Communicating Faith

9. Communicating Faith through Religious Education

132 9 Communicating Faith through Religious Education Stephen J. McKinney This chapter aims to look at how faith can be communicated through religious education within the specific context of Catholic schools in Scotland. This will be achieved by a critical review and reflection of the history of religious education within the post-Vatican II era and through the application of insights gained from a series of extended expert interviews with Bill Horton , recently retired advisor of religious education for secondary schools in the Archdiocese of Glasgow. The interviews provided a wealth of background information and fascinating insights into the development of religious education in the Scottish Catholic secondary schools. Bill’s personal and professional journey as teacher and advisor in religious education and his archdiocesan and national leadership roles meant that he was involved in many of the major initiatives of the late twentieth century. The initial sections of this chapter will, then, sketch a brief history of Catholic schools in Scotland and provide an overview of the unique nature of these Catholic schools, including the post-Vatican II history of religious education within Catholic schools. The chapter will then examine some key ideas drawn from Communicating through Religious Education 133 Bill Horton’s comments on this history and his vision of religious education and the future of religious education. Catholic Schools in Scotland There is a rich diversity of national-cultural heritages within the postReformation Catholic community in Scotland: Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Irish, and indigenous Scots Catholics.1 The critical mass for the establishment of post-Reformation Catholic schools, however, came from those of Irish origin.2 The geographical proximity between Scotland and Ireland has historically facilitated frequent crossover and interchange in both population and culture. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, increasing numbers of Irish Catholics, procuring employment in agriculture but also increasingly in industry, had settled in Scotland, especially in the West.3 Those Irish Catholics who sought schooling for their children encountered the bewildering variety and somewhat chaotic mosaic of school provision in Scotland that predated the establishment of the national school system and compulsory school education.4 A small number of voluntary Catholic schools were established in the west of Scotland to preserve religious identity and culture for Catholic children.5 The number of Catholic schools grew steadily throughout the early nineteenth century, but demand for Catholic schooling dramatically increased with the influx of the Catholic Irish immigrants who arrived as a result of the series of famines in Ireland in the period of 1845–1849.6 Despite attempts by the government to standardize school education in 1872, the Catholic schools remained substantially selffunded because the Catholic Church was concerned that the distinctive con1 . Stephen J. McKinney, “Immigrants and Religious Conflict: Insider Accounts of Italian , Lithuanian and Polish Catholics in Scotland,” in Global Citizenship Education: Philosophy, Theory and Pedagogy, ed. Michael A. Peters, Harry Blee, and Alan. Britton (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2007). 2. Robert Anderson, “The History of Scottish Education, Pre-1980,” in Scottish Education Post-Devolution, ed. Tom G. K. Bryce and Walter Humes, 219–28 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003). 3. Martin J. Mitchell, The Irish in the West of Scotland 1797–1848 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1998). 4. Martha Skinnider, “Catholic Elementary Education in Glasgow, 1818–1918,” in Studies in the History of Scottish Education 1872–1939, ed. Thomas R. Bone, 13–70 (London: University of London Press, 1967). 5. James E. Handley, The Irish in Scotland 1798–1845 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1943). 6. Robert F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–1972 (London: Penguin Press, 1988); Thomas M. Devine, The Scottish Nation (London: Penguin Press, 2006). 134 Stephen J. McKinney fessional nature of Catholic schooling should be preserved.7 This was resolved by the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act, which enabled the Catholic schools to be recipients of full state funding but retain denominational status , Catholic religious education, and the right to appoint Catholic teachers (subject to approval from the Scottish hierarchy).8 This early history of Catholic schooling has been presented by insider academic sources as an arduous struggle to educate an impoverished immigrant community that experienced sectarian hostility and resentment. Arguably , the sectarianism and resentment were focused on certain periods of history—for example, the economic recession between the two world wars.9 Perhaps this history requires contemporary revision within broader conceptual frameworks of immigrant typologies. Some recent historical accounts have, perhaps more helpfully, focused on the heroic...