Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter

Shortwood Teachers' College, in St. Andrew, last September passed a significant milestone in its 121-year history and the religious community in the Caribbean stands to benefit.

With a cohort of 18 students, the school last September confidently inaugurated its degree - Bachelor of Education in religious education.

The new programme brings to three the number of undergraduate degrees offered at the college, which is renowned for its pioneering work in teacher training. The other undergraduate degrees are in the areas of early childhood education; and human ecology.

The B.Ed. in religious education had been in the works for many years, explained Audrey Corrodus, vice-principal at the college, who was also part of the team that did seminal work on the degree programme.

Much credit she said is attributable to Norma Darlington, former principal of the institution who saw the need and who set in motion the consultative process which culminated in the degree.

Values

Elaine Foster-Allen, who succeeded Mrs. Darlington as principal, explained some of the thinking that inspired the creation of the degree programme. She said the programme was thought to be necessary having regard to the strong place that religion occupies in the life of the nation. To further emphasise her point, she pointed out that many issues having to do with morality and values have a strong relationship with faith positions and religion.

She hinted that religious education has historically not been given the respect it deserves. "What we were finding in the schools was a kind of watered down concept of what religious education is about. Mainly, RE was Bible study or Bible stories," she said.

Religious education, Mrs. Foster-Allen stressed is not Bible knowledge and as such deserves to be treated as discipline by itself. The degree programme, she said, is likely to improve the cadre of people now teaching RE - which in significant part is comprised of pastors, guidance counsellors, and teachers of language arts.

According to the Mrs. Foster-Allen, "We have to make sure RE is relevant to the times. We are living in a multi-faith situation where what we try to do is to help our children to understand how people arrive at faith."

In her high school days, she did Bible knowledge where all that was required was the study of St. Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. That activity strengthened her personal faith, but it did not facilitate an understanding of how people arrived at their own faith position, she said.

"How did Jacob come to be called Israel. What processes did he go through to help hin understand who God is? How did Martin Luther King Jr., come to talk about 'I have a dream' and to equate the struggles and journeys of African peoples in America to biblical portions and times? How do you come to believe in obeah and indigenous religions? We are full of beliefs. How do we develop spirituality in children? What is behind the practice of passing children over caskets? Why do we do these things? How is that people when they are sick, they want prayers whether the sick person is Christian or not?"

These are some of the questions she explained that help people grapple with how persons determine their faith positions.

Moral integrity

"We would like to think that at the end of the three-four years here, we give our teachers some sort of moral integrity which means that they can defend a position, they can challenge the children and show them some directions," Mrs. Foster-Allen said.

Kenneth Runcie, head of the Religious Education Department said the coming of the new degree programme is pertinent in the wake of globalisation and migration. "Globalisation has forced our hands, and so too has mass migration from Asian countries to Jamaica. Other faiths are growing in Jamaica."

He cited the increasing presence of practitioners of Haitian religions, Asian spiritualites and the continuing influence of Rastafari. He and Mrs. Foster-Allen warned that if schools continue to teach the Bible alone, there was the risk of alienating a growing segment of the non-Christian community. In that scenario, those who feel alienated, Mr. Runcie warned, might opt to litigate.

Mr. Runcie, who is himself a graduate of both the University of the West Indies and the Jamaica Theological Seminary, noted that last year the government of Trinidad & Tobago passed legislation which require that religious education be taught at all levels of the primary and secondary school system.

The Ministry of Education in Trinidad & Tobago and Shortwood, he said, are exploring avenues of cooperation. Under discussion, he said, is an arrangement that would allow graduates of Shortwood with the degree in RE to go to Trinidad & Tobago to help to develop a similar programme there. Meantime, Trinidad & Tobago would send some persons to be trained at Shortwood in delivering religious education.

Opportunities are being created, Mr. Runcie said, for Shortwood to conduct short-term courses related to RE in the twin-island republic.

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

The RE degree programme at Shortwood Teachers' College is the only one being offered in the entire Caribbean, Mr. Runcie noted. This pioneering work of Shortwood, he continued, has not gone unnoticed by other Caribbean governments and there have been various expressions of interest in working with Shortwood in the delivery of religious education.

Founded in 1885, Shortwood Teachers' College trains females (and a few males) for the classroom. It presently has an enrolment of more than 600 full-time diploma students and 80 full-time degree students. It has a part-time student body of 400.

Eighteen students are pursuing the B.Ed. in religious education of which three are full time. These full-time students are expected to finish the programme in August. The part-time students are scheduled to complete the programme next Easter.

The graduates of the B.Ed. in religious education will be qualified to teach the subject from the primary level all the way up to the sixth form (grades 12-13).

The B.Ed. in religious education is being undertaken in consultation with the University Council of Jamaica, the nation's quality assurance body for post-secondary education, Mrs. Foster-Allen noted.

Prior to the new B.Ed. programme, the college prepared teachers for the classroom by offering a diploma in religious education or a diploma in religious education with guidance. This initial cohort in the RE degree programme all had qualified themselves with diplomas in either RE or RE with guidance. However, a person pursuing the RE degree without a suitable diploma in the discipline will have to spend four years to complete the programme.

Gaining popularity

Both Mrs. Foster-Allen and Mr. Runcie said that the RE degree is gaining popularity and many students within the college who are pursuing other disciplines are wanting to do some of the courses. In particular, the promise of an elective next semester titled 'Dancehall, Sex and Religious Ideology' is already oversubscribed, Mr. Runcie said.

The RE programme allows persons to do a few electives which are somewhat tangential but which are important, Mrs. Foster-Allen said. For example, a course called 'New Ventures' - which deals with developing entrepreneurship in students. The course asks, 'What is the role of religion in developing skills in enterprise and entrepreneurship?' This, she said, is particularly relevant as some companies, mainly in Europe and North America, have persons designated ethics officers, or ethics managers. She asked, "Where do you learn to do the ethics? Religious education is the basis from which you can do some of these things.

She stressed that students in primary and secondary schools will need to grapple with religion increasingly as their worldview is heavily libertarian, post-modern and they are fed heavy diet of news and entertainment from North America. Religion, she said, offers the sophistication necessary to grapple with such issues.

Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com.