The Dogmatic Approach to Religious Education

The dogmatic (also referred to as traditional or magisterial or catechism) approach to religious education has been used for many years and implemented in Australian Catholic schools from their beginning up until the 1960’s. Central to the dogmatic approach is the text the Catechism.

The catechism, a text containing the doctrines or teachings of the church, was developed in medieval times. Following the development of the printing press, the catechism reflected the transition from oral instruction to written instruction which was distributed widely across the world. Ryan (2007) states that by the twelfth century a question- and- answer format was developed to enable the contents of the Catechism to be memorised. Further distribution of the text occurred in 1529 when Martin Luther published a catechism to be used for instructing children.

In 1885 a decision made by the Plenary Council to have a uniform catechism resulted in the characteristic text being the teaching resource for thousands of Australian school students. This text was used for nearly eighty years, with the last revision being released in 1936 (Rummery, 1977).

Limitations Rummery (1977) indicates that there was little attention paid to the history of the Bible or the history of the church and very limited direct teaching from the Bible. The teacher was viewed as an authoritarian whose role was to ensure that their students memorised the Catechism. This was also an expectation of the teachers, parents and the clergy.

Rummery (1977) suggests that the dogmatic approach relied on memorisation and learned facts and as a result removed a connection to God. In addition, the approach did not provide opportunities to critique the doctrine or question. Further, the lack of personal involvement and unrelatedness to the real world disconnected the learning from translating the teachings into the student’s life.

Advantages There were a number of advantages in using the dogmatic approach to religious education. The approach allowed the language of religious education to remain unchanged. The approach required limited teacher training due to the question- and- answer format. It enabled the teachings of the text to be passed down from generation to generation. The teachings provided understanding of Christian life, the truth, and therefore limited confusion in the recipients of the knowledge (Rummery, 1977).

The dogmatic approach was used for many years as a method of sharing religious teachings. The disadvantages of the approach eventually outweighed the advantages and therefore was progressively phased out of religious education.

Reflection Identify aspects of teaching religion and teaching people to be religious in a particular way.