‘What is the meaning and significance of ‘spirituality’? In what senses, if any, is ‘education in spirituality’ a coherent and justifiable task for the common school?
...pire and the post Roman period of the English invasions, the only trace of literary culture was to be found in the Celtic west of the country where organized Christianity survived. St Augustine arrived from Rome in 597, setting up a church and a school at Canterbury. From Kent, preachers moved into other English kingdoms, establishing schools alongside churches. There was an intellectual renaissance in the twelfth century, heavily influenced by the spread of knowledge from Moslem Spain and Sicily and the translation (into Latin) and availability of the works of Aristotle after about 1120. Schools continued to be closely tied to the church and literary Latin was de rigueur and the staple of the curriculum. French was the spoken language in the schoolroom until after the 1350’s when English began to replace the common language of educated people. It was not until the early 15th century that English entirely replaced French as a national language. School entry was entirely male of course, though some ladies of aristocratic families, especially those surrounding the court, were often well educated. However, girls were excluded from the grammar schools and therefore the universities as a matter of course. During the late medieval period most people were still ‘educated’ by employment, institutional education being restricted to a very small minority whose access was through wealth or privilege. Before industrialisation, changes in society were relatively small and any form of schooling was simply unavailable to the vast majority of the population. However, it was around the late 17th century that educational philanthropy began to have an influence and by 1700 the grammar schools and the universities had also expanded considerably. The Puritan revolution saw an expansion of ideas inspired by Francis Bacon and the introduction of scientific methodology in the form of experiment and induction. Calls were heard for the education for all children, even those of the poor. It was in this political milieu that the roots of working class organisation and ideas of political power were born (Thompson 1963). Unfortunately, the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 also opened the door for the restoration of the House of Lords, the powers of the unified clergy and the gentry as well as the bishops and the Church of England. (Lawson & Silver 1973) Throughout the Georgian period education was becoming a main area of public debate in a society that was changing rapidly. With increasing industrialisation, populations became concentrated in new towns that were springing up all over the place with few public amenities, which inevitably led to increased child labour and child crime. Many working men began to educate themselves and the seeds for this process were more often than not planted at local Sunday schools, which included the inevitable readings from the Bible. During the 19th century the state became more and more involved in education until the introduction of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 opened the door for education for all. (Until this time the majority of working people and certainly women, could not even sign their own name, as a short excursion into the pre-1870 records of any registry office will confirm.) Education as a public service and the provision of Religious Instruction Although the Education Act of 1870 did not make education compulsory (or free) it began a process of government intervention and legislation, enabling schooling of children to run in tandem with the rapidly changing social conditions. Balfour’s 1902 act allowed secondary schools to receive grants from the local authority. The Hadlow Report of 1926 pressed for ‘secondary education for all’ as the NUT and the labour movement began to exert its influence on policy. The Hadlow committee’s second report of 1931, influenced by John Dewey, made proposals for radical changes to the school curriculum. Schools were now being thought of as ‘training centres’ where children could be exposed to activities and experiences more in tune with the world of work, as ‘the 3 R’s’ was no longer seen as adequate. Towards the end of WW2, the 1944 Education Act made it a requirement for local authorities to provide secondary education to the age of 15 (and to 16 at ‘a later date’). Public education was organised into its present structure of primary, secondary and further education. However, in 1943 the influential Norwood report was saying, ‘there shall be an opportunity for religious education in all schools…… the home has generally ceased to be a place of religious instruction’. Amazingly, the NUT and the Labour Party agreed that the vast majority of people in the country as well as members of the teaching profession wanted religious instruction to be given in state schools. From 1944, religious instruction, in terms of Christian indoctrination, was to retain its grip on the ‘moral spiritual education’ of children in all state schools in England despite the nature of the secular society, which it both served, and was funded by, through taxation. Ironically, the state education system in the USSR banned all forms of religious teaching (as well as worship) and, paradoxically, state funded religious schooling was banned in the United States when the Supreme Court finally agreed with its own constitution, namely the First Amendment. In contrast, the British Government, with the 1944 act, made religious instruction the ONLY subject that it was compulsory for all state schools to teach! The 1988 Education Reform Act merely reinforced these sentiments, with the added provision that ‘religious worship’ was now to be compulsory too! This was to be ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’. Religious education and a daily act of worship continue to be compulsory for all children in state schools in England and Wales to the age of 16 to this day (2003) and 23% of all state schools in England have a formal church foundation (faith schools). Not only that, but the current Labour government looks set to increase this percentage. Despite all the social changes and education acts over the last 200 years or so, the Church of England in particular, still has a privileged position in the politics and education of the children of this country. Unlike almost all other western liberal democracies, which have separated church and state, it is the established church of the nation and its bishops, who are totally unelected, have an automatic right to sit in government in the House of Lords. It also has exemptions from some parts of the Human Rights Bill. I would argue that the current system is at odds with liberal educational values and aims, such as personal autonomy, consent and in particular, religiously ‘untethered’ spiritual education. Spiritual Education – why bother? As we have seen throughout history, those who would wish to rule have used spiritual education, through religion, as a lever to maintain their grip on power and in particular in recorded history, to control the proletariat. Though Stalin banned religion in the defined sense, it was replaced with a political ideology and allegiance to the state, which was a religion in everything but name. Would it not be best therefore, in view of our liberal aims and our democratic ideals, to remove all forms of religion, including the ideological variety, from the educational agenda and forget about ‘spiritual education’? For me, this would be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. To ignore the role of what I will call a ‘spiritual’ dimension to human existence would be to deny the essence of humanity itself. Without this aspiration, we would become mere technocrats only concerned with the mundane. Here we must again address the question ‘What are schools for?’ and we return to our aims of personal autonomy and to help prepare the young people in our charge for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. As educators we need to facilitate the transition from the child’s self-centred psychology, a biological phenomena evolved to enhance survival, to the idea that to promote ones own well-being one must also promote the well-being of others (MacIntyre, 1981). If this transition does not take place then we will remain childlike in our wants, slaves to Dawkin’s selfish-gene; ‘ We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.’ (Dawkins 1989) Our lives would be controlled by Freud’s barbarous id, (Hall, 1999 ) and indeed, some might say that this is precisely the state of affairs in which our society currently finds itself! McLaughlin (1996) concedes that the promotion of ‘spiritual development’ is problematic and that the promotion of individualistic aspirations in general, undermines values based on the pursuit of ‘the common good’ and responsibility to the community. Indeed, it would take skilled, committed teachers to convince most young people in today’s consumerist society, that it would be in their best interest to accept many values which are obviously in the interest of the global community, for example, buying goods that have been produced using child labour in the Third World. The young individual would have to think about sacrificing personal choice and instant gratification for some moralistic ideal from which it is difficult to see the benefits without a fairly advanced holistic worldview. I agree that a ‘holistic’ education is a high ideal and a tall order for the ‘common school’. However, it is surely in the best interest of us all to grasp the nettle, take the concept of ‘spiritual education’ seriously and agree on a strategy for delivering a curriculum which will enable the individual to access human aspirations beyond the satisfaction of our physical and social needs. Maslow’s famous ‘hierarchy of needs’ identified the following need levels: 1. body needs, 2. security needs, 3. social needs, 4. ego needs, 5. Self-actualisation. Maslow believed that once an individual is self actualised, they are in a position to follow their calling whatever it may be, artistic, intellectual, social, spiritual etc. He also believed that people should be able to move through the needs to the highest level provided they are given an education that promotes personal growth. Here are some of the ideas that Maslow thought could be presented to young people on an educational agenda: § Be authentic § Transcend their cultural conditioning and become world citizens § Find their vocation and right mate § Know that life is precious § Be good and joyous in all kinds of situations § Learn from their inner nature § See that basic needs are satisfied § Refreshen their consciousness; appreciate beauty and other good things in life § Understand that controls are good and complete abandon is bad § Transcend trifling problems § Grapple with serious problems such as injustice, pain, suffering and death § Be good choosers § Be given practice in making choice of goods, then making choices in their religious beliefs. (Maslow, 1968) If our relationship with others is based on self-aggrandizement, and our relationship to property is acquisitive, the structure of society is bound to be competitive and self-isolating. If in our relationship with ideas we justify one ideology in opposition to another, mutual distrust and ill-will are the inevitable results. (Krishnamurti,1955) Back to the Norwood report of 1943, which said, ‘the home has generally ceased to be a place of religious instruction’. If we remove the words ‘religious instruction’ and replace them with ‘moral and spiritual development’ and we accept this statement as generally true today for many young people in our society, then we can justify the provision of a ‘moral and spiritual’ agenda in the school curriculum if we are to meet their need for personal growth and our aim of personal autonomy. We can’t please all of the people all of the time, however, as educators we can make recommendations to influence and change both attitudes and policy regarding the delivery of an educational agenda which is best suited to meet the educational aims of the liberal democratic society in which we live. Religion in school – the case against faith-based schools There are two separate issues regarding the existence of faith-based schools. First, should religious schools exist at all and second, if allowed to exist, should they be state funded? I will argue for the former, which negates the need to argue the latter. Broadly speaking, a religious school is one that encourages pupils to adhere to a single religious faith and normally has admissions criteria based on the religious affiliation of the parents of the individual child. Currently, of the 23% of schools that are faith based roughly half are Anglican and half Roman Catholic though the recent Green Paper on education (2001) supported the Church of England’s wish to take control of a hundred more schools as well as provide state funding for schools from other faiths represented by minorities throughout the UK, but mainly in the large cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester. There are arguments set out against religious based schools in a pamphlet issued by The Humanist Philosophers Group (2001) and in a presentation to the Faith Schools conference by Michael Hand at the Institute of Education in June 2002. Hand’s argument is the more succinct and runs briefly as follows: 1) Faith schools teach for religious propositions 2) No religious proposition is known to be true 3) Teaching for belief in ‘not known to be true’ propositions is indoctrinatory 4) Therefore, faith schools are indoctrinatory He goes on to add a refinement to this argument but this is the gist. Though logical, my main objection to this as a ‘stand alone’ argument against faith schools rests on the question, ‘what do you mean by truth?’ Many ‘truths’ taught as part of the curriculum could be perceived as theories only. In fact the entire philosophy of the scientific method rests on the bedrock of falsification. Popper considered all knowledge, in the traditional sense of certainty, or in the modern sense of justified true belief, to be unobtainable. (Popper, 1959) In contrast I have seen some superb arguments for the existence of God, a most convincing of which may be found in John Polkinghorne’s ‘Science and Theology’ (1998). Even so called mathematical ‘truths’ or ‘certainty’ may be open to question if one digs deep enough. Surely a sounder philosophical argument would be based on the young persons autonomy and consent. There is no doubt that religious issues and commitment can be of vital importance in a person’s life, indeed, many throughout history have sacrificed their lives for their religious principles. If this is the case, then surely such commitments should only be entered into subject to the requirement of valid consent. Religious schools per se are unethical because they violate this requirement in the following ways: 1) Many young people lack the competence to assess religious views. Their lack of experience, historical and political knowledge leaves them exposed and vulnerable to religious indoctrination. Faith based schools cannot help but take advantage of children in this context, which is unethical. 2) By definition, any religion-based school would be unlikely to provide full, impartial information concerning their religion, especially if it shows it in a bad light. The written word is often likely to be taught as ‘truth’ or of divine origin, for example the Bible and the Koran, without objective analysis. Information is often very selective in order to coerce the young person into believing that which they may not do if given the full or known facts. Not only is this unethical, it is also immoral. 3) The young persons adoption of the school’s preferred religion is unlikely to be entirely voluntary. This can be due to overt or private reprimand for non co-operation, assumption of belief by adults or simply peer pressure. It is also often taken as read by teachers and parents attached to faith schools that without religion there can be no morality, though it is perfectly possibly to be totally moral and a complete atheist. This argument would seem to be on firmer philosophical ground than one based on ‘truth’ and holds whether each individual religions is true or not (they can’t all be true because often they are contradictory, for example, the divinity of Jesus Christ, which is a matter for conjecture even amongst Christians themselves) However, we could still ...