Three weeks ago a parent wrote to me at The Sunday Times asking whether he could withdraw his son from religious education lessons. He was an atheist. His son found the lessons hopelessly boring. Why waste time that could be better spent on subjects worth studying? My answer, which was that he could withdraw, drew a clutch of wholly predictable and, even by my standards, unusually abusive e-mails. A good number of readers clearly thought the law was an ass, and that I personally was to blame.

Alan Keightley, of Dudley in the West Midlands, “blinked in disbelief” at my “breathtaking stupidity, ignorance and covert racism”.

Sartre, he reminded me, once said that “to be an atheist you need to know a lot”. It isn’t a matter of seeking to convert a child to a particular religion, but rather of teaching them about the many different faiths practised in multicultural 21st century Britain so that we can live harmoniously together.

If children can opt out of RE they should, he said, be able to opt out of any subject. “Do they have to be French or hope to become French citizens,” he concluded incredulously, “because they are having French lessons?” The fragility of our lives as citizens in a plural society in which bombs explode on Underground trains gives these criticisms a particular and disturbing significance. We expect our schools to teach the understanding and tolerance upon which our future depends. We believe that lessons in RE have a unique contribution to make.

The fact that many children are learning very little is not in itself a reason for making the subject voluntary or abandoning it altogether. We do not, after all, question the importance of English as a subject because 22% of 11-year-olds leave primary school unable to read to the required standard.

Alan Keightley’s e-mail articulates the official justification for the teaching of RE with admir- able pungency. “RE encourages pupils,” the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority tells us, “to consider questions of meaning and purpose in life. Pupils learn about religious and ethical teaching, enabling them to make reasoned and informed judgments on religious and moral and social issues. Pupils develop their sense of identity and belonging, preparing them for life as citizens in a plural society.”

But do they? The aspiration is fine, but the reality, according to Ofsted, is very different.

A report published last autumn found that many of the 150 locally devised syllabuses that determine what is taught in RE lessons are inadequate. “As a result,” said David Bell, the chief inspector in England, “some pupils are struggling to reach the required standards in RE.”

In Ofsted’s judgment, RE is one of the three worst-taught subjects in primary schools. “Few primary school teachers have qualifications in RE and it can no longer be assumed that they have residual knowledge of Christianity and other religions . . . Few develop an awareness of key concepts of ‘sacred’, ‘holy’ or ‘worship’.”

In secondary schools the situation is somewhat better, with more students opting to take examination courses in the subject, but “the leadership and management of RE departments remains weak, and the shortage of properly qualified subject teachers remains more severe than in almost any other subject”.

Suppose the government, as it well might, given the current terrorist crisis, made RE its next priority in education. Suppose millions were to be spent on a major national initiative to improve the quality of RE teaching. Would it make any difference? Not much. The problem with RE is not ultimately the dearth of qualified teachers. It is the pusillanimity of the politicians responsible for what is taught in schools who approve the teaching of knowledge about different faiths, but who recoil nervously from the prospect of offering children any experience of that complex of doctrine, worship, ritual and prayer which is religion.

The knowledge without the experience is worthless. We assume that a smattering of information, taught at present by someone who may well have little or no intellectual or spiritual grasp of what is involved, will lead to greater religious understanding and therefore civic tolerance. It will not. RE lessons in a school that has no commitment to a particular faith can never realise the aspirations we deem to be so important.

This is why so many parents want their children to attend a faith school. They want their children “to develop a sense of identity and belonging” and know that they must give their children that sense of belonging. This means educating them at an institution that has a commitment to a particular set of beliefs and values.

The 14,000 state schools in England that have no religious affiliation would be better off using the time now devoted to religious education to bolster learning in other subjects such as maths and English.

Effective pastoral care systems, the assembly that every school has to organise daily, and social and moral education — which takes place in many subjects — can be used to develop the moral responsibility of young people.

Let’s stop pretending that every school can teach every child anything meaningful about religion. Let’s scrap RE lessons.