EDUCATION
For humanists education a matter of high importance. On this page we set out our fundamental policy and provide links to some pages dealing with the matter in more detail.
POLICY ON EDUCATION
General principles
Education should fit the individual for life as a full participant in society, and teach self-respect and respect for the dignity of others.
Education should promote intellectual honesty. It should foster a love of learning and an appreciation of the supremacy of reason and the scientific method in the search for knowledge.
Education for citizenship should be based on a framework of human rights and responsibilities and should impart the knowledge, cultivate the understanding, and foster the critical skills essential for individual engagement with society and politics.
It should fit children and young people for life in a democratic society underpinned by human rights and the rule of law.
Lifestance education
Education should ensure that children are informed about a range of religious and nonreligious lifestances and have autonomy in their choice of their own lifestance.
The school should bring an academic discipline to bear in presenting the beliefs, practices and values of different lifestances as well as assisting pupils to develop their own responses to them.
Publicly funded schools should not promote one particular religious or non-religious lifestance as the only correct one but teach about the various lifestances (including Humanism) factually and in an objective way. Where parents or young people are offered an option of instruction in a particular lifestance, Humanism must be one option alongside the religions.
Education directed at fostering inter-cultural understanding that includes religious viewpoints should also include Humanism as a non-religious lifestance and include the perspectives and culture of non-religious people.
Many questions and problems arise in the application of this policy in practice.
Here we analyse the different approaches possible, some of which are acceptable, others not.
Here we look at humanist and secularist approaches to non-confessional religious and humanist education and provide links to some practical examples of such education.
Here we comment briefly on some implications of our general policy.
Here we highlight human rights aspects of education policy with reference to the Lautsi judgement of the European Court of Human Rights and the Convention of the Rights of the Child.
Here we refer to the OSCE’s Toledo guidelines, which set down the requirements for the sort of educational approach we advocate in some detail.
A short section of The European Dream deals with education.
See also our response to the EU Commission consultation on Schools for the 21st Century