The centre cannot hold: decolonising the RE curriculum in the Republic of Ireland

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Ireland primary RE is a fractured, contested, complex and changing territory devoid of a common language and characterised by a proliferation of syllabi and curricula generated for increasingly diverse school types. For centuries the dynamic decolonising process has led to a questioning of former orthodoxies and an attempted de-linking of the place and potency of the RE curriculum as well as a fundamental change in perception of the nature, identity and purpose of RE. Placing particular emphasis on the work of a variety of decolonial and postcolonial critical theorists, the authors engage in a theoretical interpretation of 5 keys waves of curricular decolonisation in Ireland. from the 16th to 21st centuries and argue that a historical contextualisation is vital in attempting to understand its nature. Currently RE’s perceived hegemonic status is challenged and its very existence within the curriculum is in jeopardy, as it faces a form of ‘cultural oblivion’. The repackaging of religion under the more acceptable form of human rights and world religions with a confusion and conflation of values, ethics and RE and a hybridity of curricular styles and content is symptomatic of the latest wave of this decolonising process.