Back to School?

The truism of living in Britian in early summer is that the clothes shops have menacing adverts of allegedly happy school kids wearing smart new uniforms when the reality is the streets have exhausted students wearing tired clothes, desperate for the wheel to stop so they can get off the treadmill of contemporary education.

Today, in September, term starts. I have just got back from our school's first assembly. Quiet children sitting in ranks as the head talks to them; a story, a moral message (inevitably about listening and learning) and a prayer. I sat with the "top class", the Year 6s, which in England and in this borough in particular, face the exciting cycle of entrance exams for various establishments over the next few weeks. My own children went through this a few years back and now face the future of more exams themselves over the next few years....

All this raises interesting questions about what school is for and whether we offer our young people the opportunity for learning skills that will equip them for life. Talking to parents whose children have recently dropped off the far end of the educational treadmill and now face a bleak employment future, whatever it is that we try to teach our children, above all we must give them a deep sense of their own dignity. As a Christian, I would want to say that this is something to do with being made in the image and likeness of God. I realise that spirituality is a hot potato in education but unless we honour our children by sharing this truth with them, they will simply be pray to that contemporary view of consumerism that suggests that personal worth is defined by possessions. Those who oppose the place of religion and religious language in the discourse of education betray our children and condemn them to a life framed by the language of the consumer.