S14 E2: The One About FoRB (Freedom of Religion or Belief)

This chat is just what we need to reinvigorate us as we start a new term,  cold, exhausted from festive celebrations, still arriving and leaving in the dark, with depleted VItamin D reserves.  This episode will give you an hour to be reignited and reinvigorated about the amazing work we all do and what is possible and help us start a new term with renewed energy.
We look at what FoRB is and what it isn't, trauma informed ways of dealing with violations,  why it's so important in today's world.
My guest Josh Cass is as wise as he is humble, and will be the lift you need to see you through the last half of January.
A link to the REC article on The Toledo Principles
https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/resource/toledo-guiding-principles/
https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/rec/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/toledo-article.pdf

A link to all the FoRB resources from Culham St Gabriel
https://www.cstg.org.uk/campaigns/promoting-freedom-of-religion-or-belief/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to the RE Podcast, the first dedicated RE podcast for students and teachers. My name is Louisa Jane Smith, and this is the R.E. Podcast. The podcast for those of you who think RE is boring, which it is, and I'll prove it to you. My guest today is Josh Cass, and he is going to be talking about freedom of religion or belief, or its acronym Forb. It's a topic which comes up specifically in the GCSC as part of the human rights and social justice theme, but it permeates throughout all curriculums and schools. However, I think sometimes it's quite a difficult thing to teach, a difficult thing to promote, a difficult thing to ensure happens in our society. So I'm really hoping this episode supports us in ensuring Forb thrives. So welcome, Josh.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Thank you for having me, Louisa.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Josh, will you just introduce yourself to our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Sure. Hello, my name's Josh, Josh Cass. I live in London with my two children. I've worked on issues of interfaith, interreligious dialogue, and communication for many years now. And I'm now an advisor to a number of different organizations, including Cullum St. Gabriel's, who you may be familiar with, who are involved with and support the development of religious education and the worldview's approach to RE.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Absolutely. And for me, yeah, it was Cullum St. Gabriel and particularly Catherine who spoke very eloquently at a recent NATRA meeting and sort of put me in touch with you. So massively grateful for that. How did you then sort of really get involved with the Forb research?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Sure. So my connection to Forb, and just to be clear, Forbes is freedom of religion or belief. Forb it's a terrible acronym, but just for everyone's sake, Forb, it makes it much easier to use that than the full expression. My connection begins with my work on interfaith. And as we'll get into Forb is this right that we all have to have change and express our own religion or belief identity. And for many years, at a policy level, there's been this idea, or there was this idea that Forbes and Interfaith should somehow be connected. That somehow, you know, you could apply interfaith methodologies in different contexts to promote and protect Forbes. And so because I was working on Interfaith for many years, I was often brought into conversations, particularly by policy professionals, to help them think about this relationship between Interfaith and Forbes. But it was only later when I started working with Catherine and Cullums that we began to think specifically about this relationship between Forb and education, and particularly the relationship between Forbes and education in school settings, in formal education settings, that this piece of research and this work that I've been involved with at Cullums really started to get off the ground.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

I'm really interested then is in this relationship between Forbes and interfaith. Because I think I can see the connection there, and actually what you're trying to support is communication and dialogue and mutual respect of people that practice different religions. But actually, the sort of tension there is maybe that part of sort of Article 18, which is that human right that affords us this. That you have the right to change religion, you have the right to not be religious. And actually, I guess then Forbes encompasses much more than just faith dialogue. It's about dialogue between faith and non-faith.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

That's right. And I think that that's I want to be careful here how I say this because I think that there's an assumption very often at a policy level, it's not necessarily the most faith-literate space that one can be in, and that there are assumptions being made about what interfaith is, what religious education is. It's coming from a place of goodwill and good intent, but without necessarily a contextual understanding of those issues. And that's where some of the problems I think can start to arise in terms of, in my experience, being in conversations with policy professionals and saying, well, we'll just set up an interfaith dialogue and that's our way to do Forb. Well, I don't know. I'm not convinced by that necessarily. And I think that work needs to be done. And that's why it's exciting to be working with Cullin, to be thinking about and working with teachers, quite honestly, thinking at a grassroots level, right there at the coalface, thinking about what works, how do we navigate these ideas around belief? Yeah, how do we navigate those ideas? And so I think it's really important to start by having a good understanding of what Forb is before we start applying it into different settings. So, you know, human rights are for everyone, everywhere. They apply universally to us all. And Forb, Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, explicitly says it's the freedom to have, choose, change, or leave a religional belief, and the freedom to practice or manifest a religional belief, including non-religious beliefs like humanism and atheism.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

One thing I'm interested in out of two things that you said. One is about misconceptions, because I think I would not be surprised if me in my own practice and possibly other people out there fall prey to some of the misconceptions that maybe happen in the political sphere. So it'd be interesting to kind of find out what that is. But also I think it would be really helpful then to just sort of define what freedom of religion or belief actually means that we can and that we can't do. So let's just start with those misconceptions.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Sure. I think that's really admirable that you're being self-reflective and critical about this because I think there are so many misconceptions and misunderstandings around Forb arise from people moving too quickly through these issues. So, you know, to begin with, Forb is a human right. It's articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's Article 18. It's important to remind people that human rights are for everyone everywhere. And Forb in particular is the freedom to have, choose, change, or leave a religion or belief, and the freedom to practice or manifest a religion or belief, including non-religious beliefs, atheism, humanism. And really, really critical, Forb protects the individual, not the religion. And it protects the individual in particular from things like coercion and discrimination in religious matters. And it includes the right for parents to raise children in line with their beliefs. So already we're starting to see some of the spaces in which why education could be an important field, a contested field in which questions of Forbes might arise. We've already said that Forbes protects the individual, not the religion, so it doesn't protect a religion from criticism, you know, in cases of alleged blasphemy. That is not something which Forbes covers. And so the other thing to say is that there is no hierarchy of human rights. No one right is more or less important than another. And so as a result of that, when we're thinking about human rights, there are going to be occasions when different rights are in tension, and that can be tricky. I think it's important to add that Forbes a relatively underdeveloped human right, I would suggest, in that it's been part of the Declaration of Human Rights, along with all the other ones, for 70 odd years. I would suggest this really only been in the last 20 or 30 years that focus has been given to it, to what it means, to what it looks like, and how it can be promoted and protected. For most of that 20, 30 years, it's been thought about either as an academic idea, as a policy idea, but not really. I would say a tremendous amount of attention's been given to what it looks like in practice, how you actually promote and protect Forbes, these ideas, these principles that are connected with Forbes. I think it's really to Cullum's credit, but also we'll come on to this in due course, but the RE community can take a real sense of pride and ownership in many respects, because it is there in the classroom. It is being talked about by teachers, it is being explored, it has been explored, but I think what's not happened is that it that learning, that iterative engagement by teachers with these issues, that's not being fed back into some of the policy conversations that might be going on in relation to Ford. And I would suggest that's been a real weakness up until now, because it's meant that some of the ideas that are emerging at a policy level don't really connect with what's happening in the world. And that's never really a particularly robust or sustainable situation to be in going forward. But we can get into that.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

And do you think a lot of that is because of those tensions that you mentioned between other human rights? So for example, nobody's really sat down to think about how does freedom of religion or belief match with freedom of speech?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yes, I would agree with that point. I think even before you get to that point, from a policy perspective, Forb historically, and even to this day I would suggest, remains, certainly in the UK, a foreign policy priority. Forb happens overseas. It's interesting to note that under the last government there was a Prime Minister's envoy for Forbes, but they were thinking about Forbes outside of the UK. There was no real remit for thinking about the promotion and protection of Forbes as a specific human right within the UK. I mean, the Human Rights Commission, you can make the case that that's the space in which that exploration might have happened. But really, historically, Forb has been a foreign policy priority, not a domestic priority. So again, you can start to see that there's this blind spot emerging about how government of all stripes have thought about this particular human right. That's one thing to say. But absolutely, in terms of the tensions between Forbes and other rights, freedom of expression, unquestionably, there is a tension there between the right to Forb and freedom of expression and what we as a society consider to be permissible speech. But not just freedom of expression. Thinking about particular gender, you know, the way that people experience violations of Forbes, of their Forb, is very much connected with issues of gender. So I'm thinking about Muslim women who might want to wear a hijab or a niqhab and the spaces in which they might be not able to do that. So there are these, there are definite tensions between Forbes and other human rights which are tricky to tease out. I'm not gonna pretend that they're easy, they're not. And I think that teachers in schools on a daily basis are confronting those issues and are exploring how to make these accommodations between different rights work on a daily basis. And it's why it's a real shame, in my opinion, at least, that teachers and senior school leaders haven't been connected into conversations about the promotion and protection of Forbes and Forbes principles more systematically. And hopefully that's going to change.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

It's interesting what you're saying, that actually that this often is seen under the remit of foreign policy. Do you think that's because sometimes in other countries it's much more overt that freedoms are being taken away? And actually, we're maybe under the impression that in this country we do have that freedom, but that actually those freedoms are taken away in a much more subtle way that's not obvious. And actually, that's much more difficult to create policy for.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

I think there's a truth to that. I think there's absolutely a truth to that. But I think that I'm sure our conversation will move to this in due course. But like, you know, the work that Cullum have been doing in terms of supporting teachers in schools over the last couple of years, in terms of actually how do you teach children to think about four principles, to learn about four principles? One of the ways in which teachers have gone about approaching that task is to think about the fact that in some parts of the UK, if you are a member of a religious minority, you might not have access to a local place of worship. And how does that lack of access have an impact on your my ability to fully express my religious identity? Now, that might not be as an egregious example of Forbes being violated as the horrendous stories that one can hear about if one engages with various human rights discourses. I mean, it's obviously not as egregious as that. But at the same time, if we're serious about Forbes and promoting and protecting this idea of freedom of religion or belief, thinking about the ways in which I might not be free to fully express my religious identity is part of that discourse and is something that children can learn about within the context of the classroom, thinking about the world around them, the communities that they live in. How can their communities be even more welcoming to people who might be different to themselves, who might have a different religious identity to themselves? That's just as much as part of Forbes and being a Forbes activist and caring about Forbes as caring about the plight of people far away from us as well. So there's a balance, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

That's really interesting. Now, I want to talk a little bit more specifically about what happens in schools, but something we touched on, and I just want to see if there's anything else we need to say, which is about the tension between different human rights. So we mentioned the sort of freedom of expression. Are there any other rights that that Forbes is in tension with other than that one?

SPEAKER_00 14:15

I think that there is no hierarchy, theoretically, of human rights. All human rights are equal. And inevitably, in a society where we are striving to enable as many people as possible to access all of their rights as possible, there's going to be a tension about how we negotiate that. Freedom of expression and Forb are obviously, you know, there are examples of tension there. One thinks about high-profile cases where sacred texts have been provocatively burned, you know, as a way of expressing oneself, whether or not one chooses to agree with that as a legitimate form of expression. That's for society to determine. That's one thing. Questions of gender, the right of people to choose to dress in particular ways in relation to their their faith or belief identity. That's again, there's a tension between those issues and Forbes. One of those areas where we're still learning, because Forb is a relatively new right in terms of the case law, is the right of children in relation to education. We said that Forbes protects the right of parents to raise their children with the religious belief of the family. But at what point does a child have the right to say that they don't want to be educated in line with those beliefs? There's not a huge amount of f precedence or case law in relation to that. There are some from Sweden. So that's something to look out for as well. But with all human rights, there's these tensions that emerge between different rights. And it's how we as a society choose to navigate those tensions that the approach that we take to doing that, one hopes, I hope, that we as a society choose to do that in the most sensitive, thoughtful way that we can, listening to the experiences of people for whom those rights are most keenly felt. But that's an ongoing process.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

The way that I understand law, and I I may be wrong, is that you are afforded your rights, but you can't express them in a way that takes away the right of others. So, you know, you have the right to express yourself through nudity, but you can't just walk through a street because everyone else has the right not to see you expose yourself. And so you have to create spaces where that's possible. That's right. So you have the right to not agree with someone's religion, but you don't have the right to burn their holy books. Indeed. Because that encrouches on the rights of others. You know, and I know that there's not always a very clear demarcation between those two things, but it does feel as though there is precedent of how we establish those rights. So even the right for expression, you have the right to express whatever opinion you want as long as it doesn't incite hatred. And so we have these ways of managing those rights. It feels as though maybe nobody's necessarily used the same methodology to applying Forbes when actually there is precedent for it.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

I think that's right. It's a relatively new area of law. I'm no lawyer. I should also, you know, hold my hands up at that point. But certainly we need to all of us, I would say, become better at learning to accommodate and live alongside one another and bend and flex in the right ways at the right times. And that's the challenge of, you know, living in a cosmopolitan complex society.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

And I I find it really interesting what you said about that a parent has a right to bring their child up in the religion that they have. But at what point does that child get autonomy over their own rights to leave? You know, and I'm assuming that it's not as simple as just saying, well, it's when they're 18, because a 17 and a half year old does that mean they are forced into a religion at 17 and a half? You know, so actually there's some really interesting areas I think that I'd not really thought about. I want to talk about this sort of ministerial statement that was issued in 2022. So I think that's going to be specifically relevant to a lot of the listeners in terms of what it says about what curriculum should do. And it's really important, I'm guessing, to note here that this is not just about RE curriculums, that this is about curriculum generally. So, first of all, positive and accurate information. Now that's a very, very loaded statement because actually we're often dealing with material that is subjective and where two people can have opposite opinions that both feel that they're accurate. So that's an interesting one. To combat stereotypes and to promote article 8, which is forb. Have you got any advice about how we can effectively do this in our curriculums?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah, so just to put a bit of flesh on the bones in terms of the context of that statement. So that statement was written as part of an annual ministerial. So it's a large conference that in theory happens every year somewhere in the world, where countries who have made public commitments, either domestically or internationally, in relation to Forbes, come together to sort of talk about the state of Forbes. And in 2022, that ministerial happened here in London, and it was a large-scale event, and within the context of that conference, various statements were drafted and signed by representatives of different countries across a number of issues, one of them being education. And it's worth also saying that there's a trajectory that that sort of statement sits within that begins, if you like, some people would say with this document called the Toledo Guiding Principles, which is about 20 years old now, which is about the teaching of different religions in public schools. And so there's this trajectory of discourse, of ideas around the relationship between teaching about religion and human rights. Council of Europe publications as well are part of that too. So there's this big international set of documents and frameworks and what have you that are trying to articulate and express what this is all about. 2022, the ministerial, and then Cullum, I would say, starts to get really involved in the wake of the ministerial. And one of the things that we've been able to do in the last couple of years is to try to express what forb education looks like because you've got those themes which you've read out. As you say, they're quite broad and they're quite loaded. So we've tried to be more specific. And so we've got three principles that we've come up with. And the first one is we say that forb education requires that children have an ability to talk about freedom, what it means to be free, what it means for others to be free, and to think about what it might feel like or mean to have those freedoms restricted. So that's the first principle. The second principle is an ability to talk about their own religion or belief, to have an opportunity to experience ways in which other people explore and express meaning and to learn about where and how their own religion or belief identities may be different to those of others. And the third principle is to have an opportunity to learn about human rights, that human rights are for everyone everywhere, and that Forbes specifically is a human right. So that might include Know looking at some of the human rights documents, the Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant for the Right of the Child, various other documents and to think about human rights in relation to those documents. So those are if you like our our columns, three principles for what forb education should include. Now I would say that that's quite a specific set of principles and that there aren't many examples anywhere of forb education because it's quite specific. There are in our research an adjacent bucket, so to speak, of interventions that take place in classrooms which seek to promote and protect what we would describe as forb adjacent ideas, so things like uh inclusive citizenship, interreligious dialogue, initiatives that combat anti-religious hate, whether that's in relation to Islamophobia or anti-Semitism, broad anti-racism education. Those are things which one might describe as forbadjacent education. That forb education for us has these three principles.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

They're really helpful actually. And just also for the listeners, the Toledo Guiding Principles, I'll put a link to something that you can read from the REC regarding that, just in case that's something that you haven't kind of engaged with yet, just so that you can have a look at those because they're really interesting. There is a an official document, but that's quite lengthy.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, this is a long document.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yeah, so the REC, I've got like a sort of accessible version of that, which I'll put a link to. The two things that I want to bring out there is number one, it feels as though the worldviews approach to RE supports those three principles that you've come up with, but also it feels that that's not going to be enough. That RE as a lone wolf is not going to be okay in dealing with those things. That actually the concept of freedom, I think, is something that has to be taught alongside a curriculum. And it's much better to do that in a sort of citizenship lesson or a PSHE lesson or within tutor time or an assembly. And probably the same with human rights in a more general sense, that there isn't necessarily one subject which lends itself to learning about human rights because it seems to spread across the curriculum and therefore might necessarily need to be done centrally, and then each subject can pick up the bits that are relevant to them. So actually, if they're doing, you know, sort of public speaking or convincing arguments in English, they could talk about freedom of expression and sort of creating frameworks so that you don't start spouting off things that are anti-religious or anti-racist or overtly racist. So let's just start with that first thing about how much a worldviews approach to RE supports what Forbes is trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Sure. I mean, I think it's really important that I say at this point, and I didn't say before, I'm not a teacher. So I've spoken to a lot of teachers in relation to this work, but I am not a teacher. Having said that, my understanding of a worldviews approach is that a worldviews approach begins with people. You know, it places people at the centre of the methodology. And in the same way, all human rights are about the rights which we as individuals have. So already, as you said, there's this conceptually, both human rights and a worldviews approach places the individual at the centre of what it's trying to do. And again, my understanding of a worldviews approach to religion is that it's about enabling children to see themselves in the curriculum, providing them with opportunities to feel seen and also to learn about religion in the way that they themselves experience it, which is again what freedom of religion or belief is about. It's the way that I, Josh, experience my religion, it's about how I express my religion, it's not about the religion in the book, it's about the religion that I live. So there's this real kind of complementarity between, I would suggest, between a worldviews approach to religion and thinking about the ideas and principles which Forb promotes and protects. So that's why I think it's you know it's a fruitful conversation to be having about this relationship between a worldviews approach and forb. And this is where I start to get onto thinner ice because I think that's really important that we bring teachers into this conversation and that teachers are part of thinking about these similarities and so forth, because they have the experience, I've seen it in terms of enabling children to think about lived religion and belief, to learn about lived religion and belief. And then what we've been talking about at Cullum is the development of a Forb lens. So rather than thinking about, you know, we're gonna sit down and do a lesson on Forbes, is how do we apply these principles, the principles of freedom, the principles of lived religion, and the principles of human rights as a lens to an established unit of work that a teacher might be teaching or have taught for a number of years. That's been the approach that we've been thinking about at Cullum and with the teachers that we've been working with.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

That's really helpful for us and very, very interesting actually, that Forbes should not be a standalone topic that you teach in a lesson, that Forb underpins your curriculum in the way that you approach it, where you're hitting those guidelines in terms of giving children a space to talk about religion, talk to religious people, have authentic lived experience, and actually then Forb underpins the curriculum rather than is a sort of discrete part of it. And I think that's really helpful for us to know how to approach this when we're writing our curriculums.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

But also I think it means that RE teachers need to have a wider conversation with their senior leaders to say this is what we're doing in RE to do this, but actually this needs to be a whole school thing.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

100%.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

But it also will help you have those conversations with leaders who maybe don't understand the importance of a worldviews approach in RE in modern Britain to say that actually this is wider than just an RE community. This is about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And this is our part to play.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Absolutely. I think that's absolutely right. And I think that you know this becomes a lever, if you like, that the RE community as a whole can reach to and pull on to raise the profile of the RE community in a different way, you know, to say that actually RE and the worldviews approach is central to our commitment as school communities, as individuals, as citizens to the promotion and protection of human rights, but also thinking about things like community cohesion, the role that schools have to play in promoting cohesive communities and creating communities where everyone feels welcome and safe and secure. This is part of that conversation too. And it's another way of making the case, of articulating the need for it. And I think that you're absolutely right that this is something that it's a whole school approach. It's not a standalone, it's about how do we weave this into the conversations that we're having with our colleagues, with senior school leaders, with parents, wider community, everyone.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

And actually, Bridget Phillipson, education secretary, did uh 100 days in office meeting. And actually, she was asked the question for you, what is the purpose of education? In a general sense, you know, it was a general meeting, it wasn't specifically RE. But she talked about the importance of creating children who understood who they were, their place in the world, how to understand other people and show respect and tolerance. And it was really interesting that her understanding of what the point of education was was grounded in what RE is, what good RE is.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

And sort of ties in with these themes that I think come out of freedom of religion and belief. There are some concerns I have, and I want to get your take on this.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Which is some of the difficulties of embedding a sense of forbidden schools, particularly representing the nuns, the sort of non-religious people in sort of faith schools. Have you got any sort of thoughts or advice about that?

SPEAKER_00 30:24

I mean, there are things which keep keep me awake at night. I mean, maybe that's putting it too strongly, but I mean when I think about the issues of Forbes and Forbes in schools, I think there are some real challenges. You know, for me, I worry that Forb can drive a sense of exclusion. At Cullen, we've been thinking about this language of a Forbes flourishing school. You know, one of the things that I worry about is whether for a school to be a forb flourishing school requires that teachers can talk confidently and openly about ideas of religious conversion and non-religious belief. And I wonder whether there are schools in which that might be difficult, challenging. You know, think about particularly, you know, more conservative schools or schools with a minority faith character? Are the how confidently are they able to engage with some of those themes? And if it is uh challenging for those schools to engage with those themes, does it mean that those schools can't become full flourishing schools? And if that's the case, does it perpetuate some of these narratives, feed into some of these narratives that some communities are quote unquote anti-human rights? And what does that mean in terms of broader issues of cohesion, broader issues of inclusion? I worry about whether or not human rights are necessarily a helpful or appropriate lens for schools when thinking about questions of inclusive practices. We know from human rights practitioners in other parts of the world that that these narratives can be divisive, they can be perceived as being imposed by secular actors or the West, quote unquote, onto specific communities and does this language of human rights create additional barriers? Those are some of the things that I'm worrying about in terms of when we're talking about promoting Forbes in the classroom, those for me are some of the tensions that arise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Do you know what? As you're speaking, and I'm gonna start speaking out loud, so I don't know if this is gonna make any sense, that there's an inherent contradiction between what Forbes is trying to create and instilling Forbes, in that these are human rights that have been created from a particular positionality that reflect the values of a certain type of society, and imposing those rights on cultures if they're not done sensitively with an understanding of different ways of thinking, that there are societies where too much freedom could be dangerous if given too much too soon. And actually, a society is built on a structure whereby there's a little bit more imposing of ideas. And it's not to make a judgment on which of those societies is better or worse, but just that we should be aware of the inherent value sitting behind Forbes could be in direct contradiction to values in another type of society, and that sort of maybe intellectual arrogance, maybe that we've got to be aware of. I don't know if any of that makes sense, but it's just kind of the thoughts in my head.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Yeah. So for instance, in a previous job, I was involved with some work with a Jordanian partner delivering work in a country in East Africa, and the approach that the Jordanian partner took, again, this was loosely around freedom of religion or belief, was to talk about human dignity. Now, human dignity as a concept speaks into this language that the funder in the UK was more interested in promoting, which was very much grounded in human rights. But human dignity was the way that the partner in Jordan, they used that language because they felt that they were able to go into a room in that country and have that conversation about human dignity, which opened up the conversation around interreligious dialogue, interreligious engagement, in a way that would be more successful than talking about human rights and freedom of religion or belief. Now, I'm not for one moment saying that we should be coy about human rights, you know, that's the law of the land, but I worry about the barriers that human rights language does throw up for people. You know, it doesn't land the same for everyone within themselves. Does that mean that for those for whom it might be challenging, does that make them bad people, quote unquote? I want to be careful about saying that was the case because you know my children go to school with some of those people. So I think we just need to be very careful about how we proceed as an Ari community with these ideas, not because we shouldn't be robust about promoting them, but we need to be mindful. This is the tension. We were talking about the tension between different human rights earlier. This is the tension that this throws up. And it's not straightforward and it's not always easy. There will be bumps along the way, but you know, we just need to be thoughtful about it as we go into it.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

But it's almost intention with itself that you know freedom of religion or belief means that people should be free to not promote freedom of religion or belief. You know, that's it's interesting. The other thing that I think is sort of slightly linked to this, and you sort of alluded to it in terms of a lot of the work being done is about international violations of Article 18. And I think that's interesting for us as teachers in terms of what case studies we are choosing to teach this and the impact of misrepresenting or making a religion look bad by the examples that we choose. Now, there's something called the UK Forbes Forum.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

And that focuses on international forb violations. How can we effectively teach violations of Forbes without antagonizing any particular group?

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Sure. Just to say that UK Forbes Forum is a collection of UK-based organizations who've come together because they're concerned about the promotion and protection of Forbes internationally. And one of the key things that they do is to raise the profile of Forb violations which are taking place in other parts of the world. And I think you're absolutely right that it's important that we learn about those violations and we think about them. And I think that it's a tension and it's a skill for teachers to navigate to do what you're saying. Or how do we have that discussion without giving the impression that a particular country or a particular religion is synonymous with violations of human rights? I think that's not where one wants to be as a teacher. When I think about the work that we've been supporting with teachers here in the UK who've been doing this work already, is to think about those violations, quote unquote, closer to home. So, for instance, one of the schools we were being with is in Plymouth, and they've been studying Hinduism, and in particular the challenges faced by Hindus to be able to fully express their religious identity because of the lack of Mandir in Devon, and the children were supported to think about what it might feel like not to have access to a place of worship of their own and what that would mean for them to be able to express fully their religious identity and thinking about how to make their community more inclusive and more welcoming. So it's one example of the way in which you can learn about violations or not full access to one's human rights. Another teacher working in Leicester used a historic case study of a bus driver who was Sikh. I can't remember exactly how many years ago this was, but the bus company said that he had to remove his turban because it wasn't part of his uniform, and there was a backlash amongst other bus drivers who came out in support of him and they worked together to change company policy around the right that Sikh people have to wear a turban. So there are ways in which I think teachers can think about forb violations in an appropriate way for their children, that connects them with their communities, that connects them with the places in which they live, makes it more real, so to speak. It's not to say that as children get older that they shouldn't engage with some of the more contemporary and egregious examples of those violations. But I think that our experience at Cullum is that you can have challenging conversations in primary school classrooms about Forbes and about the way in which people experience restrictions on their right to Forb here in the UK without necessarily having to teach about those more controversial, more challenging examples, which, let's be honest, I don't fully understand what's going on in these in in certain places. So why should we expect that a 14, 15, 60-year-old can do it if we can help them to think about things that are happening locally to them? My senses, and certainly based on the experience that we've had so far, is that teachers are more likely to find that an accessible way to teach about these things, and that the children themselves will enjoy learning in that way too.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

You know, sometimes I think what we do is we try to choose really controversial things.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

And actually it shuts children down because it just feels so overwhelming and they can't really see how they can make a difference, and you're just presenting them this awful situation and then going, What should you do? And they're like, I don't know, I'm 14.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

Those two examples that you've chosen are localized, individual, lived experience of a situation that they can probably relate to a little bit more and find a solution. Yeah. And specifically with the sick one, is that actually there was a solution found where people banded together. The other thing that I think is wonderful about those is there's no aggressor, there's no buddy in that situation. It is just here is a situation, let's look at it through a forb lens. And actually, there's quite a nice solution without demonizing any one group of people, which I think is really lovely.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

It's just worth saying that with the example from Devon as well, you know, the children in that school then decided as a class that they wanted to write a letter to the local council about why Hindus living in Plymouth needed access to a mandate in an age-appropriate way, those children, with the support of their teachers, with the support of their senior school leaders, were able to feel a sense of agency about how they could change and improve their local community. So I definitely there are ways in which, you know, I'm not going to pretend that it's easy for teachers, but there are certainly ways in which if you want to connect with this set of issues, there are ways in which you can do it at a local level, unquestionably.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

And yeah, and just to point out, it's significant that it was a local issue. Yeah. So actually it immediately helps the children to connect to that rather than it being something that's far away.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

I'm aware of time, so I'm just going to sort of combine a few of the questions. And really, I just want to talk about where we can go next in terms of support. One thing I do want to talk about in this is the sort of primary phase of a project that you're doing is out now. So just tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Sure. Over the last couple of years, Cullum have been supporting four schools in particular, primary schools, to explore how their teachers can support their children to learn about Forbes and Forb principles. So there have been four schools, one in Plymouth, one in East London, one in Leicester and Congleton. And working with them, we've produced two reports. One's already on the Cullum website, and one will be, well, we're talking in December. It should be on the website any day, really, but certainly by the new year, a phase two report which highlights the learning and the approach and the methodologies that were taken by the project team as a whole to support children to learn about these issues. So if teachers are interested in learning more about the approach and how to do this work, the Cullum website is unquestionably the place to head straight to. Find those reports and have a look. They're full of really great insights and also some resources too. So we've produced early on a set of learning objectives that cover early years through to key stage three so that teachers can think about the kinds of outcomes that they can be looking for with their children to show learning in relation to Forbes and Forb principles. That's all there on the website and definitely worth having a look at if you're interested in doing this work. There's also examples of materials that were developed by teachers. It's really important to say that what we did off the bat straight away was to say we're not going to try and produce an off the shelf resource. This is about teachers working with where their children are, the kinds of ideas that their children are familiar with and a way in which they learn, and to support those teachers. To develop their own approaches to these ideas, which is why those learning objectives were really important, because it meant that a teacher could think about a unit of work or a lesson plan that they were going to be delivering, and then think about within the context of that lesson how they could tweak its delivery or ask specific questions to explore how children are learning about Forb and Four principles.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

And I just want to sort of like think about moving forward. If there's a primary project, is there going to be a secondary one?

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Is that the kind of plan moving forward or the plan moving forward is so we've did two iterations of this project working with the same schools. So we feel really confident that children in primary schools with support, with buy-in, can learn about Forbes and Forb principles. Something that we weren't confident of going into this process. We assumed it could be done, but we didn't know. So the next step is to try to develop some e-learning for teachers to help to lead them through the process of how they might start to apply a Forb lens to their teaching. You're asking me now to speak at the very edge of my knowledge because these are live conversations we're having at the moment. My sense is that that we'll pitch those e-learning resources at a primary school audience still, but unquestionably, moving forward, there will be conversations about how do we support secondary school teachers as well. But that's quite honestly TBC, I'm afraid, at this point.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

No, and that's always exciting. It's always exciting to know there are things that are being talked about, but you don't ever want to kind of like rush into something and do things that needs to be considered about when's the right time to do it.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Absolutely. But I think one point to make, and I the risk as a non-teacher in having this conversation with you is that I am well aware, and you said it in your introduction, that Forb is there in the curriculum, and teachers have been teaching about Forb for many years, and they're doing amazing work. And I've met many of them who've been doing it not connected to anyone else. There's no one coordinating and helping. Well, historically, there hasn't really been anyone coordinating or helping to think about Forb education in RE or in citizenship or whichever other area of the curriculum. So I need to be humble when I say all this stuff because it is happening, it has been happening, and it continues to happen, and it would have happened without Cullum doing this. I think what I hope we as Cullum are doing and able to do is to connect these conversations into the policy conversation.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

You know, to come back to where we started from. My frustration always has been the lack of practitioner voice, whether as an interfaith practitioner in the Forbes space or as you know, working alongside teachers, you know, the lack of teachers in the Forbes policy space as well, sharing their experience of what works has been something that is a real gap. And I really hope moving forward in the future that we Cullum can act as a conduit for that best practice, which has been happening historically, which is continuing to happen, can be fed into those conversations.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

And I know that there's a working group at the moment that says that Forbes should be part of the national curriculum. And obviously, we're in the middle of a curriculum and assessment review at the moment with the DFE. What's the thinking around that at this present moment?

SPEAKER_00 47:36

Well, I just to say that working group is we're not quite saying that it needs to be part of the national curriculum. What the group is sort of saying is that Forb is a tool which teachers and educators and schools and policy folk can use to advance various outcomes and objectives. And one thing that we've been focusing on going into the curriculum review is to think about the contribution which Forbes education can make in terms of promoting community cohesion, which after the summer that we've just had and the impact of global events, I'm thinking specifically of the war in Gaza and wider Middle East. You know, we know that schools have a role to play in promoting and building cohesive communities. And forbes education and supporting interventions which promote children to think about forb and forb principles can play a role in promoting community cohesion.

SPEAKER_02 48:37

So I guess it's that lens again, isn't it? It's that Forb lens that is kind of underpinning a national curriculum rather than being a discrete subject or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

Just as we close, I've got two questions for you. The first being, is there anything else that you just want to say that's a final thought to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Yes. If there's one thing I could leave your listeners with. Cullen, we've been testing out this little statement, and I'd love to hear what your listeners think about this statement. And it goes like this: it says that high-quality religious education can only be taught in an environment where Forb principles flourish, and for Forbes to be promoted and protected requires that children have access to high-quality religious education. So that we're kind of naming this relationship. We've spoken already in this conversation about some of those tensions, and I would really love to hear what people make of that statement. Does it sit true to them? If it doesn't, why not? And what might some of the challenges be in relation to it? Whether you agree or disagree. I'd really love to hear what people think about that.

SPEAKER_02 49:43

So what I'll do is I'll clip that little sign belt, I'll put it on social media and I'll get people to respond to that. Brilliant. Because actually it's a really nice way of understanding the reciprocal relationship and nature between RE and Forbes. And I think it would be really lovely to get people's sense of what that means to them. So yeah, I'll absolutely do that. Josh, if you could wake up tomorrow and one thing was different in the world, what would you want it to be?

SPEAKER_00 50:06

Well, I mean, you know, I mean that that's a very broad question, but I'm assuming you're asking about Forbes.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

I mean, it doesn't have to. It can be about, you know, middle lane drivers. I don't mind.

SPEAKER_00 50:16

Well, I will answer that question in relation to Forbes because otherwise I'll go down too many rabbit holes. But I would say, you know, I think that, as I said before, you know, the teachers and the voices of teachers, their experiences need to be better integrated into discussions about how to promote and protect Forbes. You know, I think that we in the UK are incredibly fortunate in having, again, recognize that not being a teacher, it's easy for me to say this. I know the pressures that teachers are under and the lack of resourcing that exists. With that said, we are fortunate to have such amazingly qualified and competent and enthusiastic teachers, and particularly the RE community, who have been engaged with issues relating to Forbes and the promotion of Forb. There's so much excellent work going on, and it's such a missed opportunity that teachers remain marginal to the conversation at a policy level. And I would love it if tomorrow we were to wake up in a world where through some magic mechanism, that experience and that authenticity and that commitment could be captured and disseminated and heard in all those places where conversations about Forbes and education are happening and not hearing from teachers right now. And not hearing from children right now. I mean and if that were to happen, that would be transformative both in the way I think that Forb is being promoted and protected globally, but also the way that Ari is being taught in the UK.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

I love that. And I'm also just thinking now, how wonderful would it be to ask children if we woke up tomorrow in a world where Forbes happened everywhere in every space. Yeah. What would the world be like? Because I think that actually sometimes you have to imagine ideal in order to create something that's better. You have to dream big. So I think it would be a lovely thing to do with the children.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

Josh, I've loved this chat, and I think it's going to be one of those conversations that people listen to and it just re-invigorates them and re-excites them about the role that we play not only in children's lives, but in wider society and globally. And just really, really does put RE on the map, I think, when we start talking about these really wonderful big themes that are so dynamic and so relevant to the world that we find ourselves in. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

My name is Louisa Jane Smith, and this has been the R.E. Podcast. The podcast for those of you who think RE is boring, but it is not. It's creating a space to do something which is a privilege, which is to help children to understand their place in the world and how valuable that is. And actually, it gives us the opportunity to be a bit of a leading voice in something like freedom of religion or belief in a world where actually maybe this isn't necessarily front and center. But thank you so much for listening to us or the life out of you.