ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a reply to Liam Gearon’s contribution to the present volume. In this, he responds to an article I wrote for the British Journal of Educational Studies (BJES), which makes a critique of certain aspects of his work (Jackson, 2015a). Contrary to Gearon’s claim in his chapter, my article does not present a denial that there are issues concerning Religious Education and matters of politics and security, a topic on which I myself have written in relation to the UK ‘Prevent’ agenda (Jackson, 2016). My BJES article responds specifically to Gearon’s misrepresentation of a European Commission-funded research project—the REDCo project—and to his account of the development of the Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools, a policy document published by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe through its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR, 2007). In my BJES article, I reply to Gearon’s arguments, attempt to correct errors of fact, comment on his rhetorical use of language in certain passages of his work, and illustrate the relationship between his views on ‘paradigms’ of Religious Education and his view of the politicization and securitization of Religious Education. In the present chapter, I summarize my reactions to Gearon’s representation of the European Commission-funded REDCo project and his critique of the development of the Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools, and then present responses to the nine specific counterpoints to my arguments, which he presents in his chapter.