[ACNS source: Lambeth Palace] In his first major address on education as Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has set out a bold vision for the future of faith schools while challenging strongly a narrow “functional” approach to learning.
Speaking on the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, Dr Williams argued that faith schools had a major contribution to make to a more open and cohesive society.
Addressing the annual conference of the Association of Anglican Secondary School Heads in Exeter, Dr Williams set his approach to faith schools in a broader post-September 11 context: “… we have been reminded of what a colossally significant role religion plays in the lives of millions; if this is so, do we want religious communities isolated and ghettoised further or do we need a bold engagement with the vision of religious groups for humanity on the part of public bodies? Only if we go down this latter path, I believe, can we help such groups to be faithful to what is most profound, sophisticated and resourceful in their own heritage. And only so can some fundamental issues about the deepest justification for shared human hopes and commitments be kept on the agenda of a confused and floundering secularism.”
Dr Williams described sharply contrasting approaches to education: “There is a real tension in educational thinking between those whose concern is primarily, almost exclusively, with imparting skills to individuals and those who understand education as something that forms the habits of living in a group, identifying common aspirations and making possible co-operation and conversation.” The ethos of Church schools was of the latter type.
The Archbishop went on to warn: “Educational institutions in fact can’t be neutral about this. If you think you are being neutral about the moral or spiritual ethos of a school, you are in fact generating an ethos of individualism, functionalism and ultimately fragmentation.”
At their best, Dr Williams argued, church schools were characterised by a commitment to a deep sense of loyalty and openness. He contrasted this openness with a version of tolerance that was “all too successful in lots of schools.” It often manifested itself among teenagers as “an incurious co-existence, even a bland acceptance of mutual ignorance and non-understanding, in the name of not passing judgement…Openness, in contrast, is a willingness to be curious, to argue, even, yes, to judge, in the sense of trying to assess another’s experience in the light of your own values and decide how deeply it challenges you and how deeply you want to challenge it. It has everything to do with truthfulness at many levels.”
Dr Williams also set his approach to church schools in the context of the wider Christian community and called for new and stronger links between the two:
“The fact is that very many students in a church school will have their primary exposure to shared religious activity in school. They and their families will not regularly and invariably be part of a worshipping group, whatever motions may have been gone through by parents to win places. What the school does corporately as a Christian body will be, to all intents and purposes, how these parents and students will experience the reality of Church.”
[The full text of the address can be found at: www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/030911.html]