Introduction

Learning about religion and belief starts in school and even before school. Birth ceremonies are often obviously religious, while there appears to be an increasing tendency towards non-religious or pluralist ‘naming ceremonies’ (though there is little research in this area). Birth registrations themselves reflect essentially religious family normativities rooted in theology and natural law, despite the growing advent of families where gamete donors are not legal parents, and vice versa, or where an egg donor, surrogate, sperm donor and co-parent may all be involved in the creation of a pregnancy but not all be part of the child's new family, in biology, in parenting or in law. Nurseries and libraries may be packed full of little Noah's Arks. Sunday Schools and church playgroups tell many more stories than Noah’s. Easter and Christmas set the dates of term, and the price of holidays, even when Ramadan, Diwali and Yom Kippur are also increasingly visible. At the same time, ‘British values’ are pinned up on nursery and school walls, and advertisements for everything from baby milk to vodka make for a subliminal backdrop of religiously rooted normativities, from whiteness and heterosexuality to able bodies and blue or pink gender types. From Mothercare to ‘Music with Mummy’, roles are implied, even now that sandwich shops and supermarkets embrace the Pride rainbow to ‘queer’ their products and consumers. This is the subconscious stuff of religion, belief and world views. It seeps into everything, even before we become conscious of learning or enter formal learning spaces. So, we arrive at school apparently fresh to learn but already full of deep expectations and atavisms. What happens next is critical to challenging those inheritances, and shaping our abilities to think, feel and live religion, belief and non-belief for the rest of life. Yet, policy and practice on religion and belief in schools, and on school RE, are themselves in a highly muddled state. This is a major factor in the widespread lack of religion and belief literacy, and in the broken chain of learning. This chapter will explore this in relation to RE in particular. The following chapter will pick this up in relation to religion and belief in the wider life of schools.