Kenyan researchers agree with pupils' views that CRE is 'boring' and 'useless in life'

 Screengrab of one of the CRE books in use   Photo:LonghornPublishers

Over the decades in Kenya, successive syllabus changes have sought to move Religious Education (RE) away from racist, colonial-period indoctrination and evangelisation, towards something more inclusive.

That hypothetical inclusiveness is apparent in the primary syllabus’s general objective seeking that learners should ‘develop awareness...for African Religious Heritage’, and in its specific objective, to ‘respect...other religions’.

However, in practice these things aren’t done, and numerous Kenyan studies reveal that school leavers exit the system with none of those critical thinking skills that Christian Religious Education (CRE) claims to promote, little appreciation of other belief systems within communities, and no ability to make considered moral choices or internalise socially-acceptable behaviour.

Indeed, Maseno researchers found that almost 100 per cent of the time, CRE teaching fails to encourage any critical thinking; that is, the ability to make thoughtful moral choices. Other Kenyan researchers agree with pupils’ views that CRE is ‘boring’ and ‘useless in life’. Pupils forced to take CRE in Forms three and four report that they ‘hate it’, but admitted to opting for it because it’s ‘easy’ ‘for the exam’.

Clearly something is wrong with CRE in its present incarnation.

As an educator, I approach the debate from a professional perspective, yes, but also from my own faith angle, which is fundamentally Christian. In this two-part series, I will do two things: a) support RE, yet critique its present form and (b) offer alternatives next week.

Fundamentally, CRE as it exists in Kenya’s 8-4-4 system of education is excessively prescriptive, and has not substantially shifted from the missionary ‘indoctrination’ method.

Indoctrination is a serious matter, and all moral philosophers, religious or otherwise, consider it to be profoundly morally wrong. It is ‘unethical influencing in a teaching situation’. One famous educational-ethicist states that indoctrination happens when schooling involves ‘drilling’ (this happens in our schools), ‘authoritarian teaching’ (this happens, too) and the absence of ‘free discussion’ (Maseno studies conclude that this is definitely absent in CRE). RE should be a core ‘ethical’ subject; instead, ours is a profoundly unethical course.

We have no school-level Religious Education as such in Kenya; rather, we have Religious Instruction of the sort that most functioning nations, even very religious ones, have rejected. Depending on the school attended, pupils are drilled in CRE, Hindu Religious Education ((HRE) or Islamic Religious Education (IRE) without the right to opt out; the three religions are segregated, and whichever one is taken, pupils end up being converted and coached into mindless obedience.

And we’re not just talking about lower KCSE and KCPE level, for government is presently pushing the Kenya School Readiness Assessment Tool (KSRAT), which aims to assess whether Early Childhood ‘leavers’ are prepared for lower primary; the CRE criteria for this progression include a toddler’s ability to ‘say prayers’ and ‘sing religious songs’. KSRAT states that ‘Children need to know that there is a supreme being’. This is cultish; it is CRE as North Korea!

Then, at primary from Standard one to eight, the CRE syllabus requires pupils to ‘desire to worship [Christianity’s] God’, ‘be a follower of Jesus Christ’, ‘thank God for the work of the church’, ‘be ready to suffer for Jesus Christ’ and ‘Desire to say the Lord’s prayer always’.

Being from a Christian heritage, I naturally think it fine that existing Christians might say the Lord’s Prayer, but I do consider CRE’s ‘grooming’ to be unacceptable. After all, Christianity, as Jesus Christ suggested, is ideally a freely-chosen faith.

This is not only the position of diverse Protestantism, but also of conservative Catholicism, which in recommendations sent to worldwide bishops working on RE states that ‘The rights of parents are violated, if children are forced...or if a single [faith] system of education...is imposed upon all’.

Further, this famously strict Church quotes its Second Vatican Council, that everywhere in education, even in Catholic schools, RE should ‘refrain from any...action which might seem to carry a hint of coercion or of any kind of persuasion’. 

In short, Kenyan CRE, at all levels, is contrary to the theological teachings of mainstream denominations across the Christian spectrum, to internationally agreed Human Rights, and to our sovereign Constitution. It is certainly immoral in its compulsory form. Similarly, HRE and IRE. Again, this isn’t education, but coercion.

Once more, even the Catholic church explicitly argues that while catechesis (doctrinal teaching on ‘How to be a Christian’) is laudable for practising Christians outside the curriculum, the teaching of RE within the curriculum (in any schools) should be ‘knowledge about [faith]’, not instruction in it. What the church is rightly advocating, is the separation of Church and State-offered forms of religious learning. Our sovereign Constitution also requires this separation.

These problems with CRE are serious, but what truly matters is how our children really encounter the subject in lessons, often in ‘total institution’ boarding schools. Pupils primarily learn through teachers and government-approved textbooks. One widely-used Primary Teacher Training handbook instructs State-paid CRE teachers to act, not as servants of all citizens, but ‘As an agent of the church’, in effect abrogating the State’s democratic function! This is doubly frightening when we consider how recent Kenyan studies conclude that these CRE teachers do not in practice promote critical thinking at all, but instead their biased moral structures are ‘imposed on the learner’.