Letter: Religious education shapes Britain

Sir: Is religious education in schools so profoundly different from all other subjects, as your leading article (7 July) suggests? Your assertion that we teach all other subjects because they are 'true' is breathtaking. All subjects are important and all subjects need to be learnt 'living gracefully with uncertainty', as you so elegantly put it.

Let us set on one side the teaching of children to be adherents of particular faiths or denominations, which is located in families, communities of faith and religious schools. All subjects worthy of a place in a school curriculum are dependent on one another in that common pursuit of truth in which teachers and pupils are involved. To claim that the study of physical sciences, drama, mathematics, history or religions involves ranking their 'truth', or even their rationality, is a very limited view of education. Education links reason and imagination, or the curriculum is barren.

Yours sincerely,

STEPHEN ORCHARD

Director

Christian Education Movement

Derby