Volume 1
Moral instruction and training in schools : report of an international inquiry / ed., on behalf of the committee, by M. E. Sadler.
- Date:
- 1908
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Moral instruction and training in schools : report of an international inquiry / ed., on behalf of the committee, by M. E. Sadler. Source: Wellcome Collection.
53/608 page 47
![it is their business to do what they can to prevent al] public educational agencies from being employed in ways which inevitably impede the recognition of the spiritual import of science and democracy, and hence of that type of religion which will be the fine flower of the modern spirit’s achievement.” But, so far as Great Britain is concerned, the Committee are impressed by the earnest conviction with which so large a number of the teachers, and especially of the women teachers, both in our elementary and our secondary schools, speak of the power of the religious lessons to inspire a high moral ideal and to touch the springs of conduct. We are assured, by our investigators and by some of those who have given oral evidence, that the withdrawal of the religious lessons from the schools (and in a still higher degree the prohibition of acts of common worship) would be regarded by multitudes of teachers as a calamity, hurtful (as they believe) to the children, in- jurious (as they know) to their own spiritual life. But by evidence not less weighty the Committee are drawn to the further conclusion that the syllabuses of religious instruction should be carefully considered by those in authority and, when necessary, revised, in order that teachers may be enabled and authorised to give more time to definite moral instruction than is now, in many instances, the case. More use (the Committee are per- suaded) might be made of portions of Scripture as texts and themes for lessons in personal and civic duty, and less use should be made of them as exercises in that often too desiccated a thing called “Scripture Knowledge,” good and necessary in itself but sometimes tainted by overmuch regard to examinations, But to procure this improvement it will not be enough to revise the syllabuses. In the course of their inquiry the Committee have had VOL. I. d](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32843409_0001_0053.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
