Two books came today. Expensive, hefty, sturdily bound by the Edinburgh academic publisher, John Donald. They are two volumes in a 14 volume set on Scottish Ethnology. They deal with Religion (vol. 12) and Education (11).
The volume on religion covers the arrival of Christianity and brings the cultural story up to the 21st century. It is by far and away the most comprehensive and authoritative account of religion in Scotland, and it includes chapters dealing with the pluralistic and multicultural context of modern Scotland, and its inevitable and enriching consequence of religious diversity. This looks like one of the big books I'll slowly work through as a course in culture, Christianity, religious diversity, folk theology, and the entwined relationship between social development, religious history and the contemporary cultural landscape. In a world fractured and fragile, where religion can be cause or cure of human suffering and conflict, it is a responsibility to understand our own religious heritage, context and peculiarities. Because in a diverse world, and in a pluralist Scottish society, for many, many people, Christians are 'the other'; and more than ever we need the gift to see ourselves, as others see us, and to see the others, as part of who we are.
The volume on Education is similarly comprehensive - tracing historical development, cultural influences and consequences on Scottish Education. Interesting chapters for me include the account of Special Education provision, Scottish Universities, 'approved schools' for troubled and troublesome children, Catholic education and women in education. Ever since I read and was converted by George Davie's magnificent and wonderfully partisan account of the role and value of Scottish University education, in The Democratic Intellect, I have been passionate about education as more than preparing people for employability. As an expression of my own vocation in theological education, I am vocationally committed to education as formative, humanising and driven by aims significantly higher than market demands and other functional goals. These are arguably necessary to make education socially and economically viable; but the pursuit of learning and the search for knowledge have deeper goals in the human character, mind and will. Varieties of information when integrated bring knowledge; knowledge when assimilated into character and applied to life, brings wisdom - and we desperately need graduates in wisdom, and post-graduates in the science of living well.
Comments