ABSTRACT
The Birmingham Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction was published in May 1975 and was followed in September by a large, loose-leaf volume of suggestions and aids called Living Together: Teachers’ Handbook of Suggestions for Religious Education, The syllabus is four pages long and is published in the middle of the 24 page booklet. Dr Harry Stopes Roe, the chairman of the British Humanist Association, claims that the Syllabus is ‘dominated by religion’, represents ‘nurture of religion’, that ‘the material as a whole is slanted in a religious direction’ and that it ‘establishes religious indoctrination’. Dr Stopes Roe argues that the 1974 summary page ‘was fair and balanced with respect to religious and non-religious views on ultimate questions, and balanced over the range of them’. Dr Stopes Roe points out that the word ‘religion’ occurs more often in the 1975 Syllabus and that often religion stands alone, without any compensating reference to the secular ideologies.
