Reviews 

The current discussions about the nature of ‘worldviews’ in relation to the RE curriculum will, I suspect, continue for a long time. Indeed, it is a very interesting and encouraging conversation, suggesting that we have moved from the experiences of the pupils highlighted by Linda Rudge (1998) in her memorable article ‘“I am nothing – does it matter?”’ Or have we? In the Spring 2023 edition of Professional REflection, Lynn Revell and Kate Christopher emphasised the need to start with ‘the real lives of people, allowing a potentially critical view to be explored through questions that are rooted in a variety of disciplines’ (p. 70). They underlined the need for teachers to recognise that ‘worldviews start with people and … that pupils must engage with the contested nature of knowledge themselves’ (ibid.). In the same issue, Luke Donnellan provided a critical overview of teaching humanism and non-religious worldviews, urging teachers to ‘move away from questions that are of particular concern to the religious and focus instead on the ways non-religious people make sense of themselves and the world and how they live their lives’ (p. 59). He emphasised the variety of humanist thinking and prompted questions about what constitutes a worldview. In this context, Sarah Bakewell’s exploration of seven centuries of humanist thought reviewed here could hardly be more relevant. She shows that the broad sweep of humanism touches all aspects of the curriculum and surely fulfils Ofsted’s definition of cultural capital, now considered to be an essential underpinning of the curriculum: ‘the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement’ (2019, para. 226).