Religion, education and the post-secular child

Davis, R.A. (2014) Religion, education and the post-secular child. Critical Studies in Education, 55(1), pp. 18-31. (doi: 10.1080/17508487.2014.860042)

Abstract

This essay endeavours to reframe current discussion of the relationship of religion to education by highlighting an often seriously neglected element of contemporary educational thought: the changing, post-secular understanding of childhood in the globalised age. Drawing upon recent ethnographies of childhood, and an older anthropological scholarship, the essay seeks to illuminate the place of religion and religious experience in the education of the young by interrogating prevailing and competing perceptions of childhood that often implicitly underpin the discussion of the relationship of the ‘post-secular’ to both liberal and critical-constructivist accounts of educational purpose. In rehabilitating this core concern with childhood, the essay also seeks to recover the ‘pre-secular’ child of folklore, myth, fairytale and romantic aesthetics in order to propose that current Western conceptions of the child are constitutively implicated in these living legacies.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Davis, Professor Robert
• Authors: Davis, R.A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education > Creativity Culture and Faith; College of Social Sciences > School of Education > People, Place & Social Change
• Journal Name: Critical Studies in Education
• ISSN: 1750-8487
• ISSN (Online): 1750-8495