Reflection on Values and Attitudes Toward Religious Education (REL201)

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Assignment 2 Religious Values
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Introduction
In a secular context, religious education is considered as a type of teaching of a specific
religious belief and various aspects associated with it, such as doctrines, customs, rituals, and
personal roles. In Western culture, it is associated with largely separate academia and
considers religious belief as operating modality and tenet. In this report, a reflection on values
and attitude such as humanity, family, trust, loyalty, and honesty towards the religious
education has been provided, wherein the bond or link between them is discussed. In addition
to this, their impacts on approach and motivation to religious education are also discussed in
detail in this report.
Ques1: Reflect on your values and attitude toward religious education.
Religious education is all about education which is associated with religion. I believe that
such education can be gained from various religious literature, religious centres, and religious
organisations. There are certain human values that I would like to relate to religious
education. These are humanity, family, trust, loyalty, and honesty. Talking about humanity, I
have learned that humanity is the primary acceptable condition of human society and it is also
the most underestimated condition. I have noticed that people help each other in order to get
hearty and mental satisfaction. Religion, on the other hand, is an idea or belief system. From
my experience, humanity is the belief that unites people from all religion and combines their
learnings and beliefs. There is a famous quote that there is no religion higher than humanity.
People learn from their experiences while helping others as driven by the feeling of
humanity. However, it has been seen that humanity's quality is eventually fading away in
human beings. According to Walsh (1997), people should live their religion as a courtesy to
humanity and should help the people across the world. Religion education considers
humanity as removing poverty, engaging oneself in the service of others, and respecting other
fellow beings. I would like to add more into this that humanity is also about minimising
mental suffering.
Talking about the other value which is trust and its influence over religious education, I
believe that trust helps us in becoming a better religious educator. Leaders and teachers in
religious education must have a trusted relationship so as to have an effective religious
education and united bond. Usually, trust is built on the basis of reliability of one person over
others. In religious education, if the trust level drops down, all involved relations might start
getting affected by the conflicts and contentions. Researchers are studying trust as an
attribute, situational feature, behaviour, and ethical principle. Koehn (2012) argues that
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religious education setting is having the strongest influence than another administrative
leader. The main concern that I realised how to build trust as a part of religious education.
Campbell (2012) emphasises five facets of improving trust in the education setting, namely
reliability, competence, openness, honesty, and benevolence.
Talking about honesty, I believe that it is a congruence of one's sayings and actions. I
perceive people as honest after estimating their truthfulness. For being considered as honest,
the principal in any education system should be behaving genuinely. I have seen that
educators who are consistently honest are more likely to earn the trust of their friends and
relatives. Being honest teaches a person to be authentic. I believe that in the religious
education field, one's words should be congruent with the actions otherwise, the authenticity
might get weakened. A leader in the field of religious education cannot ignore trust in a
relationship as it cannot be counterfeited.
Loyalty is another value that I believe is one of the pillars of the religious educational system.
People usually see religion as a mix of feelings, such as honesty, love, unity, joy, peace, etc. I
believe that it is developed through some consistent and valuable interaction between two
people over a period of time. Loyalty cannot be built just by presuming its existence. It is
built just by maintaining continuous bilateral exchange and undermining instances of
negligence. I think that level of trust, honesty, loyalty, and humanity are a quintessential
factor for the success or failure of the religious education and leaders are the best persons to
influence the level of these factors between two people. Religious educational institutes can
be improved through regular opportunities. Religious education pupil would be benefited by
researching the role of strategies and trust between teachers and leaders.
Ques2: How do they affect your motivation and approach to religious education?
Talking about the effect of the aforementioned values over my motivation and approach to
gain religious education, it all depends on their level of influence. The significance of these
values has been considered in a various publication on organisational leadership, human
relations, and management. For instance, Koehn (2012) emphasise that trust is considered as
more significant than love. Rovai & Baker (2004) believe that addressing religious education
in school is important for learning and can adequately result in diverse exposure of student to
the outer world. All that is required from the religious institutions is to teach unbiasedly.
There are many impacts on a person's value on religious education. For instance, it would
decrease the number of religiously motivated crimes (Miller, 2013). All that is required is to
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make the student body a bit of diversified and enhancing scholars’ education. By developing
a value like humanity, religious educational institutes can control the religiously motivated
crimes as nowadays they are increasing. If educators make students learn about respecting
other human beings and their religious beliefs, then this would surely be reducing the number
of hate crimes. I have seen in those schools where religious education is banned, students
usually assume that crime is acceptable (O’Grady, 2009).
It has been noticed that trust and reliability makes a person associated with the religious
education institute emotionally and socially intelligent. Such religious leaders understand the
value of the person that has the ability to manage emotion and perceive and also show
genuine empathy towards others. Honest and trusted leaders are socially intelligent that are
adaptive and flexible, accept full responsibility for their mistakes and they are also lifelong
educators. Trust, honesty and loyalty reduce vulnerability (Miller, 2013). Religious literature
like the Bible has taught me that "there can never be any growth without real freedom." One
of the significant prerequisites of honesty is benevolence that focuses on increasing trust for
teachers and other leaders. Religious leaders often become worried and anxious for their
welfare. It is required from an honest leader to be optimistic, confident, and providing sincere
compliments, protecting rights, and apologising sincerely (Goodlet & Collier, 2014). In the
religious educational institute, even a small visit of leaders can bring or boost confidence and
increases the trust levels.
Talking about religious education and the family values, some literature supports the
argument that marriages and family relationships are strengthened by religion. Individuals are
benefitted by religious preaching. Majority of the Americans are more accustomed to
Western monotheistic faith due to their religious involvement. I have read about the theories
that emphasise more on Judaism, Islam, and Christianity than the Western faith. Religion is a
widely discussed a topic that helps in widening the knowledge of local community and family
members (Abbott, et.al, 1990). Due to a large number of religions, it is necessary for the
religious educational institutions to provide knowledge of all the religions that bring people
from different race and class together. The impact of the aforementioned values is seen on
religious literacy which is considered as a key to the right education. Honesty, family values,
loyalty, trust, etc., help the scholar to gain more knowledge related to religious beliefs
followed around the world. Being a student in a foreign country, I realised that understanding
of religions has a great influence on the students' learning. They get a better insight into
society, culture, history, and politics. It is quintessential for students to gain religious
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education in order to understand and respect the diversity of which they are a part of (Koehn,
2012). In addition to this, students are also a part of the lives of different types of people and
this knowledge will have a positive impact on their learning and relationships. Such students
have a better command over reality and values. However, in the majority of the cases, I have
noticed that education institute are reluctant to discuss religion.
Conclusion
The following report discussed the religious education in detail, wherein it was discussed that
honesty is a congruence of one's sayings and actions. In addition to this, the role of trust was
also elaborated. It was determined that trust help us in becoming a better religious educator.
In addition to this, the impacts of honesty and family values were also enlisted in the report.
For instance, trust, honesty, and loyalty reduce vulnerability. It was also highlighted that
honest and trusted leader is socially intelligent that are adaptive and flexible, accept full
responsibility for their mistakes and they are also lifelong educators.
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References
 Abbott, D. A., Berry, M., & Meredith, W. H. (1990). Religious belief and practice: A
potential asset in helping families. Family relations, 443-448.
 Barr, A., Gillard, J., Firth, V., Scrymgour, M., Welford, R., Lomax-Smith, J., ... &
Constable, E. (2008). Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians.
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training, and Youth Affairs. PO Box
202 Carlton South Victoria, 3053, Australia.
 Borgonovi, F. (2012). The relationship between education and levels of trust and
tolerance in Europe 1. The British Journal of Sociology, 63(1), 146-167.
 Campbell, H. A. (Ed.). (2012). Digital religion: Understanding religious practice in new
media worlds. Routledge.
 Goodlet, K., & Collier, J. (Eds.). (2014). Teaching well: Insights for educators in
Christian schools. Barton Books Pty Limited.
 Koehn, D. (2012). Rethinking feminist ethics: Care, trust and empathy. Routledge.
 Miller, J. (2013). REsilience, violent extremism and religious education. British Journal
of Religious Education, 35(2), 188-200.
 Miller, T. S. (2012). The hippies and American values. Univ. of Tennessee Press.
 O’Grady, K. (2009). Honesty in religious education: some further remarks on the legacy
of Ninian Smart and related issues, in reply to L. Philip Barnes. British Journal of
Religious Education, 31(1), 65-68.
 Rovai, A. P., & Baker, J. D. (2004). The sense of community: A comparison of students
attending Christian and secular universities in traditional and distance education
programs. Christian Scholar's Review, 33(4), 471.
 Walsh, B. (1997). Education in precarious times: Postmodernity and a Christian
worldview. Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity.
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