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.
