The fundamental beliefs and principles underlying the curriculum of a subject in the school system are very important. Philosophy provides curriculum specialists and stakeholders with a framework for building the curriculum. It helps them answer the question what is knowledge, what is of value for learning, how students learn, what methods to use, what are the outcomes of education and what is the role of the teacher in the earning process etc. Different philosophies, such as Idealism, Realism, Critical Realism, Pragmatism and Existentialism provide different answers. The author in this paper is concerned with the Religious Education curriculum for the three last years of High School (Lyceum in Greece). He argues that the curriculum should be defined as the total learning experiences of the individual. For that, Pragmatism which pervades John Dewey’s work and his definition of experience and education, and in some cases Existentialism, should be the basis on which the Religious Education curriculum ought to be constructed. Along similar lines, he argues that pragmatism should be considered with Βahktin’s ‘dialogical self’, Geertz’s ‘grammar of culture’ and the Orthodox theology of the Person. The study puts forward the view that Religious Education might be a modern, not confessional subject, educating adolescents with a ‘religious language’ of themselves and their societies and aiming towards a critical religiosity’, where otherness is a part of ourselves.
Contact Details
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) School of Theology, Department of Theology Section of Systematic Theology, Pedagogy and Religious Education University Campus, Ano Ilisia, 157 71 Athens (+30) 210-7275726 makoulia@theol.uoa.gr
