There is much beauty and goodness around us. Yet, we also live in a world that is increasingly in the grip of violence and war, poverty and injustice, alienation and loss of meaning of life. Can children be empowered to become agents of change; to bring out and celebrate their innate ability for love and compassion; their intrinsic inclination towards justice and fairness? Can we, as religious communities, work together to further ethical values in our children towards a just and peaceful tomorrow?

Through the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children, the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC) and has embarked on an initiative to promote and facilitate ethics education and interfaith learning. We are currently developing a toolkit and relevant resource material for this initiative. The offer by the WCC to organize workshops at the Assembly to share concerns and ideas on pertinent issues provided an opportunity for us to share our latest material and obtain important input on the draft toolkit we are developing.

When talking about ethics, many think only of personal values that direct our day-to-day life. But the world we live in forces us to think and act also in global terms. We do not live in isolation; both adults and children need ethical sensitivities to relate across cultures and civilizations, across national and ethnic barriers, and across religious identities and commitments.

We therefore think that any learning processes within all religious traditions, especially in relation to children, need to pay attention to four dimensions of responsibility:

First, all religious traditions, while fostering the faith and values of their own community in their children, must ensure that they are taught and that they learn in ways that respect others, and the ‘otherness’ of others. A child that does not learn to relate to others who believe and act in different ways is ill equipped to live in a religiously & culturally plural world.

Second, religious traditions need to make conscious efforts in their teaching practices to lift up the religious and cultural values in their tradition that promote openness, honesty and compassionate attitude to other human beings. These need to be instilled in children from a very early age.

Third, while recognizing that religious traditions are different from one another, we also need to look for commonalities and overlapping values that would provide the basis for people to act together on common concerns. We need to teach and practice our faith in ways that demonstrate our common humanity and mutual inter-dependence with all others.

Fourth, today we also emphasize the concept of ‘inter-religious education’, learning not in isolation but in inter-relation with each other. Children not only need to know and appreciate their own faith but also need to have an informed understanding of what others believe, and the commonalities we share both as a human community and as those who struggle in different ways to deal with basic issues of life.

Are there, then, some core values that all religious traditions would recognize and accept as values that should inform all children, of whatever culture or religious tradition they belong to? And can these form the basis of ethics education and interfaith learning for children?

This remains a debated issue, because while some affirm that there are indeed such core values that all can affirm, others look at ethical values as influenced by the cultural and social contexts and the vision of the society that a community hopes to create. In any case, there would be differences of opinion on which of the values are more important than others, and on how to balance the importance of values that are significant for the well being of individuals against the common good of the community.

However today we see numerous instances where people from a number of religious communities come together to make affirmations on a number of issues that affect their relationships as the human community and seek to uplift some common values that all can and must respect.

We have found that the overall approach to human dignity can be laid out in values related to the other such as respect, empathy, responsibility and reconciliation. We hope that intentionally inculcating these values will empower and strengthen us in our commitment to justice, respect for human rights and in building democratic relationships between individuals and within societies.

Children have important spiritual capacities. In a way, ethics and spirituality are two sides of the same coin. We think that children have an innate capacity for spiritual development. This means that spirituality is not something that one “thrusts upon” or even “gives” to the child. Rather ethics education aims at empowering the child to develop to the full his or her spirituality for his or her well-being and that of the whole society. It is important to recognize that while the child has the “innate capacity” for it, spirituality has to be nourished and developed. It is important that this spirituality is nourished within the specific context of a religious or spiritual tradition so that concrete structure and foundation is given towards its growth and development. This growth happens through a learning process that involves teaching, critical reflection, integration and development of relationships.

In fact, at the heart of spiritual development lies the child’s ability to build and practice positive relationship with him or herself, the other, the environment and with the Reality symbolized by many names such as God, the Absolute, the Ultimate Reality or simply as the Divine Presence in our midst.

On the other hand, it is also true that spirituality and religion are not the same, and are at times at odds with each other. The emphasis on spirituality may arise from the desire for more openness so that not everything is thrust into existing religious expressions. Yet, we should recognize that there is also “false spiritualities” which lead people into ego-centric preoccupation with themselves, or take away their attention from the realities of the world they live in. Whether spirituality or religion, both should express a vision that insists that one’s welfare is coterminous with the well-being of the society.

There are those who think that spirituality has to do with feelings and emotions. On the contrary, spirituality has little to do with feelings and emotions but is a way to handle emotions. It is a way to channel emotions, feelings, compassion into engagement. Engagement, in turn, is the dynamic of liberation and empowerment. Therefore the spirituality that the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children seeks to kindle in children through their awareness of and growth in ethical values also needs to come from inter-religious engagement.

At the workshop on interfaith learning and ethics education that we offered at the World Council of Churches Assembly we introduced the draft toolkit that is still in the making and raised the issues mentioned above. It was inspiring to hear the views of the many participants in the workshop and it was enriching to learn about other actions to promote and engage in interfaith learning in different parts of the world.

We talked about ethics, values and children. We explored pedagogies and methodologies conducive for interfaith learning. We shared our experiences from the test workshops that we have arranged in different parts of the world. A representative from our network in Latin America lifted up the very specific challenges and needs for children today. We finally discussed resources and material that we could share.

The vision of the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education is based on the belief that ethics education and interfaith learning will enhance children’s innate ability to make positive contributions to the well-being of their peers, families, and communities, and that this in turn, will help the entire human family to thrive in an environment of greater justice, peace, compassion, hope and dignity.

The ethics education initiative launched by the Arigatou Foundation and the GNRC aims at contributing to realize the right of the child to full and healthy physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development and the right of the child to education set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child

We believe that ethics education and interfaith learning in a cultural and plural society can empower children to play a major role in creating a world of greater justice, peace and dignity. The Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children fosters children’s spiritual development based on common ethical values. The initiative was taken by the GNRC, a network launched in May 2000, with the support of the Arigatou Foundation.

Mrs Agneta Ucko, an educator and theologian from Sweden, represents the Arigatou Foundation and is the Secretary General of the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children, an initiative for children's rights with a special focus on ethics education and interfaith learning.

Next article
Table of contents