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Teaching or preaching — Max Charlesworth and religious education

journal contribution
posted on 2012-12-01, 00:00 authored by Stan Van HooftStan Van Hooft
In this essay I elaborate on the theoretical framework – that of Millian liberalism – that Max Charlesworth brought to many public issues, including that of the relation between education and religion. I will then apply this framework to a debate in which I have been recently involved myself: a debate around the provision of religious instruction in public schools. In the first section I expound Charlesworth’s rejection of secularism in education in a liberal pluralist state and his defence of faith-based schooling. In the second section I uncover the religious motivations behind the Victorian government’s 1950 amendments to the apparently secularist Victorian Education Act of 1872. In section three, I explore the notion of secularism more fully and suggest that the struggle between those who espouse religious instruction in state schools and those who oppose it while advocating a more general form of education about religion is a symptom of a deeper tension between liberalism and communitarianism within the culture of modernist, liberal states.

History

Journal

Sophia

Volume

51

Issue

4

Pagination

531 - 544

Publisher

Springer Netherlands

Location

Dordrecht, The Netherlands

ISSN

0038-1527

eISSN

1873-930X

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

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