Catholic Education in Australian Primary Essay

Key Stakeholders Influencing Religious Education

A basic assumption underlying Catholic education in primary schools is that children are already believers, with God and Jesus already familiar figures (Ryan 1999). Oddly, the Church itself is less a major player in the development of curricula because this underlying belief already exists (or is perceived to exist). Instead, the major stakeholders that influence the development of religious education includes parents, administrators, and more local representatives of the Church rather than the central powers of the Church (Ryan 1999; Buchanan 2003). In the modern era, educational and Catholic theorists have gained greater influence over the development of curricula, giving basic religious concepts a more prominent place in education and allowing for greater critical investigation with reduced initial assumptions (Buchanan 2003). The role of Jesus in Catholic education has become less doctrinal and more accessible as a way of improving the level of engagement of Catholic students.

Conclusion: Issues for Teachers

Teachers of students in Catholic primary schools, in Australia as well as in Catholic communities the world over, need to emphasize the community-centric rather than the Church-centric aspects of Catholic beliefs and values in the classroom, making Jesus more of a personal figure than the representative of a large and distant entity (Moran).This will also help develop the ability for students to critically examine and personally apply the values and beliefs that are central to the practice of Catholicism and membership in the Church, allowing religious education to become a personally engaging and somewhat self-directed process (Buchanan 2003). As in secular education, the increased level of involvement that this perspective and teaching method leads to makes for a more lasting and a more soundly built knowledge base for the students, thus more deeply engraining Catholic values in the students not through rote indoctrination, but through personal investigation. The place of Jesus in Catholic education, then, is not so much as a figure that simply teaches lesson, but a figure whose very actions are themselves lessons that the students themselves can discern, analyze, and apply as they see fit with only initial guidance from the instructor.

References

Brisbane Catholic Education. (2003). Religious Education Years 1-10 learning outcomes.

Buchanan, M. (2003). Survey of current writing on trends in Religious Education. Journal of Religious Education 51(4), 22-30.

Moran, G. (?) Understanding religion and being religious.

Ryan, M. (1999). The classroom religion….....