Values and Turmoil in Education

Values and Turmoil in Education

© 1995 The Christian Institute

By John Burn

John Burn was Principal of Emmanuel College CTC, Gateshead, having previously also been the Head of an urban comprehensive school for 14 years and a senior lecturer in science at a teacher training college. He has been President of the Newcastle Branch of the NUT and was a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas which in 1985 produced the report Faith in the City. He is Chairman of The Christian Institute and until September 1995 was a member of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority. In 1994 he was awarded the OBE for services to education

Contents

Introduction

A Christian Basis to Education

Gains and Losses

Relativism

Conclusion

Introduction

"When I became a teacher, thoroughly committed to making secondary comprehensive schools work, I joined the National Union of Teachers and was aware of the then General Secretary of the NUT, Sir Ronald Gould, speaking of the need for a spiritual, moral and Christian basis to underpin education. This now seems light years away and it would be a great joy but a great shock to hear this today at the annual conference of that great union.

Ten years ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas, of which I was a member, published their report Faith in the City. It was controversial. It successfully raised public awareness of inner city issues and the commission spent a great deal of time looking at education and schooling. We visited many inner city areas in London, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Tyneside and Greater Manchester. We talked to school teachers, parents and the pupils themselves.

Listening to those who lived in these communities it became clear that there was great concern about the quality of schooling. Aspirations were too low on the part of teachers, pupils and parents. There was a preoccupation with pastoral care and understanding children's backgrounds at the expense of learning.

Very bright children were being held back and slow learners confused in a system ideologically committed to mixed ability teaching groups. Parents were finding it very difficult to gain accurate information about their children's attainment, performance and progress. There was a real concern on the part of parents - Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus - that moral education and religious faith was being undermined by a drift into moral relativism and a multi-faith mishmash largely lead by teacher trainers and advisers.

One further, and I believe supremely relevant, abiding impression for me of the two years Faith in the City experience was that we were able to talk with and listen to many church leaders, including Bishops and other senior figures in the church.

It was apparent to me that many, by no means all, of them were much more certain about how social and political issues could be addressed than they were about the truth of the faith which it was and is their responsibility to guard, proclaim and hand down. I would suggest that this situation has worsened further in the last ten years. The Christian Church, at its national leadership level, sounds an uncertain note with the commitment to theological liberalism and moral relativism and so has nothing of significance to say to the turmoil which faces us today in education and in society.

I would want to say that in education today the crisis which faces us is not primarily about spending and resources. It is primarily a spiritual and moral crisis.
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A Christian Basis to Education

Education is about the preservation and transmission from one generation to another of the best that has been thought, written and said. It is about much else also - but this function has been sadly neglected. The world view that has shaped our culture over many centuries is that of biblical Christianity. That is why the overwhelming majority of people in Britain today still describe themselves as Christians and wish their children to have an opportunity to experience in school Christian worship, prayers, Christian teaching and an understanding of the Bible. This can be done at the same time as respecting the rights of those who hold to beliefs other than Christian.

The question which educators and the educational system must face is this: what do we believe to be true about human beings? For what we believe will determine what and how we teach. Christianity teaches that God has placed eternity into the hearts of men and women and that our hearts are restless until they find peace in Him. It teaches that we are accountable to God for our lives and that we are moral beings with choices to make and take responsibility for. It teaches also, of course, that we are flawed and fall far short of our potential to live lives which please God. Left to themselves children will not build heaven on earth - quite the reverse. This was well illustrated by William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Children do need discipline and boundaries. Learning will involve pain and struggle. Humanistic child-centred approaches to children's learning assume that children can discover truth by themselves.

Christianity teaches that some conduct is right and some is wrong. It says that some things are true and some are false; that there are absolutes by which to live. I fear that this is anathema to those who would shape what it is that should go on in schools.

When I began my teaching career, the idea of a school or even a local education authority positively promoting Christianity and the Ten Commandments was not unusual. For example in 1974 the Newcastle LEA brought out a policy document which attempted to do this very thing. A school which promotes Christianity and the Ten Commandments today would attract a deluge of criticism from inspectors, advisers and teacher trainers.
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Gains and Losses

As I look back over thirty years in schools there have been gains and losses. Class sizes, despite the recent blip, are very much smaller than they were. Educational technology has vastly improved. A wide range of subjects is available to children of all abilities. There is a much wider choice of schools for parents.

I believe that the introduction of the National Curriculum, national testing of children at 7+, 11+, 14+ and 16+ along with the delegation of responsibility for decision making to the schools themselves will increasingly be seen to be great gains.

There has been a huge expansion of those qualified to access higher education. However, we are being faced to question whether this has been done at the expense of rigour and standards. Science and Technology play a larger part in the experience of all children than they once did.

There have, however, been serious losses.

There has been a decline in accuracy of speech, grammar, punctuation and spelling across the whole ability range. The ability to read accurately and with understanding is a key to effective learning. The child-centred approach has also led to many teacher trainers and advisers advocating a less structured and direct approach to the teaching of reading. Traditional phonics was replaced by a belief, in its most bizarre aspect, that children who are given opportunities to fondle colourful books would of themselves become proficient readers. The 'real books' approach still has its advocates despite the decline in the reading ability of many children. The reality is that the children who are most at risk need traditional direct teaching methods.

There has been a serious decline in discipline allied to the decline in the authority of the teacher. There has been a serious increase in deprivation amongst young people. I mean the most serious deprivation of all - emotional. This goes across all social and economic groupings in society. Teachers in schools are having to bear the brunt of the consequences of the decline of the family, the decline of the role of the father, the increase in the proportion of children born to cohabiting parents. Increasing numbers of children are left to themselves, not read to, not listened to, not cuddled, and schools are asked to fulfil a role which is beyond them.

Five years ago in my previous school, which served a predominantly urban priority area, we calculated that at least 40% of the children were from unstable homes resulting from family break-up. A colleague from a mainly professional and middle class area calculated a similar figure for his school. In my current school there is a similar pattern of uncertainty in children's minds as to whom they belong. This makes learning in school more difficult and throws an unreasonable responsibility on to teachers. At the same time we have made life more difficult for the teachers. Effective sanctions have been removed. Verbal and physical assaults on teachers have risen and unsubstantiated allegations by children against teachers sometimes leads to the teacher's automatic suspension before a due enquiry has been made.

Experienced teachers are finding children difficult to control. In 1989, a government report found that in one week only 0.5% of secondary school teachers experienced physical aggression from pupils which was of 'a clearly violent nature' - only, therefore, just over 1,000 teachers each week!

The return to traditional concepts of marriage, fidelity, fatherhood, motherhood and the family are crucial to the restoration of stability and learning in our schools.

In addition we require from the Department for Education and Employment circulars on discipline which are rooted in the realities of the classroom and in the experience of those who are in our classroom front-line rather than what we have at the moment which seem to be based on selective textbook sociology and an optimistic belief in the perfectibility of human nature through reason alone. There are, of course, many success stories and many schools which are very popular with parents in the publicly funded sector. I would want to say these schools have many features in common. They have strong leadership and a collective commitment to a shared vision of learning and the promotion of excellence. These schools are often characterised by traditional teaching methods, firm discipline and a commitment to promote good behaviour and to teach right from wrong, truth from falsehood.

It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that the most popular schools with parents and the most successful in terms of performance in matters of behaviour, attendance, staying on rates and examination success are those Church schools with a clear Christian ethos.

My own school is an 11-18 comprehensive with two-thirds of the students living in inner city Tyneside. It is oversubscribed by 3:1. Whilst it would be foolish to deny that the reasons for this are various and include the fact that we are a new building and are well-resourced in technology and IT, the over-riding reason for our popularity is our commitment to promote good behaviour and values which are consistent with a broadly Christian stance. We want to stand for truth-telling, honesty, politeness, wholesome moral values and accountability. Huge numbers of parents want their children to be exposed to the benefit of all of this even though they do not always consistently base their own lives upon these values.

Despite our popularity with parents our traditional approach to teaching and discipline has been questioned by OFSTED. There was a suggestion made therefore that they felt we were unlikely to achieve the highest grades at GCSE. In reality a few weeks ago we were pleased to learn that 23% of our year group had gained A or A* grades in our first year of examinations. It is my experience that many inspectors and advisers bring to their task their own agenda and commitment to child-centred learning, untested theories and are often hostile to traditional values and belief. They often unnecessarily unnerve teachers who are doing well by traditional means.
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Relativism

I believe that relativistic ideology has come to dominate the thinking of those who influence decisions in education today. How is this manifested in practice?

Biblical Christianity is committed to historicity, objectivity, accountability and supernaturally revealed absolutes of right and wrong in human behaviour. It is committed to the discovery of truth, but the prevailing world view of opinion formers seems to be one of relativism and subjectivism. If it is true and right for you, that's OK. What is not OK is for you to seek to persuade others of the truth and rightness of your opinion. There is a superficial tolerance about all of this although there is an intolerance of those who believe that there are absolutes in the area of truth and morality.

Overlaying this, however, there is a commitment to promote political correctness in matters of gender, health, the environment, animal rights, etc. We have seen, therefore, many damaging trends manifesting themselves:-

A drift into discussions about "empathy" rather than objectivity in History and a suggestion that History should become multicultural and move away from its predominantly British and Euro-centric basis. Facts and dates become less important.
Geography has become more about acquiring opinions on environmental issues and world development and less committed to even the most basic tasks such as being able to identify countries from a world map and locate mountain ranges, rivers and capital cities.
In English Literature there has been a shift towards 20th century social literature and away from the concept of a canon of great classical literature. At its most bizarre there are those who would still argue, admittedly a minority, that the text of Neighbours or Eastenders is as valid as an objective study as Shakespeare, Jane Austin, Dickens or Chaucer. I reject the validity of attempting to help children see Romeo and Juliet through the eyes of a working class girl in riverside Newcastle and would urge that we continue to look at Shakespeare as giving us a universal and timeless insight into human nature. I was alarmed in a recent appointment interview to be told by an experienced teacher seeking to make Shakespeare relevant to modern youth, that Romeo and Juliet was primarily about under-age sex.
Science has also been at risk. This is too large a matter for today. There has been a growth of those who are committed to scientism, - that belief that scientific descriptions of the world are the only descriptions that matter or may be accepted as real knowledge. On the other hand there has been the challenge of post modernism. Post modernism dethrones science by attacking the very human rationality in which science has flourished. Science has progressed by its commitment to a humble, systematic search for the truth about things. The task of the scientist is to make a large number of accurate experimental observations from which a theory can be derived provided it is supported by a large body of consistent data. It depends for its success on a faith position, i.e. that the natural world is real and objective and stable.
Post modernism is committed to the view that knowledge is clothed in language which is culturally and geographically determined. The reality of the force of gravity, however, means that people fall out of trees with the same acceleration irrespective of place, time and language, although they may interpret their experiences differently.

If the post-modernist view that all forms of constructed knowledge are "language games" prevails then Science as we have known it will fall. At the moment the post-modernist view has had most influence in the arts, in humanities and religion. It has made some in-roads into Science but is being stoutly resisted.

Despite the conflicts that have existed between science and Christianity they do share a commitment to objectivity and to a critical realist view of knowledge. Christianity stands for a rational view of the universe which is the real creation of an objective God. If our Christian culture goes, science itself is at real risk. To its credit, the National Curriculum Council and its successor, the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority, have had some success in resisting a further trend to relativism in the Curriculum. I believe the tide has been stemmed but not turned back sufficiently - eternal vigilance will be necessary.

Religious Education has fallen victim to relativism, although in recent years this has been strongly challenged. It does remain true that in large numbers of schools Religious Education is little more than a superficial, relativistic and subjective view of the many moral issues which concern us. Religious Education in many schools remains a multi-faith mismash of misrepresentation of all faiths in which the truth claims of each religion are not examined but instead there is an unfocused examination of experience, custom and practice in a search for so-called promotion of tolerance and the lowest common denominator.
Sex Education finds a place in all secondary schools. There the subject is the product of much confusion stemming from the heart of government. On the one hand, through the DFEE, we are told to have a sex education programme which is committed to family values. On the other, the Health Education lobby tells us to promote the concept of health through safe sex. I would suggest to you that in the vast majority of schools within the programme of Personal and Social Education or Health Education, the Christian view, shared by other faiths, of marriage, sexual fidelity and sexual abstinence outside of marriage as a positive basis for healthy living would struggle to find a significant place. Why not promote Christian morality? The idea of promoting marriage as the only moral context for sex is commonly derided. We seem to have lost the ability to blush and the capacity to feel shame.
There has also been an attack on the need for an act of worship each day. The act of worship is said to be unethical and unworkable.
How This Has Come About
How has this happened? Who is to blame? The situation is complex. Those who sought to detach Christian ethics from Christian belief have I believe reaped the whirlwind. The attacks on traditional Christian ethics and belief by those who dominate the media have played a part. The difficulty of those gaining entrance to the media who wish to explain the basis for orthodox Christianity is a disgrace.

Those who influence thinking in practice - civil servants, advisers, teacher trainers and head teachers - have influence out of proportion to their numbers. Many of them are arrogantly out of step with the majority of the public and parents. The world view of many of these opinion formers is secular humanist and relativistic.

I would not wish to suggest that all teacher trainers are like this. I do know, however, from serving as a teacher trainer for four years and sitting on two bodies (the CNAA Teacher Education Committee, and the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education) that we have a serious problem.

Relativism flourishes in many schools, universities, colleges and teacher training establishments. The views of those who have recently acquired degrees in History, RE and Geography and who are training to be teachers worries me enormously (as a result of interviewing large numbers of candidates for teaching posts). Relativism with its rejection of moral absolutes and its uncritical embracing of post modernism is a rejection of orthodox Christianity and a threat to morality and values in our schools.

Allied to this many of those who prepare graduates for teaching in schools embrace relativistic views about learning and discipline. They advocate negotiated behaviour and negotiated learning for teachers. Teachers are relegated to the role of facilitator rather than instructor and in many classrooms the input of teachers is quite small.

It is for this reason I support the further extension of School Centred Initial Teaching Training in successful and well-proven schools. It saddens me when I read in OFSTED reports of Inspectors criticising primary schools for an over-emphasis on Christianity and the teaching of the Bible and for schools who approach learning in a traditional and structured way being asked to re-examine their teaching styles.

At the end of the day it is the schools themselves - not the inspector, adviser or teacher trainer - who has to give a direct account to the parent.

Christians have contributed to the decline by their own lack of willingness to apply biblical principles and values to public life. It is now time for them to re-assert themselves and make society in general more aware of the consequences of the decline.
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I must close

I want to argue that schools in which spirituality and moral values are taken seriously are institutes of high morale and places where children succeed.

I remain committed to seeking to do what is the best for children in areas of high unemployment and low income. That is my choice but I respect those who seek to do the same in quite different situations.

There has been much gained in recent years, particularly in terms of structure, freedom of choice and school-based accountability. Resources are important, but not the key issue. The very issue is the value system which underpins our society and schools.

Schools will collapse under moral relativism and an absence of spiritual truth. Our society also will collapse without commitment to shared values and beliefs.

At the basis of all our concern for discipline, learning and standards lies a deeper spiritual and moral issue. Schools will also be unable to operate unless we restore the family as the basic building block of society and the place in which faith and values are fostered.

I would hope that this seminar will play a part in helping to bring these key issues to the attention of the nation and to say wake up fellow citizens and see the need to re-moralise and recognise that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom".
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