Women have always played an important role as first educators for their children in inculcating values and teaching religious education in most societies and cultures, but have rarely been credited for that work. Behind the scenes work, within the confines of home, is not newsworthy; it is perhaps looked at as responsibility which a woman has brought upon herself as part of motherhood. However, in the Sikh Scripture, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, there is recognition that the first religious and spiritual teacher is the mother, father being the next in line, then the guru, the spiritual master, God. The woman is a symbol of respect and the key person who meets physical, emotional and religious needs of children. In my opinion, the person who recognised Guru Nanak, not as a mere mortal but as the divine messenger of God, was Bebe Nanki, his sister and devotee.
In the United Kingdom, where I live at present, I have been involved in the education sector for over three decades in various capacities from being a classroom teacher to managing education in a local authority and now as an inspector. It is my experience that most primary education, concentrating on the state sector, government school, is delivered by women. It is rare to see a man teaching in nursery establishments, infants and junior schools; if there is one, he is most likely to be the head-teacher, classroom teachers are very few and they don’t stay too long there. Therefore, the main responsibility of teaching falls on the shoulders of women. It is mainly in secondary schools and in further and higher education where there are more male teachers.
Religious education is compulsory in England and it is mainly and broadly Christian. However, parents can withdraw their children from acts of collective worship, if they wish. Some parents may take this opportunity to withdrawn their children, but there are insufficient arrangements made to provide for those children’s particular needs; i.e. Jewish or Muslim worship. Not many Sikh or Hindu parents withdraw. In England as probably elsewhere, there is the additional difficulty of religious education being taught by teachers whose knowledge of religious education is limited. Also they may not be practitioners of their own faith, or any faith, but are expected to teach something up to about six world religions and they teach it as if it were any other subject.
Teachers in primary school are trained in teaching children and are not usually subject specialists. They teach all subjects of the National Curriculum and it is also their responsibility to facilitate a coherent approach to pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. This approach should be informed by links with parents and supported by the sense of a close community. In some ways it is meant to be an extended family atmosphere, a community on its own in which pupils have opportunities to learn about and explore different values, beliefs and views and to develop and express their own. The teachers’ role is to enable children to reflect on their own experiences in a way which:
We live with great mystery, this great dilemma in our lives, whether religion liberates or puts shackles on us. I ask myself how I can live my life as a visually distinctive Sikh woman, while advocating universality of my faith in a religiously plural world; how do I live my faith in an increasingly secular and materialistic world; how can I, in this age of logic and science, come to understand that the tensions between religious and materialistic progress are polarities one can live with without becoming schizophrenic; how can I be true to my faith with total acceptance of the other, particularly when there is the big baggage of historical and continued persecution by followers of other faiths of my faith community; how can we move forward and grow together, while holding on to what is dear to me, in my religious tradition, in my family and in the wider society of which I am part. These are the issues I am struggling with, every day and there are many more.
On the other hand, there is much that unites us as I learnt while contributing to the World Congress of Faiths and International Interfaith Centre publication ‘Testing the Global Ethic -- Voices from the Religions on Moral Values’. We are all part of God’s creation and part of God’s divine purpose, half of humanity being women. God is both mother and father who provides both spiritual and physical sustenance to both believers and non- believers. We are all affected by what happens in other parts of the world and there is cosmopolitan atmosphere in most major capital cities. Children growing in such an environment attend multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-faith schools and have no choice but to learn skills of living and sharing with their neighbour, in the wider interest of peace and harmony. Women are well suited to imparting these skills with help from their male counterparts.
Charanjit AjitSingh, a Sikh, is a lecturer and writer on Sikhism.