, and Christian normativity continues to negatively impact other ‘religious groups’. This is even the case when we consider the scholarly World Religions Paradigm, one of the building blocks of religious and interreligious education. 2. The World Religions Paradigm Today, most pupils (and educators) take the so-called World Religions Paradigm for granted. As Masuzawa puts it: the World Religions Paradigm “has become so prevalent, so naturalized in our discourse that it seems as though it were no logic, no ideology at all, but a mere reflection of the way things are” and its foundational category, religion, is perceived as a disinterested, neutral and objective category, that is moreover transculturally and transhistorically applicable35. The idea that there are many 32. G. FREDERICKSON, Racism: A Short History, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 6. 33. C. BELL, Paradigms behind (and before) the Modern Concept of Religion, in History and Theory 45 (2006) 27-46, pp. 29-30. 34. G. WEKKER, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2016. 35. T. MASUZAWA, The Invention of World Religions: or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 6.

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religious traditions – Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism – is normal, it is part of our ‘worldview’, just as we think it normal that representatives of different world religions come together to discuss world affairs or religious truths. The world as we know it is populated by different people who belong to different religious traditions: they believe different things, hold different values, and practice different rituals. The World Religions Paradigm exhales a sense of diversity and multiplicity, it draws attention to the colorfulness of what it means to be human. The World Religions Paradigm plays with the distinction between the singular – religion – and plural – religions; the idea is that these multiple ‘religions’ may be understood as variations or species of a single genus, the category called ‘religion’. This generic category ‘religion’ is considered transcultural and transhistorical: it cuts across time and space. Religion, generically understood, is “geared to a transcendental ‘beyond’ that [is] ‘immaterial’”36. The counterparts of ‘religion’, seen as universal, are the particular world religions. Sometimes these are also referenced as the different -isms, i.e., various fairly cohesive systems of beliefs and practices that express in historically-culturally diverse ways the internal impulse towards the transcendent mentioned above37. The cornerstone of the World Religions Paradigm is belief/creed, i.e., confirming or assenting to propositional statements: that the world is created, for example, or that the divine is immanent. Indeed, many textbooks comparing different traditions will start by enumerating the central beliefs of this or that tradition… If one wants to know what religion someone adheres to, we ask “what do you believe?”. Creed and belief often function as the most plausible substitutes for the term ‘religion’. For a long time, this paradigm functioned both as a scientific framework for the study of religion and as an incentive to openness and dialogue. Increasingly, however, scholars of religion are pointing out that age-old patterns of religionization were adopted and adapted in the framework of the World Religions Paradigm38. Rather than describing, labelling and categorizing traditions that were simply ‘out there’ waiting to be mapped, traditions were made in the image of a certain model of Christianity. Some recognize the hermeneutical fingerprints of Protestantism in the emergence of the World Religions Paradigm. They especially point at the paradigm’s focus on texts and beliefs. According to them, the Protestant 36. D. HOUTMAN – B. MEYER, Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, New York, Fordham University Press, 2012, p. 3. 37. B. NONGBRI, Before Religion, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2013, p. 20. 38. S. OWEN, The World Religions Paradigm Time for a Change, in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 3 (2011) 253-268.

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critique of the empty ritualism and materialism of Catholic tradition found its way into the comparative study of religion. Others point to the influence of the Enlightenment and its critique of superstition as expressive of immature and primitive religion. Some go even further back, and recognize in the paradigm earlier Christian theological (Pauline) assumptions about spirituality and carnality and about belief and the law (which figured prominently in the age-old patterns of religionization that pitted Christians over against both Jews and Muslims). As Jonathan Z. Smith sums up: It is impossible to escape the suspicion that a world religion is simply a religion like ours, and that it is, above all, a tradition that has achieved sufficient power and numbers to enter our history and form it, interact with it, or thwart it. We recognize both the unity within and the diversity among the world religions because they correspond to important geopolitical entities with which we must deal. All ‘primitives’, by way of contrast, may be lumped together, as may the ‘minor religions’, because they do not confront our history in any direct fashion. From the point of view of power, they are invisible39.

The World Religions Paradigm builds on age-old patterns of religionization, it assumes binaries that are deeply ingrained into our cultural archive and affects the way we distinguish between religious traditions and imagine and value them. Here we may think of binaries between matter and spirit, ritual and law, body and mind, spiritual and literal reading, tribal and universal, oral traditions and textual traditions, political and personal traditions… The World Religions Paradigm is not just descriptive, it is also implicated in processes of legitimization/delegitimization, which build on the much older distinction between Christians, Jews, Muslims, and pagans and its derogatory classifications. The past continues into the present. To give just one example: to this day, there is a sense in which reasonable, modern religion does not cling to the material (visible, palpable, smellable, …), ritual, or legal dimensions of religion; that it accepts critique and strives after detachment and accepts that the source of life may not be captured. Good religion does not need frills or outer show and views all those ritual, material and spatial externalities as historico-culturally determined and thus relative. It knows that it cannot lose itself in this kind of detail but must focus on what is ultimately important; it cannot be captured in human images. The emphasis “on interiority, personal faith and sincerity of the 39. J.Z. SMITH, Religion, Religions, Religious, in ID., Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2004, 179-196, pp. 191192.

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beliefs ends with an idea of religiosity as a completely existential experience”40. Authentic religiosity or mature faith, according to this modern understanding of religion, thus detaches people from their material and ritual forms and liberates them from the risks of empty formalism and inauthenticity. It is spiritual, apolitical, and personal rather than ritual, material, political and traditional. This understanding of good, authentic religion is further enhanced by another modern paradigm, namely that of the religioussecular divide. 3. The Religious-Secular Divide: Tolerant versus Intolerant Religion Within the religious-secular paradigm (1) religion is projected as the key cause of violence; (2) violence done in the name of religion is coined as particularly brutal; it is primitive, irrational behavior, “driven by emotion, ritualism, and tribal loyalties”41; (3) to avoid the ravaging effects of religion, religion had to be privatized and henceforth separated from the realm of politics. This is what Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Voltaire argued for when they were fighting against religious fanatics. In line with this discourse, secularization understood as the privatization of religious belief was “deemed essential for the possibility of modern politics”42. Considering the true nature of religion, some also argued that the separation of the religious and secular realm would actually restore religion to its true nature, a deep commitment to the divine, free from any form of coercion or force. True religion is peaceful, spiritual and tolerant. It projects unneighborly love and universal peace. Religion which respects these boundaries is good religion, religion which strays outside its proper realm is bad religion. Bad religion needs to be contained. Whenever these two realms get mixed up, violence lurks around the corner. Keeping both realms separate is the key to modern regimes of tolerance. Europe has understood this. The story about the European rise of tolerance, however, is permeated by old and new patterns of religionization that do the work of legitimization/delegitimization. For a start, this story “denominates ‘religion’ as 40. M. ROSATTI, Ritual and the Sacred: A Neo-Durkheimian Analysis of Politics, Religion and the Self, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009, p. 27. 41. B. KAPLAN, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 3; W.T. CAVANAUGH, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009. 42. L. MAVELLI, Security and Secularization in International Relations, in European Journal of International Relations 18 (2012) 177-199, p. 178.

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the domain of the violent, the irrational, the undemocratic, the ‘other’” and associates the secular with rationality, politics, and diplomacy. It creates a dichotomy between “a terrifying figure of the premodern past on the one hand” and a modern “Enlightened believer at home in the world, on the other”. The latter sets the norm, while the former needs to be educated and if necessary “made extinct”43. Besides this, in the present as in the past, pleas for tolerance have built on a discourse that discredits certain religious groups as ‘different’ (in this case as intolerant, fundamentalist, fanatical). Indeed, part of this story about the rise of tolerance is the assumption that some religious others might not be capable of tolerance and therefore might even be intolerable. Especially the traditions of Catholics, Jews and Mohammedans (Muslims) were projected as irreconcilable with the values of Enlightenment. Drawing on older patterns of religionization, philosophers, like Locke, Voltaire, and Kant projected the ideal of true Enlightened religion – free, spiritual, with room for doubt – over against false religion, which was carnal, legalistic, and oppressive; they projected this problematic religion collectively onto the figures of the Jew, the Mohammedan and the Papist. These three were all imagined as intolerant and therefore intolerable. In any case, they would need to be closely monitored, for at any time they could turn against the nationstate and become violent. They were perceived as forming a nation within a nation. Since 9/11, which brought back the image of religious fanaticism, it is Islam that meets with suspicion and calls for an Islamic Enlightenment and Reformation are getting louder. There is the suggestion that Islam is difficult to reconcile with the Judeo-Christian values of respect and tolerance. It has even become common for Western societies to understand themselves in terms of a Judeo-Christian society, a discourse that ‘others’ Muslims as outsiders and strangers. As Creutz-Kamp explains: Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre, the terminology used in media coverage concerning Islam has to a growing extent come to be connected with terrorism and political violence; historical conflicts are brought up to show that there is some kind of “natural leaning” towards violence in Islam (Akar 2004, 18). The aspect of religionization is central here – Islam is brought up as an explanation for the violence, regardless of the context. In the analysed writings, violence is seen as something connected to religion 43. E. HURD, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion, Princeton, NJ – Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 23 and EAD., The Political Authority of Secularism in International Relations, in European Journal of International Relations 10 (2004) 235-262, p. 237.

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or culture. Muslims are depicted as a coherent group – aggressive and threatening, or with a tendency towards these attributes44.

The framing of 9/11 in terms of the return of religious fanaticism has normalized such questions as: is Islam reconcilable with the enlightened values of Judeo-Christianity? Even when interfaith activities aim at being inclusive and focus on the meeting of equals, this socio-political context may impact the way Muslims experience interfaith learning. Even if, for the privileged, interfaith learning is about appreciating diversity and enhancing mutual understanding from the perspective of Muslim minorities, it may nevertheless be seen as an impossible arena, where they are obliged to show that they are good, moderate (read: open minded, dialogical) Muslims. As a consequence, Muslims may experience partaking in interfaith learning as oppressive: they are being pushed to perform their identity in such a way that comforts those who embody the majority norm. Critical interfaith education asks how a ‘common sense’ discourse about religion contributes to the stratification of people and seeks to deconstruct this ideal of normalcy.

V. CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A CRITICAL INTERFAITH PEDAGOGY Critical theorists emphasize the importance of interfaith education in terms of a reciprocal encounter between equals who orient around religion differently. Nevertheless, they also suggest that “the conditions under which the assumedly equal dialogue takes place, and the positions of the self and the other (asymmetrically) constructed in such encounters, are […] insufficiently problematized”45. Indeed, some pupils might stand out as visibly different when compared to those whose religious identity is more interiorized or spiritualized and hence less attached to set practices. Consequently, without vigilance, they run the risk of being projected as ‘different’, in the sense of deviant from religious normalcy and placed in the position of having to defend themselves or explain that what they do is not irrational or premodern or foolish or superstitious. They may find it tiresome to go against the dominant modern discourse about true religion as interiorized and they may simply give up discussing their own 44. K. CREUTZ-KAMP, The Othering of Islam in a European Context: Polarizing Discourses in Swedish-Language Dailies in Finland, in Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 295-308, p. 298. 45. RIITAOJA – DERVIN, Interreligious Dialogue in Schools (n. 7), pp. 77-78.

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practice46. I call this dialogue fatigue. If the cause of this is not explored, some might wrongly conclude that these pupils are closed and disinterested. The problem is once again projected back onto them, whereas the norm and its implied delegitimization of religious difference goes unnoticed. Raising self-awareness, engaging in critical self-reflection, and cultivating reciprocal dialogical encounters around personal stories are all key aspects of interfaith learning but they might not suffice to counter marginalization in the classroom and in society at large. It may also be important to provide pupils with the critical tool set to analyze power relations, unpack privilege and engage in transformative action. To that end, it is first of all important that pupils understand how difference is deviance from the norm: we may all differ, but some are more other than others. Therefore, rather than focusing on those who are other, critical educators should scrutinize the construction and perpetuation of the norm as well as look at the delegitimization of those who deviate from this norm. Enhancing the critical potential of interfaith education entails the deconstruction of the category of ‘normal’ religion47. This includes surfacing, exploring, and questioning some of the normative assumptions about religion (what it is and what it should be) that are deeply ingrained in the socio-political imagination of Western liberal democracies; and it needs to be shown how these normative assumptions privilege some while they disadvantage others. Where does this discourse about ‘normal’ religion stem from? who has the power to define this norm? and whose ‘religious’ practice is delegitimized in the course of defining ‘normal religion’? Religious educators dedicated to critical interfaith pedagogy will also want to explore with their pupils to what extent dominant discourses of religion, religious diversity and dialogue (the language they 46. Elsewhere I gave the following example: during one of my scriptural reasoning sessions, a Muslim student objected to his colleagues touching and handling the Qur’an as if it was any ordinary book. She explained that the Qur’an is the word of God and therefore a sacred book. She tried to elaborate on why one may not touch the Qur’an without having performed Wudu (ritual washing). Her Muslim colleagues agreed and tried to communicate that they had no problem with their colleagues reading the Qur’an from their iPad, but that it would be offensive if they would touch the Qur’an as if it were a mere study object. Their concern was met with disbelief. Especially, my liberal Protestant students murmured this is precisely what is wrong with Islam – the fact that this religion has not gone through the critique of the Enlightenment and fiercely holds on to fundamentalist attachments to the matter of the text without understanding that what we should focus on is the meaning of the text and what it reveals about the divine. More than ever, they were convinced that Islam needs to confront itself with the masters of suspicion like Christianity had to do more than a century ago. M. MOYAERT, Interreligious Hermeneutics, Prejudice, and the Problem of Testimonial Injustice, in Religious Education 114 (2019) 609-623. 47. FITZGERALD, Critical Religion and Critical Research on Religion (n. 27), p. 303.

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use, the literature they refer to, the programs they deploy) continue to reproduce patterns of religionization, thereby immediately contributing to the othering of some of their own pupils. More concretely, they may want to trace back the genealogy of the World Religions Paradigm and have pupils explore to what extent they operate from a belief-centered and text-oriented understanding of religion and make negative collective associations between ritual/material practice and superstition. They may also scrutinize the religious-secular divide and its underlying normative assumptions about good and bad religion. Besides, for educators and pupils it is important to realize the impact such patterns of religionization may have on people who engage in visible ritual and material practices (dietary restrictions, veiling or other clothing regulations, prayer practice…) or who adhere to traditions which are associated with the problem of fanaticism. Critical interfaith pedagogy, by instilling pupils with a sense of how religious difference throughout history has been imagined and used to other people, will provide them with the analytical tools to ask to what extent religious othering continues to happen today, how they themselves are part of this problem, and how they may be part of the solution. After all, the starting point of the transformation of inequality is developing an awareness of oppressive social structures. KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies St.-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

Marianne MOYAERT

TAKING A FULL DIALOGICAL STAND APPROACHING WORLDVIEW EDUCATION FROM AN INCLUSIVE DIALOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

I. INTRODUCTION In this essay I would like to explore the limits of worldview education as a school subject in a pluralistic society using a dialogical perspective. One of the reasons is that I wonder if we will ever succeed in reaching the goals of worldview education when we continue to perceive worldview education as a single school subject within the boundaries of an educational system that is part of a rational, fragmented, data-driven and secularized society as ours. Further I believe that interworldview competencies like expressing one’s own beliefs, being open to the beliefs of others, recognition of the differences between various beliefs and the willingness to learn in a critical-constructive way with and from others1, that all come within the framework of dialogue, can and should also be applied and developed in other school subjects than worldview education. After all, the value of dialogue does not stop at the boundaries of worldview education but applies to all of education. The foundation of these assumptions is that dialogue is the core structure of human nature2. I base these assumptions on the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a Russian philosopher of language, who has devoted his life to the study of dialogue. This plea for a more extensive dialogical perspective on education at large and worldview education in particular is structured as follows. First, I describe the problems we encounter in the application of dialogue in educational settings. These problems refer respectively to the mode of cognitive functioning that is used in education for ordering human experience, the division of power between teacher and pupil in pedagogical relationships, the model of communication that is used in educational settings and the way teachers have facilitated the acquisition of a worldview by pupils. Second, I describe three aspects of a full dialogical approach to worldview 1. Source: https://www.kuleuven.be/thomas/page/interlevensbeschouwelijke-competenties/ (accessed 3 July, 2021). 2. S. VAN EERSEL, Dialoog als levenskunst: De kunst om in verbondenheid met anderen te leven (Dialogue as the Art of Living: The Art to Live in Connection with Others), Utrecht, Eburon, 2021.

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education, respectively a dialogical mindset, a dialogical pedagogy and a dialogical communication. The first aspect refers to being truly open to others to whom we are related by nature; teaching and learning from a dialogical mindset requires that all ideas and points of view are included in the dialogue, also those ideas and points of view that we disapprove of. The second aspect (dialogical pedagogy) is displayed as a list of concepts that can help to make worldview education more complete, more vital and more successful, at least as seen from a dialogical perspective. The third aspect refers to the instrument we use in education to enhance the acquisition of a worldview by pupils: language. In this section I emphasize the importance of the use of internally persuasive discourse as opposite to externally authoritative discourse. In particular I dwell on the word ‘internal’ to emphasize the relational or dialogical structure of this type of discourse. I also highlight the aspect of responsibility to point out that the success or failure of a dialogical internally persuasive discourse approach (DIPD) to worldview education is a responsibility of both teacher and pupil, and at a higher level of school administrators and policymakers. I end by offering some thoughts on the future consequences for worldview education when opting for such an extensive dialogical approach. II. APPLICATION ISSUES REGARDING DIALOGUE IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS One of the goals of worldview education is to promote understanding between people with different worldviews, both religious and non-religious3. The accomplishment of this goal requires a dialogical exchange of various views, values, ways of thinking and conduct4. Although the importance of dialogue for the realization of worldview education in a pluralistic society is widely recognized in the literature on interworldview education and although a dialogical approach to language, mind, meaning, and selfhood is slowly growing within the field of psychology at the expense 3. M. MOYAERT, Inter-Worldview Education and the Re-Production of Good Religion, in Education Sciences. Special issue: There Is a Crack in Everything. Education and Religion in a Secular Age 8/4, art. 156 (2018) 1-15; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040156. 4. A. DE JONG, Interreligieus leren op katholieke basisscholen (Interreligious Learning in Catholic Primary Education), in C. HERMANS (ed.), Interreligieus leren op de basisschool: Perspectieven op vakontwikkeling en schoolontwikkeling (Interfaith Learning in Elementary School: Perspectives on Curricular and School Development), Budel, Damon, 2005; A. MULDER – B. VAN DEN BERG, Learning for Life: An Imaginative Approach to Worldview Education in the Context of Diversity, Eugene, OR, Wipf & Stock, 2019.

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of monological, Cartesian conceptions of these terms5 and although (socio-) constructivist theories of learning are slowly gaining ground in the field of education6, insufficient attention is paid to learning how to enter into a dialogue of otherness7. This is illustrated by research showing that schools and school systems in many countries are (still) doing a poor job as far as the quality and effectiveness of teaching the basic values and skills of a democratic and pluralistic society are concerned8. What these studies show, among other things, is the anxiety among both teachers, school administrators and policy makers of shifting from quantifiable content knowledge to human qualities that may not reveal themselves in full until well after their pupils graduate9. There are many possible explanations for the unsuccessful application of dialogue in (worldview) education. One explanation has to do with the mode of cognitive functioning or thinking that is used in education for ordering human experience. Bruner distinguishes between two different modes of cognitive functioning: a logico-scientific mode and a narrative mode10. The first mode leads to well-substantiated theory based on scientific evidence and to knowledgeable answers guided by reasoned hypotheses. The second mode leads to believable, but not necessarily true historical 5. J. SHOTTER, Life inside Dialogically Structured Mentalities: Bakhtin’s and Voloshinov’s Account of Our Mental Activities as Out in the World between Us, in J. ROWAN – M. COOPER (eds.), The Plural Self: Polypsychic Perspectives, London, Sage, 1999, 71-92. 6. M. FULLAN – M. LANGWORTHY, A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find New Learning, London, Pearson, 2014; M. KOOPMAN – M. SWINKELS – K. STRUYVEN, Leer- en leerlinggericht opleiden (Learning- and Pupil Centered Education), in D. BEIJAARD (ed.), Weten wat werkt: Onderwijsonderzoek vertaald voor lerarenopleiders (Knowing What Works: Educational Research Translated for Teacher Educators), Meppel, Ten Brink, 2016, 59-69; A. SCHLEICHER, World Class: How to Build a 21st-Century School System, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, Paris, OECD Publishing, 2018. 7. R. ANDERSON – L.A. BAXTER – K.N. CISSNA, Texts and Contexts of Dialogue, in IID. (eds.), Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications, 2004, 1-9; J.A. KEATEN – C. SOUKOP, Dialogue and Religious Otherness: Toward a Model of Pluralistic Interfaith Dialogue, in Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 2 (2009) 168-187. 8. INSPECTIE VAN HET ONDERWIJS, Burgerschap op school: Een beschrijving van burgerschaps-onderwijs en de maatschappelijke stage (Citizenship at School: A Description of Citizenship Education and Social Internship), Utrecht, Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2016; SCHLEICHER, World Class (n. 6); F. SLEEGERS, In debat over Nederland: Veranderingen in het discours over de multiculturele samenleving en nationale identiteit (In Debate about the Netherlands: Changes in the Discourse about the Multicultural Society and National Identity), Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2007; WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, The Global Risks Report 2020, 15th Edition, Cologny – Geneva, World Economic Forum, 2020. 9. SCHLEICHER, World Class (n. 6). 10. J. BRUNER, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1986.

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accounts. The main difference between these two modes is, that the logico-scientific mode focuses on truth-finding while the narrative mode searches for meaning and meaning construction. Although the narrative mode of thinking is gaining field in (worldview) education, the logicoscientific mode of ordering human experience is still dominant in most classroom settings11. This hinders the application of dialogue, because dialogue has more to do with meaning construction than with truth-finding. A second explanation concerns the pedagogical relationship between teacher and pupil. This relationship is characterized by a division of power between teacher and pupil12. Formally, power is vested in the teacher and teachers use this power to pursue their professional aims. However, the application of dialogue requires teachers to give up their authority in order to establish collaborative control over the classroom by both teacher and pupils, which is something many teachers find hard to do13. Also, Simons, van der Linden and Duffy show that teachers’ ideas about learning are predominated by guided learning, in contrast to experiential and action learning14. This means that most of the teaching and learning is teachercentered rather than pupil-centered. This puts constraints on the application of dialogue because dialogue takes place within authentic relationships, not within externally controlled relationships in which the subject must fulfill the requirements of the dominant other. A third explanation refers to the model of communication that is used in educational settings15. Standing in a tradition in which Western culture has a strong history in relativizing differences between people in global generalizations, for example in religion (different religious traditions pose different truth claims which are equally true), or in science (all of reality fits into one explanatory system which is dictated by the laws of nature), education favors a cybernetic approach to communication above a phenomenological approach16. According to the first approach, semantic content 11. P. KIRSCHNER, Het voorbereiden van leerlingen op (nog) niet bestaande banen (Preparing Pupils for Jobs That Do Not Exist [Yet]), Heerlen, Open Universiteit, 2017; J. WERTSCH, Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action, Hertfordshire, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. 12. N. MERCER, The Guided Construction of Knowledge: Talk amongst Teachers and Pupils, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters, 1995. 13. E. MATUSOV, Pattern-Recognition, Intersubjectivity, and Dialogic Meaning-Making in Education, in Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal 8 (2020) E1-E24; SCHLEICHER, World Class (n. 6). 14. R. SIMONS – J. VAN DER LINDEN – T. DUFFY, New Learning: Three Ways to Learn in a New Balance, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publications, 2000. 15. R.T. CRAIG, Communication Theory as a Field, in Communication Theory 9 (1999) 119-161; WERTSCH, Voices of the Mind (n. 11). 16. F. HARDMAN – J. ABD-KADIR, Classroom Discourse: Towards a Dialogic Pedagogy, in D. WYSE – R. ANDREWS – J. HOFFMAN (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of

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is considered a mere function of communication, which is information processing. Cybernetic communication theory thinks of information as being encoded in a message, which is sent by a sender to a receiver. In order to gain access to the information, the only thing a receiver must do is to extract the information from the words that constitute the message (decoding). A phenomenological approach, by contrast, considers communication as a series of utterances that respond to one another. According to this approach, meaning is not the result of transmitting an unaltered meaning from one person to another, but the outcome of the interaction between two (or more) subjects, a speaker and a listener. As dialogue is a reciprocal form of interaction between two or more individuals, the application of dialogical communication requires a phenomenological approach to communication, not a cybernetic one. A fourth explanation refers to the fact that the influence of organized worldviews on individuals has changed radically in Western society17. More and more people nowadays find it unthinkable to adhere to a form of organized worldview that does not represent a personal way of adhering18. Today individuals have their own ways of actualizing their humanness, not only in the sense of a fullness that lies beyond human life, both within and outside organized worldview frameworks, but also in the sense of human flourishing here and now19. This applies to teachers as well. Many teachers have become unfamiliar with religious and non-religious worldviews. As a result, they may find it difficult to discuss and understand both the beliefs of their pupils and their own beliefs20. In class this often leads to the acquisition of a worldview that enables pupils to choose for themselves among the different religious and non-religious views on life and the world. Problem is that this approach does not always lead to active engagement with others and that pupils are left with a theoretical framework in which they must slot their own viewpoint themselves. In order to face the challenges as outlined above it is important that the learning process of pupils be structured to focus on the pupil and on the pupil’s learning process rather than on the teacher and the subject English, Language and Literacy Teaching, London, Routledge, 2010; WERTSCH, Voices of the Mind (n. 11). 17. J. DE HART, Zwevende gelovigen: Oude religie en nieuwe spiritualiteit (Floating Believers: Old Religion and New Spirituality), Den Haag, Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau, 2013; C. TAYLOR, Varieties of Religion Today, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2002. 18. TAYLOR, Varieties of Religion Today (n. 17). 19. C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. 20. H. RADSTAKE, Teaching in Diversity: Teachers and Pupils about Tense Situations in Ethnically Heterogeneous Classes, Antwerpen – Apeldoorn, Garant, 2009.

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matter. What we need is an approach to (worldview) education that allows teachers and pupils to be and to stay in constant dialogue with themselves, with others and with the diverse world around them21. The aim of this ongoing dialogue is personal growth or in Bakhtin’s words ‘ideological becoming’: the acquisition of a more complete image of ourselves and the realization of human fullness by appropriating the ideological viewpoints of others22. In order to enhance the personal growth of pupils in (worldview) education we need educational professionals with both a dialogical mindset, a dialogical pedagogy and dialogical communication skills. Approaching dialogue merely as a communication technique that can be used at moments in which classroom talk is at stake is not enough to get the job done. Such a limited perception of dialogue does no take account of the complexity of life. What we need is a comprehensive approach to dialogue that includes all aspects of living and learning. Such an approach does not take life for granted but acknowledges that there is something very special about us being alive23. It focuses on what happens in those living moments when we are actually in contact with others and otherness. It acknowledges that it is impossible for us – living beings – not to be responsive to others and our surroundings and that the outcomes of our responsive activity have a complex, open and dialogical structure which cannot be completely captured in any finalized descriptions. To put it differently, we are not independent and self-made persons; we owe our identity to the living and embodied relations that we maintain with others and the otherness that surrounds us24. Or as Bakhtin puts it: “The way in which I create myself is by means of a quest: I go out to the other in order to come back with a self”25. With reference to the realization of this ‘quest’ in (worldview) education, the term competency, as in interworldview competencies, may be misleading. The downside of this term is that it creates images in our minds of independent techniques or skills that pupils can develop with 21. E. MATUSOV – K. VON DUYKE, Bakhtin’s Notion of the Internally Persuasive Discourse in Education: Internal to What?, in K. JUNEFELT – P. NORDIN (eds.), Proceedings from the Second International Interdisciplinary Conference on Perspectives and Limits of Dialogism in Mikhail Bakhtin: Stockholm University, Sweden June 3-5, 2009, Stockholm, Stockholm University, 2010, 174-199. 22. M.B. TAPPAN, Domination, Subordination and the Dialogical Self: Identity Development and the Politics of Ideological Becoming, in Culture and Psychology 11 (2005) 47-75. 23. C.M. SHIELDS, Bakhtin Primer, New York, Peter Lang, 2007. 24. SHOTTER, Life inside Dialogically Structured Mentalities (n. 5). 25. K. CLARK – M. HOLQUIST, Mikhail Bakhtin, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1984, p. 78.

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the help of a well-structured curriculum resulting in respectful and responsive behavior that can be associated with the ultimate aim of worldview education. Korthagen26 however, points to the fact that the performance of specific behavior involves much more than being equipped with the right competencies. According to Korthagen we always act within a certain context, in which our actions are influenced by skills or qualifications, that in turn are being influenced by our beliefs. Further, these beliefs are influenced by the position we grant ourselves in the whole of the cosmos: our values, passion or mission in life. It is the integration of all these layers in our personality that makes us the person (and the professional) that we are. Put differently: “Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher”27. In tune with these insights, I would like to opt for a term like qualities28 rather than competencies, as ‘quality’ refers to who we are, both as private persons and as professionals29. Whereas competencies relate to one layer of a person’s personality, the layer of skills and qualifications, qualities address a person’s inner source and its influence on the other layers. When all layers are reconciled, a person is in accordance with himself, is in flow30. In order to enhance the ideological becoming of pupils in (worldview) education, fostering this ‘flow-experience’ within pupils’ lives should be our central focus. In the following sections I describe what this focus comprises from a dialogical point of view.

26. F.A.J. KORTHAGEN, Waar doen we het voor? Op zoek naar de essentie van goed leraarschap (What Are We Doing It For? In Search of the Essence of Good Teaching), Oratie, Utrecht, WCC, 2001; ID., In Search of the Essence of Good Teacher: Towards a More Holistic Approach in Teacher Education, in Teaching and Teacher Education 20 (2004) 77-97. 27. P. PALMER, The Courage to Teach, San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass, 1998, p. 104, quoted in F.A.J. KORTHAGEN, Zin en onzin van competentiegericht opleiden (Sense and Nonsense of Competency Based Education), in Velon: Tijdschrift voor Lerarenopleiders 25 (2004) 13-23, p. 19; also, Kelchtermans draws attention to the person of the teacher as the essential element in professional teaching, which he elaborates in a personal interpretative framework in which concepts like ‘professional self‐understanding’ and ‘subjective educational theory’ are central (see G. KELCHTERMANS, Who I Am in How I Teach Is the Message: Self‐understanding, Vulnerability and Reflection, in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 15 [2009] 257-272). 28. Korthagen uses the term ‘core qualities’, which he links to ‘character strengths’, a term that is used by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi in the field of positive psychology, in order to focus on people’s strengths, rather than on their deficiencies (see KORTHAGEN, Zin en onzin van competentiegericht opleiden [n. 27]). 29. SCHLEICHER, World Class (n. 6). 30. F.A.J. KORTHAGEN – A. VASALOS, Kwaliteit van binnenuit als sleutel voor professionele ontwikkeling (Quality from Within as the Key to Professional Development), in Velon: Tijdschrift voor lerarenopleiders 28 (2007) 17-23.

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III. DIALOGICAL MINDSET For Bakhtin dialogue is not primarily ‘something with words’, like a conversation. Dialogue is not a semantic instrument for clarifying one’s position or for the manipulation of the position of others. Dialogue relates to a way of life or – more precisely – a way of doing things31. Based on Bakhtin’s theory I define dialogue as a reciprocal way of verbal and nonverbal action in which both the boundaries of singularity and the openness towards others is being respected32. The dialogicality of this way of acting is based on the assumption that life is both a relation, an event and an utterance. Thinking in terms of dialogue is thinking in terms of relation. According to Bakhtin we must take this very literally. Everything is connected to everything. There is nothing that is not connected to something else. This also applies to us as humans. In fact, this interconnectedness goes so far as that we cannot be defined otherwise than in terms of relation. The only correct way of defining ourselves is by saying that we are relation, the relation between a center (our self) and all that is not that center (everything outside that self). And even the notion center (or self) is a relational concept. Our self is a convoy of the ideas and viewpoints of others. In the eyes of Bakhtin our true self is a narrative or a play “containing more than one actor”33. Thinking in terms of relation allows us to overcome thinking in contradictions or polarities. It enables us to replace duality thinking by a way of threefold thinking: I-other and the relation between I and other; poor-rich and the relation between poor and rich; yin-yang and the relation between yin and yang. Whatever elements we bring together, there is always a third element that balances the opposite positions34. Besides a relation, life is also an event. According to Bakhtin life is a process of becoming, not an accomplished fact35. Life is an event without ending. Moreover, life is an event that we accomplish together with others. Being is co-being, better yet co-becoming. In order to see ourselves as a process of becoming, as the sum of all our possibilities, thinkable and unthinkable, we need the perspectives of others. It is only others who can 31. CLARK – HOLQUIST, Mikhail Bakhtin (n. 25); M. HOLQUIST, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, London – New York, Routledge, 2002. 32. S. VAN EERSEL, Towards Dialogue: Teacher/Student Interaction in Interreligious Education, Münster, Waxmann, 2011. 33. HOLQUIST, Dialogism (n. 31), p. 18. 34. VAN EERSEL, Dialoog als levenskunst (n. 2); HOLQUIST, Dialogism (n. 31). 35. HOLQUIST, Dialogism (n. 31).

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complete (but never finish!) our limited perspective on life. In a nutshell this means that for our completion as individuals and as humans we depend on the completing thoughts and actions of others to whom we are related. Due to our physical condition, our physical situation in time and space, we cannot step outside ourselves to perceive ourselves from the outside. However, others can, because they belong to a different generation, to a different culture, to a different religion and so forth. Just as we cannot pull ourselves out of the water by our own hair, we cannot complete ourselves. In order to become a more complete person we depend on the completing, yet deviant thoughts and actions of others. Put differently, without being confronted with the otherness of others, we will never be able to learn about ourselves. Martin Buber illustrates this as follows: “When we walk our way and encounter a man who comes towards us, walking his way, we know our way only and not his; for his comes to life for us only in the encounter”36. The limitation of our physical abilities prevents that the final word about us will ever be spoken. Throughout our very existence there is no way in which we can finalize the event we call life. As human beings we live an incomplete life and for our completion we depend on others, incomplete beings as ourselves. One of the consequences of the fact that we are related to others and that we need others to complete the process of our ideological becoming, is that we both address others and are being addressed by others37. With our life, with the actions we perform, verbally and non-verbally, we express who we are, what we value, what our questions, desires or wishes are, but always in relation to the values, questions, desires and wishes of others. With everything we do in life we respond to the expressions of others just as others respond to the ways in which we express ourselves. Life, therefore, is not just an event, it is also an utterance. Utterance, in Bakhtin’s thought, is a relational term which refers to the smallest unit of speech as a give-and-take between the individual’s need to communicate a particular meaning and the requirements of language as a generalizing system38. It is relational in the fact that it is not an isolated or selfcontained phenomenon. An utterance is always an answer to another utterance that precedes it, and is therefore always conditioned by, and in turn qualifies, the prior utterance to a greater or lesser degree. Before it means any specific thing, an utterance expresses 36. M. BUBER, I and Thou, ed. W. KAUFMANN, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970, p. 124. 37. HOLQUIST, Dialogism (n. 31). 38. Ibid.; WERTSCH, Voices of the Mind (n. 11).

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the general condition of each speaker’s addressivity, the situation of not only being preceded by a language system that is ‘always already there’, but preceded as well by all of existence, making it necessary for me to answer for the particular place I occupy39.

Because our life is both a relation, an event and an utterance, Bakhtin states that life is dialogic by nature: “Everything else is the means, the dialogue is the end. One voice alone concludes nothing and decides nothing. Two voices are the minimum for life, the minimum for existence”40. There is not one single action, not one word spoken, that is not directed to someone or something else. Sharing life with others presupposes that we are always in dialogue – we cannot choose not to be in dialogue – with others and with the world around us. And just like we are being addressed by others, we are being addressed by the world. We cannot choose not to be addressed. The latter makes that we are responsible for our response. How we fulfill this responsibility illustrates who we are, as an individual and as a human being41. It is this dialogical ‘truth’ that we should keep in mind in everything we do. Dialogue is both the source of a meaningful life and the orientation towards a meaningful life and can be found both in our consciousness and in our actions. Adopting a dialogical mindset in (worldview) education requires teachers and pupils to fundamentally orient themselves towards others and to a deeply felt desire to understand and to be understood42. It requires both teachers and pupils to be and to stay open to others, to be and to stay related to people, ideas and beliefs that differ from ours. Teaching and learning from a dialogical mindset requires that all ideas and points of view be considered, including the ideas and points of view that bother us or that we disapprove of 43. IV. DIALOGICAL PEDAGOGY The dialogical pedagogy that I have in mind should broaden pupils’ horizon, deepen their self-understanding and their understanding of the world, enrich their repertoire of knowledge and free their hearts, minds and souls. Such a pedagogy emphasizes agency, stimulates exploration and inquiry, embraces the perspective of outsideness, enhances vitality, needs 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

HOLQUIST, Dialogism (n. 31), p. 60. M. BAKHTIN, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Ann Arbor, MI, Ardis, 1973, p. 213. VAN EERSEL, Dialoog als levenskunst (n. 2). SHIELDS, Bakhtin Primer (n. 23). Ibid.

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ambiguity, accepts incompleteness, contextualizes learning, acknowledges the complexity of things, is open, is relational and presupposes diversity44. 1. Emphasizing Agency Taking a dialogical perspective on (worldview) education assumes that we as humans have the ability, at least partially, to shape our own lives and to control our own destiny. We are not completely at the mercy of deterministic powers of a supreme entity. We have agency: the extent to which we can act independently of others (or the Other). This is an important issue, because having agency means that we can make a difference, that it matters what we do or do not. In (worldview) education having agency refers to being actively dedicated to the meaningful learning of all pupils. It presupposes that we, as educators, take responsibility for creating a situation in which all pupils, regardless of their religious or cultural backgrounds, are learning. It also presupposes that we transmit part of this responsibility on pupils providing them with the opportunity to learn to take responsibility for their own development. When we fail in giving pupils an active role in their own developmental process, little if anything is learned. Substantially, fulfilling this role refers to learning how to give meaning to one’s own experiences and those of others. Emphasizing agency is, in other words, an activity focused on the co-construction or co-creation of meaning. As human beings, we are acting creatures and we have the power to evoke something, to change something or to renew something. As acting creatures, we live at the crossroads of time and space, together with all the values, ideas, assumptions, questions and doubts, religious and non-religious, that come together at a particular place and at a particular time. We cannot make others responsible for our successes or failures. At the same time, we are not disconnected from others and the world around us. The fact that we are always related to others and to the world compels us to take our responsibility to learn, to help others in their learning process and to make a difference. 2. Stimulating Exploration and Inquiry Mastery, or worldview literacy, as one of the goals of worldview education, is, from a dialogical perspective, only a small step towards a more significant or meaningful way of learning. Obviously, pupils need a basic 44. I derive these aspects of dialogical pedagogy from E. MATUSOV, Journey into Dialogic Pedagogy, Hauppauge, NY, Nova Science Publishers, 2009 and SHIELDS, Bakhtin Primer (n. 23).

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knowledge of (organized) worldviews and of the different ways in which people act according to their different conceptions. However, this knowledge is not meant to be the result of the learning process. As we have seen before, from a dialogical perspective the learning outcomes of worldview education have to do with the construction of meaning- and sense-making. Literacy, in this regard, refers to getting pupils involved in communication processes directed at meaning construction and to learning pupils to draw their own conclusions regarding the topics that are brought up in the conversations. Regarding relevant and meaningful topics as God, truth, power and the like, there are no conclusive or decisive arguments that are relevant or meaningful for all pupils, regardless of their faith, culture or background. What can be addressed and explored in these conversations, however, are the reasons and values that are relevant in the construction process. Characteristic of this process is that it has an open ending. It is necessarily inconclusive and unfinished. We can never know all there is to know, take every perception into account or get acquainted with every piece of information that has been or will be provided about a particular subject. When we organize our education with a sole view on mastery or literacy, we deprive our pupils from the opportunity to develop the open and explorative attitude that is associated with lifelong learning. At the same time, we deprive our pupils from the opportunity to learn to understand that their perspectives are not the only perspectives and that their interpretations of a situation are not the only possible interpretations of that circumstance. 3. Embracing the Perspective of Outsideness45 Sociologically, our upbringing provides us with the mental structure to perceive things as they are. This includes the way we think and act46. We develop this habitus within a particular social environment. This explains why people who share their upbringing within the same environment, at least to a certain extent, share the same ideas, worldviews and lifestyles. And they not only develop a similar habitus, they are also inclined to accept their social and cultural surroundings as self-evident and to reproduce its structure, including all its social differences and differences in thinking, judging and acting. As educators we take a serious risk when we do not take enough time to fathom our traditions and the social, cultural, 45. Outsideness refers to the Bakhtinian assumption that it is only from a position outside something (or someone) that an object (or subject) can be perceived in the completing categories of time and space. 46. P. BOURDIEU, The Logic of Practice, Oxford, Polity Press, 1990.

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political and religious values that play a role in our personal lives as well as in our educational contexts. It is important to know and understand the thinking patterns and rules of conduct that can be associated with the way we teach, both within and outside worldview education; it is even more important not to be determined or hindered by these rules and customs. New ideas stem from external sources, not from within ourselves. When we remain in our habitus and reject or deny ideas that differ from ours, we lose the opportunity to expand our view on the world. At the same time, we are deprived of the opportunity to find new ways of supporting the different needs of our pupils in their ideological becoming. 4. Enhancing Vitality When I take the outcomes of international studies, with regard to teaching the basic values and skills of a democratic and pluralistic society, seriously, and when I notice, from my own experience as a program manager and educational designer of innovative teacher training programs, how laborious it is to change the attitudes and ways of conduct of educational professionals, I cannot but agree with Carolyn Shields47 that education is lacking vitality. In order to enhance vitality in class it may be enough to do things differently from what we normally do. For instance, by using games instead of instructional design or by providing meaningful assignments in the form of explorative projects instead of transmitting abstract and theoretical knowledge about organized worldviews that are experienced by pupils as foreign to their personal understanding. However, the problem of vitality also refers to the way we have organized the teaching- and learning process as a system. The efficiency mindset of school administrators and policy makers together with growing demands for reporting and control, puts constraints on the vitality of the relationship between teacher and pupil, as well as on the relationship between teachers. Vitality not only is an essential part of the pedagogical aspects of learning, it is also an essential part of the institutional aspects of the learning process. The more static our attitudes, procedures and structures, the less thrill and excitement we will experience. A routine work ethic or attitude towards life not only results in an aversion against change, but also leads to a weariness against any kind of action. If we want to learn our pupils to take adequate action – in terms of contributing to human flourishment – in regards to the changes that take place in time, we will have to enhance vitality within our educational system, both on a micromeso- and macro-level. 47. SHIELDS, Bakhtin Primer (n. 23).

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5. Needing Ambiguity One of the problems of the application of dialogue is our dedication to certainty. From a dialogical perspective it can be said that the more certainty we need, the less unity we will experience and the greater the chance that we will perceive our world as fragmented. Conversely one could argue that the more ambiguity we embrace, the more we will be in peace with ourselves and the world around us and the less we will experience reality as fragmented or stressful. The more we strive for certainty, the more pressure we put on ourselves and others because there are only a few areas (if any!) in which we can be fully sure of the matter. Besides, it is less stressful to accept that there are no unequivocal answers to our ideological questions, than that we hold on to our inner beliefs for fear of being accused of moral weakness or spinelessness. From a dialogical perspective we would be well advised if we would relieve the burden of holding on to an invariable position over the years and to use our freedom to reflect, meet, learn and grow in relation to others. Helping pupils by their search for an authentic answer to the question how to live a morally good and responsible life, is a goal that many teachers pursue. Making pupils understand that this does not mean that they can form an opinion that they can hold over many years is a much greater challenge, because this requires that, as educational professionals, we do not apply absolute values and norms and that we are willing to adjust our views at all times when it turns out that our views are wrong (or less true), or the views of others are better (or truer). This does not mean that we cannot take a stand. On the contrary, we should. And we should also encourage our pupils to adopt their own position, although not based on unwavering certainty. We all should learn to listen to our inner voices that are constantly inviting us to review or enrich our ideas and actions. 6. Accepting Incompleteness From a dialogical perspective we should abandon the idea that there is only one way of interpreting or valuing a situation or event. Much of what we were taught has been revised by now or is currently under discussion. This, however, does not mean that our schoolbooks and teaching methods are adapted accordingly in due time. As a result, ideas about religious differences, differences in race, gender issues and the inequality of LGBTI-people remain. In (worldview) education we can never speak the final word, on any subject. There is always an-other word, an-other voice, an-other perspective or an-other way of perceiving things. This, however,

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does not relieve us from our duty to provide pupils with excellent teaching methods. But in doing so we should not forget that knowledge changes over time and that our values and perspectives change too. And together with these changes our ways of providing education must change. This change entails that we pass these dynamic views of knowledge, knowledge development and the development of values and perspectives on to our pupils in order to prevent them from experiencing unnecessary tension or mental blocks when confronted with new ideas, different views or alternative lifestyles. Meeting the goals of (worldview) education means that we create space for the development of social, intellectual, moral and spiritual qualities. The essence of (worldview) education is the increase of understanding: understanding ourselves, others, the world around us, life and the way we relate to the Other (with capital O). The primary focus of (worldview) education should not be the transfer of knowledge but the constant testing of our ideas and conduct in order to arrive at an ever-deeper form of understanding. Why do we do things the way we do? Why does life evolve the way it does? What in this situation is morally wise? When we ask explorative questions, we are concerned with understanding, connecting the old to the new, the known to the unknown, and connecting past, present and future. It is our duty as educators to bring together different voices, different perspectives and different worldviews in support of a lifelong learning process. This requires the arrangement of a dialogical space that is both limited and open, value-laden and hospitable; a space in which attention is paid to both individual and communal voices and in which both small stories and big stories can be told and listened to. 7. Contextualizing Learning During the last few decades, we can notice a growing standardization of our educational programs and practices. Characteristic of his trend is that systems are central, rather than people. In order to operate the educational ‘machinery’ as efficient as possible, the organization of teaching and learning emanates from ‘the average pupil’. Based on this metaphor educational professionals use standardized teaching methods and standardized forms of assessment. Working with standardized methods and scrutiny provides teachers with the illusion that they control both pupils’ learning processes and the results of these processes. I use the word illusion here to emphasize the fact that a focus on results, standards and measures independent of the context in which these standards are being carried out entails a simplification of reality. A context-free interpretation of teaching

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and learning ignores our natural demand for intrinsic motivation, for agency, for contributing to a greater good and for meaningful stories behind the shallowness of everyday reality. It deprives pupils of the opportunity to discover their potential and hinders them in their pursuit to develop themselves as far as possible. Detaching classroom activities from the context in which we live puts a brake on our progress as human beings. Education should stimulate the development of every individual instead. It is creativity, intuition, the capacity to work with others and imagination that will take us forward, not abstract and fragmented school subjects as math, geography, French, citizenship and religion. This does not mean that we do not need any knowledge in these fields. However, this knowledge should always be connected with our personal and human qualities and interests, with our values and norms, our motivations, questions, emotions and feelings, with who we are as a person and with who we want to be as humans. The truth is that what we value, the way we live, changes over time and differs from place to place. The context in which our lives take place matters. We cannot ignore that. Based on this fact, it makes more sense to learn to have an eye for different perspectives and to understand these perspectives within their own contexts, than to try to transmit a fixed body of knowledge, free from its context, as the one and only reliable or true source of knowledge for all people and all times. 8. Acknowledging the Complexity of Things When, as is argued above, nothing is certain, when everything is influenced by the context and when all situations are perceived from a particular point of view, it is time to find a new balance between the transfer of information and the creation of a space for pupils in which they can participate in meaningful conversations and activities in which they are encouraged to reflect on what they already know and in which they can ask fundamental and explorative questions like: ‘Whose perspective is being voiced in this interpretation?’, or ‘What other perspectives are possible?’. This approach to (worldview) education requires that we stop seeing knowledge as fixed and concluded and start to perceive knowledge as something ‘under construction’, largely depending on personal and cultural interpretations. The knowledge we have obtained and the experiences we have gained hitherto determine to a large extent how we collect and interpret new information. We cannot engage the world as if it were a manual for a new product. We cannot solve the complex problems of our time in terms of black and white, or right and wrong. Single or unequivocal explanations are inadequate to do justice to the world we

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live in. Reality is more complex than that. There is always the possibility of more or different statements or perspectives. And they are all there at the very moment. As educators we still believe that once a subject has been taught, our pupils will have understood. We stick to the presumed significance of reaching all predefined goals of the program without us realizing that the active creation of meaning is more important to the process of ideological becoming than passive receptiveness. With this I do not mean that receptivity – listening – is a meaningless activity, on the contrary, but then this receptivity has to be a receptivity for the key concepts and ideas that are fundamentally constituting life and that provide us with a basic structure and guidelines how to respond adequately and responsibly to new, unexpected and complex situations. 9. Being Open When we stimulate active listening and dialogical interaction, when we recognize the importance of the context, when we emphasize the relevance of an outside perspective, of plurality and polyphony, we are well on our way to become more open and less defined. A limited worldview easily leads to thinking in terms of right or wrong, true or false, and hampers an open and honest exploration of the situation. Learning pupils that it is okay to ask questions about things they do not know, as long as it happens respectfully, is the basis for removing or exceeding polarities in which one thinks he is better than the other and in which people are excluded on the base of their nationality, background, religion, skin color, culture, gender, behavior and so forth. Avoiding conversations about these opposites is not a kind of tolerance, but a hegemonic way of shaping education in which the dominant position is quietly confirmed. Most teachers, for instance, have no idea what it is like to have a migration background and to be confronted with this background on a daily basis. To be open requires that we recognize that what we have always thought or believed, might actually be wrong or different. Going out to investigate what other viewpoints are possible in the given situation, is what being open from a dialogical perspective entails. 10. Being Relational From a dialogical perspective everything and everyone is related to something and/or someone else. And as we have seen above, even the self is dialogic, a relation. Because dialogue is fundamentally relational, dialogue can help us understand how relations work, even those that can be associated with a cognitive and narrow-minded approach to (worldview) education. Relation is the basic structure for everything we do and for

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every event that takes place. As such, relation is also fundamental to processes of learning and development in school settings. Educational systems and structures often lack this relational aspect of learning. This is because educational systems and structures are created to prevent chaos and contingency. They should offer us certainty and uniformity instead. Systems and structures are being established as forms of governance regarding order and discipline, but never in connection with learning. Because of this we should never let the organizational systems take the place of relations that foster learning. Systems should always be embedded in relations, not the other way round. In (worldview) education we should foster our relations, take time to engage in encounter and listen to the polyphonic tunes of living-diversity. 11. Presupposing Diversity For Bakhtin otherness is a basic structure of life. This is without prejudice to the observation that most people find it very difficult to accept this truth and to be confronted with otherness. The funny thing is that because life is diverse, we do not have to pay special attention to it. We do not need to ‘celebrate diversity’, as it is often so eloquently put. But we should not perceive it as a problem either. When we take life seriously, we must accept that the basis of our existence is diversity. This requires that we accept, welcome and acknowledge every pupil in who or what he or she can become, notwithstanding their intellectual or physical possibilities, speech, ethnic background, gender, religious orientation and so forth. All differences between people in general and pupils in particular are intrinsically part of the complex structure of human life. The natural character of this condition ensures that diversity is not a problem. And as such we should not conceptualize diversity as a problem within (worldview) education. The real problem is not diversity, but inequality, between rich and poor, smart or foolish, boy or girl, Christian or Muslim, with or without a migration background and so forth. As educators in the field of (worldview) education we should not exchange one with the other: diversity is a fact, inequality is a choice. Summing up, if we manage to open up to the diverse world of dialogue, the views and conduct of other living beings can become apparent to us. At the crossroads of different inner lives there are activities that call on us for a response. This dialogical approach differs from mainstream thinking in which our mind is a single rational system which orders fragments of life in an orderly manner according to the laws of nature. In an educational setting this means that new things are learned by (first) teaching

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its rational principle, or in other words, by putting theory into practice. The dialogical approach that I am pleading for, perceives our mind as dialogically structured, which means that “all its parts are interrelated as people are interrelated, in myriad ways and in countless meetings, all of which require the taking up of offerings, the issuing of invitations, tact, trust, helpfulness, disquiet, joy, and so on, and so on. With such a mind as this, to be instructed into a new practice, we require things to be pointed out to us from within our attempts to begin executing the practice, we require living examples to which we can relate”48. Rather than putting a theory in practice, Shotter refers to this way of teaching and learning as “putting a special practice into our practices”49. The word special here refers to our use of particular words at particular moments, words we use to “distinguish and relate, to place and position, to separate and to connect”50 with a purpose to understanding their meaning potential in new and different situations. If we can learn our pupils to articulate their activities in this way, with an eye for all the different meanings their words and those of others may have had, have and may have in the future, they may develop more refined and skillful forms of dialogical conduct, while putting serious effort into the realization of human fullness. V. DIALOGICAL COMMUNICATION Pupils develop a worldview of their own by selectively appropriating the ideological viewpoints of others and making them their own51. The term appropriation refers to the religious and non-religious voices that are available in a particular socio-cultural and historical context that shape pupils’ identities in a critical way. On the one hand they provide pupils with a coherent worldview; on the other hand, they limit pupils in what they can become52. From a dialogical perspective appropriation is not a matter of mastery, but of authorship53 or authorial agency54: becoming 48. SHOTTER, Life inside Dialogically Structured Mentalities (n. 5), p. 87. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. M. BAKHTIN, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Austin, TX, University of Texas Press, 1981. 52. W. PENUEL – J. WERTSCH, Vygotsky and Identity Formation: A Sociocultural Approach, in Educational Psychologist 30 (1995) 83-92. 53. HOLQUIST, Dialogism (n. 31); TAPPAN, Domination, Subordination and the Dialogical Self (n. 22). 54. E. MATUSOV – M. SMITH – E. SOSLAU – A. MARJANOVIC-SHANE – K. VON DUYKE, Dialogic Education for and from Authorial Agency, in Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal 4 (2016) A162-A197.

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the author of one’s own life. Religious as well as non-religious voices become one’s own only when pupils invest them with their own intentions, their own accent, adapting them to their own religious or non-religious context. The dynamics that drives this process is dialogical communication: the positioning and repositioning of oneself in relation to the voices of others using language. Promoting authoring or authorial agency by means of communication requires offering scope for different voices to interact. More scope means more interaction and offers more opportunities for appropriation. The amount of scope for interaction depends on the type of discourse that is used by teachers and pupils55. With Bakhtin I refer to a discourse that offers maximum scope for interaction as internally persuasive discourse (IPD)56. Internally persuasive discourse can be distinguished from externally authoritative discourse. Characteristic of the internally persuasive discourse is that it does not involve any privilege and that it is not endorsed by any form of authority. The internally persuasive discourse is what each one of us values and considers important enough to want to persuade others, however with respect to the freedom of others to be persuaded or not. The internally persuasive discourse does not deny what we stand for and would like others to participate in its ideological viewpoints. But not at all costs. And not from the idea that its truth is the only truth that others should adopt. It wants to persuade, not dictate or impose. As such, the internally persuasive discourse is open to change and is always willing to interact with various and ever-evolving views and positions. Although it tries hard to persuade us, it lets us decide for ourselves whether we appropriate its position. Unlike the internally persuasive discourse, the externally authoritative discourse is a given and exalted discourse. Exalted here means that its authority has already been determined in the past. This authority leaves us no choice to use, next to our own discourse, another discourse with equal rights. Examples include discourses in which religious dogmas, well-established scientific truths or the widely shared truths of popular books or films are being expressed. As opposed to externally authoritative discourse, in which the word serves as a means to process information, in internally persuasive discourse “[t]he word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a natural and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker 55. VAN EERSEL, Towards Dialogue (n. 32). 56. BAKHTIN, The Dialogic Imagination (n. 51).

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gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own”57. From this quote one might get the impression that words first belong to others, whereupon they belong to us. According to Matusov and von Duyke58 this is not how dialogue works. They state that our words are half-someone else’s not in the past but in the present. The words we use are not only defined by us, but simultaneously by others to whom we are related. Words, as such, have no meaning in themselves; their meaning is the result of the co-construction between a speaker and a listener. The meaning of words is a relational, not a systemic phenomenon. Based on this understanding Matusov and von Duyke59 ask what the word ‘internal’ in internally persuasive discourse represents. They critically explore this topic by suggesting that internal in this context may either refer to the individual, to the discourse practice or to the dialogue. The first understanding of the word ‘internal’ refers to mastering the learned knowledge and skills by the individual, as well as to freely accept, be passionate about, and sincerely believe in them. Thus seen, the word internal refers to internalization. Positive about this interpretation of IPD is its focus on pupil’s subjectivity and teacher’s possibility to sensitively guide pupil’s learning. The downside however is that, as we have seen above, pupils’ understanding of an idea cannot be the sole property of an individual. Furthermore, pupils’ internalizations could also involve freely accepted nationalism, racism, exploitation and so forth which does not correspond with the goals of worldview education. The second understanding sees internal as internal to the discourse practice. In this reference pupils are supposed to become active and respected members of a well-defined discourse practice, or put differently, to find a unique author position in the discourse practice. In educational settings this perception can be recognized by pupils setting their own targets, putting together their own study routes or choosing their own way of assessment. Although this interpretation of IPD takes an important step forwards towards the deepening of the educational process, it does not meet the standards of dialogue. This is because the contribution to the discourse practice must be approved by a group of insiders or experts. It is them who, from within a hierarchical structure, decide whether pupils’ contribution is authentic or not. 57. Ibid., pp. 293-294. 58. MATUSOV – VON DUYKE, Bakhtin’s Notion of the Internally Persuasive Discourse in Education (n. 21). 59. Ibid.

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The third understanding suggests that internal refers to the dialogue itself, that is, to the continuous testing of ideas and to the responsibility associated with it. First, I would like to dwell on the aspect of testing. According to Matusov and von Duyke [a] participant’s word is persuasive not because the participant is passionate about it, nor because the participant fills the word with his or her own unique intonation, nor because the participant considers the word genuinely as his or her own, nor because it is original and authored by the individual, but because it is dialogically tested and forever testable60.

Matusov and von Duyke refer to this third interpretation of internally persuasive discourse as dialogic internally persuasive discourse (DIPD)61. They argue that, although the first and second approach to IPD are in accordance with the thought of Bakhtin, they do not touch the dialogic heart of this approach which is a fundamental openness to the differences in our relationship with others and the world. Of course, pupils can be passionate about their own beliefs and can actively author these beliefs in their own creative ways. This however does not guarantee that all relevant or possible others are involved, and it does not prevent pupils from trying to escape scrutiny by turning their discourse into an authoritarian one. There is also no guarantee that when the focus of education is only on affirmative statements of conviction, passion, ownership and belief, the IPD will include doubts, questions and challenges, which in themselves are crucial to dialogic understanding. Regarding worldview education, these questions and doubts may refer to: Why should we (teachers and pupils) care about following a predetermined program of worldview education? Whose religious and non-religious voices outside the classroom are important for the dialogue at hand? Are some religious or philosophical ideas truer than others? Truer in the eyes of whom and in terms of what? How do we take a responsible position in issues of worldview or ethical thought or conduct? The process in which the voices of others are acquired is neither a process of internalization nor a matter of becoming a member to a particular discourse practice. The translation of different religious and non-religious voices into a person’s context involves a constant and complex social adjustment to the generic patterns in ‘worldview discourse’ in which one’s own voice slowly liberates itself from the authority of the discourses of others62. This social adjustment only contributes to authorial agency when pupils can reinterpret the religious and 60. Ibid., p. 179. 61. Ibid. 62. BAKHTIN, The Dialogic Imagination (n. 51).

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non-religious voices of others for their own purposes and formulate adequate responses to them that in turn become part of the ‘worldview discourse’ where they can be tested and appropriated by others. This process of interpretation and reinterpretation never comes to an end; there will never be a moment in which the testing of our different truths can be stopped. Making use of a dialogic IPD approach (DIPD) in (worldview) education means encouraging pupils to constantly engage in internally persuasive discourses on matters of life where pupils encounter historically, culturally, religiously and socially important voices, learn how to address these voices and to develop responsible replies to them. Linguistically, this means using utterances that allow maximum scope for interaction and offer optimal conditions for appropriation by both teachers and pupils. These requirements can be met by using categories of utterances that either express speaker’s experience as it is seen by the speaker, compare speaker’s experience with the other’s experience, request information about the other’s experience, convey reception of or receptiveness to the other’s experience, or reword the other’s experience. Respectively this involves the use of disclosures, confirmations, real questions, probing questions, acknowledgements, rewordings and explorations63. DIPD might make pupils more aware in a sense that it might help them to articulate their language entwined activities more clearly, so that they can come to a more elaborate and refined practical grasp – not a theoretical one – of how to make sense of their activities than they have at present. Let us now dwell on the aspect of responsibility. Promoting ideological becoming in educational settings by using DIPD is primarily teacher’s responsibility. Nevertheless, this responsibility is not only a professional responsibility, it is also a personal responsibility and it is not limited to the teacher either. Matusov contends that the real achievement for learning is that individuals cannot claim innocence or ignorance for their practices64. This statement is based on Bakhtin’s fundamental dialogical assumption of otherness65. This assumption argues that as individuals we all differ from each other; we all hold different positions in life and from our different positions we perceive the world differently. One implication of this assumption is, that we all have different meanings to bear to the world. Another assumption is that what is perceived by one person, cannot be perceived the same by another person and vice versa. Besides being different, this means that no perception is complete. Every perception is 63. VAN EERSEL, Towards Dialogue (n. 32). 64. MATUSOV, Journey into Dialogic Pedagogy (n. 44). 65. CLARK – HOLQUIST, Mikhail Bakhtin (n. 25).

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limited by its being positioned in time and place. For the context of (worldview) education this means that by sharing our unique perceptions of the world with others, we offer others an opportunity to develop themselves, to become a more complete person. It also means that when we refuse to share our personal worldview with others, we deny others the opportunity to develop and complete themselves. According to Bakhtin the uniqueness of the position we take in life does not provide us with a privilege – the privilege of making our own decisions independent of others – but with a responsibility, the responsibility of enhancing the personal becoming of others and to contribute to human flourishing66. This responsibility, which is inherent to our nature as mankind, applies to teachers and pupils alike, as well as to school administrators and policy makers67. Bearing in mind their different responsibilities as teachers, pupils and managers or leaders, it is up to each single one of them to decide how to respond to this ontological appeal. The success of worldview education and the practical use of interworldview competencies depends on the willingness of both teachers, pupils and policy makers to take a radical dialogical stand to teaching and learning. As I have pointed above, this includes both a dialogical mindset, a dialogical pedagogy and a dialogical way of communication. Neglect of this ‘package deal’ will minimize the opportunities to promote processes of ideological becoming – the main goal of (worldview) education – in school environments. The scale and the complexity of this ‘package deal’ may easily scare educators, which is understandable. However, we should not be afraid to start acting in a dialogical way without knowing up front where this acting will take us, whether this ‘quest’ concerns our thinking, our pedagogical behavior or our communication. From there we learn and develop ourselves and others, both our colleagues and our pupils. In view of this process it is important to constantly and frequently reflect on what mindset we are using, what pedagogical transactions we are carrying out, how we are communicating – what language we use, how we respond to pupils – and so on. More important than drawing up plans and interventions in advance, is creating the conditions for learning to take place. According to Biesta the development of the self is something that may happen, but for which there is no guarantee that it will actually 66. HOLQUIST, Dialogism (n. 31). 67. Korthagen and Vasalos point to the fact that already in 1988 Cuban draw attention to the importance of so-called ‘second order changes’: in-depth changes within the structure and the culture of the school that enable alterations within the primary process (see KORTHAGEN – VASALOS, Kwaliteit van binnenuit als sleutel voor professionele ontwikkeling [n. 30]).

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happen68. A teacher who wants to stay in the driving seat in order to minimize the risk of education, will discourage his or her pupils to become their own subject and to realize their personal qualities.

VI. CONCLUSIONS I would like to end with some thoughts considering the consequences for worldview education when taking a full dialogical stance. These consequences refer both to the didactics of the teaching process and the system of education. After all, how are we able to apply an extensive dialogical approach to worldview education and expect our pupils to meet its goals when outside the classroom they are confronted with a political and educational system that is fragmented and decontextualized, in which cognitive learning and reproduction get most attention and a one-sizefits-all approach is commonly used? When we take our students, our educational system and our society seriously, we would do well to start perceiving the whole of our lives and works from a dialogical point of view. This requires our joint effort in looking for answers to questions such as: do we want worldview education to be a single school subject? What is the relevance (for pupils!) to make it part of the school exams? Can its goals be reached when we divide the educational program in scattered bits of information and in fifty minutes time slots? Is it not time to start the learning process from personal experience rather than focusing on the transfer of a predefined body of knowledge? Should we not think about a different educational design, for instance in the form of projects that are meaningful in pupils’ lives beyond the classroom and/ or in the form of key concepts that are studied across different knowledge areas using a DIPD-approach? Would that not be more in line with the way we naturally develop as humans, hence endorsing our personal interests? Would that not increase the probability of reaching the goals of worldview education? And finally, would that not contribute to increasing the ability among future generations to respond adequately and responsibly to the problems of a globalized and technological rapidly changing society? This is not a plea for a unilateral abolition of worldview education as a school subject. On the contrary. What I would like to argue for is that we make a serious start – Fullan and Langworthy speak of a moral imperative to adopt new pedagogical models in our schooling 68. G. BIESTA, Het prachtige risico van onderwijs (The Beautiful Risk of Education), Culemborg, Phronese, 2015.

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system69 – in looking at our educational system dialogically taking into account what is truly valuable in the becoming of our pupils, not only in higher education or secondary education, but in primary education as well. Already in 1929 Alfred North Whitehead – the founding father of process philosophy – referred to this value as the development of the self which is not primarily reached by teaching text-book-knowledge, but by offering pupils an educational structure that is based on “the voluntary issue of free choice” in which freedom comprises “enrichment of possibility as the issue of discipline”70. I believe this is in line with Fullan and Langworthy who emphasize “the importance of translating curricular learning goals to meet up with the specific contexts, personalities, and learning modalities of real students”71, rooted in “supportive relationships that can unleash the potential of every student”72, preparing them “for a globalized, knowledgebased world driven by technology”73 in which “wise judgments [have to be made] in circumstances where there is no fixed rule or piece of incontrovertible evidence to guide them”74. I believe that the goals and perspectives of worldview education might play an important role in trying to achieve these (new) educational aims. The question of form is, I believe, less relevant at the time being. Most important is that we get started on a true dialogue on designing educational programs that will actually contribute to human flourishing, both on an individual and on a social level. As, according to Whitehead75, this aim has more to do with wisdom than with intellectual development, I wonder whether we as experts on worldview education should play a prominent role in this evolution. Kolonel Wilsstraat 5 NL-5371 AG Ravenstein The Netherlands [email protected] www.sanvaneersel.com

San VAN EERSEL

69. M. FULLAN – M. LANGWORTHY, Towards a New End: New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, Seattle, WA, Collaborative Impact, 2013. 70. A.N. WHITEHEAD, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, New York, The Free Press, 1929, p. 30. 71. FULLAN – LANGWORTHY, Towards a New End (n. 69), p. 11. 72. Ibid., p. 14. 73. Ibid., p. 12. 74. Ibid., p. 13. 75. WHITEHEAD, The Aims of Education and Other Essays (n. 70), p. 30.

INTEGRATING ATTENTION TO RELIGIOUS IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT, WELL-BEING, AND INTERWORLDVIEW COMPETENCIES IN DUTCH SECONDARY EDUCATION

I. INTRODUCTION Typical for the Dutch context since the Constitution of 1848 is the so called ‘dual school system’ of public and denominational schools. Both public and denominational (religious) schools get governmental funding if certain criteria are met. Most public secondary schools do not include religious education in their curriculum. Religious denominational schools differ in the way they specify the content and the teaching of religious education. At Christian schools, religious education can be either confessional or non-confessional, meaning respectively teaching into a religion or teaching about religions and worldviews, whether or not combined with teaching from elements. There is great variety between schools with regard to the way shape is given to religious education, even between schools of the same denomination. Schools differ for instance regarding the role religion plays (both formally and in daily practice) and their aims for religious education1. Parents and children are free to choose their own school; as a result, schools vary in characteristics of for example cultural, social economical and religious background. Therefore, differences between schools are, to a certain extent, in fact differences which are related to pupils’ backgrounds2. As a result of processes like individualisation and globalisation religious diversity has increased in society as a whole and in schools as well. Earlier empirical research made clear how increasing religious diversity 1. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST, Geloven in bijzonder onderwijs: Levensbeschouwelijke identiteitsontwikkeling van adolescenten in het voortgezet onderwijs (Proefschrift Vrije Universiteit) (Confidence in Denominational Education: Religious Identity Development of Adolescents [Dissertation]), Zoetermeer, Boekencentrum, 2006; EAD. – S.A. DE ROOS – S. MIEDEMA, Religious Identity Development of Adolescents in Religiously Affiliated Schools: A Theoretical Foundation for Empirical Research, in Journal of Beliefs and Values 27 (2007) 303-314. 2. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – S. MIEDEMA, Meeting the ‘Others’ in School: On (Inter) religious Contacts of Dutch Pupils in the Dutch Dual School System, in Religious Education Journal of Australia 30/2 (2014) 25-31; G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – S.A. DE ROOS – S. MIEDEMA, The Relationship between Religious Education and Religious Commitments and Explorations of Adolescents: On Religious Identity Development in Dutch Christian Secondary School, in Journal of Beliefs and Values 30 (2009) 17-27.

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has an impact on Christian schools in the Netherlands in different ways and effects both school leaders, teachers, pupils and parents3. As a result of the growing (religious) diversity both inside and outside schools, attention to interworldview competencies of everyone involved is more and more needed. In this contribution, I will mainly focus on Dutch Protestant schools for secondary education and the pupils who attend these schools. As these pupils are first of all young people in the twenty-first century, I start with some general reflections on what occupies this age group4. In our time, it is not easy, especially for young people, to learn to relate to ‘life’. Modern man himself has the task of giving meaning to his existence5. The source of meaning must increasingly be sought in one’s own inner self. This places great emphasis on authenticity and ‘being true to yourself’. In many areas (education, work, relationships, hobbies, etc.) young people not only have the space but also the duty to make authentic choices6. Referring to this notion of living in a world with multiple options, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim7 introduced the powerful term homo optionis. More and more people realise that there is a downside to this emphasis on authenticity. The freedom to fully shape one’s own life and set one’s own course in all domains of life turns out to be less attractive than it seems. There are serious indications (like the high number of loneliness and depression amongst young people) that young people have difficulty answering existential questions and find it difficult to positively contribute to the world around them8. 3. E.g. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – C. KOM – K.H. TER AVEST – S. MIEDEMA, A Catalogue of Protestant Primary Schools in the Secular Age: Results of an Empirical Project in the Netherlands, in Religion & Education 40/2 (2015) 202-217; K.H. TER AVEST – G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – S. MIEDEMA, “If It Feels Good…”: Research on School Selection Process Motives among Parents of Young Children, in Religion & Education 42/3 (2015) 357-367; G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – I. VERSTEEGT – J. VAN DER KOOIJ – I. VAN NES – S. MIEDEMA, Beyond the Split between Formal School Identity and Teachers’ Personal Worldviews: Towards an Inclusive (Christian) School Identity, in Education Sciences. Special issue: There Is a Crack in Everything. Education and Religion in a Secular Age 8/4, art. 208 (2018) 1-18; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040208. 4. With a special thanks to Hannah Visser Ma, who – as a student assistant at the Faculty of Religion and Theology of VU Amsterdam by that time – helped to collect literature regarding mental well-being of young people, attention to existential questions in education and (religious) citizenship education. 5. C. TAYLOR, Sources of the Self, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989. 6. See also J. VAN DEURSEN-VREEBURG, Persoonsvorming in het voortgezet onderwijs: Pleidooi voor een contemplatieve pedagogiek (Person Formation in Secondary Education: Plea for a Contemplative Pedagogy), in Religie & Samenleving 14 (2019) 190-209. 7. U. BECK – E. BECK-GERNSHEIM, Individualisation: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences, London, Sage, 2002. 8. G. STEVENS – S. VAN DORSSELAER – M. BOER – S. DE ROOS – E. DUINHOF – T. TER BOGT – R. VAN DEN EIJNDEN – L. KUYPER – D. VISSER – W.A.M. VOLLEBERGH – M. DE

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For the Dutch context the disadvantages of being a homo optionis are clearly depicted in the reports on mental health of young people by the Dutch institute for public health and environment (RIVM) published in 2018 and 20199. These reports show, on the basis of several studies, that the mental pressure on young people (both secondary school pupils and students) is increasing. Young people experience a lot of pressure to perform and meet the expectations of society. Increasingly they experience stress and symptoms of burn out. Among the factors impacting mental health depicted in the 2019 report, are ‘performance pressure’ and ‘choice stress’. The RIVM 2020 report in this series on public health10 shows that as a result of Covid-19 and all the measurements needed to overcome this virus, additional pressure has been put on the mental health of everyone, young people and young adults in particular. One striking finding is that more young people indicate to suffer from loneliness. The long-term effects of the Covid-19 crisis are still unknown, but from what is known we can conclude that there are serious reasons to pay particular attention to the question how the mental health situation of young people can be improved. Should and could schools play a role here as well? And if so, would it be possible and/or fruitful to combine attention to well-being of pupils with attention to both religious identity development and interworldview competencies? In order to elaborate on these questions, I will focus on the interplay of religious identity development, well-being and interworldview competencies. I will mainly do this by integrating and combining findings of earlier research (both theoretical and empirical) on Christian secondary education in the Netherlands. In earlier studies the key components which are central in the current contribution have been addressed substantially. However, so far the interconnection between the concepts has not been thoroughly explored. This contribution is of an exploratory nature and aims to stimulate both theory building and empirical research. I will start with a theoretical framework to clarify what, in this contribution, is understood by ‘religious identity development’ and ‘worldview’ (II.1-2). In section III, attention will be paid to what is known (on LOOZE (eds.), HBSC 2017: Gezondheid en welzijn van jongeren in Nederland (Health and Well-Being of Young People in the Netherlands), Utrecht, Universiteit Utrecht, 2018. 9. RIVM-report: Themaverkenning 1. De mentale druk op jongeren lijkt toe te nemen (Mental Pressure on Young People Seems to Be Increasing), in Volksgezondheid verkenning, 2018; RIVM-report, Mentale gezondheid van jongeren: Enkele cijfers en ervaringen (Mental Health of Young People: Some Numbers and Experiences), RIVM, TrimbosInstituut en Amsterdam UMC, 2019. 10. RIVM-report: Verder kijken dan Corona: Over de toekomst van onze gezondheid (Looking beyond Corona: On the Future of Our Health), E-book, published 27 November, 2020; https://www.volksgezondheidtoekomstverkenning.nl/magazine (accessed 15 April, 2021).

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the basis of earlier research) about religious identity (III.1), religious backgrounds (III.2) and religious contacts (III.3) of Dutch young people. In what follows, it is argued that interworldview competencies are needed as they stimulate both individual development of young people and enhance wellbeing and living together in a (religiously) diverse (school) society. Section IV elaborates on the contextual embeddedness of interworldview competencies and discusses several dimensions of dialogical competencies (as central elements of interworldview competencies). Before concluding (section VI), section V offers ‘Provocative pedagogy’ as a possible pedagogical, didactical approach which integrates attention to both religious identity development, well-being and interworldview competencies.

II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 1. Religious Identity Development My PhD-thesis11 was on religious identity development of young people who attend Christian secondary education. For my theoretical framework I used the work of Erik Erikson12 and James Marcia13 who describe identity development in terms of commitment and exploration. According to Marcia, identity exists in the tension field between involvement (commitment) and the search stimulated by curiosity (exploration). Marcia understands commitment to be the affective involvement of the person with a person or a theme, feeling connected to it and the effort the person is prepared to put into it. Commitment means that someone is committed to something and goes for it. Commitment represents the connection to a specific combination of goals, values, and ideas. Exploration, in Marcia’s thinking, stands for curiosity that challenges one to investigate, to try out different alternative choices in areas that are relevant to the person. In the ideal situation, which is beneficial for one’s well-being and ongoing development, commitment and exploration are both present, in a balanced way. An important theme in the development of the young adolescent with regard to the changing relationship to the environment in which she or he is growing up, is the letting go of home and the forming of bonds, 11. BERTRAM-TROOST, Geloven in bijzonder onderwijs (n. 1). 12. E.H. ERIKSON, Identity, Youth and Crisis, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1968. 13. J.E. MARCIA, Identity in Adolescence, in J. ADELSON (ed.), Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, New York, Wiley, 1980, 159-187.

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commitments, with new ‘important others’14. Marcia has focused his research and theorising on the identity development of adolescents and young adults. Marcia’s research shows that relevant areas to which young people learn to relate personally are professional reality and the world of ideas or worldviews, which also includes values and standards15. These areas appear to determine identity, whether or not the young person ultimately develops a strong commitment to them. Particularly in his later work, Marcia has made clear that he sees identity development as a spiral process16. Development can be described as a process that is influenced by two poles. On the one hand there is the orientation towards forming and maintaining structure (foreclosure and achievement) and on the other hand the orientation towards openness to change and flexibility (diffusion, moratorium)17. The identity formation phase begins with the extremes of the two poles: rigidity (foreclosure) and a lack of definition (diffusion). Exploration is the first movement towards the integration of these two poles. The development cycle described by Stephen et al.18 involves finding a balance between the preservation of identity and openness to change. It is precisely in the process of identity revision that ‘the self’ and ‘the other’ come closer together: “Ongoing identity revision brings the poles of ‘self’ and ‘other’ ever closer into an identity which is expansive and inclusive while, at the same time, differentiated”19. Individual and environment are thus closely involved in the identity process. In line with Breeuwsma’s20 lifespan, dynamic perspective on development, development is perceived as “a lifelong multi-dimensional, multi-directional, multidetermined process. By changing commitments and explorations the individual de- and reconstructs his or her self-image. This image is subsequently used to process information and to deal with problems and situations”21. 14. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – K.H. TER AVEST, Levensbeschouwelijk leren als proces van loslaten en verbinden: Pedagogische strategieën ten behoeve van het (inter)religieuze leerproces van leerlingen (World-View Learning as Process of Letting Go and Connecting: Pedagogical Strategies for the Benefit of Students’ (Inter-)Religious Learning Process), in Handelingen: Tijdschrift voor praktische theologie 38/1 (2011) 45-55. 15. MARCIA, Identity in Adolescence (n. 13). 16. E.g., J. STEPHEN – E. FRASER – J.E. MARCIA, Moratorium-Achievement (MAMA) Cycles in Lifespan Identity Development: Value Orientations and Reasoning System Correlates, in Journal of Adolescence 15 (1992) 283-300. 17. See BERTRAM-TROOST, Geloven in bijzonder onderwijs (n. 1), pp. 32-33. 18. STEPHEN – FRASER – MARCIA, Moratorium-Achievement (MAMA) Cycles in Lifespan Identity Development (n. 16). 19. Ibid., pp. 297-298. 20. G. BREEUWSMA, De constructie van de levensloop (The Construction of the Life Course), Amsterdam – Meppel, Boom, 1994. 21. BERTRAM‐TROOST – DE ROOS – MIEDEMA, Religious Identity Development of Adolescents in Religiously Affiliated Schools (n. 1), p. 311.

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In my PhD-study I chose to use a broad definition of religion. To express this choice for a broad concept, the term ‘worldview’ (in Dutch levensbeschouwing) was used. Worldview is seen as being continuously subject to change and consisting of an individual’s system of implicit and explicit views and feelings in relation to human life. In the empirical research, for practical reasons, a ‘stipulative definition’ was used, namely: “A worldview is the way one looks at life”. Religious identity development was eventually described as “The totality of the gradual change in the content and strength of commitments in relation to the way one looks at life and the amount of exploration in the achievement and change of these commitment”22. 2. Terminology: Worldview and Religion The concept ‘worldview’ has been further conceptualised by van der Kooij, de Ruyter and Miedema23. Based on extensive conceptual study, they made a distinction between organised and personal worldview. As in both definitions existential questions are a relevant aspect, their definitions are very useful in relation to the aims of the current contribution. According to van der Kooij et al. organised worldviews are more or less established systems with a group of believers, which prescribe answers to existential questions. Personal worldviews are individuals’ views on life and humanity, consisting of (sometimes tentative) answers to existential questions. So, an important difference between organised and personal worldviews is that organised worldviews prescribe answers to existential questions, whereas personal worldviews only (tentatively) answer these questions. Regarding the different ‘types’ of existential questions24, van der Kooij et al. explain that “it is not necessary for a personal or organised worldview to pay attention to all these questions. A personal or organised worldview can have answers to some questions, reflect on others, without paying attention to others”25. This might be truer for a personal worldview than an organised worldview. To say that someone has a worldview, tentative answers to at least ontological questions, teleological questions and ethical questions are needed. 22. Ibid. 23. J.C. VAN DER KOOIJ – D.J. DE RUYTER – S. MIEDEMA, “Worldview”: The Meaning of the Concept and the Impact on Religious Education, in Religious Education 108 (2013) 210-228; IID., Can We Teach Morality without Influencing the Worldview of Students?, in Journal of Religious Education 63 (2015) 79-93. 24. According to VAN DER KOOIJ – DE RUYTER – MIEDEMA, Can We Teach Morality? (n. 23), existential questions express ontological, cosmological, theological, teleological, eschatological, and ethical notions. 25. Ibid.

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Like stated above, more and more people, both adults and young people, are – as homines optionis – left to themselves regarding existential questions. Possible answers to existential questions can be found in a variety of worldviews. In general, the importance of organised worldview is diminishing26. Nowadays, both in public and denominational schools we find a range of organised and personal worldviews (amongst which religious ones) amongst pupils, staff, and parents27. In the next section I will focus on the religious identity, backgrounds and contacts of Dutch young people. III. RELIGIOUS IDENTITY, BACKGROUNDS AND CONTACTS DUTCH YOUNG PEOPLE

OF

Based on available empirical data which have been collected during the last two decades, I will now shortly elaborate on the religious commitments and explorations of Dutch young people who attend Christian schools for secondary education. I will also share some findings regarding their religious backgrounds and elaborate on what is known about the interworldview contacts of young people, both inside and outside school. The combination of these descriptions leads to a plea for (more) attention to interworldview competencies in education. 1. Religious Commitments and Explorations Research among pupils (average age 16.8) attending the pre-examination classes of Higher General Education (Havo) and Pre‐University Education (VWO) of four Dutch Protestant Christian secondary schools, has provided more insight into the religious identity development of young people in terms of changing commitments and explorations28. Based on data derived from a quantitative question, I found that for the group pupils as a whole (a total of 518 pupils), the religious commitments are not strongly pronounced, but the religious explorations are even significantly lower. Generally speaking, young people are not particularly 26. CBS, Religie in Nederland (Religion in the Netherlands), 2020; https://www.cbs. nl/nl-nl/longread/statistische-trends/2020/religie-in-nederland?onepage=true (accessed 30 April, 2021). 27. E.g., S. MIEDEMA – W. VEUGELERS – G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST, Enkele trends in levensbeschouwelijke vorming anno 2013: Nationale en internationale perspectieven (Some Trends in World-View Education Anno 2013: National and International Perspectives), in Pedagogiek 33 (2021) 179-186. 28. BERTRAM-TROOST, Geloven in bijzonder onderwijs (n. 1).

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concerned with what their worldview actually entails, let alone with the question of whether and how they might view life differently. It seems more likely that they take for granted the worldview they have been inherited from their parents, without making a strong personal commitment. They seem to be planning to explore this further at some point in the future (‘someday’). Some young people indicated this almost literally in additional interviews. Based on these interviews and my further reflections on the data, I formulated the hypothesis that so many things are already changing in their lives (in the area of relationships, family, choices regarding study and profession, etc.) that in this phase of their lives (and perhaps especially then) young people need a framework to hold on to. This could explain the emphasis on commitments. However, if development is a continuous process of connection and exploration, then the exciting question is whether and how the development of young people’s religious identities can be kept going and whether or not young people can be prevented from getting stuck in ‘commitments’. I will get back on this in section five. 2. Religious Backgrounds of Pupils from the Perspective of Religious Education Teachers Although earlier research makes clear that pupils tend to have stronger religious commitments than explorations, it is not the case that most pupils explicitly adhere to a particular worldview. Already in 2006 41,5% of the pupils indicated not to count themselves among a particular religion of worldview. Given the developments in society29, my guess would be that this percentage would be higher nowadays. Also, the youth studies of, amongst others, van Dijk-Groeneboer point in that direction30. As schools do not collect data about the religious backgrounds of their pupils, only research can shed light on this. In a more recent study, we asked teachers who teach Religious Education (RE) in Dutch secondary schools to estimate the religious backgrounds of their pupils31. In table 1 the percentages are depicted, categorised for four different school types. Although RE is hardly taught in public schools, there are some schools 29. E.g., T. BERNTS – J. BERGHUIJS, God in Nederland: 1966-2015 (God in the Netherlands: 1966-2015), Utrecht, Ten Have, 2016. 30. E.g., M.C.H. VAN DIJK-GROENEBOER, Handboek Jongeren en religie (Handbook on Youth and Religion), Almere, Parthenon, 2010; EAD. – B. VAN HERPEN-DE REGT, Jongeren en hun waarden, in Religie & samenleving 14 (2019) 144-173. 31. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – T.D. VISSER, Godsdienst/levensbeschouwing, wat is dat voor vak? Docenten godsdienst/levensbeschouwing over zichzelf en hun vak, nu en in de toekomst (Religion/World-View, What Is That Subject? Religion/World-View Teachers about Themselves and Their Subject, Now and in the Future), Woerden, Verus, 2017.

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which do offer a course like RE. In total 5 teachers working at public schools responded (1,8% of the total research population). Although the percentages must be treated with care, it is interesting to see the differences in the estimations. Mean percentage … pupils

(Protestant) Christian

(Roman) Catholic

Strict religious, Christian

Public

Christian

29,29%

31,5%

91,37%

18,2%

Islamic

9,92%

9,13%

0,37%

21,4%

Religious

36,94%

30,24%

78%

26,4%

Secular

55,93%

61,33%

13,37%

58,6%

Table 1: Estimated religious backgrounds of pupils by RE teachers (percentages, by school denomination)

What is striking is that RE teachers estimate that most of their pupils are secular. Only teachers in strict religious Christian schools indicate that there are few secular pupils in their schools. This is probably related to the recruitment and admission policy used at these schools. Teachers working in Protestant and Catholic schools have the impression that around one third of their pupils are Christian. A large majority of the pupils in these schools are described by the Religious Education teachers as ‘secular’. According to the teachers of Protestant and Catholic schools, almost 10% of pupils are Muslim. In public secondary education, this percentage is higher, according to the Religious Education teachers. Considering the admission policy applied in strict religious schools, it is not surprising that the percentage of Christian pupils in these schools is so high and the percentage of Islamic pupils negligible. Lastly, it is good to realise that the percentages are means. From other studies32, we know that there is great variety within school denominations. For example, 60% of the pupils of one of the Christian schools for secondary education which took part in the 2006 study on religious identity development of young people consider themselves as Muslims and only 5% as Christians. 3. Interreligious Contacts of Dutch Young People In the EU funded research on religion in education (REDCo) which ran from 2006 to 2009 we investigated, among many other things, teenagers’ 32. E.g., BERTRAM-TROOST, Geloven in bijzonder onderwijs (n. 1); BERTRAM-TROOST – VERSTEEGT – VAN DER KOOIJ – VAN NES – MIEDEMA, Beyond the Split (n. 3).

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perspectives on the role of religion in their lives, schools and societies33. A quantitative questionnaire was spread amongst at least 400 pupils (attending secondary education, mean age 14 year and 11 months) in each of the participating countries, amongst which the Netherlands. A couple of questions focussed on the relations pupils have with people around them, both at school and after school. In the Dutch study eight schools participated, both denominational and public schools. The participating public schools did not teach Religious Education (no RE). The denominational schools offered either Confessional Religious Education (CCRE) or Non-Confessional Religious Education (CNRE). It is striking that the reactions on the statement “At school, I hang around with young people who have different religious backgrounds” were very diverse. Pupils who attend schools which offer confessional RE agreed less with this statement than pupils who attend schools which offer non-confessional RE or no RE (CCRE: 19,7%, CNRE: 68,8%, no RE: 77,5%). Pupils who do not have a religion stated significantly more often than those who have a religion that at school they socialize with young people who have different religious backgrounds (66,5% versus 43,8%)34. In the REDCo follow-up study the questions on dealing with people who have different backgrounds, were used again. In total 347 pupils with a mean age of 15 years and 3 months took part in the research (175 male [50,7%] and 170 female [49,3%]). In total five schools were involved, amongst which three Protestants schools35, one Catholic school and one public school. With an eye on the growing (religious) diversity in society as a whole and the growing amount of political and societal debates on how to deal with the plurality of religions and worldviews36, we aimed to add empirical insights37. With regard to dealing with young people of different religious worldviews at school, it seems that the more important religion is to a pupil, the more often he/she indicates to hang around with pupils of different 33. P. VALK – G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – M. FRIEDERICI – C. BÉRAUD (eds.), Teenagers’ Perspectives on the Role of Religion in Their Lives, Schools and Societies: A European Quantitative Study, Münster – New York – München – Berlin, Waxmann, 2009. 34. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – S. MIEDEMA – K.H. TER AVEST – C. BAKKER, Dutch Pupils’ Views on Religion in School and Society: Report on a Quantitative Research, in VALK – BERTRAM-TROOST – FRIEDERICI – BÉRAUD (eds.), Teenagers’ Perspectives on the Role of Religion in Their Lives, Schools and Societies (n. 33), 221-260. 35. Again there was variety between these Christian schools: one of them being strict religious the other two more open and diverse. 36. P. SCHEFFER, Het land van aankomst (The Country of Arrival), Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij, 2007; H.M. VROOM, Walking in a Widening World: Understanding Religious Diversity, Amsterdam, VU University Press, 2013. 37. BERTRAM-TROOST – MIEDEMA, Meeting the ‘Others’ in School (n. 2).

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religious backgrounds at school. For instance: of the young people to whom religion is not important at all, 43,8% hang out with pupils of different religious backgrounds at school. 27% of them do not know the religious background of their schoolmates. For young people to whom religion is very important, the percentage of those who socialize with pupils of different religious backgrounds at school is 62,9%. Only 6,5% of them indicate not knowing about the religious backgrounds of their schoolmates. One explanation for these differences could be that young people to whom religion is (very) important are more focused on religion and religious differences (as they probably also have more knowledge and experience in observing religious differences)38. The degree to which pupils deal with young people of different religious worldviews after school, does not seem to be related to the importance pupils attach to their own worldview. This might be related to the fact that, in the Netherlands, to a certain degree the choice of school is related to certain religious (or worldview) perspectives which affects the possibilities of meeting young people of different religious worldviews at school. In ‘after school life’ it is, in our depolarised society, much less possible to choose neighbours, activities, meetings et cetera with mainly people of the same worldview. Pupils who attend a strict religious school appear to have many more interreligious contacts outside school than at school. For pupils of the other schools it is striking that they have almost the same number of interreligious contacts both at school and after school or even more interreligious contacts at school than after school. We learn from these findings that, at least for the Dutch case, it is not possible to state in general that secondary schools in themselves are places where pupils meet more religious diversity then they are used to in their own lifeworld context. In some cases, it might even be the other way around39. All in all, the findings described above do indicate that it is valuable to pay further attention to interworldview competencies and the way attention is or can be given to them at school. There is religious diversity within schools, also within religious schools. More and more pupils are not explicitly aware of their worldview. In addition to that, quite some pupils to whom religion is not important do not know about the religious backgrounds of their schoolmates. In combination with the earlier finding that pupils (age 14-16) appear to have only little religious explorations, the impression arises that young people possibly live next to each 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid.

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other instead of really in interaction with each other. It is my contention that in order to develop school communities which can be described as interreligious instead of multireligious attention to interworldview competencies is needed. In the next section I will further reflect on what I perceive as key elements of interworldview competencies in the context of Dutch secondary education. IV. INTERWORLDVIEW COMPETENCIES: RELATIVISM AND CONTEXTUALITY One of the things which can be concluded from the findings as described above is that religious diversity within schools does not automatically lead to interreligious exchange and learning from each other. Apart from that, it is striking that more and more Dutch young people are not explicitly aware of their own worldview. Both with an eye on the religious identity development of pupils and their capacities to living together in a diverse society, attention to interworldview competencies can be recommended. In order to argue this, I will share some reflections regarding interworldview competencies. 1. Contextuality In line with Stier40 who reflects on the concept ‘intercultural competencies’, it is my contention that interworldview competencies are not universal, but flexible. They must constantly be modified according to the context, character of the task, background of the schools and people involved et cetera. As a result, in my view there are no absolute answers to the question which interworldview competencies are most needed nowadays. This view fits within the ecological approach as elaborated on by Bronfenbrenner41. Human development always takes place in context. The environment, in the broadest sense, is an important ‘player’ in the process. Identity development takes place in the micro-context (family), the meso- (school, peer group) and the macro-context of the public domain of society. In Bronfenbrenner’s ecological pedagogy, the school is seen as an intermediate space between family and society, and the classroom 40. J. STIER, Intercultural Competencies as a Means to Manage Intercultural Interactions in Social Work, in Intercultural Communication 7 (2004) 1-17. 41. U. BRONFENBRENNER, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1979; ID., Ecological Systems Theory, in Annals of Child Development 6 (1989) 187-249.

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is a practice space for public debate. Identity is not only a matter between the individual and significant others in the immediate family environment but is also formed in the encounter with others. Without the encounter with the other, a personal identity can in essence not develop42. This means that developing a personal identity in the encounter with the other is an important aspect of the school’s pedagogical task. What the focus of this task is or should be and how it can be given shape, depends on the context. However, in one way or the other dialogical competencies play an important role43. Based on the work of Strike44, elsewhere I elaborated on the three key components of dialogical competencies45. Most liberal philosophers attach great value to an autonomous lifestyle because only then, in their opinion, children can be intrinsically motivated to hold the liberal values. Unlike other liberal thinkers, Strike argues for the role and importance of personal concepts of life. Strike argues that there should be a dialogical relationship between comprehensive life concepts (as ‘primary moral languages’) and the more basic public morality (the ‘public language’). He emphasises that ‘the public language’ or the ‘public morality’ is not separated from the diverse moral traditions in society. Both languages develop, according to Strike, in interaction with each other, in a process of reciprocal adjustment, and are therefore dynamic. According to Strike it is likely that, in a liberal democratic society, different interpretations of the public language are developed, each being coherent with one of the different primary moral languages. Following this line of thought, de Wolff46 concludes that considering the dynamics of the public morality it is important to allow comprehensive life conceptions in the public debate on the arrangement of our society. In education children 42. See also A. PEPERZAK, To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University Press, 1993. 43. E.g., S. ALTMEYER, Competences in Inter-religious Learning, in K. ENGEBRETSON – M. DE SOUZE – G. DURKA – L. GEARON (eds.), International Handbook of Inter-religious Education: Part Two, Dordrecht, Springer, 2010, 627-640. 44. E.g., K.A. STRIKE, On the Construction of Public Speech: Pluralism and Public Reason, in Educational Theory 44 (1994) 1-26; ID., Liberalism, Communitarism and the Space Between: In Praise of Kindness, in Journal of Moral Education 29 (2000) 133147. 45. E.g., J. EXALTO – G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST, Strong Religion in Liberal Society: The Case of Strong Religious Schools in the Netherlands, in Education Sciences. Special issue: There Is a Crack in Everything. Education and Religion in a Secular Age 9/1, art. 28 (2019) 1-12; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9010028. 46. A. DE WOLFF, Religie, fundamentalisme en burgerschap (Religion, Fundamentalism and Citizenship), in S. MIEDEMA – G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST (eds.), Levensbeschouwelijk leren samenleven: Opvoeding, identiteit & ontmoeting (Learning to Live Together in World-View Perspective: Education, Identity & Encounter), Zoetermeer, Meinema, 2006, 155-170.

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need to learn dialogical competencies. Concerning education, Strike distinguishes three elements here: children must acquire skills in a primary moral language, in the public moral language and in conducting the hermeneutic or critical dialogue between the various primary moral languages47. To be a good citizen in our liberal-democratic society, then, reasoned along these lines, it is first of all important that children become well aware of their own conception of life c.q. worldview and get to know it well. It is also important that they learn what this view of life means for their lives and how they can discuss this with each other (and with others who share this view of life). Secondly, it is important that children learn about public morality (which, in Strike’s view, is not separate from primary moral languages) and learn to appreciate and endorse its importance. It is also important that children learn how to properly bring their own view of life into the public debate. Thirdly, it is important that children can practise conducting a ‘critical dialogue’ between different views of life. Being able to conduct a critical or hermeneutic dialogue serves, according to Strike, three purposes: firstly, children learn to understand how others think about their way of life. Secondly, it contributes to ‘reciprocity’, i.e., learning to put oneself in someone else’s shoes. Thirdly, practising critical dialogue should also contribute to children’s capacity to deal with criticisms of their own primary moral language and to value their own primary moral language correctly. This also means that they can really listen to criticism and (learn to) be open to alternative perspectives. So, it is also about daring to question one’s own perspective. It is my contention that pupils who come from secular backgrounds and attend public schools should develop other competencies than for instance pupils who come from strict religious backgrounds and attend a school which closely relates to this background. Both groups differ regarding the extent to which various interworldview competencies are already developed. E.g., as a result of an upbringing in a rather homogenous context, pupils who attend strong religious schools are generally very well aware of and have a lot of knowledge of their own perspective. Pupils attending public schools on the other hand have, generally speaking, more experiences with relating to others who hold different views. One of the things that I find very helpful of Strike’s approach is that it underlines, with an eye on living together in a diverse society, the 47. STRIKE, On the Construction of Public Speech (n. 44); ID., Liberalism, Communitarism and the Space Between (n. 44).

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importance of acquiring skills in one’s primary moral language or, in other words, worldview. To me, this shows that interworldview competencies should always come together with what one could call ‘intraworldview competencies’. As there appear to be some misunderstandings on this, I will now shortly reflect further on this issue. 2. Relativism In my view people often tend to interpret interreligious learning as an opposite or alternative rather than a constitutive and essential part of religious learning. Together with Altmeyer48 and in line with Strike49, I would like to stress that interreligious dialogue and learning are always and coincidentally intra-religious. If this is not clear (enough) to teachers, parents and pupils, the critique that developing interworldview competencies leads to relativism is rather understandable. In their book Diversity Competence: Cultures Don’t Meet, People Do, Hoffman and Verdooren50 elaborate on the ethical dimension of diversity issues: ‘Dealing with difference’ includes ethical dimensions: is one culture better than another? On what basis can this be determined? With reference to the work of Procee51, Hoffman and Verdooren present three ethical positions towards diversity: universalism, relativism, and pluralism. The most extreme and at the same time most common variant of universalism is monism. In short, monism means that one’s own system of thought or culture is the only legitimate way to understand the world. There are clear links here to ethnocentrism as the underlying assumption is that one’s own culture is superior. Relativism, on the other hand, stands for diversity: truth is relative and limited by one’s own experience and position. Cultural relativism therefore implies that all cultures represent their own unique way of life that cannot be understood from the outside. Hence, one cannot judge (the actions of) others. Aloof tolerance is what remains: Ethically, relativism encourages a position of non-judgment and acceptance of difference from the conviction that a universal morality is impossible and undesirable, as it could lead to feelings or actions based on superiority. 48. ALTMEYER, Competences in Inter-religious Learning (n. 43). 49. E.g., STRIKE, On the Construction of Public Speech (n. 44); ID., Liberalism, Communitarism and the Space Between (n. 44). 50. E. HOFFMAN – A. VERDOOREN, Diversity Competence: Cultures Don’t Meet, People Do, Bussum, Uitgeverij Coutinho, 2018. 51. H. PROCEE, Over de grenzen van culturen: Voorbij universalisme en relativisme (Across the Boundaries of Cultures: Beyond Universalism and Relativism), Amsterdam – Meppel, Boom, 1991.

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Relativism thus encourages tolerance as a main virtue: since one cannot judge phenomena in other cultures (religions) from one’s own culture/religion, the appropriate response it to be tolerant52.

In a society such as ours in which people from a variety of cultures and ways of life constantly meet, however, this is not tenable. Today’s world does not consist of separate islands of groups of people/cultures/beliefs that can remain at a safe distance from each other. All in all, it must be concluded that both universalism and relativism have their own advantages and disadvantages. Procee53 identifies pluralism as a way of getting past both relativism and universalism. Pluralism states that no single group holds the complete truth. The world is constantly in process. In interaction and exchange, people can improve their understanding of the world together. Diversity and interaction (exchange) are essential to this. Procee combines them into the keyword ‘interactive diversity’. To ensure this interactive diversity in a society, two things are crucial: non-exclusion and the promotion of interaction. No one, regardless of cultural, religious, or ideological background, should be excluded beforehand from interaction and the exchange of ideas. In order to live together, people must also be willing to communicate and explain their views. This is exactly where interworldview competencies come in. Amongst them are notions of ‘openness towards other perspectives’, ‘positive approach towards otherness’ and the ‘capability of suspending judgement’. These skills are unfortunately sometimes wrongly mixed up with a particular interpretation of ‘tolerance’ and thereby with relativism. Namely: toleration as ‘live and let live’, an attitude that in fact has more to do with indifference than with real tolerance. In order to overcome misunderstandings of (the ethical positioning of) interworldview competencies, including dialogical competencies, together with Hoffman and Verdooren54 I think it is very important to make clear that “engaging in dialogue does not mean withholding judgment: it means suspending judgement until a deeper understanding of an issue is gained. It represents a willingness or even enthusiasm to broaden your view and learn from others in the pursuit of a deeper and broader understanding”. All in all, interworldview competencies involve a willingness to challenge both the other’s and one’s own views, which is really different from ‘anything goes’ or mere relativism.

52. HOFFMAN – VERDOOREN, Diversity Competence (n. 50), pp. 95, 96. 53. PROCEE, Over de grenzen van culturen (n. 51). 54. HOFFMAN – VERDOOREN, Diversity Competence (n. 50), p. 101.

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V. INTEGRATING RELIGIOUS IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT, WELL-BEING, AND INTERWORLDVIEW COMPETENCIES: PROVOCATIVE PEDAGOGY In the remainder of this contribution, I will focus on the possible interplay of religious identity development, well-being, and interworldview competencies within the context of secondary education. It is my contention that the key aim of education, including worldview education, is broad personhood formation. Schools can and should play a valuable role when it comes to helping pupils finding their ways in life. Here I draw to a contribution of Schinkel on education and ultimate meaning55. Schinkel refers to Peters, White, and de Ruyter56 who all argue that education should contribute to the meaning people are able to find and give to life. De Ruyter makes clear that meaningful education is a fundamental interest of children. She argues that the right to meaningful education should be interpreted as a right to be raised within a conception of the good and to learn from a diversity of alternative conceptions of the good. De Ruyter describes meaningful education as education that assists children to find their meaning in life. She underlines that the preposition ‘in’ is used deliberately. Meaningful education does not necessarily or primarily assist children in acquiring an understanding of the meaning of life, i.e., an understanding of why they live or what the purpose of human life is. It assists children to acquire a sense of meaning of their own life, i.e., what will give their live meaning, purpose or sense57.

Peters and White also both dismiss the idea of ultimate or profound meaning (‘the meaning of life’) in favour of ordinary meaning, or ‘meaning in life’. Thus, according to Schinkel, they exemplify the trend visible also in the general philosophical literature on life’s meaning. Schinkel argues that in their rejection of ultimate meaning and retreat to ordinary meaning they concede too much. In his view the possibility of ultimate meaning of life should be left open in education: The question is, however, whether education should be limited to supporting, facilitating, promoting and otherwise contributing to meaning in life, ‘immanent’ meaning only – or rather go beyond that and affirm the search 55. A. SCHINKEL, Education and Ultimate Meaning, in Oxford Review of Education 41 (2015) 711-729. 56. E.g., R.S. PETERS, Farewell to Aims?, in The London Educational Review 2 (1973) 1-4; J. WHITE, Education and a Meaningful Life, in Oxford Review of Education 35 (2009) 423-435; ID., Exploring Wellbeing in Schools: A Guide to Making Children’s Lives More Fulfilling, Abingdon, Routledge, 2011; D.J. DE RUYTER, The Right to Meaningful Education: The Role of Values and Beliefs, in Journal of Beliefs and Values 23 (2002) 33-42. 57. DE RUYTER, The Right to Meaningful Education (n. 56), p. 34.

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for a deeper, higher, ‘transcendent’ or ‘ultimate’ kind of meaning. I will argue that education should indeed do the latter58.

It is his contention, and I agree with him on this point, that education should “both help people come to terms with doubt in this area of life and foster their capacity to enjoy experiences of ultimate meaning”59. Schinkel’s theoretical plea underlines the more practical advices of, amongst other, the Dutch Educational Council (which is the most influential advisory board of the Dutch government regarding education). The Council advocates an active role of school in contributing to helping pupils finding their ways in life. In their report Onderwijs vormt60 two ways in which schools can contribute are distinguished, both in terms of content and process. First, content-wise by offering pupils knowledge about various (religious) traditions and the moral and existential insights that exist in these traditions as traditions, history and community are needed to help young people shape their own moral identity. Secondly, process-wise, by inviting young people, in an open dialogue, to discover for themselves what can be meaningful for them and how they want to relate to the traditions offered. Conversations in the classroom about what pupils are essentially concerned with and how they themselves want to (learn to) relate to various traditions can then be personally formative for the pupils and at the same time contribute to their citizenship skills. Both the individual pupil and their (religious) identity development and society as a whole benefit from this. As explained above, it is my contention that with an eye on both the religious identity development of pupils and their capacities to living together in a diverse society, attention to interworldview competencies in education is very helpful. Special attention needs to be given to dialogical competencies, which include both intra-religious learning and interreligious learning. Interworldview competencies can stimulate both religious commitments and religious explorations as interworldview competencies are both focussed on awareness and knowledge of one’s own perspective and on other perspectives. Earlier findings show that pupils in secondary education generally tend to have a greater need for something to hold on to (‘commitment’) than for change (‘exploration’). They are more inclined to ‘connect’ than to ‘let go’. However, identity development is described as a process in which 58. SCHINKEL, Education and Ultimate Meaning (n. 55), p. 712. 59. Ibid., p. 711. 60. Onderwijsraad (Education Council), Onderwijs vormt (Education Forms), Den Haag, Onderwijsraad, 2011.

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connecting and letting go both play a role. Where the pupil tends to hold on, he/she can be challenged by the teacher to let go61. Pupils can only take up this challenge when they feel encouraged and are not required to throw all their (temporary) certainties overboard at once62. Here lies the challenge for the teacher: to challenge pupils (to let go) in such a way that they also feel encouraged. Elsewhere this approach has been described as ‘provocative pedagogy’63. The word ‘provocative’ comes from the Latin provocare, which is: to call, to arouse, to encourage, to stimulate, to challenge. So provocative is more than just challenging, it is first of all – before stimulating and challenging are mentioned – encouraging, giving trust. Five key characteristics can be distinguished64. Provocative pedagogy starts by tuning in to the needs of the child, first of all by listening to ‘the voice of the child’. Provocative pedagogy begins, so to say, by orienting the teacher to his/her environment. The young person feels at home with the teacher because he knows himself to be known. Listening is an essential competency in provocative pedagogy. Secondly, the teacher asks himself what the learning needs of these young people might be in this context. The teacher shows himself to be a good listener, someone who is satisfied with just one word when he hears what the pupil says – also what was not said. After all, what moves the pupil often goes deeper than the concrete subject that he brings up or the behaviour that is displayed. The third characteristic of a provocative pedagogy is the trust that the teacher gains from the young person by answering his/her needs. The teacher must be able to listen to what the pupil brings and contributes, but – and this is an essential aspect – not be limited by it in his role of professional educator. It is only in a relationship of trust that the child dares to allow 61. BERTRAM-TROOST – TER AVEST, Levensbeschouwelijk leren als proces van loslaten en verbinden (n. 14). 62. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST, Levensbeschouwelijke identiteitsontwikkeling van jongeren: Tussen verbinding en verkenning (Youth World-View Identity: Between Connection and Exploration), in T. VAN LAAR-JOCHEMSEN – J.M. PRAAMSMA – J. GERKEMA-MUDDE – C. KOERS (eds.), Geloofwaardig opvoeden: Op zoek naar richting en ruimte (Credible Parenting: In Search of Direction and Space), Barneveld, Uitgeverij De Vuurbaak, 2006, 47-57. 63. K.H. TER AVEST, Provocatieve pedagogiek: Uitdaging en bemoediging voor het verhaal van leerlingen en leerkrachten in de school (Provocative Pedagogy: Challenging and Encouraging the Story of Students and Teachers in School), in T. VAN DER ZEE – C. HERMANS (eds.), Identiteit als verhaal van de school, Budel, Damon, 2009, 79-94; K.H. TER AVEST – G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST, Provocatieve pedagogiek en didactische strategieën (Provocative Pedagogy and Didactical Strategies), in IID. (eds.), Geloven in samenleven (Believing in Living Together), Amsterdam, ScienceGuide, 2009, 120-135. 64. TER AVEST – BERTRAM-TROOST, Provocatieve pedagogiek en didactische strategieën (n. 63).

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itself to be called upon, aroused, and challenged to leave the familiar and explore hitherto unknown possibilities. In a trusting relationship, the child allows itself to be taken by the hand to enter a new space, a space – and this is the fourth characteristic – that the teacher has created for the young person to be able to cope with the confrontation with positive or negative contrasts, and to learn in the difference. Guided by the teacher, the young person explores the other, faces the difference in order to look at him- or herself differently because of the contrast: ‘Guided openness’ is the fifth characteristic of a provocative pedagogy. Although the teacher plays an important role in provocative pedagogy, also classmates can be inviting to adopt a different perspective and – in doing so – stimulate exploration. In addition, characters from religious stories from the Christian and other religious traditions can also evoke contrasting experiences and, as such, challenge development. In both cases, however, it is the teacher who creates the trusting framework within which the developmental process of letting go and connecting is possible. From the careful appraisal based on knowledge, skills, experiences and expertise the teacher knows what intervention is best to stimulate the pupils’ development. The teacher is so to say ‘the master’ who knows the impact of saying farewell to one’s own comfort zone and exploring other perspectives in order to achieve authenticity in one’s own commitments. Since it is generally known that learning by example is the best way to transform a learner’s attitude and behaviour, the teacher must be an ‘expert by own experiences’ in exploration and commitment. The teacher should have gone beyond the confusion of the encounter with ‘the other’65. VI. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION In this contribution I elaborated on the interplay of religious identity development, well-being, and interworldview competencies. I did so by integrating and combining findings of earlier research (both theoretical and empirical) on Christian secondary education in the Netherlands. I argued that with an eye on both the religious identity development of pupils and on their capacities to living together in a diverse society, attention to interworldview competencies in education is very helpful. Special attention needs to be given to dialogical competencies, which include 65. K.H. TER AVEST – G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – S. MIEDEMA, Provocative Pedagogy or Youngsters Need the Brain to Challenge Worldview Formation, in Religious Education 107 (2012) 356-370.

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both intra-religious learning and interreligious learning. Interworldview competencies can stimulate both religious commitments and religious explorations, as interworldview competencies are both focussed on awareness and knowledge of one’s own perspective (intra-worldview) and on other perspectives. As healthy identity development, in which commitment and exploration are balanced, is related to well-being, my expectation is that the development of interworldview competencies of young people can stimulate both their religious commitments and explorations and well-being. This is especially helpful in our times, given the difficulties many young people experience regarding answering existential questions and finding their ways in a (religiously) diverse world. I argued that provocative pedagogy could be a helpful approach here as it seeks to find a balance between young people’s need for holding on (commitment) and the importance of change, ‘letting go’ and encountering ‘the other’ (exploration). Provocative pedagogy offers fruitful possibilities to combine (attention to) intraworldview competencies and interworldview competencies in educational settings. Further conceptual elaboration and research could shed further light on the relationships between identity development, interworldview competencies and well-being. I assume, and findings of the described studies point in that direction, that learning how to relate to others who hold different perspectives stimulates exploration. Probably it also ‘works’ the other way around in the sense that identity development and well-being can also stimulate interworldview competencies: if pupils know who they are themselves and what they stand for (commitment), in combination with an openness towards others (exploration), they are most probably more open towards (learning/improving) interworldview competencies like suspending judgements and tolerating ambiguity. More (empirical) research is needed to investigate how this can be done in practice and under which conditions the outcomes are optimal. The role of the teacher also needs further investigation. How can teachers be motivated and equipped to implement skills which are connected to provocative pedagogy? What helps and/or hinders them in doing so? Especially Educational Design Research can shed light on these issues as this approach which combines theoretical and practical knowledge aims at both generating research-based solutions for complex problems in educational practice and advancing knowledge about the characteristics of these interventions66. 66. T. PLOMP – N. NIEVEEN (eds.), Educational Design Research. Part A: An Introduction, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development, Enschede, SLO, 2013.

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All schools should embrace their societal and pedagogical responsibilities and find out in their specific context – with a specific teacher and pupil population – in what way they can contribute to interworldview competencies. In order to be able to take up their societal role seriously, more room should be made for transformational educational processes. This implies that schools should not only be measured and paid on the basis of their cognitive quantifiable outcomes67. Only then, schools are really able to contribute to interworldview competencies of young people which serve both their identity development and well-being and society as a whole. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Faculty of Religion and Theology Chair of Religious Education De Boelelaan 1105 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands [email protected]

Gerdien BERTRAM-TROOST

67. G.D. BERTRAM-TROOST – S. MIEDEMA, Fostering Religious Tolerance in Education: The Dutch Perspective, in R. GANZEVOORT – S. SREMAC (eds.), Lived Religion and the Politics of (In)tolerance, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 237-257.

PART III

CONFESSIONAL COURSES

INTERWORLDVIEW DIALOGUE AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION COURSE IN SECONDARY EDUCATION IN FLANDERS

I. INTRODUCTION There should be something about Christians that puzzles people and makes them wonder what is at the heart of our lives. Timothy Radcliffe1

According to Didier Pollefeyt (KU Leuven), the goal of interworldview competencies is “to build a culture of discourse between the worldview courses and to help pupils to acquire competencies that will enable them to enter into dialogue and work together with those of other beliefs”2. But how do the interworldview competencies relate to the curriculum of Roman Catholic Religious Education in secondary education in Flanders? This is the key question of the present contribution. We will firstly sketch a framework for both worldview education in Flanders and the interworldview competencies that have been formulated by those responsible for the worldview courses. Secondly, we will focus on the Roman Catholic Religious Education curriculum that was updated in 2019. Subsequently we will answer our central question by considering the interworldview competencies in and in relation to the curriculum. In concluding our contribution, we hold a plea for the opportunity to search.

II. FRAMEWORK In order to sketch the context in which interworldview competencies are acquired in Flemish secondary education, we will present the twofold nature of its framework. Firstly, we will consider worldview education 1. T. RADCLIFFE, What Is the Point of Being a Christian?, London, Burns & Oates, 2005, p. 2. 2. D. POLLEFEYT, Allemaal dialoogscholen!? Levensbeschouwelijke vakken en interlevensbeschouwelijke dialoog (All Dialogue Schools? World-View Courses and Interworldview Dialogue), a lecture based on Pollefeyt’s opinion article of 20 October 2019, Hoe vorm geven aan interlevensbeschouwelijke dialoog tussen levensbeschouwelijke vakken in het gemeenschapsonderwijs? (How to Shape Interfaith Dialogue between WorldView Subjects in State Education?), see https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2019/10/17/allemaaldialoogscholen/.

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in Flanders and indicate its connection with the education network. Secondly, we will focus on the interworldview competencies, the attainment of which has been made compulsory by the authorities for worldview education. 1. Worldview Education in Flanders In Belgium, the federal government recognises a total of six religions or religious denominations, and one non-religious worldview, thus giving these groups the right to governmental subsidies. Chronologically, Roman Catholicism and Judaism were recognised at Belgium’s inception, then Anglicanism (1835) and Protestantism (1876), and more recently Islam (1974), Orthodoxy (1995) and a non-religious worldview (2002). While the Buddhist Union of Belgium does receive a grant, it is only recently recognised by the government, but is not prepared to be an actor in the field. The recognition of these six religions/denominations and this one nonreligious worldview requires the organisation of worldview education in all the networks of the Officieel onderwijs (‘Official Education’) system of public schools (as distinguished from the Vrij onderwijs, or ‘Free Education’ system of private schools) and in all three communities of Belgium. Every recognised religion/denomination/worldview is associated with a ‘Recognised Authority’ and the non-religious worldview with an ‘Association’ (an intentional word choice on their part). Each Recognised Authority and Association is thus responsible for the content of the education that they organise (i.e., the curriculum) and for the supervision and mentoring of the teachers3. Contrary to all the other school courses in Belgium’s 3. For clarity, as far as Roman Catholic Religious Education is concerned, it is not the Recognised Authority that is responsible for the mandate of the Religious Education teacher, but the competent authority, i.e., the bishop, who in practice has delegated his authority to his Education delegate. In regard to mandates, see M. VAN STIPHOUT, Functieerkenning: De godsdienstleerkracht op het snijvlak van twee juridische werelden (Accreditation: The Religion Teacher at the Intersection of Two Legal Worlds), in L. BRAECKMANS (ed.), Niets nieuws onder de zon: De competentie van de leerkracht als levensbeschouwelijke pedagoog (Nothing New under the Sun: The Competence of the Teacher as a Worldview Instructor), Antwerpen, UCSIA, 2007, 17-38 and EAD., De juridische bevoegdheden van de levensbeschouwelijke instanties voor de organisatie van het eigen godsdienstonderwijs en van de niet-confessionele zedenleer in Vlaanderen: Noot bij arrest nr. 172.519 van de Raad van State (The Jurisdiction of the Recognised Authorities for the Organization of Their Own Religious Education and Non-Confessional Ethics in Flanders: Note on Judgment no. 172,519 of the Council of State), in Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsrecht en Onderwijsbeleid (Journal for Education Law and Education Policy) 3 (2007-2008) 234239.

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compulsory education, the supervision and mentoring tasks in worldview education are not two separate functions, but are combined into one integrated job description. In worldview education one speaks therefore not of inspectors and mentors, but of inspector-mentors (inspecteur-adviseur). In Flanders, inspector-mentors of the worldview courses together make up one fourth of all salaried inspectors of the Flemish Government for all courses4. In Flanders, education is organised by both public and private educational networks. In the first category (referred to above as ‘Official Education’), the education providers are under the direct responsibility of the government: Community Education (GO!)5, Education for Towns and Municipalities6, and Provincial Education7. As for private education, Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen (Catholic Education Flanders) comprises the largest umbrella organisation8, having joined forces with four additional actors to represent their interests toward the government in the Consultative Committee of Small Education Providers9. Not all schools belong to a network or umbrella organisation. Moreover, the option of homeschooling is also possible10. An umbrella organisation or a school can be guided by a confessional pedagogical project. This is the case for example with Catholic Education 4. The inspector-mentors for the worldview courses in Flanders have all been recruited by and receive directives, guidance and advice from their Recognised Authority. For the inspector-advisors of Roman Catholic Religious Education for example, the Recognised Authority is the Episcopal delegate of the diocese in which they work. They receive their salary however from the Flemish government, who naturally holds them to their statutory commission. The Recognised Authority for Roman Catholic Religious Education is a body of the Roman Catholic Church for which the Flemish bishops are responsible. Specifically, the Recognised Authority for Roman Catholic Religious Education is made up at present of the five education delegates of the Flemish dioceses, representatives of the Belgian Episcopal Conference and the Director-General of Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen (Catholic Education Flanders). 5. See www.g-o.be. 6. See www.ovsg.be. 7. See www.pov.be. 8. Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen is a membership and network organisation. It connects Catholic school boards with each other, represents them to the governmental authorities and supports the schools in pedagogical, juridical and organisational areas. See: https:// katholiekonderwijs.vlaanderen/engels. 9. ‘Overleg Kleine Onderwijsverstrekkers’ (‘Consultative Committee of Small Education Providers’). See: https://www.vlor.be/vlor-in-english. The Steiner schools (www.steinerscholen. be), the Independent Method schools (www.fopem1.jimdo.com), the Protestant schools (www.ipco.be) and the Flemish Education Consultation Platform (www.voop.be) belong to this Consultative Committee. 10. For a clear and more detailed explanation of the Belgian Education system see https:/ /eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/belgium-flemish-community_en.

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Flanders with its Catholic Dialogue School project11. On the basis of this project, the school is open to anyone who wishes to receive education that is primarily based on a Christian-inspired view of humankind and the world. With respect for every person’s (worldview) identity, the Catholic Dialogue School invites pupils to enter into dialogue with those of other convictions and, in doing so, invites them, through such dialogue, to discover, deepen and strengthen their own identity. The Roman Catholic Religious Education course is an integral part of the educational project of the Catholic Dialogue School (which is why it is obligatory). Moreover, as Didier Pollefeyt explains, “one can safely say that the concept of the Catholic Dialogue School developed from the new perspective of the Roman Catholic Religious Education course which had already been developed at the end of the previous century”12. Obviously, the lesson timetables for Roman Catholic Religious Education in a Catholic Dialogue School correlate with the school’s Christianinspired pedagogical project. Catholic Education Flanders and the Recognised Authority for Roman Catholic Religious Education share the policy that in primary education, three Roman Catholic Religion lessons will be scheduled weekly. Education organised by a public authority or public administration (the Flemish Community, Province or City/Town) differs considerably in regards to worldview-inspired education. For example, in Community Education, organised by the public authorities, two worldview lessons per week are compulsory. The pupils (or rather the pupil’s parents) are at liberty to choose the particular worldview education desired. In both primary and secondary education, each worldview has its own specific teacher. The worldview course is completely unrelated to other school courses in the 11. For more on the Catholic Dialogue School, see Katholieke dialoogschool: Eigentijds tegendraads (On the Catholic Dialogue School: Contemporary Contrarian), Antwerpen, Halewijn, 2016; D. POLLEFEYT – J. BOUWENS – P. VEREECKE, Katholieke dialoogschool: Wissel op de toekomst (Catholic Dialogue School: Change on the Future), Antwerpen, Halewijn, 2016; L. BOEVE – J. METTEPENNINGEN – D. POLLEFEYT (eds.), Liefde in tijden van katholieke dialoogschool (Love in Times of the Catholic Dialogue School), Antwerpen, Halewijn, 2017; L. BOEVE, Het evangelie volgens Lieven Boeve: Mijn ambitie voor onderwijs (The Gospel according to Lieven Boeve: My Ambition for Education), Tielt, Lannoo, 2019, pp. 16-60. 12. D. POLLEFEYT, Artikel 24 van de Belgische Grondwet en de blijvende waarde van de huidige levensbeschouwelijke vakken: Een antwoord aan Patrick Loobuyck of de analyse van een ideologisch construct (Article 24 of the Belgian Constitution and the Lasting Value of Current Worldview Subjects: An Answer to Patrick Loobuyck or the Analysis of an Ideological Construct), in Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsrecht en Onderwijsbeleid (Journal for Education Law and Education Policy) 5 (2019-2020) 421-430, here p. 423.

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curriculum. As a last detail, we also note here that since the middle of the 1980s, in addition to the choice of a specific worldview, pupils in Official Education schools also have the possibility of exemption from worldview education. In such cases, they are no longer obligated to follow any course established by a particular denomination, religion, or worldview. On a historical note: since and even during the creation of Belgium, the place and value of worldview education in the curriculum has been regularly the subject of debate13. Most recently, this occurred during the run-up to the parliamentary election of 26 May 2019. During the process of identifying Articles of the Constitution that would be open to revision on the part of the new legislature, Article 24 was removed from consideration at the last minute – more specifically, this guaranteed that worldview education would retain its place in schools as enshrined in the Constitution. Particularly responsible for this action was Senator Bert Anciaux, who, contrary to the predetermined platform of his party, voted against the opening of Article 24. His party (and other parties supportive of the revision of article 24 §3) were ‘not amused’14. In acting on his personal conviction, Anciaux had thus broken an unwritten rule. He explains: “For me, Article 24 guarantees that religion in one’s upbringing and in the educational system should keep its place”. He continues, “If one bans religion from Official Education, then one bans religion from organised society and from the governing authorities. In this way, religions are forced onto the side-lines of society, without preserving any insight into their ideological way of working and without the possibility of fundamental dialogue. That is extremely dangerous. We have to fight for more opportunities to develop into an active pluralistic society”15. Even although Article 24 is only applicable to Official Education schools – and does not by contrast affect schools affiliated with Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen – a change in the status of the worldview courses could have led to the considerable loss of governmental subsidies.

13. For a very concise summary, see B. MOENS, De nieuwe schoolstrijd: Hoe de toekomst van het onderwijs ons allen raakt (The New School Battle: How the Future of Education Affects Us All), Kalmthout, Polis, 2019, pp. 23-47. More extensively, see also. H. BYLS, Geschiedenis van het katholiek onderwijs in België (The History of Catholic Education in Belgium), Leuven, KADOC, 2015; J. DE MAEYER – P. WYNANTS (eds.), Katholiek onderwijs in België: Identiteiten in evolutie: 19e-21ste eeuw (Catholic Education in Belgium: The Evolution of Identities: 19th-21st Century), Antwerpen, Halewijn, 2016. 14. See POLLEFEYT, Artikel 24 van de Belgische Grondwet en de blijvende waarde van de huidige levensbeschouwelijke vakken (n. 12). 15. https://www.kuleuven.be/thomas/page/interview-bert-anciaux/.

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2. Interworldview Competencies in Flanders While there is structural interaction between the authorities responsible for the worldview courses16, there has not been such structural interaction in the classroom. In order to compensate for this deficiency, and in light of the awareness that structured meetings with those of other worldviews would stimulate the threefold aims of (1) knowledge about each other, (2) making comparisons with each other, and (3) enhancing the development of one’s own worldview identity, the need arose for structural interactions of this nature17. In this way it would be possible to respond to the heterogeneity in the class, with all its worldview diversity. On 27 September 2013, the Minister of Education of the Flemish government, along with the representatives of the Recognised Authorities (or more specifically the representatives of the different worldview subjects), signed a declaration obligating all worldview teachers to implement 24 interworldview competencies into their teaching: seven of which concern ‘me and my worldview’, ten regarding ‘me, my worldview, and the worldview of the other’, and another seven regarding ‘me, my worldview, the worldview of the other, and society’. While compatible with each other, they are differentiated on each of the three levels between knowledge on the one hand, and skills and attitudes on the other.

16. On this subject see M. VAN STIPHOUT, Scheiding van kerk en staat als achtergrond en oorzaak van de vele vormen van samenwerking tussen de organisatoren van de levensbeschouwelijke vakken in Vlaanderen (Separation of Church and State as Background and Cause of the Many Forms of Cooperation between the Organizers of the Worldview Subjects in Flanders), in L. DEVUYST – C. VAN WAEREBEKE (eds.), De toekomst van de levensbeschouwelijke vakken: De eerste stappen naar gelijkberechtiging: 50 jaar schoolpact (The Future of Worldview Subjects: The First Steps towards Equal Rights: 50 Years of School Pact), Brussels, VUBPress, 2010, 123-142. The Recognised Authority & Association, a consultative body of representatives of the Approved Bodies and Association established in 1993, plays an important role in the structural contact of worldview education in Flanders. 17. See also M. VAN STIPHOUT, Contextualiteit en maatschappelijk belang van de levensbeschouwelijke vakken in Vlaanderen (Contextuality and Societal Importance of the Worldview Subjects in Flanders), in C. VAN KERCKHOVE – K. DE MAEGD – F. STAPPAERTS – P. DALKIRAN – J. VAN POUCKE (eds.), Hebben ze zin? Levensbeschouwelijke vakken in het onderwijs (Are They Relevant? Worldview Subjects in Education), Antwerpen – Apeldoorn, Garant, 2019, 11-25, especially pp. 19-21.

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The schematic organisation of these competencies is as follows18:

18. Cf. https://www.onderwijsinspectie.be/sites/default/files/atoms/files/20121206_ dossier_ILSenILD.pdf.

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In the first phase of implementation, teachers need to be able to prove that they implement these competencies in their lessons for a maximum of 6 hours per year19. Of course, the said competencies are not to be seen separately from the established curriculum of each worldview (cf. infra). On 28 January 2016, a statement of commitment was signed by representatives from the umbrella organisations of Official Education and those from the Approved Bodies and Association20. Since then, they stand shoulder to shoulder in their commitment to strengthen worldview dialogue, and to do so through a continued effort to realise the interworldview competencies. This commitment to work together towards (inter) worldview interpretation and dialogue is further underscored by the societal context, as illustrated for example by the terrorist attacks in Brussels and in Zaventem airport in March 2016. How does one create a realistic, positive picture of worldviews as constructive sociological (f)actors in a context that is factually dominated by aggression in the name of a god or worldview? III. THE CURRICULUM FOR ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION SECONDARY EDUCATION21

IN

An educational focus on integral personal development implies focusing on worldview education. It is the ambition and the claim of the Roman Catholic Religious Education course that it contributes fundamentally to the development of both the growth of the pupils’ identity and the position and responsibility these young people will later have in society. Qualitative worldview education is crucial in this respect. This is the context in which the updating of the Roman Catholic Religious Education curriculum for secondary education took place in January 2019. This update also applies to the same course across all education networks. 1. Curriculum Update The updated curriculum is essentially the same curriculum as that of 199922. However, having been in use for the previous two decades, in 19. The first phase referred to here is not further detailed. 20. See https://onderwijs.vlaanderen.be/sites/default/files/2021-07/01-28-engagements verklaring-interlevensbeschouwelijke-dialoog.pdf. 21. The following is a slightly modified version of the introduction I wrote on behalf of the Recognised Authority: Leerplan rooms-katholieke godsdienst voor het secundair onderwijs: Geactualiseerde versie (Curriculum for Roman Catholic Religious Education in Secondary Education: Updated Version), Brussel, Licap, 2019, pp. 5-8. 22. For the previous curriculum see Leerplan rooms-katholieke godsdienst voor het secundair onderwijs in Vlaanderen (Curriculum for Roman Catholic Religious Education in Secondary Education in Flanders), Brussel, Licap, 1999, reprinted in 2007.

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format as well as content, it was time for an update. As far as the format was concerned, in both its paper and digital version, the curriculum needed to be orderly and clear and without too many complex sentences. It needed to be as schematic as possible, giving the teacher the maximum freedom to be creative in working with the ingredients to achieve the area goals. With regard to the content, an update had become inevitable, as fundamental issues had developed since 1999 that demanded integration in the curriculum, such as the interworldview competencies and compatibility with the Catholic Dialogue School project. Finally, and in a certain sense predominantly, an update of the curriculum was needed because the world, the Church and the education of 1999 differed from the world, the Church and the education of 2019, just as the worldview development of teenagers had in the meantime also evolved. If the curriculum aims to promote the worldview development of every pupil on the course, an update was therefore essential. While the curriculum update may have its roots in the aforementioned developments, there were also more general and equally important reasons behind it. Firstly, there are two reasons that relate to the two central actors: pupils deserve the best schooling and coaching possible in their worldview development; teachers deserve a curriculum that serves as a beacon and provides support in this process. Furthermore, the update also intends to contribute to (1) the strengthening of religious literacy; (2) the integration of the interworldview competencies into the course; (3) the positioning of the curriculum in a mindset of compatibility with the Catholic Dialogue School project and, finally (4) the adaption of the course to the context, the latter of which takes on both a contemporary and contentious position. In summary: the update aims to continue to guarantee and strengthen the quality of Religious Education within and outside of the Catholic Dialogue School. The basis of the updated curriculum is and remains the same as the curriculum of twenty years ago, articulated in the bishops’ Vision Statement of 9 September 1996. In this text, Religious Education is described explicitly and implicitly as a commission, a challenge and a service. Having listened to Religious Education teachers, lecturers and inspector-mentors, the decision was made in 2016 to take the time for a more profound reflection. Monsignor Johan Bonny, the delegated representative of the Bishops’ Conference for education in Flanders and president of the Recognised Authority for Roman Catholic Religious Education, noted that: Together with all the involved parties, the Flemish bishops wish to make an update of the Religious Education curriculum in view of possible modification or improvement.

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Actors from the field – teachers and lecturers – together with inspectormentors, THOMAS team-leader Didier Pollefeyt23 and other theologians from KU Leuven, formed a working group under the leadership of Canon Jaak Janssen, the then moderator of the Recognised Authority, and Hein Van Renterghem, co-ordinator of the inspector-mentors. The working group met approximately every six weeks in Leuven. The original idea was to focus solely on an update of the ingredients, that is, everything that should be given attention in class. This first phase of the revision process came to an end at the end of the summer of 2017, when the growing suspicion that the focus needed to be broadened proved inevitable: not only the ingredients needed updating, but also the area goals! The area goals determine which objectives need to be achieved through the ingredients. During a meeting in Mechelen with the members of the Recognised Authority and a number of inspectormentors, this path was resolutely chosen. It was immediately articulated in the declaration, Roman Catholic Religious Education at the Crossroads of Society, Education and Church Community, published by the Flemish bishops and the Recognised Authority on 21 September 201724: According to the Vision Statement of the Flemish bishops concerning ‘the Roman Catholic Religious Education course in schools in Flanders’, the curricula of R.C. Religious Education must satisfy the double directive of both religious literacy and (inter)-worldview competency. The present curricula fulfil this double directive and therefore continue to be binding. It is however important to submit the area goals, the learning ingredients and the practical resources to a critical scrutiny, with the intention of possible modification or improvement. This update will focus predominantly on the systematic presentation of the Christian faith and the Catholic Church experience of faith in relation to the development process that children and young people undergo.

Thus began the second phase of the curriculum update, this time especially in the hands of the inspector-mentors. For a year and a half, they worked with growing intensity on the entire set of area goals and ingredients and found a format in which all of these were given a clear and structured place. In the meantime, the results of their work were tested by various teachers, lecturers and theologians. They presented their final outcome to the Recognised Authority, who discussed it in its entirety, 23. THOMAS is a website offering support to Roman Catholic Religious Education by providing content and practical suggestions to teachers: www.godsdienstonderwijs.be. 24. De Vlaamse bisschoppen – De Erkende Instantie R.-K. godsdienst, Het vak r.-k. godsdienst op het kruispunt van samenleving, onderwijs & kerkgemeenschap (Roman Catholic Religious Education at the Crossroads of Society, Education and Church Community), 21 September, 2017, Brussel, Licap, 2017, p. 22 (my emphasis).

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dialogued with the inspector-mentors and gave the update their approval. In turn, the Recognised Authority presented the curriculum to the Flemish bishops, who responded with their conclusions. During the Bishops’ Conference meeting of 13 December 2018, in accordance with canon 804 §1 of Canon Law, approval was given to the curriculum update. 2. Perspectives, Currents, Fields, Ingredients, Horizon The curriculum numbers thirty-three areas spread over the three secondary grades (secondary education in Belgium consists of three grades: first grade [first and second year, 12-14-year-olds], second grade [third and fourth year, 14-16-year-olds], third grade [fifth and sixth year, 16-18-yearolds]. The updated curriculum involves a curriculum for each of the three grades, where each area is divided up on the basis of the post-secondary trajectory of the pupil’s study programme: either academic continuation or the labour market. Every area is presented on one page for each of the two study programmes25. On this one page, the area goals are central and surrounded by three clusters. Every cluster represents a perspective that is congruent with the basic goal of religious education: the perspective of Christian faith/tradition; that of plurality/society/context, and that of the identity of the pupil. Each cluster consists of terms that together make up the total of ingredients for each perspective. Although it differs in appearance from that of 1999, with area schemas instead of continuous text, the structure of the areas, area goals, and ingredients is retained, in the sense that it covers the same areas, albeit often with different names. Through the update however, significant changes and reduction of text are evident in terms of the formulation of the area goals, the ingredients and the overall design. The area goals formulate specific curriculum goals for each area. The goals are written in the active voice, where the verb is actively performed, to emphasise that the goals are only meaningful when they have been demonstrated in practice. Here the revised taxonomy of Bloom has been used and the verbs are printed in bold letters. The teacher’s creativity is called on to link ingredients from each perspective to each other to reach each area goal. It is precisely in the integral dynamic of the three perspectives in relation to the ingredients that the 25. For example see https://www.kuleuven.be/thomas/page/leerplan-secundair/terrein/ 10611/.

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curriculum is fruitful and thus normative. Moreover, and inseparable from its normative effect: in order to accomplish the area goals, all the ingredients have to be touched on at least once. In this way the hermeneutical-communicative process is given a practical dimension. A short explanation is provided for each ingredient. These are found after every area schema and are integral to the actual content of the ingredient. When, for example, the Holocaust is referred to in the explanation of the ‘remembrance education’ ingredient, the subject of the Holocaust may then not be omitted when covering the ‘remembrance education’ ingredient. In 2020-2021 three publications appeared, written by Didier Pollefeyt and his collaborator Jeroen Hendrickx, in which all Christian ingredients are explained26. Each area is considered in the context of a biblical-spiritual horizon: that is, a biblical quotation appropriate to the concerned area, with the term ‘spiritual’ purposefully added as the biblical horizon can only be adequately explained once the quotation is reinforced by the teacher’s own worldview identity, or in other words, the teacher’s own spirituality. This also clearly illustrates that the Bible does not have an isolated role in the updated curriculum, but is rather integral to it. This is also true of the biblical references found in the ingredients. Online support is provided through the THOMAS platform on the website for Roman Catholic Religious Education: www.godsdienstonderwijs.be. Not only is the updated curriculum to be found on the site, but it also offers an increasing number of practical suggestions. IV. INTERWORLDVIEW COMPETENCIES AND/IN ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION A glance at the Roman Catholic Religious Education curriculum tells us that the interworldview competencies are not just something extra that have been added to that curriculum, but that they overlap and are interconnected with the Religious Education curriculum. We will discuss this in more detail in the first part of the following section. In the second section, we will once again consider the context as an essential factor and space. 26. D. POLLEFEYT – J. HENDRICKX, Letter & Geest: Christelijke ingrediënten voor actueel godsdienstonderwijs (Letter and Spirit: Christian Ingredients for Contemporary Religious Education). Part I: Eerste graad secundair onderwijs (First Grade of Secondary Education), Brussel, Licap, 2021; Part II: Tweede graad secundair onderwijs (Second Grade of Secondary Education), Brussel, Licap, 2021; Part III: Derde graad secundair onderwijs (Third Grade of Secondary Education), Brussel, Licap, 2020.

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1. A Dialogue of Inner Perspectives In the anthropological, pedagogical-didactic and theological foundations of the updated curriculum Roman Catholic Secondary Religious Education27, reference is made to a double plurality that has to be taken into account in religious education. Firstly, there is the diversity within the Catholic tradition itself: “an internal Christian plurality in time and space”28. Secondly, there is the diversity between all the other worldviews and encounters are sought with the diversity of these traditions. This is completely in line with what the Flemish bishops and the Recognised Authority for Roman Catholic Religious Education have indicated in their 2017 declaration, borne out by that document’s repeated emphasis on (inter)worldview competencies in addition to religious literacy. This makes it clear that the interworldview competencies, the subject of our contribution, cannot be seen in isolation from the Roman Catholic Religious Education curriculum. Even more so, the curriculum seeks the integration of the interworldview competencies and already implies to a great extent the realisation thereof in the integrated three-pronged dynamic of ‘context – identity – Christian tradition’. In the classroom, effort is therefore made to attain the competencies to the greatest extent possible through achieving what the curriculum proposes. This means that, independent of the context of a Catholic Dialogue School or Religious Education in a different context, the interworldview competencies are already realised without requiring great effort beyond that demanded by one’s own curriculum. To give an example: at least three areas of the secondary curriculum take interworldview competencies explicitly as ingredients, more specifically two areas in the second grade (‘encounter’ and ‘living with diversity’) and one in the third grade (‘faith and context’). These deal with the competencies of interworldview encounter, interworldview dialogue and interreligious dialogue. More specifically, the Roman Catholic Religious Education curriculum deals with ingredients such as: 169: Interworldview encounter. 194 and 289: Interworldview dialogue. 201: Interreligious dialogue. 300: Intra- and interreligious dialogue. 308: Interworldview competencies of dialogue and living together/society. 27. Ronald Sledsens and Didier Pollefeyt developed the groundwork, which can be found in the updated version of the Leerplan rooms-katholieke godsdienst (n. 21), pp. 12-25. 28. Ibid., p. 22.

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Additionally, in all the grades there are implicit possibilities with the ingredients that aim in particular at gaining knowledge about other worldviews, as for example in the following ingredients: 20: Inspiring stories and individuals in various worldviews. 54: The place of humankind and nature in various worldviews. 75: Worldview as internalisation and engagement. 97: Worldview perspectives on (dealing with) pain and suffering. 109: Spiritual and personal development in various worldview perspectives. The mechanism of the encounter and the tension between one’s own tradition and plurality plays a part in the implementation of the curriculum. In addition to the elements that can be explicitly identified as overlapping between the curriculum and the interworldview competencies, one can assert that the curriculum is fundamentally interworldview-focused or, in other words, fundamentally interworldview-minded. The internal perspective that is used in Roman Catholic Religious Education (the preferred option and the content as well as the testimonial position of the Religious Education teacher29) is in no way an exclusive perspective in which everything that is non-Christian is refuted, ignored or considered to be of secondary importance. Nor is the internal perspective inclusive in the sense that in the Roman Catholic Religious Education lessons all other worldview traditions are embraced in a way that no longer distinguishes the differences. The aim of the internal perspective is to guarantee a dynamic of encounter that assures an active dialogue between the starting point of (one’s own) Christian tradition and the way in which (other) religions/worldviews appear to us. In terms of active dialogue, this engagement involves reaching out from the Christian tradition to seek an encounter with other worldview entities that are likewise given room to enter into dialogue from their own inner perspective. In ideal circumstances, this dialogue between internal perspectives challenges the pupils, in the specific stage of each one’s worldview development, to receive various initiatives to stimulate personal worldview training and further reflection and development. 29. The teacher who gives the Roman Catholic Religious Education course has been authorised to teach by the bishop of the diocese of the school in which the teacher works. This authorisation is dependent on at least three conditions: “a candidate religious education teacher has to want to give Roman Catholic Religious Education lessons (to commit her or himself to the local bishop), be able to give it (is baptised, has the required diplomas and will follow the curriculum) and may give it (the authorisation of the episcopal bishop)”. See M. VAN STIPHOUT, De organisatie van het vak r.-k. godsdienst in het Vlaams onderwijs (The Organisation of the Subject of Roman Catholic Religious Education in Flemish Education), in Forum [2011] 9-10, p. 9.

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Through the dual emphasis of the interworldview competencies on knowledge on the one hand, and skills and attitudes on the other, the dialogue between internal perspectives gains a special dimension. The fundamental personal aspect of this worldview education is in itself an openness to both the cognitive (religious literacy) and to the meta-cognitive-affective (skills/attitudes), while guaranteeing the fundamental personal development of the pupil in the domain of one’s identity and in particular of one’s worldview identity. 2. Interworldview Competencies in Context While the interworldview competencies are to a great extent realised through the Roman Catholic Religious Education curriculum, we have already briefly mentioned the role of context, in the case of whether religious education is given in a school with a Roman Catholic identity or in a non-Catholic school. Since the Christian-inspired pedagogical project is that of schools that are members of Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen, it is obvious that the curriculum and the Roman Catholic Religious Education lessons on the one hand and the school culture (i.e., mission and vision) and the pedagogical basis of a Catholic school on the other share common ground. Even though the interworldview dialogue does not stop in any school, with or without a Catholic identity, when the bell rings at the end of the Religious Education lesson in a Catholic school, the dialogue continues outside of the lesson by virtue of the implicit and explicit incentives structurally provided by the Catholic Dialogue School project. This is different in the GO! public education network, which at times explicitly identifies itself as ‘neutral’. This is not odd however, since this neutrality is constitutionally rooted (cf. Article 24 §1) and to some extent also clarified in the same section30: in addition to “respecting the philosophical, ideological or religious convictions of the parents and children”, it requires that “schools organised by public authorities offer, until a pupil has concluded his or her compulsory education, the choice between instruction from one of the recognised religions or from the non-religious moral teaching”. In other words: apart from the designated worldview lessons, no attention is given to worldview during the lessons of other subjects, in the school’s own pedagogical project, or in other school activities. In other words, there is no other prioritised, explicit or guided 30. ‘Partially’ because the legislation says “the neutrality entails among other things” (art. 24 §1).

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locus for interworldview dialogue than the two scheduled lessons per week or private conversations; nor is there any prioritised, explicit or guided locus to the worldview identity development of the pupil in addition to the worldview education lessons. As the various worldview courses in Official Education schools are unconnected and independent of each other, the (maximum) six lesson times agreed upon by the Recognised Authorities play an extremely important role for entering into interworldview dialogue with each other, on the basis of the obligatory goal of attaining the interworldview competencies. This is in addition to the attention every worldview education programme gives to other worldviews. From the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, and initially with a number of pilot schools until subsequently all their schools, the GO! network took steps to phase out the two lessons per week that had been allotted to each individual worldview. The GO! network made use of the possibility articulated in the wording of the governmental agreement of 2019 to replace one third-grade lesson given by a Recognised Authority with an ‘Interworldview Dialogue’ course drawn up by the GO! network but taught by the various Recognised Authorities. Right at the beginning of the proceedings of the steering committee responsible for determining the framework and the way in which this new course should be realised, the GO! leadership suggested through Raymonda Verdyck that if the experience of the new approach should prove positive in the third grade (the last two years of secondary school), it was their explicit intention that such a lesson should also be organised in the other grades. At this point it is important to consider the principle of ‘crossing over’ and ‘coming back (home)’ as introduced by Didier Pollefeyt to the discussions concerning the development of this lesson of interworldview dialogue in the GO! network education: ‘Crossing over’ means that through the dialogue, one crosses over from one’s own identity to experience or ‘dwell in’ the worldview space of the other. ‘Coming back (home)’ means that having become informed and possibly enriched through the encounter, one returns to one’s own worldview surroundings. The dynamic of ‘crossing over’ and ‘coming back’ involves an encounter with the real other in his or her own context.

Pollefeyt distinguishes three consecutive steps: (1) to prepare the encounter in the context of one’s own worldview course; (2) to enter the worldview arena of the other as a guest; (3) to reflect on what I have learnt about the other and about my own identity on returning to my own worldview area31. 31. Pollefeyt points out that in this process one achieves the aims of citizenship.

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FOR THE

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Even more important than the difference between interworldview dialogue in a Catholic school and a non-Catholic school is the shared aspect of giving attention to interworldview dialogue through the interworldview competencies in the lessons of the worldview courses – which in this contribution is considered specifically in regards to Roman Catholic Religious Education. Teachers meet many ‘searchers’ in this context, more ‘searching’ pupils in fact than those who consider themselves as having a clearly outlined and pronounced worldview identity. And even if a pupil acknowledges this identity, often knowledge about one’s own identity is more limited than initially assumed. This is however not in itself a problem. In the interworldview dialogue, ‘searching’ deserves all the room it needs. To grow towards and develop in a particular worldview identity, the room to search is essential. There can be no growth or development without searching. All too often various worldviews are viewed as separate entities, set out next to each other for comparison by means of neatly produced diagrams. This does not reflect the reality we live in! Worldviews are dynamics that question, feed, challenge and enrich each other. Diversity is not the sum of all differences, but the dynamic of how those differences can strengthen all individuals. Interworldview dialogue does not seek to judge the other on the basis of difference, but stimulates the willingness to meet the other, each at his or her own level and within his or her context. The interworldview competencies are intended to serve this purpose, not in isolation, not as detached entities, but linked to and as far as possible integrated in the fulfilment of the Roman Catholic Religious Education curriculum. Vicariaat Onderwijs Mechelen-Brussel Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels F. de Merodestraat 18 BE-2800 Mechelen Belgium [email protected]

Jürgen METTEPENNINGEN

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I. INTRODUCTION We address, from an Orthodox perspective, the question: how to shape the development of interworldview competencies among children and young people? This is an important topic that is under debate in our native country, the Netherlands, and in other countries as well. In our contribution, we try to integrate our fields of expertise: on the one hand, Orthodox academic education and the preparation of state-recognised (denominational) chaplaincies and, on the other hand, secondary education and diversity training. In part II, we will provide background information; in part III, we aim to sketch the conditions that are conducive to learning about one’s own faith and the faiths of others. We hope to show that feeling secure in one’s own tradition and engaging in listening contribute to the goal of unity in diversity. II. BACKGROUND: FAITH, DIVERSITY AND EDUCATION In this part we will approach the question from three different perspectives: faith, diversity and education. In this way, we aim to sketch the landscape as we see it. 1. Faith The perspective of faith we address by describing three aspects: (a) worldview and concept of man, (b) rational and intuitive knowledge and (c) religious, ethnic and linguistic identities. a) Worldview and Image of Humanity Before trying to answer the question of how to shape the development of interworldview competencies it is good to take a step back and consider the term ‘worldview’ which translates the Dutch levensbeschouwing. This term contains the word ‘life’ which is more inclusive than ‘world’; it also encompasses the one viewing the world. It is important to consider both: worldview (wereldbeeld) and the concept of man (mensbeeld). In his or her relatively short life a child has already acquired a lot of

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knowledge about the world and him- or herself1. Much of this knowledge is implicit, especially about the human being. At school a child learns a lot about the concrete world and the tangible aspects of a human being, but less about the hidden or mystical aspects of ourselves. While for most religions it is obvious that a human being has a soul, this is not the case anymore for our Western, post-modern society. In most modern Faculties of Psychology – a discipline taking its name from the Greek word for soul (ψυχή, psyche) – the concept of soul is rather irrelevant, since it cannot be measured, and its existence cannot be proven. For a child, a ‘schizophrenic’ situation starts to develop: at home and in the synagogue, church or mosque, he has a soul; outside he does not. Western society appears not to recognise transcendence and spirituality as being significant, but because there is often no active denial of the soul’s existence, its non-existence tacitly replaces the ‘childish’ belief of the early years. In our view, the philosopher Charles Taylor and the neuropsychiatrist Ian McGilchrist help us understand what has brought about this division. First, let us turn to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age2. It describes the path which Western civilisation has taken since 1500. In the sixteenth century, it was virtually impossible not to believe in God whereas by the year 2000, many can easily remove God from their worldview, and may feel encouraged to do so. Taylor describes how the worldview changed over the course of five hundred years: the world became disenchanted (demystified), devoid of invisible forces, demons and angels, threats and grace. The world opened up to the scrutiny of human instrumental reason3 to the extent that it can be mastered or even dominated. It was just a matter of time before scientific research – the new epistemic paradigm – became the one way of resolving enigmas. Mystery, which used to form the heart of the Christian experience of God, becomes a suspicious word and mysticism a negative term to describe the devotions of believers. The devil and demons, who are essential actors of the biblical and other sacred writings, are denied or simply ignored (what about their unfallen colleagues, the angels: do they still exist or not?). The concept of man changed as well: instead of a ‘porous self’, open to the surrounding world of visible and invisible influences, we began to perceive ourselves as a ‘buffered self’, 1. Please interpret male pronouns as referring to all human beings. We use them for convenience. 2. C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018 (original 2007). 3. In Greek, reason is often referred to with the word logos (whose primary meaning is ‘word’). Taylor describes how this personal logos disengages itself from the ontic logos outside, as described by ancient Greek philosophers. For the Greek theologians this link remained obvious.

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insulated from the outside world. We started to cherish our privacy and hide more and more parts of our lives. These developments could also lead to loneliness. From the closed off citadel of this buffered self, our personal reason passes judgements on things and persons outside. Inevitably, Orthodox people who live in the West (and beyond, more and more we become a global village with widely shared cultures, fashions, expressions etc.) have been affected by these developments, considering rationality to be the supreme human faculty. In my (Michael’s) experience as a priest, who regularly hears confessions, I would even say that judging others (openly or in thought) and oneself has become the primary challenge with which believers struggle. b) Rational and Intuitive Knowledge Human reason brings us to the neuropsychiatrist Ian McGilchrist, who published The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World in 20094. He describes the working of the two hemispheres of which our brain consists. Interestingly, he associates our left hemisphere with specific tasks and discursive reasoning while the right hemisphere has the task of perceiving an overall view and intuitive knowledge. The first he links with the Greek word for reason, logos (λόγος), and the second with the human faculty for acquiring intuitive knowledge, nous (νοῦς). Ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle pictured the human process of acquiring knowledge as follows: first the nous sees or contemplates the truth (the word theoria stems from the verb for seeing) and then discursive reasoning (logos) starts analysing, ordering and giving words to what has been perceived. One could say that through the nous we learn of God and through the logos we learn about God (in Orthodox texts a theologian is engaged in the first place with the first activity through the active life of prayer). The first Christian theologians, who were well trained in Greek philosophy, used the terminology they were familiar with to give words to the mysteries experienced by them. It resulted in the often-used human trichotomy of body, soul and nous (using nous instead of spirit, which could be confused with the Spirit of God). The nous acts as the eye and leading part (hegemonikon) of the soul. McGilchrist argues that in the West, during the Enlightenment, a fundamental change took place: human logos (reason) took over and robbed the nous of its primary place. Indeed, this is exactly what we see 4. I. MCGILCHRIST, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, New Haven, CT – London, Yale University Press, 2010 (first published 2009).

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in modern life: rationality is highly prized and trained at school, while intuition is treated with suspicion since it cannot be objectively verified. For the soul’s capacity for intuitive, direct or spiritual knowledge, the nous, most modern Western languages do not have a commonly known equivalent. In English we have two words derived from the two renderings in Latin: intellect (