ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Religious Education (RE) must enable pupils to learn how to think in order to evaluate for them the truth of religious belief. Without the development of such reflective, critical thinking skills, pupils have no means of resisting cultural pressures such as relativism or fully developing their religious understanding. A major task for RE is to help pupils forward in their thinking. It is not for teachers to tell them what to believe or value, but it is for them to try to equip pupils in such a way that they can enter into the debate and develop a sound and perceptive world-view for themselves. The time-honoured expectation that pupils have to be told what to believe by authority in the form of parents, teachers or the state, can no longer operate today. In the modern world the reasons for accepting any particular authority can be and are challenged.
