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The Meaning of 'Spiritual Education'

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The Meaning of 'Spiritual Education'

Michael Hand
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 Oxford Review of Education,
Vol. 29, No. 3, September 2003

The Meaning of ‘Spiritual Education’

MICHAEL HAND

ABSTRACT Because the phrase ‘spiritual education’ does not yet have a normal or
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established use, all the philosopher can offer by way of conceptual clarification is a logical
taxonomy of possible senses of the phrase. In the first part of the paper, I argue that David
Carr’s recent work on the topic leaves many logical stones unturned. In the second part,
I sketch the outline of a more comprehensive analysis.

INTRODUCTION
‘The analytical philosophy of spiritual education’, wrote David Carr in the pages of this
journal in 1995, ‘is still in a state of relative infancy and there is urgent need for
some basic conceptual geography in the field.’ In a series of substantial and thought-
provoking papers over the last eight years, Carr (1994, 1995, 1996a, b, 1999, 2001) has
attempted to meet this need. He has, in my view, been unsuccessful. Whatever else he
may have achieved, he has not furnished us with an accurate map of the logical terrain
occupied by the phrase ‘spiritual education’. In this paper I shall explain what I think
is wrong with Carr’s analysis and make my own attempt on the logical geographical task
he has set before us.
The assumption I share with Carr is that the question of the meaning of ‘spiritual
education’ is one to which the logical geographer has something useful to contribute.
Since this assumption is by no means self-evident, we might profitably begin by exerting
a little pressure on it.
When Ryle coined the metaphor of logical geography, the objects of investigation he
had in mind were those words and phrases we can talk sense with but cannot talk sense
about. He was impressed by the fact that we sometimes find ourselves unable to explain
or define words that we know perfectly well how to use. We are ‘like people who know
their way about their own parish, but cannot construct or read a map of it’ (Ryle, 1949,
p. 9). This is the difficulty St. Augustine famously encountered when he tried to say
what time was (Confessions, Book XI); and it is the difficulty most of us encounter,
suggests Ryle, when we try to explain the language we use to describe ‘the powers,
operations and states of minds’. Logical geography is that form of philosophical analysis
which makes explicit the logical rules governing the use of such troublesome words and
phrases.
Now the problem with which the phrase ‘spiritual education’ presents us does not
seem to be of this kind. It is not a phrase whose definition eludes us despite our
knowing quite well how to use it: it is a phrase we are not sure how to use. As yet,
‘spiritual education’ has no normal or established use, either in ordinary English or in
the professional discourse of education. Decisions have yet to be made about what

ISSN 0305-4985 print; ISSN 1465-3915 online/03/030391-11  2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0305498032000120328
 392 Oxford Review of Education

should be counted as instances of spiritual education. And this does call into question
the value, indeed the very possibility, of subjecting the phrase to logical geographical
analysis. The project of uncovering logical rules obviously presupposes that the rules
are there to be uncovered. Where rules for use have yet to be agreed, there is no terrain
for the logical geographer to map.
It is, however, too hasty to conclude that ‘spiritual education’ is a phrase ungoverned
by logical rules. It is true that we have yet to reach agreement on just what should be
counted as instances of spiritual education; but there are a great many things in the
world which certainly could not be so counted. Our difficulty is not that the phrase
could mean absolutely anything, but that it could mean any one of several things. The
logical restrictions imposed by the conjunction of the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘education’
leave the meaning of the phrase under-specified. We are not sure how to use the phrase
because we find ourselves torn between a range of logically possible senses.
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Therefore the logical geographer does have something to contribute here. What she
has to contribute is not a single, authoritative definition, but a logical taxonomy of the
different ways in which the adjective ‘spiritual’ might qualify the noun ‘education’.
Such a taxonomy, while it would not tell us which sense of ‘spiritual education’ we
ought to adopt in our educational planning and policy-making, would at least make
clear to us what the options are. And this would be a significant step forward.

I
Let us look, then, at the analysis developed by Carr. There is some ambiguity in Carr’s
discussion of the nature of the logical geographical task, but I think he accepts that
‘spiritual education’ does not yet have a normal or established use. His aim is not so
much to say what the phrase means as to say what it might mean, with a view to finding
a sense that would serve an ‘educationally significant or useful purpose’ (Carr, 1995,
p. 85). We may therefore take it that Carr is trying to identify the logical restrictions
imposed by the conjunction of the terms ‘spiritual’ and ‘education’.
The first step of Carr’s analysis is as follows:
The basic problem for understanding the nature of spiritual education … is
that of seeing how what goes by this name may be construed as the promotion
of a specific form of knowledge or understanding (or repertoire of disposi-
tions) which is in some significant sense conceptually separate from (albeit
practically related to) those other forms of knowledge and conduct which it is
the legitimate business of other departments, faculties or functions of the
school to promote. (Carr, 1995, p. 84)
That is to say, the function of the adjective ‘spiritual’ in the phrase ‘spiritual education’
is to pick out a coherent theoretical or practical activity in which pupils might be
educated.
Insofar as this is an attempt to delimit the range of logically possible senses of
‘spiritual education’, it must certainly be rejected. Adjectives qualifying ‘education’
have a variety of functions, only one of which is to identify activities in which pupils
might be educated. This is not, for example, the function of the adjectives in such
phrases as ‘formal education’, ‘comprehensive education’, ‘personal education’ and
‘social education’. We can use ‘spiritual education’ in the way Carr describes, but we
are by no means logically obliged to do so.
But perhaps the restriction Carr imposes on the use of ‘spiritual education’ is not
 The Meaning of ‘Spiritual Education’ 393

intended as a piece of logical geographical analysis. It may be that he considers there

to be practical reasons, rather than logical ones, for confining his attention to a
particular subclass of possible uses of the phrase. There are certainly some uses he
wants to rule out from the start on the grounds that they are not conducive to the
development of ‘anything like a coherent practical policy or programme’ (p. 85). It is,
he thinks, unhelpful rather than incorrect to interpret ‘spiritual education’ as the
cultivation of religious faith, or the promotion of ‘vague feelings of awe and wonder in
relation to everything under the sun’ (p. 85). Carr’s contention that ‘spiritual edu-
cation’ is education in a specific form of knowledge or conduct may be a practical
recommendation designed to exclude these unhelpful interpretations.
If so, the recommendation is a poor one. In the first place, it is plainly premature to
be ruling out possible senses on practical grounds at this stage of the analysis. If the
philosopher has anything useful to contribute to the debate on spiritual education, it is
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to insist that practical decisions about how the phrase should be used are postponed
until we are reasonably clear about how it could be used. In the second place, Carr’s
supposition that an interpretation is unhelpful because the educational process it
describes is undesirable is false. We need ways of describing educational processes we
wish to prohibit as well as those we wish to promote. Indeed, Carr himself goes on to
advocate the use of ‘spiritual education’ to describe an educational process he considers
unsuitable for the common school. And in the third place, Carr’s imposed restriction
excludes a great many more interpretations than the two he identifies as being
unhelpful, at least some of which look as though they might be of interest to practi-
tioners and policy-makers.
Whether it is intended as logical description or practical prescription, the first step of
Carr’s analysis will not pass muster. But let us set aside our misgivings for a moment
and move on to consider his second step. Having stipulated that ‘spiritual education’
means education in a spiritual activity, Carr sets about identifying activities appropri-
ately described as ‘spiritual’. He succeeds in identifying two such activities, one
theoretical and one practical. (Carr prefers to speak of one activity with ‘both a
theoretical and a practical aspect’ (p. 90), but since each aspect can readily be pursued
in isolation from the other, it seems preferable to treat them as separate activities.) He
concludes that these two activities furnish spiritual education with ‘a definite content
and a basis upon which to go to work’ (p. 93), and moves on to consider how they
might be incorporated into the curriculum.
But here we encounter the same difficulty as before. Does Carr suppose that these
are the only two activities appropriately described as ‘spiritual’, that he has exhausted
the range of logical possibilities? Or is he making a recommendation, to the effect that
these spiritual activities, rather than any others, should form the content of spiritual
education? If the former, he is mistaken; if the latter, his recommendation stands in
need of a justification he does not provide.
The first of the spiritual activities identified by Carr is inquiry into spiritual truth, by
which he means inquiry into the truth or falsity of spiritual propositions. He declines to
provide us with a general account of what he takes spiritual propositions to be, opting
instead to illustrate their character through a series of examples. The examples he offers
are as follows:

What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
Man does not live by bread alone.
No man can serve two masters.
 394 Oxford Review of Education

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Of these five ‘propositions’, one is an interrogative and another an imperative. Carr

does not comment on this oddity, but it is perhaps clear enough how the offending
sentences might be recast in indicative form.
What is less clear is just what these five propositions are supposed to have in
common, in virtue of which they are to be counted as spiritual. Carr’s most illuminating
remarks on this point are to be found in his 1994 paper ‘Knowledge and truth in
Religious Education’. Here he tries to unpack the meaning of the rhetorical question
‘What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?’. The point of this
question, he says, is:

… to draw our attention to all those cases, familiar to us from our common
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experience of life, of men who have tried to gain the world and who have
thereby lost their souls—people who have precisely failed to achieve a proper
moral and spiritual relationship with God and their neighbours due to a single
minded, ruthless and blinkered pursuit of material wealth or power. In short,
whether or not we do so will it that we should put the salvation of our souls
before the pursuit of mammon, it is a plain spiritual fact that our souls will
suffer and fail to flourish if we neglect the truth of such observations. (Carr,
1994, p. 231)

I think we can infer from this passage two necessary and sufficient criteria of spiritual
propositions. First, they are propositions about the conditions of human flourishing;
which is to say that they are moral propositions, in the older and broader sense of that
term. Second, they are propositions that make implicit or explicit reference to a divine
being or purpose; which is to say that they are religious propositions. The rhetorical
question ‘What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?’, as
interpreted by Carr, counts as a spiritual proposition because it is concerned with the
conditions of human flourishing and makes implicit reference to a proper relationship
with God. Spiritual propositions, then, are religious moral propositions.
Against this interpretation of what Carr takes spiritual propositions to be stand his
explicit denials that they are either moral or religious. They do not, he says, belong to
‘the category of moral judgments or prescriptions’ (Carr, 1995, p. 91), and nor do they
‘express articles of religious faith’ (p. 91). These rather mystifying denials are quite at
odds with the import of his example propositions.
The denial that spiritual propositions belong to the category of moral judgments
becomes intelligible if we assume that Carr is here using the term ‘moral’ in one of its
modern, narrower senses. If, for example, one takes the view that moral judgments are
by definition prescriptive, it is clear that descriptive propositions about the conditions
of human flourishing are excluded. Again, if one restricts the scope of morality to
this-worldly aspects of human flourishing, claims about other-worldly aspects will have
to be classified under a different heading. It is perhaps only from these narrow accounts
of morality that Carr wishes to dissociate spiritual propositions. He objects to Jim
Mackenzie’s description of one of his example propositions as ‘a commonplace of moral
decision-making’ only because he imputes to Mackenzie the view that morality is ‘a
secular system of rights and duties ultimately grounded in notions of interpersonal and
social interest’ (Carr, 1999, p. 457). If instead Mackenzie favoured ‘a virtue ethics of
the sort which has lately come to be identified with ‘thick’ communitarian or ‘eudae-
 The Meaning of ‘Spiritual Education’ 395

monistic’ grand narratives of a sometimes religious or transcendental character’

(p. 457), there would presumably be nothing much wrong with his description.
The denial that spiritual propositions are articles of religious faith is harder to
fathom. Carr states quite clearly that ‘spiritual values’ are ‘focused upon those aspects
of human experience which look beyond the material and mundane towards what is
immutable, eternal, infinite, invisible and immortal’ (Carr, 1995, p. 89). Neither
Marxist nor humanist claims about the conditions of human flourishing can be
regarded as spiritual because ‘in concentrating exclusively on the things which pass
away rather than the word of God which endureth forever, they are not focused on
transcendent or spiritual experiences in any relevant sense’ (p. 90). It is difficult to see
how propositions pertaining to the connection between human flourishing and atten-
tion to the transcendent, or right relationship with God, could be anything other than
articles of religious faith.
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If spiritual propositions are religious moral propositions, it will be clear that the
theoretical activity of inquiry into spiritual truth is one with a strong academic pedigree.
It is the activity better known to us as moral theology or religious ethics. Education in
this activity is an essential part of any adequate educational programme in either
religious studies or ethics. A person would not be properly educated in religious studies
had she not examined the implications of religious truth-claims for conceptions of the
flourishing life; nor in ethics had she not studied those ethical theories underpinned by
religious belief.
All the more surprising, then, that Carr himself considers inquiry into spiritual truth
to be unsuitable for inclusion in the curriculum of the common school. His argument
seems to be a psychological one, to the effect that young children need to hone their
investigative skills on the spiritual truth-claims of just one religious tradition before they
can cope with the bewildering diversity of spiritual propositions across the spectrum of
world religions. He draws an analogy with the learning of natural languages: children
need to acquire fluency in a first language, he suggests, before they can cope with a
second or third (Carr, 1996a, p. 175). This analogy is doubly unpersuasive: first
because there are in fact children who acquire fluency in their first and second
languages more or less simultaneously, and second because the resemblance between
fluency in natural languages and competence in spiritual inquiry is not very close. But
even if Carr’s psychological argument were sound, it is not clear why it would
constitute a barrier to the teaching of spiritual inquiry in the common school. If, to
avoid confusing pupils, it is necessary in the early stages to focus on the spiritual
truth-claims of just one religious tradition, so be it. This would only be objectionable
if it were intended or anticipated that such an initial focus would dispose pupils
to a non-rational acceptance of the claims of the selected tradition, or to a closed-
mindedness about the claims of other traditions. But Carr explicitly and repeatedly
denies that education in spiritual inquiry involves this sort of confessional or indoctrina-
tory teaching.
The second of the two spiritual activities identified by Carr is more straightforward.
It is the practical activity of cultivating spiritual virtues. By ‘spiritual virtues’ Carr
means those dispositions whose contribution to human flourishing can only be under-
stood with reference to a divine being or purpose. There are some virtues (e.g. justice,
prudence, temperance and fortitude) which are likely to feature in any reasonable
conception of human flourishing, religious or secular; but there are others (e.g. faith,
hope and charity, abstinence, chastity and forgiveness) which arguably only make sense
in the context of some form of religious faith. As Carr has it, ‘what precisely distin-
 396 Oxford Review of Education

guishes the theological from the cardinal virtues, I think, is that whereas the latter
would appear to be focused primarily on the temporal or sub-lunar sphere of conven-
tional human morality, the former are evidently orientated towards the extra-mundane
dimension of human aspiration to what lies beyond the purely temporal’ (Carr, 1995,
p. 92).
Again, it is difficult to see why Carr considers the practical activity of cultivating
spiritual virtues to be unsuitable for inclusion in the curriculum of the common school.
Plainly, teachers in the common school have no mandate to instill spiritual virtues in
pupils. But there is nothing obviously objectionable about equipping pupils with the
ability to cultivate spiritual virtues in themselves should they so desire. On the contrary,
it seems positively desirable that pupils should come to understand the aims and
procedures of this activity, and its role in the lives of those who choose to participate
in it.
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On one level, then, Carr underestimates his own achievement. He supposes himself
to have supplied spiritual education with ‘a definite content and a basis upon which to
go to work’ (Carr, 1995, p. 93), but at the price of putting it out of bounds to the
common school. In fact, I have argued, no such price has been paid. The ‘definite
content’ Carr suggests can properly be taught in faith schools and common schools
alike.
At a more basic level, though, Carr signally fails to do what he sets out to do: namely,
to provide a logical geographical analysis of ‘spiritual education’. One looks in vain
through his papers for a systematic exploration of the logically possible senses of that
phrase. Instead what one finds 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’.

II
Let us, therefore, go back to the drawing board and broach the task afresh. What the
logical geographer has to contribute to the question of the meaning of ‘spiritual
education’, we have said, is a logical taxonomy of the different ways in which the
adjective ‘spiritual’ might qualify the noun ‘education’. We can construct such a
taxonomy, I suggest, on the basis of the following broad distinctions.
First, the adjective ‘spiritual’ might qualify the noun ‘education’ either by identifying
a part or aspect of education, or by identifying an approach to education as a whole. It
has been widely assumed in recent debate that it serves the former function, but there
is no logical reason why it should not serve the latter, why ‘spiritual education’ should
not mean education spiritually conceived, or education based on spiritual principles. So
interpreted, it would stand in counterpoise to such phrases as ‘liberal education’ and
‘secular education’, rather than such phrases as ‘religious education’ and ‘moral
education’.
Second, if the adjective ‘spiritual’ identifies a part or aspect of education, there are
two kinds of part or aspect it might identify. A part of education can be defined either
by its content, by the area of the curriculum being taught, or by its object, by the faculty
of the learner being educated. We distinguish between teaching mathematics and
teaching English; but we also distinguish between educating hearts and educating
minds. ‘Spiritual education’ could mean education in some spiritual content or edu-
cation of the human spirit.
And third, if the adjective ‘spiritual’ identifies a part of education defined by its
 The Meaning of ‘Spiritual Education’ 397

content, the content in question may be of two kinds. Pupils may be educated in either
activities or dispositions. To learn a fact, concept, method of inquiry or body of
knowledge, or to master a practical skill or technique, is to acquire a degree of
competence in a theoretical or practical activity; to learn a virtue, habit, inclination or
character trait is to acquire a disposition. An item of educational content may be
something pupils learn how to do or something they learn to be. The adjective
‘spiritual’ could pick out content of either kind.
These three distinctions yield a logical taxonomy with four basic categories. The
phrase ‘spiritual education’ could mean: (i) education based on spiritual principles; (ii)
education of the human spirit; (iii) education in a spiritual activity; or (iv) education in
a spiritual disposition. None of the distinctions we have drawn is logically exhaustive,
so there is scope for the identification of further categories should they prove necessary.
But the tangle of semantic impulses we feel when confronted by the phrase ‘spiritual
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education’ can, I think, be largely resolved into these four categories.

Each category represents a subclass of possible senses of ‘spiritual education’. There
are various activities, dispositions and kinds of principle that might be described as
‘spiritual’, and various accounts of what is meant by ‘the human spirit’. It is beyond the
scope of the present paper to describe all the possible senses within each category. It
will, however, be helpful to put some flesh on our taxonomic bones, and to that end I
shall describe what I take to be the most obvious or natural possible sense in each
category.
Our first category, then, is education based on spiritual principles. Here, I suggest,
the adjective ‘spiritual’ is most readily construed as a synonym of ‘religious’. It is true
that there are some contexts in which we use these terms to mark important distinc-
tions; but there are many others in which they are interchangeable. To describe a
principle as either ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ is ordinarily to indicate that it is derived from
religious teaching, or makes implicit or explicit reference to a divine being or purpose.
It will not be disputed, I hope, that it makes sense to talk of different approaches to
education. If it was ever thought that the criteria of the concept of education were so
stringent as to answer all our questions about what to teach, by what methods, and
under what institutional arrangements, such a view would find few supporters today.
One cannot put a child through just any programme of instruction and claim to have
given her an education; but the range of instructional programmes which do fall within
the conceptual boundaries of education is extensive. To make decisions about edu-
cation which are not made for us by the meaning of the word, we need a set of
principles derived from elsewhere. One’s approach to education is determined by the
set of decision-making principles one adopts.
One of the places from which such principles can be derived is religion. Religious
traditions typically include either sets of divine commandments or substantial concep-
tions of human flourishing with implied principles of conduct. It is possible to apply
such commandments or principles to questions about curriculum content, teaching
methods and institutional arrangements in education. Where educational questions are
approached in this way, we might plausibly speak of education based on spiritual
principles.
The second category in our taxonomy is education of the human spirit. Here we are
interested in those senses of the word ‘spirit’ that pick out educable parts of persons.
In the widest of these senses, ‘spirit’ is synonymous with ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ in their
widest senses, and covers all those properties of persons that are not shared by
inanimate material objects. But this wide sense is not quite what we want, for it picks
 398 Oxford Review of Education

out the educable part of persons rather than one educable part among others. On this
definition, all education is education of the spirit. What we are looking for is a narrower
sense of ‘spirit’ whereby it identifies only a part of the soul.
In fact, both ‘spirit’ and ‘mind’ have such narrower senses in ordinary English. The
parts of the soul they respectively identify can be brought to light by considering the
difference between saying of someone that she has a good mind and saying that she has
a good spirit. In the first case we are making an assessment of her intelligence, of her
ability to exercise reason or acquire and apply knowledge; in the second, we are making
an assessment of her character. A person with a good spirit is one who is honourable or
decent, whose motives are sound, whose heart is in the right place. She has the right
sort of aims and ambitions, even if she lacks the intelligence to realise them. The
distinction shows up clearly in the kind of adjectival company ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’
habitually keep: minds are quick or slow, sharp or dull, penetrating or plodding; spirits
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are generous or mean, proud or humble, brave or timid. In this narrower sense, then,
the spirit is the seat of the virtues and vices, of the passions, emotions and desires.
When a person retains her dignity and integrity in the face of overwhelming adversity,
we speak of a triumph of the spirit; when she loses the will to live, or her desires are
irrecoverably suppressed, we say that her spirit is crushed or broken.
The use of the word ‘spirit’ to refer to the passional part of the soul has roots
stretching as far back as Plato. In Chapter XIII of the Republic, Plato identifies the spirit
as one of two non-rational elements of the soul. The spirit is the seat of the emotions
or passions, while the appetite houses such primal urges as hunger, thirst and sexual
desire. The two non-rational elements operate under the governance of reason in the
‘just’ or well-ordered soul. In a striking image from the Phaedrus, Plato likens the spirit
and the appetite to a pair of great winged stallions, and reason to the charioteer who
struggles to rein them in.
On this interpretation, a call for spiritual education would be a call for educational
attention to the heart as well as the head. It would be an assertion that our responsibil-
ities as educators extend beyond the transmission of knowledge and understanding to
the firing of passions and the shaping of character. Whether or not we ought to accept
this assertion is open to question; but it is at least tolerably clear what it amounts to.
Our third category is education in a spiritual activity. As we have seen, this is the
category favoured by Carr, who identifies two spiritual activities in which pupils might
be educated. Both the activities he identifies are coherent and, contrary to his own
estimation, suitable for inclusion in the curriculum of the common school. However,
they are by no means the first activities the adjective ‘spiritual’ brings to mind.
The activities we most naturally think of as spiritual, I think, are those devotional and
meditative activities by which human beings seek fellowship, communion or personal
relationship with the divine. We think of the various ways in which the believer reaches
out to her god, or brings herself into his presence, or focuses her attention upon him.
We think, that is to say, of those activities which constitute the arena of spirituality. The
possible sense of ‘spiritual education’ that strikes us with most force in this category is
education in the activities of prayer, worship and religious contemplation.
Education in these activities does not presuppose religious belief on the part of the
learner. It is true that pupils who do not hold religious beliefs cannot sincerely
participate in prayer, worship or religious contemplation; but they can learn what these
activities are all about, how they are conducted and why they are important to believers.
They can learn about different kinds of prayer and different kinds of answers to prayer.
They can come to an empathetic understanding of the intense religious feelings that
 The Meaning of ‘Spiritual Education’ 399

give rise to spontaneous worship, and of the quieter sense of holiness to which ritual
worship gives rise. And they can experiment with those contemplative techniques by
which the mystic silences the noise of the world in an effort to hear the voice of God.
It is perhaps worth saying a few words in passing about the relationship between
spirituality and religion. If we take a person’s spirituality to consist in the various ways
in which she seeks contact or communion with the divine or transcendent, it is clear
that having a spirituality entails having a religion. However narrowly one chooses to
define ‘religion’, it is difficult to imagine any plausible set of criteria that would not be
satisfied by a person who both believed in the existence of a divine or transcendent
being and actively sought communion with that being. Admittedly, it has become
commonplace in recent years to find people professing to have a spirituality but not a
religion; but it seems likely that what is actually being rejected by those who make such
professions is organised religion. Such people hold religious beliefs, but not on the
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authority of a sacred text or ecclesiastical institution; they worship, but not according
to a predetermined pattern of ritual or liturgy. If this is their position, it is quite
coherent: spirituality is as much at home in idiosyncratic forms of religion as in
organised ones.
If having a spirituality entails having a religion, the reverse may not be true. It is
perhaps possible to imagine forms of religion in which spirituality plays no part. A
person who believed in a god and strove to obey his commandments as laid down in
a sacred text, but made no attempt to seek communion or fellowship with her god,
could presumably be said to have a religion but not a spirituality. Be that as it may, it
is doubtful that there are any actual religions, organised or idiosyncratic, that are not
centrally focused on some form of prayer, worship or contemplation. Insofar as a god
is thought to desire fellowship with, and not merely obedience from, human beings,
those who believe in him can hardly fail to take an interest in spirituality.
The fourth and final category in our taxonomy is education in a spiritual disposition.
What are the inclinations, habits or character traits we are tempted to describe as
‘spiritual’? Carr suggests, plausibly enough, the theological virtues, those virtues whose
contribution to human flourishing can only be understood with reference to a divine
being or purpose. The disposition I should like to consider here, though, is the one we
identify when we describe people as ‘spiritual’.
In what I take to be the prevalent sense of the term, to describe a person as ‘spiritual’
is to ascribe to her a certain serenity or equanimity. It is to observe that she is, to an
unusual extent, detached from the pressures and anxieties that normally attend every-
day life, that she is somehow in the world but not of it. The spiritual person is
reconciled to her lot; she is not grasping or ambitious or demanding. She seems to
derive her strength and security not from her success, or her wealth, or her relationships
with other people, but from some invisible, transcendent source, a source so powerful
and enduring as to render her immune, or at least less vulnerable, to the slings and
arrows of worldly fortune. If this is what is meant by ‘being spiritual’, a person in whom
this quality has been deliberately cultivated could reasonably be described as ‘spiritually
educated’.
This completes our sketch map of the logical terrain occupied by the phrase ‘spiritual
education’. If the four categories of our logical taxonomy exhibit the general shape of
the landscape, the particular possible senses just described represent its principal
landmarks. I am aware that a great deal of cartographic detail remains to be added. But
it may be that enough has been said about what ‘spiritual education’ could mean to form
the basis of a rational debate about what it should mean.
 400 Oxford Review of Education

To this latter debate, the philosopher of education has no special expertise to

contribute. Once the logical options have been clearly set out, the only rational criterion
for choosing between them is usefulness to the educational community; and the sense
of an ambiguous word or phrase that is most useful to the educational community
depends entirely on what the members of that community want to say. Plainly this is
something to which the philosopher of education has no privileged access.
Nevertheless, I shall, by way of conclusion, risk venturing an opinion on this matter.
I suggest that a new term is particularly likely to be found useful by the educational
community when it identifies an educational process that is: (i) compatible with the
aims of the common school; and (ii) distinct from the established curriculum subjects.
Such an educational process may or may not be desirable; but the question of its
desirability will be a live one, for it is neither excluded by the nature of common
schooling nor part of the existing curriculum. It is a serious candidate for inclusion in
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the curriculum, and therefore the sort of thing to which the educational community is
likely to want to refer. If one of the senses of ‘spiritual education’ we have considered
meets these criteria, there is at least a prima facie case for preferring it to the others.
The first and last of our senses must be ruled out on the grounds of incompatibility
with the aims of the common school. The education offered by the common school is
precisely not an education based on religious or spiritual principles. It is an education
based on a principle of neutrality with regard to religious beliefs and substantial
conceptions of human flourishing. Similarly, because of this principle of neutrality, the
curriculum of the common school cannot include the cultivation of dispositions that
depend on religious belief. While the disposition of being spiritual may not be logically
dependent on belief in a transcendent source of strength and security (insofar as there
may not be a belief criterion for the ascription of the disposition), it does seem to be
psychologically dependent on such belief. It is difficult to see how one could attain the
required degree of serenity and detachment from the world unless one had in fact come
to believe and invest one’s trust in a divine or transcendent being. Since, in the
common school, we can neither assume the possession of such beliefs nor justifiably
instill them, we are not in a position to teach pupils to be spiritual.
Our third sense of ‘spiritual education’ must be also be rejected, on the grounds that
the process it describes is not sufficiently distinct from the established curriculum
subjects. For education in the activities of prayer, worship and religious contemplation
is an integral part of any adequate programme of Religious Education. There is simply
no need for a separate term for education in spirituality. The same objection applies to
the sense of ‘spiritual education’ proposed by Carr. The activities of inquiry into
spiritual truth and the cultivation of spiritual virtues are ordinary religious activities that
naturally belong under the curriculum heading of Religious Education.
Only our second sense, education of the human spirit, satisfies both criteria of
usefulness to the educational community. Serious educational attention to the affective
domain is neither obviously precluded by the aims of the common school nor properly
catered for by the established curriculum subjects. It is therefore an area of teaching
and learning that has a rightful place on the agenda of current educational debate.
It is worth noting that this sense of ‘spiritual education’ suggests a promising, parallel
interpretation of the phrase ‘spiritual development’, as found in the 1988 Education
Reform Act. According to the Act, ‘the curriculum of a maintained school must
promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils’
(HMSO, 1988). If spiritual development is interpreted as development of the passional
part of the soul, it forms a natural complement to mental and physical development.
 The Meaning of ‘Spiritual Education’ 401

The Act may be seen as charging schools with responsibility for nurturing bodies,
minds and spirits, or limbs, heads and hearts. While some members of the educational
community might still want to challenge the statutory obligation to promote the
spiritual development of pupils, it is at least, on this interpretation, an obligation worth
talking about.

REFERENCES
AUGUSTINE Confessions, Edition trans. CHADWICK, H. (1991) (Oxford, Oxford Univer-
sity Press).
CARR, D. (1994) Knowledge and truth in religious education, Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 28, 2, pp. 221–238.
CARR, D. (1995) Towards a distinctive conception of spiritual education, Oxford
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Review of Education, 21, 1, pp. 83–98.

CARR, D. (1996a) Rival conceptions of spiritual education, Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 30, 2, pp. 159–178.
CARR, D. (1996b) Songs of immanence and transcendence: a rejoinder to Blake, Oxford
Review of Education, 22, 4, pp. 457–463.
CARR, D. (1999) Spiritual language and the ethics of redemption: a reply to Jim
Mackenzie, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 33, 3, pp. 451–461.
CARR, D. (2001) The protean spirit of Jeff Lewis, Oxford Review of Education, 27, 1,
pp. 151–163.
HMSO (1988) Education Reform Act (London, HMSO).
PLATO, Phaedrus. Edition trans. JOWETT, B. (1970) The Dialogues of Plato (Vol. 2)
(London, Sphere).
PLATO, Republic. Edition trans. CORNFORD, F.M. (1941) (Oxford, Clarendon Press).
RYLE, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind (1990 edition) (Harmondsworth, Penguin).

Correspondence: Dr Michael Hand, Institute of Education, University of London, 20

Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK. E-mail: m.hand@ioe.ac.uk
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