Exclusion of RE from well-being guidance is a ‘real loss’ says academic

8th May 2023

The dropping of religious education from the Junior Cycle Guidelines for Well-being is a real loss for students, according to a DCU academic.

Dr Amalee Meehan, Assistant Professor of Religious Education, DCU, and Dr Thomas Carrol, Primary Teacher and Part-time Lecturer of Religious Education, MIC, were speaking on wellbeing and Christian mindfulness in the context of Catholic Education on the ‘Conversations from the Classroom’ podcast, produced out of DCU.

In episode 5, Dr Meehan said when the Guidelines for Well-being were published in 2015, it made room for the subject of religious education as a legitimate contributor towards student wellbeing. “Things like learning, about inspirational figures, religious figures from the past, concepts like stewardship of the environment, communities of faith, they were all legitimate subject areas for well-being”, she said.

However, in the revised guidelines, published last year, “there was no mention of religious education as a subject which might contribute towards the well-being of the child, despite the clause in that definition I shared earlier about the sense of purpose and belonging to a wider community and there is a real loss in that because the majority of scientific studies show that religious involvement correlates with a whole slew of indicators of good health”.