Dealing with illiberal and discriminatory aspects of faith in religious education: a case study of Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture curriculum

Abstract

ABSTRACTTaking Quebec’s mandatory religious education curriculum, Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC), as a case study, this paper examines the question of whether it is legitimate to teach about the illiberal and discriminatory aspects of religious belief and practice—misogyny, homophobia, racial discrimination and the like—in a religious education class. This paper seeks an answer the question by considering the pedagogical choice to raise a critical lens to the religions studied in class in relation to the cultural approach to religious education that ERC teachers are required to adopt, the critical, democratic and intercultural aims of ERC, and the legal constraints imposed on ERC by the Canadian and Quebecois constitutional framework. The conclusion of our analysis is that while the cultural approach to RE clearly rules out the use of learning activities specifically designed to reveal illiberal and discriminatory aspects of religions. However, perceived points of conflict with prevailing social values constitute a legitimate opportunity for religious education teachers to invest their specialised knowledge of religious traditions in the service of increasing pupils’ religious literacy.