Creation myths have a place in education – in the history lessons

Making the connection

Creation myths have a place in education – but it's in the history lessons of secular schools, and nowhere else

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• 
• • AC Grayling
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Thursday September 18 2008 12.01 BST
  • Article history

EM Forster's motto was "Only Connect". Lip service is paid to this essential advice in such notions as "joined-up government", but it seems far more honoured in the breach than the observance – and invariably where its observance would be really, really useful.

Take the connections one might make between the resignation of Michael Reiss from the Royal Society because of his views about creationism in schools, and the opening this week of the first Hindu faith-based school.

One of the Hindu creation myths has Vishnu asleep in the coils of a cobra, itself afloat on a dark ocean whose waves lap the shores of nothingness. After untold aeons of this tranquility a sound of humming began, forming the syllable "om", which increased in power and brought the dawn, thereby waking Vishnu. As he woke a lotus sprang from his naval, and in its petals sat Brahma. Vishnu said to Brahma, "It is time; create the world".

This charming tale is one of many myths told in the equally many religions of the world, the great majority of them long-defunct. It would be appropriate for school history lessons to include a survey of the tales mankind told itself in its infancy, not just for the interest and entertainment value, but because of the references to them in art and literature. No education could be complete, for example, without an understanding of Greek mythology, given its role in our culture; and the same applies to Christianity - itself a version of the much-iterated older myths of a god (Zeus chief among them) who impregnates a mortal maid (Zeus impregnated many) who gives birth to a hero who goes into the underworld and then attains Olympus or heaven. And the theme of return or a promised coming – Baldr the Beautiful, expected after ragnarok; the Christian second coming; the moshiach (messiah) of Judaism - are mythical likewise, but this time as expressions of mankind's hopes for progress or a better world.

There are, alas, those who take these tales literally, and who have died or killed or both in defending them or trying to force other to believe them literally too.

Despite them, even so, one would be suspicious of anyone who proposed to teach Hesiod's Theogony or Ovid's Metamorphoses or the Mahabharata or the Epic of Gilgamesh as a textbooks of historical fact. As in all great literature there are insights and instruction to be had from these works; they are rich in allegorical meaning, sometimes it seems unconsciously so. But one would look - one looks - very askance at those who teach the two not especially compatible versions of the Bible's Genesis creation myth as historical fact.

Should chemistry and biology teachers devote part of their lessons to explaining why the story of Vishnu and his cobra is not chemistry or biology? In effect this is what - to put the best construction on it - Professor Reiss was trying to suggest. So blindingly obvious is the answer that there can be no surprise that he ceased to be the Royal Society's director of education with such rapidity once he had, speaking more with his clergyman's hat on (for he is a thing now rara avis in terris: a latter-day Kilvert), proposed the cobra-chemistry idea - though no doubt he had his own tradition's more banal version of it in mind.

No one seems to have realised yet that the question of creationist ideas being taught in schools immediately leads to the more general question of how religion is taught in schools - because all religions have their creation myths - and because it is only an accident of history that religion is regarded as somehow more respectable than astrology or ouija boards, despite being no different in degree of credibility than they.

The parallel is rather like outlawing marijuana but allowing an equally or even more dangerous drug like alcohol to be legally sold. So, no one suggests astrology should be taught alongside astronomy, or ouija-board technique alongside historical research. Yet the likes of Reiss think that the myths of mankind's infancy about the origin and nature of the world should be discussed alongside science - ! Clearly there is No Connection being made here.

But now as to that other Only Connect matter. While controversies arise about creationism, new faith-based schools open: this week's brand-new Hindu school, admitting only vegetarian Hindu children, will provide pupils with an education set in the culture and tradition of the Hindu faith. Does that mean Vishnu in the chemistry lab and his cobra and lotus in the biology lab?

The school's head teacher, Naina Parmar, stated a desire to make the school "a haven of peace. Hinduism is a very inclusive faith, which naturally promotes a calm, caring and cooperative learning environment". This is an admirable sentiment, and while faith-based schooling lasts - not too long I trust - in this country, let us hope that ambition is realised. But there is nothing inclusive about the strict exclusivity of this particular school, and there is nothing peaceful about the murderous rage with which Hindus and Muslims slaughter each other periodically in India - remember Ayodhya. The words, alas, ring a little hollow.

The trap that the government has fallen into with its misguided, divisive, ghettoisation-inviting policy of promoting faith schools is well summed up in the words of the chairman of the new Hindu school's governing body, Nitesh Gor: "If we are going to continue to have faith schooling in this country it is unreasonable and discriminatory to deny just a handful of Hindu parents the choice that is already available to much larger numbers of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and others". Quite: now everyone wants your and my tax money to bring up their children in their own version of the religions that sit on the creation myths that no sensible person wishes to be passed off on a child as any part of the truth about the world.

There is a thus deep paradox in our contemporary society about these matters: the government funds faith-based schools; the sensible majority does not want creationism taught in schools; religion is the vehicle of creationism, despite the cherry-pickers best efforts to distance themselves from the bits they can no longer bring themselves to believe in.

The best solution is to put religion where it belongs: in the history curriculum of non-faith-based schools where religion is no longer a compulsory observance at assembly or any other time.