An International Symposium on “Religion, Spirituality and Education for Human Flourishing,” will be held from February 24-26, Dar Moulay Boubkar, Marrakech, Morocco. Dar Moulay Boubkar, Marrakech, Morocco. This symposium is co-convened by the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace and the UN Alliance of Civilizations ‘Education about Religions and Beliefs’ (ERB) Project.
The symposium will collect a select group of academics and practitioners to consider the part that education about religions can play in cultivating human values and spirituality. Abstracts for the symposium were collected towards the end of last year, and selected participants were notified earlier this year.
Under various names, such as ‘education about religion’, ‘faith education,’ ‘religious studies,’ and ‘religious education,’ the teaching of religious beliefs has already been integrated into the national curricula of many countries. However, the focus of religious education is generally to impart knowledge about religions, and perhaps gesture towards some inter-religious understanding. This way of approaching religious education tends to regard religion as an academic subject, and because such education is at arms-length, the spiritual and experiential aspects of religion are not made directly available to students.
The Symposium will aim to go beyond the current knowledge-centered approaches to religious education and offers a space to discuss and debate the following questions:
- In what ways can education of/from religions better contribute to young people’s spirituality and to the flourishing of their lives?
- How can these contributions of religions be better integrated in schooling?