The lost lens in my curriculum thinking and how that affects disadvantaged pupils

In Making every RE lesson count we consider RE in a multi-disciplinary way including theology, philosophy and social sciences. We talk about how we can evaluate our curriculum using the Church of England self evaluation audit. From doing this, I knew that Social Sciences was the poor relation in my planning but I’ve now been thinking about why I really need to do something about that – particularly when aiming to close the disadvantaged gap.

But how? I hear you cry? (As I did to myself!) We teach almost half a course of social sciences… through teaching Themes… social justice, religion and life, or war are full of social sciences, surely! Half our GCSE IS social sciences!

But then I thought about the different way that I teach religions and teach themes.

I was missing the point… I would never dream of asking students to discuss the statement, ‘The most important teachings in Sikhism are about equality’ without teaching them specific teachings within Sikhi to discuss. Yet, I had no problem asking students to discuss whether ‘men and women have equal rights’.

So why is that a problem?

When considering the question, ‘Are men and women equal?’ Pupil ‘A’ might have read Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, ‘Girls who changed the World’, or The Handmaid’s Tale, The Bell Jar, or even A Vindication of the Rights of Women. They might have watched a documentary on whether Disney has started to defy gender and racial stereotypes. They may have discusses ideas with their parents being exposed to rich and diverse vocabulary. They provide a beautiful answer – an answer that is praised by my engagement in discussion – their intelligence is verified. Their position within the class as ‘able’ is secured.

Pupil ‘B’, whilst listening to the discussion, hasn’t previously thought about it much. They don’t have the acquired knowledge of Pupil ‘A’. Yes, they might benefit from listening to the discussion, but they don’t feel like they have much to add. And this leaves us with problems. Firstly, they still don’t have the knowledge… the examples or statistics, or case studies to write about. Nothing has linked to their schema. Secondly, they don’t feel good about themselves as a learner as they have not been successful. And thirdly, they don’t have the opportunity to engage with high quality, interesting content that enables them to think deeply. (Cue… some statistics about equality and an excerpt from Invisible Women).

ED Hirsch says – ‘breadth of knowledge is the single factor within human control that contributes most to human achievement’. We can help to close the disadvantaged gap by explicitly planning to teach the social science facts and statistics that students need to be able to analyse and evaluate BEFORE we discuss.

But that’s not always easy and certainly is counter to the exciting, start with a bang, big question that I might have often been tempted to launch my lesson with! It’s really tempting to start with a really controversial statement… ‘The death penalty should be abolished.’ ‘Abortion is always wrong.’ ‘Men and women are equal.’ Pose the question…. Think about your answer… Turn to your neighbour. And in 3…2…1… discuss…. BANG… the room erupts into the engaged, excited buzz of ‘learning’. Yet…

It’s important to take a moment to look at who answers… who engages… who is doing the talking? Who does the thinking? I would take a guess at those confident, articulate, ‘able’ students. I’m not sure it’s our disadvantaged students. I’d suggest that we’re possibly disadvantaging them further.

Only some of our students have the prior knowledge to link to. We need to counter this, but the knowledge is not always readily available in our textbooks. We need to provide accurate and balanced statistics. We need to show a range of views – yet – we have to recognise the elephant in our room – RE is often partisan – there are always invested groups who want to influence the political and educational agenda and provide us with their views to present to our students. We also need to recognise our biases – even our subconscious ones.

I know that teaching through social sciences is my weakness. And I suspect it’s a weakness elsewhere. I’d also suggest that disadvantaging disadvantaged students is a problem for other subjects too..