International Journal of Children’s Spirituality,

Vol. 11, No. 2, August 2006, pp. 293–306

Against (the use of the term) ‘spiritual

education’
Roger Marples*
Roehampton University, London, UK
International
10.1080/13644360600797313
CIJC_A_179677.sgm
1364-436X
Original
Taylor
202006
11
R.Marples@roehampton.ac.uk
RogerMarples
00000July
and
&Article
Francis
Francis
(print)/1469-8455
2006
JournalLtd
of Children’s
(online)
Spirituality

The paper argues that the term ‘spiritual education’ is completely otiose. It tries to show that its
application in both religious and secular contexts is deeply problematic. If there is any such form of
knowledge or understanding, it is difficult to see how children are to be initiated into it without
being indoctrinated. The paper focuses on a number of recent philosophical attempts to defend the
use of the term within religious and non-religious contexts, and attempts to highlight the respects
in which these cannot possibly succeed unless and until the concept is shown to possess features by
reference to which we might distinguish it from other forms of knowledge and understanding with
a rightful place on the curriculum. Until it can be demonstrated that there is any such thing as
spiritual knowledge, with its own subject matter and conceptual apparatus, providing some sort of
basis on which spiritual education might proceed, we have reason to be sceptical about the
coherence of the whole enterprise of attending to children’s spiritual education and their so-called
spiritual development.

Keywords: Spiritual education; Spiritual development

Introduction
It is for obvious reasons why those who would find a place for spiritual education within
mainstream education—something which is increasingly referred to as the ‘common
school’ open to students irrespective of their religious, ethnic or cultural back-
grounds—should attempt to provide a secular account of the term. Failure so to do
would leave them having to confront the problem of how such an education might be
reconciled with liberal democratic demands for a system of schooling designed to
promote (or at least not to frustrate) opportunities for students to critically evaluate
a variety of conceptions of the good, in order that they might better withstand the
attempts of those who would wish to indoctrinate them with any particular conception.

*Roehampton University, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ, UK.

Email: R.Marples@roehampton.ac.uk

ISSN 1364-436X (print)/ISSN 1469-8455 (online)/06/020293–14

© 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13644360600797313
294 R. Marples

As part of this attempt, Terence McLaughlin has recently made two very useful
distinctions between what he calls ‘religiously tethered’ and ‘religiously untethered’
forms of spirituality on the one hand, and education in spirituality ‘from the inside’
and ‘from the outside’ on the other (Alexander & McLaughlin, 2003; McLaughlin,
2003).
I shall argue that while there might appear to be a prima facie case for the notion of
‘spiritual education’ having some sort of natural home within the context of a partic-
ular set of religious beliefs and practices, it is far from obvious that this is the case,
there being some puzzling issues surrounding the ideas of ‘spiritual quest’, the ‘search
for meaning and purpose’ and what it means to be on the ‘inside of a religion’. It
would therefore be quite wrong to rest content with the view that a religiously teth-
ered spirituality is somehow self-explanatory. When it comes to untethered forms of
spirituality, there have recently been a number of bold attempts to render the notion
intelligible. I draw attention to what I consider to be significant shortcomings in some
of these accounts and suggest that there are no ‘big questions’ which are not reducible
to those with which the conventional disciplines of science, philosophy, the arts and
such like are concerned. If teachers are supposed to be making provision for
children’s spiritual education, they have a right to be told what this is and how they
might go about delivering it. The authors to whom I refer provide little if any help in
these respects, which has, I suspect, more to do with the extent to which the whole
notion is so obscure if not altogether incoherent. Until more clarity attaches to what
spiritual education might possibly amount to, we are entitled to remain sceptical
concerning either the necessity or desirability of its being a part of a teacher’s
conceptual vocabulary.

Spiritual education in a non-secular context

Before attempting to evaluate what a secular conception of spiritual education might
amount to, it is worth considering whether or not the term has any application in a
non-secular context. The distinction between secular and non-secular conceptions
can be made, McLaughlin suggests, by reference to how the spiritual domain itself is
characterised. Such a domain involves, he says, ‘a wide range of kinds of human sensi-
tivity, experience, belief, judgment, response, disposition, motivation, commitment,
virtue and achievement’ (2003, p. 191). Religiously tethered spirituality, according to
Alexander and McLaughlin, ‘takes its shape and structure from various aspects of
religion with which it is associated’, with the spirituality of religious people consisting
in part, ‘in their discovery of meaning and purpose in the theological aspects of reli-
gion, through devotion to God or gods, or through the achievement of a favoured
state of contemplation or consciousness’ (2003, p. 359), while ‘“untethered” spiritu-
ality involves beliefs and practices that are disconnected from and may even be
discomforting to, religions’ (Ibid.). Tethered and untethered spirituality alike are said
to rely on a number of ‘interrelated strands’ which are: a search for meaning, the culti-
vation of inner space, manifestations of the spiritual in life, distinctive responses to
aspects of the natural and human world, a collective or communal dimension relating
 Against ‘spiritual education’ 295

to the significance of shared memory and meaning, a sense of belonging, and a

commitment to common behaviours (Ibid., 2003, pp. 359–360).
The problems to which this gives rise are legion. Here are just a few. Firstly, a
distinction needs to be made between the search for meaning and purpose, and its
discovery. One can search for all kinds of thing without there being anything there to
discover. For something to count as a discovery, it surely must have some basis in truth
in order to distinguish it from mere illusion. I cannot discover that the earth is flat
when it is no such thing, any more than I can discover that I am Socrates.
Secondly, it is not clear whether one is ‘spiritual’ only when one has made appro-
priate discoveries or whether one is less (or equally) spiritual while still searching. As
far as ‘purpose’ is concerned, I guess that Alexander and McLaughlin would not
consider an activity to be sufficiently purposive if it were done just for fun or solace.
But surely whether or not something has a purpose or a meaning leads to further
questions about what the purpose or meaning of that is, and so on. There is a sense
in which everything, the universe included, is ultimately pointless; but there is a very
obvious sense in which the ‘meaning of life’ has to do with what we decide to make
of it and the significance we attach to different aspects of it. It is not just there, waiting
in the wings as it were, to be ‘discovered’. Do spiritual people have to find intrinsic
value in, for example, their devotional activities or are they less spiritual if they engage
in them for instrumental purposes such as a more comfortable existence in the life
hereafter? The fact remains, however, that it is far from obvious what one is supposed
to be doing when engaged in a spiritual quest, or why one should be doing it in the
first place.
Thirdly, if I were to decide by fiat that just about anything could be meaningful (for
me)—a gesture, a word, or whatever—then I would be in the lunatic world of Humpty
Dumpty. For something to count as ‘meaningful’ there must of necessity be criteria
by reference to which it has use or application, as Wittgenstein (1968) so ably demon-
strated in the Philosophical Investigations. Whatever it is that one is supposed to be
searching for when embarking on a ‘spiritual quest’, it must in principle be ‘identifi-
able’ in a public and rule governed language.
Fourthly, there is the problematic status of what is to count as a ‘spiritual quest’,
even within a religious context. Is it an attempt to find God, or is it the peace of mind
one hopes will result from finding Him? Is it an attempt to break away from what
might be perceived as the shackles associated with a religious upbringing and the
associated struggle to find a more plausible weltanschauung? Do such questions have,
of necessity, to be painful or tormenting in order to count as ‘spiritual’, or could one
simply arrive at a conclusion about God’s existence as a result of, say, a careful
appraisal of the arguments to be found in a text on the philosophy of religion—and
what is remotely ‘spiritual’ about that? Again, is one more ‘spiritual’ if one dismisses
concerns about the rationality of a particular belief as an irrelevance—it being the
peace of mind, perhaps even the sheer unadulterated joy in unquestioning acceptance
which matters more than tiresome philosophical problems relating to its truth? If not,
then what is the distinction between a spiritual quest and a (altogether more compre-
hensible) philosophical concern with epistemology and metaphysics? It simply will not
296 R. Marples

do to be told that whatever we are doing in grappling with the issue of God’s existence,
we are all on the same spiritual journey but using different modes of transport.
I confess to finding the idea of ‘inner space’ and its ‘cultivation’ so vague as to
prevent me having any view whatsoever. It is all very well to be told that ‘notions such
as awareness, centeredness and stillness are prominent’ (Ibid., p. 359), and that in a
religiously untethered context cultivation must be seen ‘under a merely therapeutic
aspect’ (Ibid., p. 360). But does this mean that if I sit in my garden feeling ‘at one’
with the world that I am more ‘spiritual’ than when I am trying to find a seat on a
crowded train? I used to continue attending Quaker meetings long after losing my
religious beliefs because I found it helpful, perhaps even therapeutic to sit (with
others) in silence. However, in a religious context, where some kind of ‘awareness’ is
required, we need to ask ‘awareness of what?’ If the answer is ‘God’, then the question
how can one be aware of Him unless He, in some sense of that term, exists, and
whether we have any reason to suppose that He does, is a philosophical question;
something which, under the rubric ‘philosophy of religion’, has a legitimate place on
the curriculum.
So much of the literature on spiritual education leaves me floundering completely
out of my depth in the sense that I have no idea where to begin in trying to make any
sense of it. What Alexander and McLaughlin say about the ‘manifestations of spiritu-
ality in life’ leaves me no wiser. Like so many of their colleagues in the field, they
provide a whole catalogue of ‘orientations, motivations and dispositions’ with nothing
in the way of unifying features, bodies of knowledge or qualities of character by
reference to which they might be seen as part of a coherent whole as something
distinctly identifiable as ‘spiritual education’. Their list includes ‘self-possession’,
‘self-control’, ‘self-knowledge’, ‘humility’, ‘calmness’, ‘serenity’, ‘openness’, ‘trust’,
‘hope’, ‘gratitude’, ‘love’, ‘generosity’, ‘self-transcendence’, and ‘wisdom’. I shall
defer further discussion of this until I try to expose the futility of the attempt to
provide a secular conception of spiritual education.
A ‘distinctive response to the natural and human world’ is, for Alexander and
McLaughlin, a matter of experiencing ‘awe and wonder’. The fact that so many
people take this to be of particular significance, and rely on it as a mark of the spiritual
even in a secular context, provides a reason for saying more about this in due course.
In all honesty I find references to a ‘collective or communal dimension relating to the
significance of shared memory and meaning, a sense of belonging and a commitment
to common behaviours’ so hopelessly vague and underdeveloped that space permits
no further discussion.
These are just some of the problems arising in trying to account for what the term
‘spiritual’ might mean in a religious context. There is another, closely related
problem, concerning the extent to which the term can be spread over the conceptual
landscape. Is there, for example, more to it than a concern about what to believe but
additionally (additionally or alternatively, it is impossible to determine in view of the
lack of clarity in the literature) a concern over how one should react to such convic-
tions? Is one ‘spiritual’ if one is terrified or angry, or must one accept things like this
with equanimity or resignation in order to be counted as such? Where is the (obvious)
 Against ‘spiritual education’ 297

absurdity in the idea of an atheist eventually coming to ‘find God’—and thus,

according to some, developing spiritually, but ending up both terrified and angry;
angry with himself for being so stupid for so long, or angry because the material
universe in which he had conducted his affairs should no longer be conceived as such
and that he had so little time left to him to make the necessary adjustments, and terri-
fied in the extreme as a result of a conviction that there was indeed an all powerful
God capable of creating a planet on which there took place unpredictable tsunamis?
Or would such a reaction be a mark of his spiritual immaturity with only those who
are able to accept it all on trust, with an unconcerned resignation in that it was all
somehow for the best as well as being perfectly compatible with the notion of a loving
father, worthy of the epithet ‘spiritually mature’?
As far as education in all this ‘from the inside’ is concerned, it ‘refers to the form
of education and spontaneity that are seen as appropriate for those within a particular
spiritual tradition, or those who are being initiated into such a tradition … central [to
which] is the attempt to form and nourish a commitment to the particular beliefs,
values and practices of a specific religion and specific tradition. The mandate [for
such arising] from the rights of parents and religious communities in relation to the
formation of their children and young people and an acknowledgment of the
demands of legitimate plurality in educational arrangements’ (Ibid., p. 361), all of
which ‘need not necessarily involve indoctrination [and] is most appropriately located
in separate religious schools, where it will be linked with “religiously tethered” forms
of spirituality’ (McLaughlin, 2003, p. 195) and is ‘an appropriate option for parents
who actively seek it’ (Alexander & McLaughlin, 2003, p. 369).
The assumptions behind this are both numerous and highly questionable. Firstly,
how is it possible to ‘form and nourish a commitment’ in ways that are non-indoctri-
natory and compatible with the development of personal autonomy? Secondly, do
members of religious faiths, whether as parents or members of a religious community,
have the right to faith schools? Thirdly, how is all this to be distinguished from the
uncritical confessionalism associated with religious instruction?
I have argued elsewhere that neither religious parents nor the communities of
which they are members should enjoy the right to faith schools with or without public
subsidy.1 What is of greater concern here is the extent to which it is possible to initiate
children into some kind of spiritual understanding without at the same time getting
them to believe in the truth of highly contentious propositions. The problem is
analogous to that of how one is supposed to understand religious claims unless one is
already an adherent to the religion in question. If genuine or full understanding of any
proposition whatsoever presupposes an understanding of the relevant concepts, then
in the context of religious belief it would be hard to see how one could make sense of
many of the rituals and activities which serve to distinguish a religion from something
else.
The difficulties associated with providing an education in religion and spirituality
‘from the outside’ are clearly recognised by Alexander and McLaughlin (Ibid.,
pp. 366–367), and after a particularly painstaking search for a conception of spiritual
education that might win approval from believers and unbelievers alike, David Carr
298 R. Marples

was led to conclude that ‘no genuine understanding of spirituality can really be
available short of a substantial examination [even initiation into] the reflection, prac-
tices and achievements of some spiritual tradition or other’ (1996, p. 173). He draws
an analogy between what Aristotle has to say about the intimate connection between
moral understanding and moral training, in what I take to be an unsuccessful attempt
to square the circle of initiating children into religious and spiritual practices on the
one hand and not indoctrinating them on the other. While there may well be a parallel
between being initiated into a particular moral tradition and its compatibility with
appreciating or understanding a very different tradition, in the way that being initi-
ated into one language is not a necessary hindrance to learning another, the analogy
is a poor one. In the case of moral education there are more easily defensible criteria
as to what might count as success, contentious as they undoubtedly are, which are
simply not there—at least in any of the literature with which I am familiar—when it
comes to spiritual education. Moreover, even if it is possible to specify such criteria
both here and in the context of religious education, the onus is firmly with those who
want to insist that there is any such thing, to make it clear how understanding in such
areas is possible without commitment and the associated charge of indoctrination.
Getting children ‘on the inside’ of a religious or spiritual tradition is, I suggest, an
attempt to get them to see things differently whereby they come to acknowledge the
truth of highly questionable propositions hitherto thought to be unintelligible or false.
If true, it means that any genuine religious or spiritual understanding (and if it is to
be genuine or complete then it must be ‘from the inside’) must be bought at the price
of indoctrination or something sufficiently like it for me to require a lot of persuasion
that it should be part of a programme of education with an emphasis on rational
autonomy.2
All this would seem to indicate that even in the religious domain references to the
‘spiritual’ and ‘spiritual education’ are more problematic than might at first appear to
be the case. It remains to be seen if they are likely to be any less problematic in a secu-
lar context. The assumption behind recent injunctions to provide spiritual education
for all children in England and Wales is that it goes beyond a merely religious educa-
tion, and recent literature is replete with attempts to specify what this might amount
to in a secular context.

Spiritual education in a secular context

John White, as secretary of the British Humanist Association Education Committee,
has no doubt that the secular humanist should have any reservations about the appro-
priateness of referring to the ‘spiritual’. In his attempt to support his case he quotes
with approval distinguished humanists such as James Hemming and Pat Hutcheson3
who see spirituality as part of our biological make-up and a defining feature of our
species, and relies on writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy and John Steinbeck who,
he says, describe ‘experience which would be generally accepted as being of a “spiri-
tual” nature’ (White, 1996, p. 32) without ever explaining why experiences with
which we are all familiar, such as the peace induced by gazing at beautiful sunsets or
 Against ‘spiritual education’ 299

magnificent landscapes should be construed as ‘spiritual’. In the same volume Alex

Rodger (1996, p. 46) sees spirituality as something to do with a person’s sense of: (i)
the kind of universe we live in, (ii) the nature and relationships of human beings
within the universe and (iii) how human life ought to be lived; all with no hint of a
recognition that answers to (i) might be the proper concern of astronomers, physicists
and philosophers, and to (ii) something which all of us have a need, if not a respon-
sibility, to answer. Why a concern with the question of how we should conduct our
lives should be thought to be any more a spiritual matter, Rodger fails to answer.4
Iris Yob is also at pains to find room for spirituality outside the confines of religious
traditions. While it may well be sustained by them, ‘it may also be prompted by or
nurtured from other sources—secular works of art, natural phenomena, dreams, the
experience of accident, illness, or death of a loved one …’(2003, p. 115); again with
no explanation or justification. She seems to think that it is the mark of a spiritual
person, not merely a religious person, to ask such questions as ‘Where do I come
from?’, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What is my purpose and destiny?’ Most thoughtful people spec-
ulate about the origins of life or the nature of consciousness or what the distinguishing
features of selfhood are, or whether or not there is any ultimate point or purpose to
their lives, but why should we have reason to believe that what they are doing is part
of a spiritual quest? Like so many writers who are sympathetic to the utility of the term
‘spiritual’, Yob sees nothing problematic here.
A recent and particularly noteworthy attempt to account for spirituality in a secu-
lar context is that provided by John Haldane, according to whom ‘there is a domain
of thought, feeling and action that is concerned with discerning the ultimate truth
about the human condition’ (2003, p. 19), which has largely to do with cultivating
an appropriate mode of being or ‘demeanour’ in response to that truth.5 Whatever
else we might say about the human condition it is, for those of us who do not believe
in eternal life, brief and finite; we simply do not have an infinite number of tomor-
rows. If that is a rational conclusion to draw, then assuming it makes sense to try
and find an appropriate demeanour, what is required of one in order to cultivate it?
It always makes sense to ask ‘appropriate for what?’; ‘demeanours’ are no more just
appropriate or inappropriate than knowledge is just relevant or irrelevant. It would
be difficult, if not impossible to answer the question other than by reference to ‘the
beliefs one has about reality’.6 Even if one concludes that ‘reality’ must find space
for God, it should not be readily assumed that any particular demeanour is more
appropriate than any other, in virtue of what was said earlier about the converted
atheist; so much depends on one’s emotional response to such conclusions. Further
argument needs to be provided before one is entitled to assume that one’s own or
anyone else’s demeanour relating to a conviction should be deemed appropriate or
otherwise. One could pose the question: ‘Once one has reached certain conclusions
about the nature of reality, should one then just sit back (in a state of tranquillity) or
should one go in search of arguments troubling to one’s certitude?’—something
which those of us with a philosophical education would frequently be inclined to do;
but it remains unclear in the extreme what we should expect from those who have
been spiritually educated.
300 R. Marples

My (general) demeanour is not only something adopted in the face of metaphysical

beliefs; I remain tranquil or otherwise, as Michael McGhee quite rightly suggests, in
the face of success or failure, adversity or loss, or injustice (2003, p. 30). The way in
which we respond to adversity or failure is largely a subjective matter, but if emotional
maturity in students is something towards which teachers should aim, it is far from
easy to determine the appropriateness or otherwise of a particular response. Was
Dylan Thomas suggesting something altogether inappropriate in response to death
when he wrote the following lines?

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Can we, as McGhee would have it, ‘measure a person’s spiritual state by their capac-
ity for forgiveness …’, and is it true that spirituality may be equally measured by the
‘vitality of [someone’s] sympathetic awareness of others, and their discernment of the
nature of their needs.’? (Ibid.) What are we to say about those who have been tortured
or have survived the unspeakable horrors of Nazi death camps and are unable to
forgive their tormentors? On the other hand, there are those whose capacity for
forgiveness is quite astonishing. After the recent murder of Anthony Walker by racist
thugs, his mother Gee was only too willing to forgive his killers. Is it not a moral
impertinence to assume that those who are so willing and able to forgive are more
‘spiritually mature’ than those who find it impossible? I for one simply cannot imagine
how those who survived Auschwitz must feel. They no doubt possess extraordinary
strengths which those of us who are fortunate enough to have been spared such a fate
have never had to cultivate. Who am I to pass judgement, or one to ‘measure’ the
extent to which any of these people are more ‘spiritually developed’ than any other?
John Cottingham is similarly disposed to account for spirituality as some kind of
response to human finitude, but it is not clear if the response to which he refers should
be characterised as a demeanour or an attitude. Problems relating to the essential
ambiguity surrounding the notion of ‘attitude’ notwithstanding—is it some kind of
belief or judgement about something or is it something more akin to a feeling or expe-
rience?—one feels that Cottingham is sympathetic to the idea of spiritual develop-
ment as having much to do with a change of attitude towards ‘false’ values such as
money and status, whereby one might aspire instead to a state of acceptance or tran-
quillity. Although as he readily concedes: ‘if the proposed benefits of the spiritual
outlook (tranquillity of mind, for example) rest on false or unsupported metaphysical
claims, they are bought at too great a price. Even if we acknowledge all the angst
generated by the raw dependency and finitude of human life, nevertheless to purchase
assurance at the cost of a leap of faith is rather like buying tranquillity by ingesting a
calming pill or undergoing a course of hypnotism: it may do the job, in a crude and
pragmatic sense, but only at the cost of another and more degrading dependency …’
(2003, pp. 50–51).
To account for the spiritual as a distinct area of human existence by reference to
talk of ‘demeanour’ or ‘attitudinal response’ is of precious little help to the classroom
 Against ‘spiritual education’ 301

teacher struggling to make sense of her legal requirement to promote children’s

spiritual education. Where, after all, are standards of correctness in this? What sense
would it make to ‘correct’ a student who, if pushed, remained insistent that his
response to the Missa Solemnis was an aesthetic response and not a spiritual one? It
would be equally absurd to correct him for maintaining that his trust in his GP, on
the grounds that she was qualified and had helped him in the past, was anything other
than entirely rational.
The literature on spiritual education abounds with references to the importance of
‘trust’ as a distinctive mark of the ‘spiritual’—as is talk of ‘hope’, ‘awe and wonder’,
and ‘acceptance’. But in what exactly are we supposed to trust and for what should
we be expected to hope? I can trust someone holding my lifeline, I might well trust
someone like Hitler, I can trust myself as well as all manner of other things. Again,
what am I supposed to accept as someone who is spiritually educated—that 2+2=4,
the big bang theory, that my life has been a failure, that nobody cares about me, that
I have cancer? I can find countless things awesome—the fact there are as many stars
in the universe as there are blades of grass on the planet earth, a swarm of locusts, the
great pyramid of Giza, a Bruckner symphony, a volcanic eruption, the Grand
Canyon, a scientific theory, or the return of a homing pigeon. The problem arises as
to where the unifying factor is to be found in all this. If I simply go around accepting
things or trusting all manner of men but rarely, if ever, hope for anything better than
the status quo, am I less ‘spiritual’ or less ‘spiritually educated’ than someone who
rarely accepts anything let alone with equanimity, but experiences strong and
frequent feelings of awe and wonder? As Carr asks: ‘if there is no more to a spiritual
attitude than being moved by certain sorts of experience or being disposed to adopt
an emotional stance towards them, how are we to know that the attitude in question
is a spiritual as opposed to a moral or aesthetic one?’ (1996, p. 165), not to mention
the fact that focusing on ‘the experience rather than the content of spiritual engagement
makes it hard to see what someone might have learned when they have learned spiri-
tually rather than aesthetically, morally or scientifically, and hence provide the basis
for a distinctive spiritual pedagogy’ (Carr, 2003, p. 216). Good teachers, or perhaps
one should say great teachers, will do their best to convey what might be called the
‘wow factor’ when teaching biology, astronomy, physics, mathematics, history and
the arts, not to mention the extraordinary things that can be achieved when combin-
ing eggs with flour. As such they are great science teachers, great music teachers or
whatever. What sense is there in the idea that in addition to doing that in which they
have such a forte they are (or, if OFSTED is bearing down on them, jolly well should
be) educating children spiritually?
Carr is particularly astute in his attempt to try and locate those epistemological
constraints by reference to which a distinct spiritual knowledge, with its own subject
matter, can be identified and on the basis of which spiritual education might proceed
in ways that would distinguish it from dotty things such as astrology. ‘Spiritual
truths’, according to Carr, are such in virtue of their location ‘within a particular
perspective on spiritual life and their meaningful interconnectedness with other
beliefs and practices of recognisably spiritual substance’ (1996, p. 173). Examples of
302 R. Marples

such truths are, he suggests: (a) ‘No man can serve two masters’, (b) ‘Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’, (c) ‘What shall it profit a man that he should gain
the whole world and lose his soul?’ (2003, p. 221), and (d) ‘Sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof’ (1995, p. 91). While he may well be correct in insisting that such
claims are not ‘scientifically’ reducible to psychology, biology or chemistry’, they
certainly appear, as Michael hand points out, to be not only ‘propositions about the
conditions of human flourishing’ and, as such, moral propositions, but because there
are both implicit and explicit references to the divine, they are also religious proposi-
tions’ (2003, p. 394).7 This is not the place to enter a debate about whether or not
such statements are indisputably true, but it is appropriate to demand an explanation
of why they should be considered spiritual. Educators have long been concerned with
children’s moral and religious education and Carr’s list may well serve a useful role
in that process, but in themselves they provide no support for an independently
specifiable spiritual knowledge with a claim to curriculum time.
When it comes to the practical dimension of spiritual education, it is on the so-
called ‘spiritual virtues’ that Carr wishes to focus. Such virtues are to be distinguished
from the moral or cardinal virtues by their orientation ‘towards the extra-mundane
dimension of human aspiration to what lies beyond the purely temporal’ (1995,
p. 92), and include ‘hope’, ‘charity’, and ‘forgiveness’, all of which, according to Carr
are fully intelligible as spiritual virtues independently of any specific context of reli-
gious belief. I do not see why virtues such as these make sense only in the context of
religious faith, as Hand seems to believe. There is, after all, a perfectly coherent sense
in which they may have point and application in a secular context. They may well
have a place in a religious context, but neither necessarily nor exclusively. Nor do I
see them having an obvious location within moral education—with the exception,
perhaps, of ‘charity’. What is important is that children examine the appropriateness
or otherwise of being hopeful or forgiving. Aren’t some things just hopeless or even
unforgivable?8 Carr fails on both counts. He provides no sound basis for spiritual
education with either a theoretical or a practical dimension and in spite of all his
efforts to the contrary, we must conclude with Hand that all we are left with is, ‘an
arbitrary stipulation that “spiritual” education means education in a spiritual activity,
and an equally arbitrary selection from the range of activities appropriately described
as “spiritual”’ (Hand, 2003, p. 396).
Perhaps the knowledge for which we ought to be searching on our ‘spiritual quest’
should properly be construed as self-knowledge or understanding; it is certainly some-
thing which appears with monotonous regularity in ‘official’ pronouncements on the
subject.9 This is quite properly the concern of educators and is of particular impor-
tance in our understanding of personal autonomy. Indeed the history of philosophy
is littered with accounts of the ‘self’ as something exclusively ‘inner’ to which we, as
individuals, have a privileged access. Such a view received a particularly clear articu-
lation in the philosophy of Descartes. More recently, it has been widely recognised
that to construe the self, as something a-social and private is incoherent, ignoring as
it does the necessity for a public world where language and meaning gain applica-
tion.10 As Anthony Kenny has shown, much confusion can arise in talk of the search
 Against ‘spiritual education’ 303

for self simply by failing to distinguish between ‘my self’ and ‘myself’ (Kenny, 1989).
What I am really engaged in when ‘searching for myself’ is the search for answers to
some fairly difficult questions relating to matters which are particularly significant
from a personal point of view; questions such as ‘Do I really believe in God?’, ‘Is
ambition still important to me?’, and countless others to do with relationships, sexu-
ality, political allegiances, as well accuracy relating to the assessment of my character
and such like. I am not looking to discover some kind of personal ‘essence’ which is
somehow hidden from view; on the contrary, I am engaged in the perfectly coherent
process of self-discovery and self-creation whereby my fundamental values and
commitments are critically evaluated and reappraised. Why on earth should such an
activity be characterised as ‘spiritual’?
Where does this leave teachers anxious to promote their pupils’ ‘spiritual develop-
ment’ as required by the National Curriculum? The answer, in a nutshell, is in a
rather uncomfortable position.

Spiritual development
In an article highly critical of OFSTED’s 1994 discussion paper ‘Spiritual, Moral,
Social and Cultural Development’, the philosopher of education John White draws
attention to the fact that talk of ‘development’ in the context of matters ‘spiritual’ is
dangerously misleading (White, 1994). Like Winch, he is part of that tradition in
philosophy of education going back to Robert Dearden’s powerful critique of the
growth metaphor (Dearden, 1968), whereby pupils are expected to ‘grow’, in the
words of the discussion paper, given a ‘favourable “climate and “soil”’ (White, 1994,
p. 6). Such a metaphor, with its presuppositions of initial and, presumably, end-states
beyond which further growth ceases has, according to White, no place in the context
of mental development—for several reasons. Firstly, there is nothing in the mental
realm akin to the fully grown human body or oak tree. Secondly, it is far from clear
how ‘spiritual maturity’ is to be identified—indeed, he believes, there is an essential
incoherence attached to the very idea. Thirdly, to conceive of educational learning as
a natural process, as opposed to a social process, is a hindrance to children’s learning.
If true, then he is surely correct in concluding that OFSTED’s claim to the effect that
development in this context may be used both transitively and intransitively is clearly
false. ‘If we are to talk of SMSC “development” at all’, says White, ‘this can only be
in the transitive sense. Parents, teachers, schools develop qualities in pupils: but
pupils do not themselves develop. The latter idea is a nonsense’ (White, 1994,
p. 371).
In a similar vein, Christopher Winch takes issue with the loose thinking associated
with much of the literature on psychological development. He draws attention to the
fact that most developmental theories fail to confront a number of serious issues relat-
ing to what constitutes development. Is it something that just happens to someone, like
growing taller or reaching puberty, or must one be more actively engaged with learn-
ing something in order to develop? In the context of ‘spiritual development’ it would,
assuming there to be any such thing, surely be something radically different from
304 R. Marples

biological maturation. Again, so much developmental theory operates with the

metaphor of ‘growth’ in ways that are totally inappropriate in such a context. Given
certain conditions, such as an appropriate diet, a modicum of hygiene and such like,
most children will grow bigger and older; and this would occur without any teaching
or learning. As Winch points out: ‘“Maturity” can be given a purely descriptive sense
in which it denotes the achievement of a certain phase in development’ (1998, p. 79),
in which case nothing has been achieved other than the fact that an organism has
reached a certain state of maturity whereby it has reached the stage at which it is
‘capable of acquiring a capacity or an ability through interaction with its environment’
(Ibid.). When it comes to people, however, the notion of maturity is frequently used
in an evaluative sense. We often describe someone as ‘mature’, especially in an educa-
tional context, when measuring or evaluating her abilities against a set of norms. It is,
Winch reminds us, all too easy to forget the fact that developmentalists are too
anxious to demonstrate what it is that children cannot learn at certain stages, and that
in invoking the metaphor of ‘growth’, not only do they all too often fail to account for
what motivates a child, they also ignore the fact that the very idea is invariably accom-
panied by normative overtones. All of which leaves one at a loss when it comes to
providing criteria by reference to which the spiritually developed child is to be identi-
fied, as well as lending support to the scepticism behind the title of this paper.

Conclusion
Education has always been concerned with trying to answer ‘big questions’ and
rightly so. Such questions, however, are at bottom reducible to the standard fare of a
liberal education in so far as they are scientific, aesthetic, religious, moral, social,
political, economic, psychological, philosophical and the like, without remainder.
Once serious questions are posed in such areas, and teachers are engaged in the laud-
able enterprise of helping young people answer them, the case still needs to be made
for an extra, ‘spiritual’ dimension. Until then we should no more conclude that expe-
riences of awe and wonder, the ability to find meaning or purpose in one’s life, self-
knowledge and understanding, the ability to remain calm in the face of adversity, or
any other of the favoured litanies, should be characterised by reference to the ‘spiri-
tual’, than should we conclude that the resignation felt upon missing the last bus is
‘philosophical’ in any other than a colloquial sense. Or am I missing something?

Notes
1. See Marples, R. (2005).
2. My reasons for scepticism are more fully developed in my article ‘Is religious education possi-
ble?’ (Marples, 1978). Michael Hand is one of many writers on this matter with whom I
would part company. He is, I believe, too sanguine about the possibility of spiritual education
(by which he means an ‘education in the activities of prayer, worship and contemplation’)
taking place without a presupposition of religious belief on the part of the learner, in that he
provides no justification for his claim that children can learn what prayer, worship and reli-
gious contemplation ‘are all about [as well as] different kinds of prayer and different kinds of
 Against ‘spiritual education’ 305

answers to prayer’, nor for his assertion that they can ‘come to an empathetic understanding
of the intense religious feelings that give rise to spontaneous worship, and of the quieter sense
of holiness to which ritual worship gives rise, [as well as being able to] experiment with those
contemplative techniques by which the mystic silences the noise of the world in effort to hear the voice
of God.’ (Hand, 2003, pp. 398–399; emphasis added.) I do not know if he believes that all of
this should be provided in common schools, but Carr is at one with McLaughlin in the appro-
priateness of providing it in faith schools ‘for the offspring of parents who explicitly desire
such initiation for their children’ (1996, p. 176). For an excellent discussion of some of the
confusion surrounding the problems associated with RE from a secular standpoint, see Winch
(1998, Chapter 13).
3. Hemming, J. (1970) Individual morality (London, Panther), and Hutcheson, P. (1994) ‘A
humanist perspective on spirituality’, in Humanist in Canada, Spring.
4. As if this were not confusing enough, Rodger cites Clive Beck’s list of key spiritual characteris-
tics by reference to which we may be said to identify ‘spiritual people’ which are supposedly
‘independent of their embededness and expression within any particular religion or way of life
…’(Rodger, 1996, p. 48). These include: ‘awareness’, ‘breadth of outlook’, ‘a holistic outlook’,
‘integration’, ‘wonder’, ‘gratitude’, ‘hope’, ‘courage’, ‘energy’, ‘detachment’, ‘acceptance’,
‘love’, and ‘gentleness’. If this is not an arbitrary hotchpotch then what is?
5. Although he himself admits, ‘when educational theorists talk about "spiritual development"
they are usually either struggling to take a last dip in the shallows of the ebbing tide of faith, or
engaged in the practice of aggrandising the ordinary, or else doing both at once. The appreci-
ation of art and music and the cultivation of a concern for the feelings of others are worthwhile
educational activities, but their point and value is made less and not more clear by describing
them as parts of “spiritual development”.’ (Haldane, 2003, p. 12).
6. Haldane says: ‘the content of the metaphysical belief must condition the character of the result-
ing demeanour. The Christian will move towards familiar religious practices, and the reductive
physicalist whose metaphysics is not so different from the Old Stoics may’, he continues some-
what mysteriously, ‘wish to explore their spirituality’ (Haldane, 2003, p. 23).
7. Hand is swift to remind us that elsewhere Carr denies that spiritual truths such as those
mentioned are reducible to neither moral truths nor to religious truths. (See Carr, 1995, p. 91.)
8. On some of the complexities involved in the whole notion of forgiveness and its educational
implications see Patricia White’s excellent discussion (White, 2002).
9. See, for example, the National Curriculum Council’s 1993 discussion paper, where the
‘spiritual’ is characterised as ‘having to do with the universal search for individual identity …’
(p. 2). In addition to the capacity to experience awe and wonder and to be moved by beauty
and injustice, the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority in 1996 identified ‘self-
knowledge as having something to do with spiritual development.
10. See, for example Charles Taylor (1989) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1968).

Notes on contributor
Roger Marples is Programme Convener for the undergraduate programme in
Education at Roehampton University. His research interests are in philosophy
of education especially the aims of education.

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