Two academics subjected major current trends in education to careful critique at this year’s Family Education Trust conference in June, with over 100 packing the ballroom at the RAF Club in Piccadilly.
Dr Mark Pike, Associate Professor in Educational Values and Pedagogy at the University of Leeds, applied the insights of C. S. Lewis to the present educational scene. He noted that in a pluralistic society, teachers struggle to subscribe to any set of values and so they often ‘commit themselves to nothing in particular – or to an undefined humanism where the only question is one of personal feeling’.
Teachers are therefore ‘tempted to remain hands-off and assume a non-interference policy’ when it comes to giving moral guidance. Older pupils are often left to decide for themselves what they think is right in the circumstances. Dr Pike pointed out that such negligence is opening the way for ‘pushers of pornography and other antisocial vices’ to gain an entrance and poison the minds of children and young people.
Rather than aim for academic success with scant attention to character, Dr Pike argued that educators should seek to awaken moral sensitivities and cultivate good character. He referred to C. S. Lewis’s observation that each of us is more than a head (an intellect) and more than an animal (a stomach), since we all have a moral sense and character (a chest).
Self-esteem ideology
The conference also heard from Professor Glynn Harrison on how self-esteem ideology has invaded schools and propagated the idea that all must be winners and there must be no losers.
The Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Bristol showed that churches have not been immune from the influence. He referred to a church website which carried the strapline ‘You’re incredible. We’re here to celebrate you!’, a message that stands in stark contrast to the biblical call to repentance, with its strong implication that ‘You are not as good as you think you are!’. As an aside, he noted the tendency of evangelicals to play down the call to repentance, because it seemed out of kilter with spirit of the age and the desire to make people feel good about themselves.
Professor Harrison demonstrated from research evidence that self-esteem ideology was based on a false science, but has gained momentum because it is compatible with the culture of individualism. Researchers have found that there is no evidence that boosting self-esteem delivers the health, educational or social outcomes claimed for it. Professor Harrison concluded that: ‘Self-esteem ideology really amounts to the work of amateur philosophers where we expected the work of professional psychologists’.
He argued that instead of seeking to boost self-esteem, parents and teachers should encourage a rounded self-concept and seek to build the virtues of resilience and character in children. But that requires some understanding of who we are and what we are here for. The issues that self-esteem ideology has raised, but failed to answer, are deep philosophical questions that secular humanism cannot resolve. As Professor Harrison put it: ‘Worth cannot be separated from the deeper issues of purpose, meaning and philosophy of life’.
