Newsom (1963)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction, Principal recommendations

Part 1 Findings
Chapter 1 Education for all
Chapter 2 The pupils, the schools, the problems
Chapter 3 Education in the slums
Chapter 4 Objectives
Chapter 5 Finding approaches
Chapter 6 The school day, homework, extra-curricular activities
Chapter 7 Spiritual and moral development
Chapter 8 The school community
Chapter 9 Going out into the world
Chapter 10 Examinations and assessments
Chapter 11 Building for the future
Chapter 12 The teachers needed

Part 2 The teaching situation
Chapter 13 What should secondary imply?
Chapter 14 An education that makes sense
Chapter 15 Attainments and achievement
Chapter 16 The subjects and the curriculum
Chapter 17 The practical subjects
Chapter 18 Science and mathematics
Chapter 19 The humanities
Chapter 20 School organisation and staff deployment

Part 3 What the survey shows
Chapter 21 The 1961 survey
Chapter 22 The boys and girls
Chapter 23 The work they do
Chapter 24 The men and women who teach them
Chapter 25 The schools they go to

Acknowledgements

Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Sex education
Appendix III Deployment of teachers
Appendix IV Letter to Minister on teacher training
Appendix V Statistical detail

Index

A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 7 Spiritual and moral development
[pages 52 - 59]

'It shall be the duty of the local education authority for every area to contribute towards the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community.' Education Act 1944.

157. The nearer we got to the boys and girls on whose education we have to advise, the more it was brought home to us that parliament gave the schools a difficult but not an impossible task when it told them to foster their spiritual and moral development. We learned that those who tried with sincerity and ability to do this found that they were not only fulfilling a statutory obligation, or discharging a social responsibility; they were meeting a felt personal need of their pupils. Most boys and girls want to be what they call 'being good' and they want to know what this really implies in the personal situations which confront them. This is difficult enough, but it is not sufficient. They want also to know what kind of animal a man is, and whether ultimately each one of them matters - and, if so, why and to whom. And they want to be told the truth. 'It is no use', we were told in discussion, 'putting up a smoke screen and retiring in flight behind it'. The teacher who is not prepared to expose himself in honestly grappling with these ultimate problems had better leave them alone. His lessons must carry conviction. This is not the same as trying to convert his pupils. Above all, they don't want to be 'got at'.

158. The best approach to this subject is perhaps to look at the problem as it confronts a typical county secondary school and consider how it can best be tackled. In Church of England or Roman Catholic voluntary schools the situation will be markedly easier in some respects, but not in all. In county schools the first factor to be reckoned with is that the staff will probably be divided in their philosophical and religious allegiance. Some will be committed Christians. True, they will be of various denominations; but this is much less likely to affect their working together in the schools' part of religious and moral upbringing than would have been the case a generation ago. Other teachers may well be definite agnostics or 'scientific humanists'. Between these two committed groups there will almost certainly be a middle range of teachers who may not be very sure of what the church believes, who may not necessarily believe all that they remember of what they themselves were taught, but who gratefully acknowledge their Christian heritage and are anxious that it should not die with them. In all this the secondary school staffroom is not very different from any group of Englishmen in the middle of the twentieth century.

159. The second factor to reckon with is the questioning spirit of adolescence. This does not mean that there are no questions in primary schools and in the lower forms of secondary schools. They abound, but they are of a different nature. They are asked in order to acquire information, not to display or to resolve intellectual doubt. Boys and girls who used to ask enquiringly 'What do we do?' or 'What's that?' now commonly react with 'Why should I?' or 'How do you know?' to much of what they have loved and practised in the past. They become increasingly aware of the differences of opinion between adults, and of the gulf between practice and profession. The borderline between cynical disengagement and constructive questioning is narrow. Sooner or later most boys and girls will pass from the acceptance of childhood through one or other of these attitudes on their way to their adult position. This happens rather earlier perhaps in modern than in grammar schools partly because their pupils come at a younger age into immediate contact with the unsheltered world outside school and home. It is a major task to steer this new doubting spirit into positive and creative channels, avoiding the truculence of 'couldn't care less'.

160. The third factor is the confrontation between the two communities - the adults in the staffroom, the adolescents in the classrooms. For better or for worse it is from these adults that these adolescents learn. The staff of the school is the largest group of adults they meet; it comprises those most obviously set in front of them as guides into the world of men. Teachers can only escape from their influence over the moral and spiritual development of their pupils by closing their schools. As long as they teach at all, whether they give formal lessons or not, they teach by the way they behave, by what they are. That is why one of the absolutely essential qualities of a teacher is integrity.

161. The fourth factor is the contrast that may exist between the standards accepted and practised at school and those which boys and girls will meet later on at work and indeed meet already as they purposely lose themselves among their older contemporaries in their life put of school. The young, though they hate to be told so, are born conformists. They conform easily to the pattern of school life, and if it is a good school this is a pretty sound pattern; they conform just as easily to the pattern of their leisure time activities - which may be good or bad, but will certainly be different. In this difference of standard between the multiple worlds of which we are all citizens lies a limiting factor to what a school can do. Its influence may well be only temporary, having no carry-over, unless it succeeds in making clear to its members that the standards it sets, and often in large measure achieves, are just as relevant to the whole of life as to the part which is lived within its walls. There is no automatic transfer of values; boys and girls need to be convinced that what applies in school ought to apply in all human relations. The Education Act wisely sees the duty of schools as being 'to contribute towards the spiritual and moral development of the community', and not to provide it. Theirs is a limited, though a vital role and they are neither the community nor the church. Society must not look to the schools to solve its moral problems, but it expects and gets from them an important contribution towards their solution. The fact that school life is longer than it was and extends far beyond childhood in a way that it used not to do makes their contribution potentially bigger and more important than before.

162. A school which takes its responsibility seriously will not just leave to chance the working out of its influence over its pupils. It will have a policy, and will try to bring all its resources to bear. Very high on the list must come the corporate life of the school. In its most intimate form this means the way in which its members behave to one another. The assumptions on which staff and pupils meet - friendliness or hostility, for instance, grudging legalism or generous helpfulness - show themselves in speech and gesture and conduct. A school where the assumptions are positive is likely to be one in which staff and pupils share many out of school activities together. Games, dramatics, music, school journeys, all play their part. Many schools, and we believe an increasing number, go further and encourage their members to undertake active personal service for the community. Many of the schools which were included in our survey told us of such activities, usually for the benefit of the old or the sick. All find that boys and girls of less than average intelligence may well be of more than average helpfulness.

163. However diverse the staff may be in their philosophical alignment all will approve of such positive well doing. Inside the classrooms, too, there is much common ground which Christian and agnostic may travel together. Christian ethics after all owe much to Aristotle as well as to Judaism. Orthodoxy finds no difficulty, but rather support in the concept of a natural law. History and geography, literature, civics, science, all play their part in forcing the moral outlook of boys and girls, and through all these subjects the whole staff, irrespective of religious affiliations, can make a united contribution to both the spiritual and moral development of the pupils. It can open their eyes, enlarge their understanding, enlist their sympathy so that they will not be blind to the colour bar, deaf to the cries of the hungry or aloof from the loneliness of neighbours. Boys and girls need to approach all situations with moral sensitivity as well as intellectual understanding; this is partly a matter of preserving the innocent perceptions of childhood (this is not to say that all the perceptions of childhood are innocent) and partly of directing the questioning of adolescence towards personal motives and social responsibilities.

164. It is at this point that a secondary school in the mid-twentieth century may run into difficulties which it cannot solve by itself. Society itself is divided. Everybody agrees that all human situations require to be faced with moral sensitivity. Those personal situations which most perplex adolescent boys and girls are, however, situations about which there is no universal contemporary agreement. The challenging feature of their lives is now the sexual instinct which is at its most potent in these years. A hundred years ago nearly all good men would normally have given the same answers to the problems which beset the young immediately in their courtship habits and prospectively in their conception of the marriage relation. Today Christians and many agnostics would still agree in their attitudes, but it would be stupid to deny that there are profound differences in society about premarital intercourse and about the permanence of marriage, or that these must be reflected in many staffrooms. Tensions there must be if the questions of boys and girls are heard and answered and not suppressed - tensions, perhaps, within the staff of a school and tensions between school and home. We can only say that we believe it to be wrong to leave the young to fend for themselves without guidance, and wrong to conceal from them (as if we could) the differences on this issue which separate men and women of real moral sensitivity. For our part we are agreed that boys and girls should be offered firm guidance on sexual morality based on chastity before marriage and fidelity within it. We believe, too, that this is predominantly the standpoint of the schools. It is also important that boys and girls should realise that 'going off the rails' does not involve for Christians losing the fellowship of the church, still less of forfeiting the love of God. There are other, and often graver, sins than those against chastity.

165. Simple moral teaching is, then, not the plain, straightforward thing that it may have been in the past, and that it still is in the main in the primary school. The same kind of difficulties arise when schools try to foster the spiritual development of boys and girls. These difficulties also spring from the differences which divide good men. True, there is a general spiritual awareness that all teachers would wish their pupils to develop. Many subjects wisely and imaginatively taught sharpen the perception of more than utilitarian values. This is an important service, and many of us recall with gratitude men and women who in our adolescent years introduced us to poets who gave words to what was in our hearts but which we did not know was there until we heard Homer 'speak out loud and clear'. The greatest themes, and the very greatest expressions of these themes, are not the preserve of the intellectually gifted; they are universal themes and universally communicable. So far there is agreement: this kind of spiritual development is hindered only by the fallibility of teachers and that coarsening and timid defensiveness in which men take refuge from the total response that greatness demands.

166. But no Christian could for a moment rest content with an education which brought men face to face with a crucifixion but not with Christ. Religious instruction in accordance with any local education authority's agreed syllabus is instruction in the Christian religion. (1) At once the subject becomes difficult and controversial. Not all teachers, not all parents, are Christians; some are avowedly opposed to religion; some feel that religion is only for children and some that it is only for adults - in the sense that boys and girls ought to be free to make up their minds when they grow up (this need provoke no dissent), and that therefore they ought not to be influenced one way or the other before they come to years of discretion (a corollary which Christians would neither accept as logical nor believe to be practicable). Some schools faced with this dilemma take refuge in equating Christianity with simple moral instruction. But, as a teacher remarked when she found the sixth beatitude turned into an injunction against writing on lavatory walls, 'religion is not about "not writing on lavatory walls"'. Some schools still reduce religious instruction to simple Bible reading with as little comment as possible - a sure way of losing the attention of most boys and girls. Some turn it into ancient history with as big or as little a claim on the attention of the average adolescent as any other period remote in time. We sympathise with the bishop who told us that he would scream if he saw any more camels on classroom walls. Faced with such evading tactics some Christians have felt that the 1944 settlement was a mistake and that no good could be expected of agreed syllabus religious instruction.

167. We believe that they are wrong because we believe, and have good reason to do so both from our own experience and from the evidence given to us, that such practices are far from typical of what happens in secondary modern schools. The best schools give their pupils something which they do not get elsewhere, something which they know they need when they receive it, though they had not realised the lack before. We believe that this can be, and usually is, given in a way which does justice to the mixed society in which we live, recognising the range and degrees of religious belief and practice to be found in it, and respecting the right of the individual conscience to be provided with the material on which freely to decide its path.

168. Boys and girls are the first to demand that teachers should know what they are talking about. What does this mean in religious instruction? What at least one apprentice wanted may be inferred from a discussion recorded during a day-release period in a steel works. 'You said about teachers in school; did they explain, you know, after-life and that to you, you know? They're in no position to explain it because they perhaps know as little as you do about it. You see a minister knows what he's talking about, I don't think a teacher does. At least he does perhaps about maths, but not about religion, because he's the same as us, unless he's a right and religious man ...' This boy, and there are many like him, demanded both 'knowledge about', information, and also 'knowledge of', experience. This is because religion is concerned with the relation between man and his Maker, with a personal relationship. Out of the experience of being loved - which alone, as the boy in A Taste of Honey realised, makes us capable of loving - springs the motive power of Christian living and, more abstractly, of Christian morals. It is this which makes Christians try to behave as they (and many humanists) think men should behave, and makes them willing when they fail to try again. The 14 and 15 year old boys and girls with whom we are concerned may perhaps perceive religion as a personal relation more clearly than their abler brothers and sisters just because they find it more difficult to frame concepts. They have no temptation towards merely clever theorising. They instinctively feel that Adam Bede was right in saying: 'I've seen pretty clear ever since I was a young 'un, as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people doing the right thing - its feelings. Its the same with notions in religion as it is with math'matics - a man may be able to work his problems straight on' in's head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe: but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than his own ease.' (Chapter 18).

169. If boys and girls are right in wanting this double kind of knowledge about religion, it follows from our mixed society that they would not expect all teachers in secondary schools to give religious instruction. In most schools today this does not happen. If the apprentice whose opinions we have quoted were to revisit his old school the chances would be more than five to one against his finding every form master taking his own form for religious instruction as they used to do in his time. The Education Act rightly provides that nobody may be penalised for not giving religious instruction; the practice of secondary schools is increasingly directed to seeing that nobody need feel awkward if he says he would rather not. We are in fact rapidly moving towards a system of specialists assisted by volunteers who take one or two forms each. Well qualified teachers are necessary because sound objective 'knowledge about' is essential when it comes to teaching upper forms. A teacher cannot help his pupils unless he can put into words their ill-formulated problems and show them how Christians would set about solving them. He must know his Bible and its teaching, he must have thought about the relation of religion, and religious knowledge, to other fields of human activity and ways of knowing. A teacher may be a perfectly good churchwarden if he has solved his problems for himself in the terms which these presented themselves half a generation ago, but on this basis alone he would not be adequately equipped to give religious instruction. For this his scholarship must be up to date, and he must move on the Christian frontiers of today.

170. Such men and women are not easy to find. The Ministry's supplementary courses have for a good many years provided a steady flow of people who are already teachers and have since acquired the special knowledge required for this work, but the supply is by no means adequate. Appropriate provision for professional training would help schools to make more effective use of ordained ministers of religion who for some time past have been recruited as specialist teachers. The scarcity value of well qualified teachers has caused them frequently to be used for this purpose and nothing else. This may well be inevitable but, like most solutions in an imperfect world, it brings its own difficulties. If boys and girls are right to demand that their teachers should know what they are talking about, teachers are equally right to demand that they should know whom they are teaching. This is especially true in the field of religious instruction, and inside this field for teachers of the less articulate. Questions will not be asked if the pupils feel they do not know their teacher; they cannot be properly answered unless the teacher can get behind the tumbling words to the real problem that puzzles the pupil.

171. Finding the right words is as difficult and necessary a step in religious knowledge as in any other kind of learning. Without it thought is impossible. The fact that the difficulty increases as ability declines underlines the importance of good teaching and good teaching conditions for the boys and girls with whom this report is concerned. From the pupil's point of view the situation is not likely to be fruitful if religious instruction is given for a mere 35 or 45 minutes a week by a teacher he never sees at any other time; from the teacher's point of view the situation is equally bad if he has to teach 600 or more different boys and girls each week. Both these situations exist and are not uncommon. We should not tolerate them in any other subject. Least of all are they tolerable here. At the beginning of this chapter we spoke of the schools' task as being difficult but not impossible. It will only become generally possible when there is a better supply of properly qualified teachers, and when schools employ them in such a way that all boys and girls have enough time in which to pose their problems and consider their solution.

172. For over a hundred years the differences between the Church of England and the Free Churches made religion an almost impossibly dangerous subject to tackle in what would now be county schools. The 1944 Act in its religious settlement was based on faith that these differences could be resolved in such a way that they would not interfere with a real Christian education in county schools. That faith was justified. Every agreed syllabus has to receive the unanimous endorsement of the religious denominations taking part. In every case this has been forthcoming - a remarkable achievement of which too little has been heard. Unfortunately from a teaching point of view the syllabuses are less satisfactory, especially where the interests (and interest) of less able children are concerned. The general approach has been to start from Bible study - itself a difficult literary and historical art once the simple story telling stage is over. From this source teachers are expected to build up by inference a general body of Christian teaching. This is to go a very long way round for most of the boys and girls with whom we are concerned, and many of them get lost on the way. It can indeed produce the state of mind which one headmistress recently found among her girls. They believed the Bible to be true but unimportant for them, though they recognised that it probably was important for people like her.

173. It is unlikely then, that teachers left to themselves would choose a literary and historical approach which might suggest to the less intelligent that the Bible belongs to the past and has no contemporary significance. They would be more likely to adopt the kind of case study methods leading back to the Bible from present day problems which the Student Christian Movement in Schools has shown to be successful in secondary modern schools. Nearly all boys and girls ask questions such as, 'What happens to people when they die?', 'How can God allow babies to be born deformed?', 'Is mercy killing justified?', 'Why is it that I'm often meaner to people I love than to those I just don't care about one way or the other?', or 'What's the good of praying if everything can be explained by science?'. They need to know what answer the Christian faith gives. This ought to be given in the most direct and plainest way possible. If such changes in method involve a fairly general revision of agreed syllabuses, we shall not be surprised. After all the school life of not very clever boys and girls is a good deal longer now than it was when most agreed syllabuses were drawn up and it will be longer still when the school leaving age is raised.

174. We have seen that the corporate life of the school is a potent instrument in the moral development of the pupils. So is its corporate worship in their spiritual development. We have visited many schools and taken part in the morning assembly. Sometimes we have found that on the particular day of our visit the school was divided into smaller natural communities - it may be the younger boys and girls separated from the elder, or the members of one 'house' worshipping together. Normally, of course, the whole school has been together, realising as perhaps nowhere else its essential unity. We can say with conviction and gratitude that we have very often been impressed by the reality which has marked these services. Corporate worship is not to be thought of as an instrument of education - though it is that - but as a time in which pupils and teachers seek help in prayer, express awe and gratitude and joy, and pause to recollect the presence of God. We admit we were surprised when one of our number told us that new entrants to industry whom she interviewed soon after their induction period frequently told her that what they missed most now they had left school was school prayers. Reviewing our own experience and the evidence we have received, perhaps we ought not to have been surprised.

Recommendations

(a) Religious instruction has a part to play in helping boys and girls to find a firm basis for sexual morality based on chastity before marriage and fidelity within it. (para. 164.)

(b) The schools have a duty to give specific religious instruction, which is more than general ethical teaching. The essential conditions for doing this are an improved supply of suitably qualified teachers and an adequate time allowance in the schools. (paras. 166,169,171)

(c) Local education authorities should consider a review of their Agreed Syllabuses to determine whether adequate provision is made for the needs of the older boys and girls of average and below average ability, and whether they leave sufficient scope for the teachers to develop methods which start with the actual problems which the pupils have to face. (paras. 172,173)

(d) We reaffirm the value of the school act of worship as a potent force in the spiritual experience of the pupils (para. 174)

Footnote

(1) So it is, of course, also in the great majority of voluntary schools. But we are glad to know that there are a few voluntary schools in which Jews are brought up in their own faith, and that there is provision in county schools for pupils not only to be 'excused' religious instruction, but 'withdrawn' for teaching in accordance with their parents' faith where this is asked for.