Professional Documents
Culture Documents
for Living
Education and young people’s
search for meaning, identity
and spirituality. A handbook.
ACER Press
First published 2006
by ACER Press
Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd
19 Prospect Hill Road, Camberwell, Victoria, 3124
All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Copyright Act
1968 of Australia and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publishers.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
For tertiary students.
ISBN 9780864316134.
ISBN 0 86431 613 5.
370.114
Contents–Summary
Part 1
Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality 1
1 Reasons for living: Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality 3
Part 2
Meaning, identity and spirituality: Analysing the constructs for educational purposes 21
iii
iv Contents – Summary
Part 3
Implications for public education: The spiritual and moral dimension to the school
curriculum 241
11 The spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum: The evolution in personal development
aims for Australian education 243
12 Expectations of schools for promoting the spiritual and moral development of young people 255
13 Links between education, personal change and personal learning 277
14 From theory to practice: Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school
curriculum 299
15 The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development:
An educational exploration 322
P a r t 4
Implications for religious education in independent schools (with special reference to
Catholic schools) 369
P a r t 5
Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses in Australian schools 441
Bibliography 481
Index 512
Contents
Part 1
Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality 1
1 Reasons for living: Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity
and spirituality 3
Part 2
Meaning, identity and spirituality: Analysing the constructs for educational purposes 21
vi Contents
S tr u ct u re and f u nction
2.9.1 Meaning as personal explanatory theory or interpretation 32
2.9.2 Meaning as personal motivation 32
2.9.3 Meaning as the justification of thinking and behaviour 32
2.9.4 Articulated personal meaning and expressions of meaning 33
2.9.5 Implied personal meaning 34
2.9.6 Emotional meaning 35
2.9.7 Imagination and intuition: Their contribution to meaning 35
C omponents to meaning
2.9.8 Structural components of meaning 36
2.9.9 Meaning as a set of values 37
2.9.10 Meaning as beliefs 37
2.9.11 Religious beliefs 37
2.9.12 Ultimate meaning 37
2.9.13 Meaning through religion 38
2.9.14 Meaning through prayer 39
2.9.15 Meaning as life goals 39
2.9.16 Meaning as a set of ideals and hopes 40
2.9.17 Narrative structure to meaning; personal meaning as a ‘master story’, and as
personal myths 40
2.9.18 Meaning as the point of intersection between understanding and emotion 41
O ther f u nctions
2.9.19 Meaning as a coping mechanism 42
2.9.20 The contribution of meaning to wellbeing and resilience 42
2.9.21 Meaning as ‘psychic moorings’ 43
2.9.22 Meaning as the ‘fall back position’ – inner resources 44
2.9.23 Meaning as interpretation of the world outside 44
3 The psychological development of meaning and issues related to change and development
in meaning 61
5.1 What is understood by identity: How the construct is used in contemporary discourse 89
5.2 The emotional substrate to identity 91
5.3 Dimensions to personal identity 92
5.4 Personal and group identities 94
5.5 Projective and defensive functions of identity 94
5.6 Identity issues 94
5.6.1 Identity and status anxiety 95
5.6.2 Identity relationships with religion 96
5.6.3 Identity, conflict and violence in the Australian context and internationally 97
5.6.4 Identity and terrorism 98
5.6.5 Identity relationships with the non-human world 100
5.6.6 Homo economicus: The rise and rise of economic identity 101
5.6.7 Relationships between media, the state and national identity 103
7 Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 129
8.1 Developments in the meaning of the word ‘spirituality’: An evaluative perspective 173
8.2 Historical notes on religious spirituality in the Australian Catholic Christian tradition since the
1960s 173
8.3 Key aspects of a religious spirituality 177
8.4 Distinctions between the ‘religious’ and the ‘spiritual’: Issues for what constitutes
spirituality 179
8.4.1 Secularisation and distinctions between religious and spiritual language 180
8.4.2 Privatisation of religion 180
8.4.3 Public rituals and private devotion (external observance and the personal) 181
8.4.4 Contemporary emphasis on experience (implications for personal autonomy and
religious authority) 181
8.4.5 Meeting spiritual needs; spirituality as a consumer commodity 181
8.4.6 Scientific rationalism and modern religious studies 181
8.4.7 Postmodern views of religion 182
8.5 Further consideration of issues related to the nature of spirituality 185
8.5.1 Spirituality, belief in God, and belief in a transcendent dimension to human life 185
Contents
8.5.2 The need for a new, non-religious language for addressing spiritual-moral issues
in the public domain 186
8.5.3 Non-religious spiritualities 187
8.5.4 A new spiritual awakening? A resurgence of religion? 188
8.5.5 Secularisation and spirituality 189
8.5.6 Spirituality and cultural postmodernity 191
8.5.7 Consumer spirituality 193
8.5.8 Dimensions of emotion, imagination and the aesthetic in spirituality 195
8.5.9 A style spectrum of spiritualities 196
8.5.10 Values in education, values/moral education and the spiritual-moral dimension
to education 198
8.6 Healthy spirituality: Criteria for the identification and evaluation of spirituality 198
Part 3
Implications for public education: The spiritual and moral dimension to the school
curriculum 241
11 The spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum: The evolution in personal
development aims for Australian education 243
12 Expectations of schools for promoting the spiritual and moral development of young people 255
12.1 Parental expectations of the school’s role in promoting young people’s spiritual and moral
development 256
12.2 Expectation of schools to ‘teach’ values: Letter by the Commonwealth Minister for Education 258
12.3 Further consideration of public expectations of schools 259
12.3.1 Contrasting the expectations of parents, students and teachers 259
12.3.2 Community expectations of schools 260
12.3.3 Parental and business expectations of schooling 261
12.4 Conflict of expectations of the role for schools 263
12.5 Expectations for personal change in students: From various educative themes and theories
in educational discourse 264
12.5.1 Issue-related educative themes 264
Education and the construction of knowledge and meaning 264
Power, political meaning, ideology and cultural hegemony: Education for
empowerment 265
Education for critical consciousness and emancipation 266
Critical theory and critical pedagogy 267
Cultural agency 267
Summary 268
12.5.2 Learning and pedagogical theories: Constructivist learning; multiple intelligences;
emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence; brain-based learning; right brain/
left brain learning; de Bono’s six thinking hats; DEEP pedagogical framework 269
12.5.3 The future of schooling themes: Theory about the future of schooling and the
needs of 21st century learners 271
Spiritual and moral dimension 272
Construction of meaning 272
Education and the critical evaluation of cultural meanings 273
Meaning, identity and spirituality 273
Personal and social transformation 273
12.6 Conclusion 274
12.6.1 The need for a workable conceptualisation of the spiritual-moral dimension to the
school curriculum 274
12.6.2 The influence of schooling on young people’s spiritual and moral development 275
13.1 The notion of education for personal change: Personal learning and the classification of
educational aims as cognitive and affective 278
13.2 The components or building blocks for personal change 279
13.3 Personal change processes: Influences on the various dimensions to personal development 280
13.4 The selection of personal change processes that are considered ethically acceptable for the
classroom 280
13.5 Personal change, personal learning and personal teaching 283
13.6 Students’ freedom of inquiry and issue-oriented pedagogy 286
13.7 A rational ‘contextual emphasis’ to personal learning in the classroom 289
13.8 How the imagination is involved in personal change and personal learning in the classroom 291
Contents xiii
13.9 Articulating spiritual and moral outcomes for students, and the assessment of such
outcomes 292
13.10 Socialisation and education: Contrasting social processes for the development of beliefs,
values and attitudes 293
13.11 The place for teachers’ own views and commitments in the teaching and learning process 293
13.11.1 Accountability and safeguards in teaching about controversial issues 294
13.11.2 Institutional endorsement for teaching about values-related topics 294
13.11.3 Teacher confidence in handling controversial issues 294
13.11.4 Pedagogy in teaching about beliefs and values 295
13.11.5 Debate about value-neutrality in public education 295
14 From theory to practice: Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school
curriculum 299
14.1 The problematic gap between personal aims for education and practice 301
14.2 The place for ‘spiritual experience’ in the curriculum 303
14.3 Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 304
14.3.1 Explicit approach to the spiritual-moral dimension of the school curriculum 305
1A Whole-subject mode: The need for a school subject for direct study of
spiritual-moral questions 306
School structures and the ‘psychology of the learning environment’:
Subverting the personal subjects in the curriculum 307
1B Parts of study units: Studying spiritual and moral questions as parts of units
of work 310
14.3.2 Contextual approach: Acknowledging and addressing spiritual-moral issues where
they arise in across-the-curriculum studies 310
Principles considered important for teaching about spiritual and moral issues 311
14.3.3 General skills and consciousness-raising: The overall contribution of the curriculum
to personal learning skills 312
14.4 Extending the conceptualisation: Locating and interpreting themes concerned with education
for personal change 316
14.5 Conclusion 319
15 The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral
development: An educational exploration 322
15.1 Introducing the problem: How to investigate a complex question like the spiritual-moral
influence of film and television 323
15.2 Story: A central concept for contextualising the spiritual-moral influence of film and television 324
15.3 Theorising about the spiritual and moral influence of film and television 324
15.4 The intended spiritual and moral influence of propaganda film 327
15.5 The educational function of documentary film 329
15.5.1 Objectivity, impartiality and advocacy in documentaries: The potential of
documentaries for bringing about personal change 330
15.5.2 Objectivity, impartiality and the making of an advocacy film 330
15.5.3 Documentaries, feature films and mythology: General Custer – the legend versus
the truth 330
xiv Contents
15.5.4 The ‘voice of God’ documentary: The ‘truth’ from the perspective of hindsight 332
15.5.5 Cinéma vérité (Cinema truth) documentary 333
15.5.6 Documentaries and critical social consciousness: Educational implications 333
15.5.7 The contrast between propaganda and documentary films 334
15.5.8 Concluding comment on the educational significance of documentary film 336
15.6 Commercial feature films and television: Their potential for influencing the meaning,
identity and spirituality of young people 336
15.7 Sequence: Analysis of possible mechanisms through which film/television may affect
spiritual and moral development 337
15.7.1 Relationships with documentary and propaganda film 338
15.7.2 The storytelling role of films and television: Emotional engagement of the viewer 338
15.7.3 Identifying and evaluating the spiritual dimension to life as portrayed in film and
television 339
15.7.4 Osmosis of values from films and television? 341
15.7.5 The ‘social reality’ of film and television and ‘reality television’ 342
15.7.6 Meeting viewer needs and interests 347
15.7.7 Escapism and idealism through virtual journeys 347
15.7.8 The film as fable: Communicating moral messages 347
15.7.9 Television drama and sitcoms as 21st century morality plays 347
15.7.10 Film/television and the imagination: Learning through imaginative identification and
imaginative rehearsal 348
15.7.11 Story and imagination: The role of film/television in enhancing and diminishing
the imagination 349
15.7.12 Media orchestrated imaginations: How film/television can affect behaviour and
personal development 349
15.7.13 Film and television as sources of images, stereotypes and myths 350
15.7.14 Role modelling: Film heroes and heroines 351
15.7.15 The sensitivity of children to implicit messages in the media 353
15.7.16 Action films: ‘Cinematic adrenalin’ and the potential relationship between film
violence and violent behaviour 353
15.7.17 The ‘evangelising’ purpose of particular film directors 355
15.7.18 An example film study illustrating issues in spirituality and identity 355
15.8 The culture of television: Its significance for the teaching and learning environment of the
school 357
15.9 Cultural agency: Action based on critical reflection on the potential personal influence
of media 359
15.10 The potential spiritual and moral influence of television advertising 360
15.10.1 Image and imagination: Retail links with the subconscious 361
15.10.2 Retail seduction: Some perspective on advertising psychology and market
research 361
15.10.3 The culture of advertising 363
15.10.4 Retail identity 364
15.10.5 Television commercials and the projection of images of unattainable perfection 364
15.10.6 The ethics of television advertising 364
15.11 Conclusion 366
Contents xv
Part 4
Implications for religious education in independent schools
(with special reference to Catholic schools) 369
16.1 Social and intellectual conditions that enable a critical historical interpretation 371
16.2 An historical perspective on Catholic school religious education in Australia 372
16.2.1 The experiential quest for personalism and relevance 375
16.2.2 The centrality of the concept ‘faith development’ 377
16.2.3 The development of diocesan guidelines for Catholic religious education 378
16.2.4 Student resource materials 380
16.2.5 New state Religion Studies courses and the quest for academic credibility 382
16.2.6 The spirituality of contemporary youth 385
16.3 Other perspectives that should have a bearing on the further development of Catholic school
religious education 386
16.3.1 The development of personal meaning and identity 386
16.3.2 Addressing questions raised by cultural postmodernity 387
16.3.3 The hermeneutic task of religious education 387
16.3.4 Other trends in religious education in the United Kingdom and continental Europe 387
16.3.5 The spiritual-moral dimension to the school curriculum 387
16.4 Conclusion 388
18 The centrality of the concept ‘faith development’ in Catholic school religious education 409
19.1 Comparing and contrasting religious socialisation and religious education 424
19.2 The faith-sponsoring or faith-mentoring process 426
19.3 Classroom religious education and the sponsoring of faith in adolescents 427
19.4 Religious education and the development of religious identity 428
19.4.1 Identity resources and the development of a religious identity 428
19.4.2 Exploration of the nature and psychological function of identity 429
19.5 The problematic notion of religious identity 430
19.6 Religious identity and the development of faith 431
20 Developing staff spirituality: A key component of the identity of religious schools 434
Part 5
Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses in Australian schools 441
21.1 Two formats for studying religion in Australian public schools 443
21.2 The development of Religion Studies courses in Australian schools 444
21.3 Historical background to the theory for school Religion Studies in the UK: The quest for an
educational identity 445
21.4 Phases of UK development 1944–2000s: From agreed Christian syllabuses to multi-faith
studies 447
21.4.1 Christian religious education syllabuses (1940s and 1950s) 447
21.4.2 Student-centred, experiential life themes (1960s– ) 447
21.4.3 Existential, issue-oriented, experiential (1960s–) 447
Contents xvii
22.1 Reflections on the emergence of an educational identity for state school Religion Studies in
the UK and Australia 469
22.1.1 Problems resulting from a separate identity 469
22.1.2 The terminology ‘confessional’ versus ‘non-confessional’: Inadequate concepts for
analysing the teaching process 471
22.2 Exploring the relationships between state Religion Studies and denominational religious
education 472
22.3 Comparison of purposes between state Religion Studies and denominational religious
education 473
22.4 Non-evaluative and evaluative dimensions to studying religion 475
22.5 Relationships with the academic disciplines: Phenomenological method and academic bias 476
22.6 The contribution of Religion Studies to the development of personal identity 476
22.7 The implementation of Religion Studies in denominational schools 478
22.8 The understanding of Religion Studies from the point of view of different religions 479
22.9 Conclusion 479
Ta b l e s a n d F i g u r e s
Tables
Table 6.1 Theories of identity from the perspective of identity health 110
Table 7.1 What do young people in China regard as ‘cool’? 163
Table 8.1 Key aspects of a religious spirituality 178
Table 8.2 Summary of stereotypical distinctions and polarities that may apply between the ‘spiritual’
and the ‘religious’ 183
Table 8.3 Evaluative criteria for the identification and appraisal of spirituality 198
Table 11.1 Emergence of personal development terms in national documents on the goals for
Australian schools 245
Table 11.2 Nine values for Australian schooling 249
Table 12.1 Analysis of the Minister for Education’s public letter on values education 258
Table 12.2 Results from a survey on the role of schools in values education 260
Table 13.1 A list of personal change processes 281
Table 14.1 A reinterpretation of an iconic aims statement 320
Table 15.1 Perceived differences between propaganda and documentary films 335
Table 15.2 Survey of the community and of schoolchildren about role modelling 352
Table 18.1 Fowler’s theory of faith development compared with other developmental theories 410
Table 18.2 An example scheme illustrating the notion of transformative pedagogy 420
Table 19.1 Contrasts between religious socialisation and religious education 425
Table 21.1 Summary of major contemporary approaches to school Religion Studies in the UK
(Grimmitt 2000), and current emphases in continental Europe 455
Table 22.1 What is religious education? (From the South Australian state schools Religious Education
Project, 1978) 469
Table 22.2 Comparison of purposes: State Religion Studies and denominational religious education 473
Figures
Figure 14.1 Diagrammatic representation of the conceptualisation of the spiritual and moral dimension
to the school curriculum 315
Figure 14.2 Interposing personal development themes as intermediate goals between personal aims
and teaching/learning activities 317
Figure 14.3 Linking personal aims with classroom practice by making use of an intermediate personal
development theme like ‘educating in wisdom’ 319
This book is dedicated to
the memory of
Teresa Ballini and Pat Rossiter –
two remarkable women
xix
Foreword
When the social institution of compulsory schooling came under strong attack in the 1960s,
one of the sharpest criticisms was its alleged domesticating effect on students. They were
being treated, it was said, as entirely malleable creatures, capable of being manipulated to
become the labour force for the industrial machine and the avid consumers of its products.
One wonders if we have come very far since then. Even the commendable desire,
fostered by ‘Outcomes-Based Education’ (OBE), to focus on what each student learns rather
than simply on whether the teacher goes through the motions of teaching, is often being
implemented in a way that reduces the whole person to a repository of marketable ‘skills’.
At the same time, ironically, an increasing sense of unease in the community about a
values hiatus in the public domain is giving rise to calls for more effective values education
in schools. But valuing is a whole-person response to the reality anyone inhabits. At the
very least, this requires closer attention to how the individual student is personally ‘getting
it all together’ – an outcome not readily amenable to the itemising assessment techniques
of OBE. Nor is this task something that can be simply dumped on the school, while other
social agencies such as the home and the media devote themselves to satisfying consumerist
goals.
An older strategy for achieving the ends of morality and citizenship through schooling
was to complement the general curriculum with religious instruction. Again, other social
agencies often saw this as relieving them of responsibility for these things, on the assumption
that formal instruction in the dominant faith tradition would naturally flow on into moral
conduct. Not only do we now know better, but a pluralistic society resists a policy that is
commonly viewed as partisan indoctrination. Yet studying a religion did at least highlight
the fact that people’s values are ultimately justified and motivated by each individual’s view
of the world and their place in it. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but these are
essentially religious concerns.
Marisa Crawford and Graham Rossiter seek to break this deadlock. Their strategy is
to nominate the concepts of meaning, identity, and spirituality as linchpins of personal
education. They show that these concepts not only enable us to re-map the traditional terrains
of religious and moral education, but also have implications for many other curriculum
areas. One of the highlights of their analysis, for me, is Chapter 15 on media and film,
which not only contains perceptive contextual analysis but has some specific implications
for classroom teaching.
Professor Rossiter has been a leader in the field of religious education for many years,
researching and writing prolifically and being involved in teacher development in many
xx
Foreword xxi
places. Marisa Crawford has been a highly effective classroom practitioner in government,
Catholic and independent schools, also for many years. The two have collaborated on several
occasions in publications promoting best practice. In the present handbook, they provide
a comprehensive review both of general theory and research, and of the particular situation
on the ground in Australia.
And none too soon. Most democratic societies are facing cultural challenges due to
galloping social change and the pluralisation of values. Religious diversity is only one of
several reasons why it is urgent that disparate groups be encouraged to work together to
renegotiate and make explicit the core values of democratic community life. Not only is
social cohesion at stake, but a sickness at the personal level must be addressed. Amid the
confusion of values, individuals are struggling to find personal meaning and identity, even to
the point of questioning whether they actually matter to anyone other than themselves.
These are the challenges addressed by Crawford and Rossiter. The way to read this book
will be first to commit oneself to a reflective reading of the whole, and then to keep the
book handy for constant reference in relation to specific needs and topics, particularly the
indexes. I commend the book as a useful tool for research workers and for classroom teachers
engaged in what, in the end, is the real business of education. The book has utility beyond
the domain of education. The analyses in Part 2 will be useful for various professionals
engaged in the care of youth.
Brian V. Hill
Murdoch University, May 2006
Preface
Finding meaning in life and achieving some authentic sense of identity are key developmental
tasks for adolescents. While many young people do not readily use the word ‘spirituality’,
it can be used to refer to the way they ‘mesh’ with the spiritual and moral dimensions
to life. The three constructs meaning, identity and spirituality have useful credentials for
interpreting the psychological development of young people; they can be used for analysing
and giving perspective to their thinking, emotions and behaviour as they negotiate the maze
of contemporary culture and the psychological perils of adolescence.
The same constructs – meaning, identity and spirituality – are also useful for interpreting
and evaluating culture; and they are relevant to educational theory and practice.
Spiritual and moral purposes have been important for school education for as long as
schools have sought to promote the personal development of the young. However, there
remains a fundamental but natural ambiguity about how to implement spiritual and moral
education appropriately. The reason: precisely because personal change processes in beliefs,
attitudes, values and moral behaviour are more complex than, and at a different level from,
educational change in knowledge, understanding and skills. Links between teaching and the
acquisition of values are naturally more complicated and more tenuous than those between
teaching and the common outcomes for education; we can teach adolescents proficiency
in mathematics – even quantum physics – but we cannot so easily teach them not to
take drugs.
Nevertheless, while acknowledging the limitations of school education in bringing
about spiritual and moral change in students, there remain important opportunities within
classroom teaching and learning for progressing their spiritual and moral development.
This book is about trying to make sure that the opportunities for doing this well are not
neglected. The idea of exploring ‘reasons for living’ is shorthand for an education that tries
to help young people become well informed about, and think through issues related to,
meaning, identity and spirituality; this, in turn, may help them chart their way through a
life-world that has become increasingly complex and daunting.
Discussion of expectations for spiritual and moral education in both public and religious
schools has always been controversial. It is unlikely that this will change. As noted above,
much of the difficulty lies with the natural complexity of links between education and
personal growth; hence theory for education of the ‘whole’ person will always be complex,
controversial and somewhat open-ended. Nevertheless, it is important to persist with the
development of this theory if the personal dimension to school education is to be made as
valuable as it can be for young people.
xxii
Preface xxiii
Ongoing discussion of the spiritual and moral dimensions to education is in the national
interest and should be an educational priority. The federal and state governments’ initiatives
in values education have been an important response to this need. But more remains to
be done. In times when most interest in educational outcomes is dominated by concerns
about measurable performance and employment-oriented competencies, and even national
economic productivity, it is important for all Australian school students that the spiritual
and moral purposes to their education do not remain nominal, or merely rhetoric where
there is little flow-through from purposes to practice.
This book tries to address these issues in both theory and practice. It proposes that good
use can be made of the constructs meaning, identity and spirituality for conceptualising and
implementing a spiritual and moral education in schools – both public and independent.
Teaching related to these constructs can contribute to students’ personal education in
across-the-curriculum studies as well as in values education and in particular subjects like
Citizenship, Personal Development, Religion Studies, Philosophy and Ethics. While we
consider that the book makes an important contribution to values/moral education, it was
beyond our scope to explore relationships with the extensive literature in this area.
Of various constructs that might be used in curriculum planning, the trio meaning,
identity and spirituality, all of which are interrelated, are particularly valuable because of
their contemporary educational relevance and their significance in young people’s personal
development.
The argument in the book presumes that little real progress will be possible in any school
program of personal education unless teachers first develop a basic understanding of the
content-related issues – hence the importance of the second part of the book in providing
a ‘primer’ or introductory typology on meaning, identity and spirituality, particularly as
they relate to the psychological, spiritual and moral development of young people. While
not attempting a comprehensive survey of research on these constructs, this will provide
a perspective on meaning, identity and spirituality that will be a good starting point for
study by educators and other youth care professionals. We hope it will also stimulate further
research both sociological and educational. The intention is to enhance the background that
educators bring to their teaching with the hope that this will flow into teaching and learning
processes, as well as into their more informal interactions with students.
Complementing what is written in structural developmental psychology about young
people’s personal development (for example Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, Kegan, Fowler and
Oser), the focus here is more on their negotiation of personal and cultural issues in meaning,
identity and spirituality; hence it is not a stage theory of development, but (as suggested
above) an interpretation of the ways youth negotiate the cultural maze and the psychological
perils of adolescence.
Too often discourse about spiritual and moral dimensions to school education in
Australia remains context-specific – there is not much exchange on these matters between
educators in the public and independent sectors – or the discussion is skewed towards the
question of state financial aid for religious schools. In this book, we propose implications
for three contexts – across-the-curriculum studies in public schools, religious education in
independent (especially religious) schools, and state-based Religion Studies courses – within
the one volume, precisely to promote a wider educational discussion that could benefit
all of the country’s schools. This broad scope has resulted in a volume of handbook-like
xxiv Preface
proportions, but this was considered necessary to be able to say something substantial about
the situation and issues in each of the three contexts, while prompting educators to become
more aware of what is happening in contexts different from their own. For example, religious
schools can often put too much store on formal religious education and a religious ethos for
communicating beliefs, spirituality and values – in other words overrating or ‘over-expecting’
the school’s religious influence. In public schools, on the other hand, the teacher’s role in
teaching values can never really be denied, although just what the word ‘teaching’ means
when applied to values can be open to conflicting interpretations; and when debate stalls
on this question, it inhibits practice that may be of benefit for the personal development of
students. Each of Parts 3–5 begins with a chapter that gives a historical perspective. This
arrangement may facilitate dialogue by giving the reader some bearings on the pertinent
issues in each context that are taken up subsequently.
While the book was written specifically for teachers, it should be useful in university
education programs. We hope it will engage education researchers too. In addition, Part 2
discusses issues that are of wider community and professional concern. This material may be
helpful for all who are interested in the psychological, spiritual and moral development of
youth, for example parents, and professionals engaged in the care of youth in areas such as
health and youth services, and church ministry.
While dealing with the Australian situation, the book has relevance for education
internationally. It creates possibilities for interesting comparisons with education in other
countries.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Eric Bogle for permission to use lyrics from his song A Reason for it all and to Rod Clark
for the use of his poem ‘It must be taught in school’.
We acknowledge permission from Dr L Welbourne, editor of the Journal of Religious Education, for the
use of articles published in the journal which were further developed as Chapters 1, 8, 15 and 16.
We thank Professor Brian Hill for contributing the Foreword. We also wish to record our appreciation
of the encouragement we received from friends and colleagues, which has helped sustain us during the
course of the project, in particular: Brian Hill, Louise Welbourne, Marge and David Steward, and Gerard
Rummery.
We also take this opportunity to thank colleagues in Australia and overseas who helped in the manuscript
appraisal process and with supportive endorsements: Australia: Michael Bezzina, Robert Crotty, Richard
Eckersley, Brian Hill, Adrienne Jericho, Terry Lovat, John McGrath, Hugh Mackay, Gerard Rummery,
Peter Sheehan, Wayne Tinsey, Tom Wallace, Louise Welbourne, Dan White, Ted Witham. New Zealand:
Gary Finlay, Kevin Wanden. South Africa: Anne Baker, Paul Faller. North America: Lorna Bowman, Gloria
Durka, Gabriel Moran, Mary Elizabeth Moore. United Kingdom: James Conroy, Gerald Grace, Michael
Grimmitt, John Sullivan. Ireland: Andrew McGrady. Netherlands: Bert Roebben.
We acknowledge with appreciation the work of our editor, Venetia Somerset. And we thank Ralph
Saubern and Maureen O’Keefe of ACER Press for their enthusiasm for the project, and for their efficient
management of the publication process.
xxv
xxvi Comments on Reasons for Living
A book for our times – times characterised by a school curriculum promote the spiritual and moral
dramatic re-evaluation of the role of the teacher development of students who seek meaning? That is
and the school in general but, within that context, what the Crawford & Rossiter book is about.
an especial re-evaluation of the role of religion, Robert Crotty, Emeritus Professor of Religion and
spirituality and morality as features of the school Education, University of South Australia
ing experience.
Professor Terence Lovat, Pro Vice-Chancellor Reasons for Living will be a significant addition to
(Education and Arts), University of Newcastle the field of research in Religious Education. It has,
concisely and provocatively, summarised the major
It is rare to find in one volume such a rich com influences upon Religious Education. It would be
bination of rigorous research and practical savvy. an essential resource for all Religious Education
The authors’ familiarity with contemporary culture professionals and a basic textbook for all students
and its impact on adolescence is remarkable. in the field.
Professor Gloria Durka, Graduate School of Religion Dr Dan White, Director Catholic Education Office,
and Religious Education, Fordham University, New York Archdiocese of Hobart
Reasons for Living provides a systematically- The writers provide a way forward for all Australian
constructed foundation for teachers across the educators to be effective in engaging young people
curriculum who wish to support the quest of youth in values/meaning/identity/reflection. They do not
to make sense out of their lives and to form a overestimate what schools can achieve in this
constellation of values by which to live. important area.
Lorna Bowman, Professor of Religious Studies & Dr Adrienne Jericho, Executive Director, Lutheran
Academic Dean, Brescia University College, Canada Education Australia
A timely handbook for all teachers committed to This is a groundbreaking book. It gathers research
the development of the whole person and so to the findings and practical experience from a number of
spiritual and moral dimensions of education, fields, demonstrating how schools can assist young
whether they work in religious schools or the pub people in their development.
lic sector. This is a valuable resource for teachers Mr Gary Finlay, Director National Centre for
and educational leaders who are concerned to assist Religious Studies, New Zealand
students in the key developmental tasks of finding
meaning and achieving an authentic sense of Reasons for Living looks at what is at the heart of the
identity. Each chapter opens up a new perspective human and religious quest, particularly among
on this challenging but most important enterprise. young people, and it explores how education can
Dr Michael Bezzina, Director of Curriculum and be a means in this search, making it relevant in
Religious Education, Catholic Education Office, serving young people’s needs.
Parramatta Mrs Anne Baker, Deputy Director Catholic Institute of
Education, Johannesburg, South Africa
More than most of us ever were, today’s young
people are confronted by uncertainty. The anthro There has been a great need for a book which
pologist Clifford Geertz once described human addresses, in a comprehensive and contemporary
beings as ‘meaning-seeking animals’. Young people manner, the major issues relating to young people’s
are indeed just so, seeking meaning amid uncertainty. search for meaning, identity and spirituality. It is a
Further, it is one thing to find everyday meaning, most helpful book and deserves to be read widely
but there is also ultimate meaning. And in the 21st by professional educators in both government and
century how should such young people be educated non-government schools.
so as to tackle that uncertainty and to find meaning, Rev Dr Tom Wallace AM, Educational Advisor to the
everyday and ultimate? Importantly, how can a Anglican Bishop of Tasmania
1
PART
Viktor Frankl 2
Read the prospectus from any school, public or independent, and you will usually find that
fostering the spiritual and moral growth of students will be a core part of its educational
aims. Since the inception of universal education, the concern to educate the ‘whole person’
has assumed varied but, at the core, similar objectives. They took different guises – formation
of character, values, citizenship, self-esteem, wellbeing and so on – and they were revised and
renamed within the context of social change, but as far as school aims were concerned, they
were de rigueur.
If one were to be cynical, it could be said that it was all just window-dressing a problem
atic area. In the last twenty years, mission and vision statements have become vogue for
any institution or individual worth their salt. From government departments to the local
butcher or baker (in appropriately sensitive locations), mission statements have been put on
public display. This in itself is not a bad thing. If the butcher and baker have particular aims
in their mission statement that they endeavour to achieve, in all likelihood they as purveyors
Reasons for Living Part 1: Education and young people
and their customers as consumers will be able to agree that the aims of the mission statement
can be achieved. Not so easy with the desire of schools to educate the ‘whole’ person!
Clearly, schools should have these personal development intentions that are at the heart
of their mandate to teach. But the chequered history of this aspect of education shows that
it remains complex, controversial, subject to fads, and often neglected in practice. How to
get it right? Now, there’s the rub.
This book proposes one way of helping to ‘get it right’. It develops a conceptualisation of the
spiritual and moral dimension to education in which the constructs ‘meaning’, ‘identity’ and
‘spirituality’ – all important for young people’s personal development – can be useful in helping
educators make across-the-curriculum teaching more relevant to students’ personal growth,
and in ways that do not compromise the integrity of the subjects being taught.3
This chapter serves to introduce the argument and related concepts, which are developed in
detail in the chapters that follow. It looks at problems in conceptualising and implementing a
spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum; it introduces the three key constructs
and explores how they can be used effectively in a modest but realistic way, referring to some
pedagogical issues and practical examples.
Part 2 explores different understandings of the three constructs and considers what it means
to educate in meaning, identity and spirituality. Parts 3–5 look at implementation within three
educational contexts: the general school curriculum, Religious Education in church-related schools
(with Catholic schools as the particular example), and state-based Religion Studies courses.
a new reality to the classroom that sparks a quantum leap to ‘personal learning’. Teachers
cannot ‘change gear’ to a spiritual mode of teaching that automatically engages students
personally. The different ‘level’ has more to do with the psychological process of personal
change in the students than it does with the pedagogy of the teacher. Personal change is
influenced by many factors outside the classroom teaching-learning process; to be authentic
it has to come freely from within the individual; if personal change is to have repercussions
through an individual’s personality, it is unlikely to happen ‘then and there’, on cue, in the
classroom. It is, therefore, more appropriate to use the phrase ‘education that may dispose
students towards personal change’ as a more accurate acknowledgment of the intention, and
hence a more realistic starting point for relevant practice.
Another influential reason for this gap between theory and practice is that various
conceptions of spiritual/moral/values education across the curriculum have not been cogent
and realistic enough to win the wide support of teachers. Most teachers are sympathetic to
the aim of promoting student personal development, but if they are not convinced that a
particular program or across-the-curriculum strategy can be carried through realistically,
then implementation will fall short of what was expected. And it will not be perceived as
realistic unless it harmonises with their ordinary experience of classroom teaching and learning.
It may be that the expectations for student personal change are too high. Perhaps it
is more realistic to ensure that the curriculum and the teaching processes are pointed in
a ‘healthy direction’ for personal development, rather than focus on how much personal
change is actually brought about. This acknowledges that not all students will change as
desired; neither will they all change at the same pace. But it remains important for educators
to know that they are doing their best to provide the educational environment, the values
orientation, the content and process that can facilitate students’ personal development.
Different across-the-curriculum approaches have been tried, for example seeing how
studies in English, History or Science could promote some form of spiritual learning. There
have been a number of generic strategies, each with its own constructs and language, such
as values across the curriculum, values infusion, holistic education, spiritual education,
and character education; while civics and citizenship education has across-curriculum
implications, the tendency has been to treat it like a subject. At times, values clarification and
self-esteem strategies have been used in different subjects, though mainly within personal
development. In addition, pedagogical initiatives derived from various psychological and
educational theories are said to foster some spiritual learning; examples include multiple
intelligences, ‘brain-based’ learning theory, left/right brain learning, spiritual intelligence,
de Bono’s hats, and constructivist theory.
This book does not set out to add another new approach to this list. Use of the constructs
– meaning, identity and spirituality – can enhance personal education in any of the approaches
mentioned above, as well as within formal subjects like religion or personal development.
In a song called ‘A reason for it all’, written in the late 1980s, Scottish-Australian musician
Eric Bogle expressed the anxiety people can feel about meaning and purpose in life; they can
sense they are caught between feelings of despair that there may be no meaning, and a desire
to find explanations of bewildering events and experiences. They need an interpretation of
what is happening that will help them cope and plan a hopeful future.
For religious people, their beliefs form a core of meaning. They interpret life from a
religious perspective. But for many, especially youth, religion – a principal traditional source
of meaning – does not have the same cogency or credibility it seemed to have in the past. In
contemporary Western societies, pluralism, pace of life and the media have affected the ways
in which communities (even families) served as frames of reference for beliefs. In a culture
with an ever increasing emphasis on individualism and the ‘good life’, many do not bother to
look for guidance from the traditional support structures for meaning; they may be religious
in a sense, but they are too busy with work and entertainment to give much thought to
overall meaning to life. Many get by with no reference to religion.
At times, for people living a life ‘under pressure’, questions of meaning will inevitably
arise. But with few links to traditional sources of meaning, or because they have despaired
of their relevance, they feel more on their own in searching for a view of life that will sustain
them. They may use readily available meanings in popular culture, even if some of these are
damaging.
The attention people consciously give to meaning in life varies considerably. This is evident
in the content of their meaning and its consequences for the way they conduct themselves, as
well as in the efforts made to cultivate personal meaning. People express concern that there is
a contemporary ‘crisis of meaning’, whereas for others there appears to be no such problem.
There is no universal consensus in diagnosing the social situation. But there are enough
indications that meaning is important in human life, and that there are problems with its
development and evaluation, to make questions about meaning important for education.
This book takes a value position on meaning. It presumes that a need for meaning and
purpose is a defining characteristic of the human being. Communities of meaning – family,
religion, social groups and the state – have a role in communicating basic meanings to the
next generation, in ways that respect the emerging personal autonomy of young people. The
notion of ‘healthy’ meaning is an important one for communities to develop to guide their
care for the young and to inform the goals of education.
Use of the word ‘healthy’ as a qualifier of meaning needs clarification. The young need
access to the core meanings of their immediate community to enable them to feel they
belong. This gives a ‘starting’ interpretation of life and reference points for cultural identity –
a cultural inheritance of meaning. It is a working theory that sustains their need for purpose
and values; it can be confirmed or modified later as they mature and take more personal
responsibility for their own meaning. At a psychological level, healthy meaning needs to be
Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality
plausible and serviceable – the best the community can offer. But it should be more than
that. It needs to include criteria for judging meaning: whether it is benign or harmful.
As far as a role for education is concerned, there is ready agreement that young people
need initial help with information and skills for developing meaning. But when it comes to
spelling out details, especially the particular meanings to be communicated, almost inevitably
there will be different estimates of what is required. The communities responsible for schools
(both government and independent) need some discernment structure in place to address
this problem. When the content is controversial, as in meaning (beliefs and values), it will be
difficult to achieve consensus; but it remains important to articulate and endorse the school’s
role both as regards ‘meaning content’ and critical skills for the identification and evaluation
of meaning. In Chapter 4, the notion of ‘healthy meaning’ will be proposed as a guide for
informing this process.
Inevitably, a study of meaning in schools needs to include religion. In liberal democratic
societies, there has long been debate about the place for religion in public education. In
the United Kingdom, religious education in the curriculum is required by law. In the
United States, law requires that religion is kept out of the curriculum.4 In Australia, a
religious education sponsored by a church or religion is permitted in limited circumstances
(Denominational religious education). Legally, a second form of religious education – a more
general exploration of religion taught by departmental teachers – is allowed (General religious
education), but has never developed successfully in the state schools; however, ‘Religion
Studies’ courses have been taken up by religious schools, especially the Catholic schools,
with high candidature.
To ignore this second format for studying religion in government schools would be
to compromise the range of cultural meanings that should be accessed and appraised by
young people in that context. Hence, with regard to their education in meaning, students
in government schools are somewhat disadvantaged. In the short term it is unlikely that
Religion Studies will become a viable subject in Australian state schools. But realistically,
how many students would choose to do this subject if it were available? (By the same token,
fewer would study religion in church schools if students had the choice.) But the notion
of an education in meaning is not limited to a formal study of religion, so we shall give
special attention to across-the-curriculum studies of meaning because of their importance
for public education.
In religiously sponsored schools, it is appropriate to include religious activities as well
as content in theology and scripture as part of education in the meanings of the faith
tradition. Even in the context of a community of faith – and the religious school is not a
community of faith in exactly the same sense as a local church or synagogue – it is important
to acknowledge the natural limitations to the ‘educational’ role. The school’s educational
process cannot ‘inject’ religious beliefs into students. The young can be socialised into
the basic meanings and practices of their religious tradition from an early age, both in the
family and in a local community of faith, and to some extent at school. But whether or not
they will become actively involved in organised religion will eventually be a matter of their
own choice. In highly secularised Western societies like Australia, many young people are
only nominally connected with their religious tradition. Nevertheless, whether or not they
become practising members, educational access to their cultural religious heritage can make
a valuable contribution to their personal development.
Reasons for Living Part 1: Education and young people
One final word here about the evaluation of meaning. While the contemporary search
for meaning is often said to be difficult for young people, there is no shortage of meanings
available in society. The world is awash with meanings telling people how to live. This is
amplified by the media, especially film and television, where consumerism is all-pervasive; it
can give the impression that meaning and satisfaction in life revolve around what one can buy.
Some young people feel that they are wading through a virtual swamp of ideas about what
it means to be alive, unique and independent. Identifying implied meanings in culture and
judging their appropriateness and potential contribution to wellbeing are therefore important
skills that the young need to develop. The evaluation of meaning may ultimately be more
pertinent than the concept ‘search for meaning’. This is where education is important.
1.3 Identity
A research consultation with youth in Australia in 1998 reported that three major concerns
of young people were unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, and identity and the
search for meaning.5 Though apparently not as immediately pressing as the problems of
unemployment and drug and alcohol abuse, the need for young people to find ways of
making meaning in their lives and developing an authentic sense of self are matters of great
concern to them. While meaning and identity are felt to be important, and are bound up
with their attempts to understand life, they may have vague and confused, but emotionally
charged ideas of what these concepts mean. In addition, they are not sure of where to look
for help, and they are not confident that adult institutions understand their questions, let
alone have satisfying answers. As the report went on to say: ‘Many young people talk of
lacking purpose and meaning in life. They often lack helpful role models, feeling that the
world in which they live bears little or no resemblance to that from which their parents
emerged.’6 In a changing social, economic and familial landscape, many of the support
networks that existed for past generations are no longer there, or if present, they appear
irrelevant.
Young people’s interest in identity is usually personal and psychological. On the other
hand, the focus of community interest in identity is often sociological: the concern is to
hand on the distinguishing characteristics of the community, ethnic and religious identities
in particular; communities are also interested in seeing what contribution education can
make to the process.
Identity is acknowledged as important in personal and social development. But what
it means and how it develops are complex and controversial. For example, identity can
be invoked to justify action ranging from support for a local football team to the extreme
of ethnic cleansing. Perceptions of identity are often closely associated with violence. A
clarification of what identity means and how this can be addressed in education should be
an important community concern. As for the construct meaning, developing the notion of
‘healthy identity’ will be proposed as useful for working out educational implications.
1.4 Spirituality
As the title of this book suggests, the constructs ‘spirituality’ and ‘identity’ have been
bracketed with meaning because it was considered valuable for education to address this trio
of constructs together in an integrated way. All three are closely related and are important
Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality
in human development; they all figure in the social sciences and they are becoming more
prominent in educational discourse. But all three are notoriously difficult to define.
Nevertheless, a clarification of their meaning is essential if they are to be used constructively
in educational theory and practice. This will be done in an introductory way in Part 2. Our
purpose is to use these constructs (and related personal development themes) for heuristic
purposes: to identify and analyse issues; to provide explanatory interpretations; to stimulate
interest in furthering investigations; and to encourage learning.
Traditionally, the word ‘spirituality’ has had a religious connotation: the style of prayer
and spiritual practice that expresses a religious perspective on life. But now, in addition to
this religious usage, the word has been selected by others precisely to avoid the religious
connotation. Religiosity and spirituality are not coextensive, even though for religious people
there is considerable overlap. Spirituality has become a ubiquitous term covering many
different aspects of personal life and culture; it is used in traditional religions, as well as in
new religious movements and non-religious spiritual groups; it also figures in areas as diverse
as ecology, new age, healing, health sciences, social sciences, business and education.
For educational purposes, the construct spirituality needs to be broad enough to include
a religious contribution, as well as acknowledging a spiritual dimension to living that covers
values, commitments and aesthetic concerns. This allows the construct to accommodate both
traditional interests and new developments that are spiritual but not necessarily religious.
This is useful for three reasons.
First, in Western societies, religion is not prominent in the lives of many people;
secularisation is at a high-water mark. Hence a spiritual education, if it is to enhance personal
development and benefit the community, has to do more than meet the needs of those who
are active members of local religious groups. This applies particularly to young people, many
of whom construct a spirituality without much reference to organised religion. While the
young are not so likely to use the word ‘spirituality’ with reference to their aspirations in life,
they tend to have more affinity with the word ‘spiritual’ than with ‘religious’.
Second, it is important not to discount the special interest that religion has long held in
spirituality, or to underestimate the valuable contribution that a study of religion can make
to young people’s education. Parts 4 and 5 of the book will endeavour to show how religious
education in all school types can contribute to the spiritual and moral development of young
people.
Third, by using a language of spirituality that is not limited to the religious, there is a
better chance of articulating the spiritual and moral dimensions to general education in a
productive way. Earlier, brief mention was made of debates about a place for the study of
religion in school education, but this does not cover adequately more general concerns about
spirituality, values and ethics in the curriculum. The language of spirituality, together with
that of moral and values education, provides a more appropriate framework for working out
these concerns.
perspectives. But the definitional difficulties can be turned to educational advantage; their
meaning and psychological functions can be explored by students.
A number of personal development constructs have been used by educators (as well as
by health and welfare professionals) in their aims. These include values, self-esteem, moral
development, character, wellbeing, coping, resilience, civic skills, wisdom, being cultured,
lifelong learning, self-management, empowerment, virtues, faith – as well as more general terms
like spiritual health, maturity, personal and social development, and religious development.7
All of the constructs are personal and complex; they are interrelated, while each usually
illustrates some distinctive facets of personal development. It is precisely because of their
personal nature and complexity that they cannot be handled in the same way as educational
outcomes in knowledge, skills and employment-oriented competencies.8 Without doubt,
they all have useful meaning and educational potential. But their multiplicity is confusing
when a conceptualisation of the spiritual and moral dimension to education tries to take all
of them into account at the same time.
We selected meaning, identity and spirituality as our focus because collectively they
entered in some way into most of the personal development terms listed above. In addition,
they met six selection criteria:
It is not proposed that the three constructs should be used exclusively to cover the
spiritual-moral dimension of the school curriculum. However, their use makes a valuable
contribution to educational discourse and provides a helpful model for handling many of
the other personal development concepts listed above.
We do not anticipate resolving all definitional difficulties and potential inconsistencies
with regard to meaning, identity and spirituality; but their exploration in terms of personal
and cultural dynamics offers considerable value for young people’s personal development
education.
Given the limitations of space in this book, we chose not to refer to the considerable
literature of moral and values education. Nevertheless, the proposed approach makes a
valuable contribution to this area even though the links with its literature have not been
pointed out.
hold true. In an environment flooded with ways to make meaning and to find our ‘true selves’,
there is an urgent need to help young people learn how to think critically about the issues.
On one hand, lifestyle expectations in Western countries have never been higher. Images
of the ‘good life’ saturate the media, and the possibilities are seductive and pervasive: ‘The
world is your oyster!’ and if you have the right consumer goods – with the right brand
labels – life is there for the taking: ‘Just do it!’ Freedom and individuality are prized. The
suggestion that life also needs altruism, commitments, and fidelity, let alone some sacrifices,
is usually notable by its absence (it is more difficult to relate these qualities to consumerism);
this makes it easier to think that life can be lived without them.
While young people’s imaginations have been stimulated to feel these possibilities vividly,
their real life experience is often in stark contrast with their wish list. No matter how hard
they try, they can never look as attractive as the fashion models or stars who set the standards
of beauty and desirability towards which all aspire. Satisfying personal relationships are not
just there to pick up like goods from a supermarket. And finding a good job and career can
be fraught with failure, disappointment and self-doubt.
When they look at what is happening around them, they find little to encourage hope.
One education document offered the following sociological analysis. While the young would
probably not use the same technical terms, many would have a first-hand experience of these
problems.
On the threshold of the third millennium education faces new challenges which are the
result of a new socio-political and cultural context. First and foremost, we have a crisis of
values which, in highly developed societies in particular, assumes the form, often exalted
by the media, of subjectivism, moral relativism and nihilism. The extreme pluralism
pervading contemporary society leads to behaviour patterns which are at times so opposed
to one another as to undermine any idea of community identity. Rapid structural changes,
profound technical innovations and the globalisation of the economy affect human life
more and more throughout the world. Rather than prospects of development for all, we
witness the widening of the gap between rich and poor, as well as massive migration from
underdeveloped to highly developed countries. The phenomena of multiculturalism and
an increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-religious society is at the same time an enrichment
and a source of further problems.9
think critically about the contemporary socio-cultural situation and about spiritual and
moral issues. It can help them discern the shaping influence of culture and learn how to
become critical interpreters and evaluators of culture. It cannot automatically make them
wise, but it can point them in the direction of wisdom.
A key to this constructive role for education is written into the title of the book (and
in the song quoted at the beginning of this chapter): reasons for living. Fundamental to
education is the appeal to reason; enhancing the capacity to think critically is central. Also,
given the malaise in meaning that the young experience, and given the negative feelings
many of them have about finding a satisfactory purpose in life and achieving some authentic
identity, there is a need to get them to consider positive reasons for living. School education
can provide a valuable forum in which they can explore constructive community meanings
as well as developing diagnoses of social problems.
The emphasis should be on student-centred study and research. The educational process
needs to be dialogical, not a one-way proclamation of normative community views. But
neither should it neglect these views. It should be directed at the meaning of issues – at
values and politics – and not just at facts and descriptions. As well as educating the young
in the critical evaluation of meaning and identity, it can provide resources that young people
can draw on in constructing their own worldview.
While this proposal may sound attractive to educators, particularly those who have been
involved in religious education, it is also likely to be perceived as unrealistic for general
education. Hence it is important to continue arguing the case for a spiritual-moral role for
general education, and to propose realistic ways in which it might be implemented.
Over the past thirty years government documentation on the purposes of schooling in
Australia has increasingly given attention to the role of education in promoting the spiritual
and moral development of young people. For example, in 1990, the following aims statement
appeared in the NSW Government white paper on education:
Values and Education: The moral, ethical and spiritual development of students is a
fundamental goal of education. It is clearly not confined to one area of the curriculum.
All teachers, across all areas of the curriculum have a responsibility to inculcate in their
students positive values and a capacity for moral and ethical judgment.
Government schools should actively promote the moral values which are shared by
the majority of people in our community. There is merit in the clear statement of this
responsibility.
In particular, this document will give greater emphasis to the link between education,
work and personal fulfilment, as well as encouraging imagination, creativity, excellence
and the search for meaning and purpose in life. It will give more recognition to the
place of the family and family values in our society and the rights and responsibilities
of parents in the area of morals and values. Greater stress will be placed on students
achieving high standards of self-discipline, personal conduct and social responsibility.
As recommended … the document will also acknowledge the importance of all students
developing spiritual values.10
Aims statements like this – including one in the Adelaide Declaration on National
Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century (1999) on spiritual and moral development,
and a comparable statement on values in the National Framework for Values Education in
Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality 13
Australian Schools (2003)11 – provide a mandate for spiritual and moral education in schools,
both government and non-government. This is a very positive development. But they also
create problems for educators because there remains a significant gap between the aims and
practice. The idea of all teachers across all curriculum areas being involved in some form of
spiritual-moral education is at first sight fanciful. The challenge is to interpret the role in
a modest and realistic way; teachers need clarification of what might be done as a natural
part of teaching and learning procedures without compromising the integrity of their given
subject matter. If not done in a cogent way, it is unlikely that such statements about values
in education will win the support of educators.
While we consider ‘spiritual and moral dimension to the curriculum’ and ‘student
spiritual and moral development’ to be the most comprehensive terms that can be used in
this discussion, at present, this view does not appear to have wide or unquestioned support
– nor does it have evident opposition; its relevance remains to be tested. For many educators,
the terms are obviously significant, but still somewhat ambiguous as regards their relevance
to public education. This is because spiritual and moral development have not yet been
conceptualised clearly enough to be accepted as more than a nominal goal. Addressing this
situation is a principal purpose of this book.
Another related issue for teachers, particularly in public schools, is a concern that efforts
to promote students’ spiritual and moral development could arouse controversy. Teachers
might engage students in an exploration of issues, and then realise they had no support
from school and school system authorities for their exercise of professional judgment in a
values education role. A mandate for some general form of values education appearing in
aims documents is one thing, but if this is not followed through to a more specific mandate
at school and local community level, with clearly stated implications for content, method
and teaching ethics, it is unlikely that teachers will feel confident enough to proceed. Hence
there is an urgent need for public endorsement at school level of the intention to engage in
across-the-curriculum spiritual-moral education, together with a realistic account of how
this could be implemented. There is no problem in requiring accountability in this or other
areas of education. But there is a danger that excessive concerns about accountability will
inhibit valuable educational activity in the spiritual-moral area. If this happens, it betrays
the professional trust the community should have in its teachers, and those who really lose
out are the students.
A need to clarify the spiritual and moral dimensions to the whole school curriculum
in a practicable way is thus a key task for public education. If there is not adequate follow-
through, then the valuable spiritual-moral thrust in recent aims documents will dissipate.
Worse still, if these more personal, holistic aims for education are surrendered because they
could not be realistically translated into practice, it will be even easier for the economic,
employment-oriented goals to dominate education even more than they do now.
There are, however, encouraging signs of progress. In recent decades, Australian state
education systems have articulated core values that should underpin schooling.12 Addressing
the spiritual and moral dimension of the school curriculum has become prominent in
educational discourse; talk about values in education has become more acceptable,13 even
if there remains ambiguity about what it means ‘to teach values’. The Federal Government’s
funding of a major national values education project has been significant.14 But it goes
without saying that much remains to be done to address the task of conceptualisation
enunciated above.
14 Reasons for Living Part 1: Education and young people
eminence that were unrealistic; their proposed importance, and the extent of intended values
outcomes, were out of proportion to what teachers knew was achievable in the classroom. In
turn, they were sceptical of programs that had an almost propaganda-like feel to them; there
was an apparent ‘values overkill’.
Another problem, particularly in public education, but not limited to that context,
is where teachers steer towards so-called ‘neutrality’ by trying to avoid values questions.
As noted earlier, they are concerned about having no school support for engaging in the
discussion of controversial issues, and they are reluctant to refer to their own views in case
this gets them into trouble with school authorities or parents.
The first step in approaching meaning, identity and spirituality across the curriculum
is realism in acknowledging the limited role of the school in bringing about personal
change. This means accepting that personal development in these areas is very complex,
and influenced by many factors. Understanding the modest role of the school is the best
starting point for planning the valuable contribution that the curriculum can make. For
example, we know that we can successfully teach young people quantum physics but that
we cannot teach them not to take drugs! As long as people use the same language when they
talk about ‘teaching values’ as they do for teaching knowledge and skills, they will continue
to overestimate the school’s capacity to promote the personal or spiritual development of
young people. Regretfully, this will further inhibit the limited contribution that the school
can make.
As regards an education in meaning, identity and spirituality, adding yet another program
with this as the title would not be the answer. Education has long suffered from the way that
schools have been expected to solve social problems through the introduction of specific
programs (such as courses on sex, peace, citizenship, values, work, leisure, driving, conflict
resolution, and AIDS). Even though these courses made useful educational contributions,
‘over-expecting’ personal change in students has remained a problem.
How studies of the three constructs are conducted, and how the students are engaged
are crucial. But the most appropriate long-term approach for promoting young people’s
education in meaning, identity and spirituality is not to create curriculum space for studying
the ‘new’ content; rather, it is to educate teachers in relation to their own grasp of issues in
these three areas. If they have a better understanding of the issues, they will be able to bring
this into their teaching–learning interactions with students in appropriate ways, both inside
and outside the classroom. Teachers need concepts and language that can help young people
identify and explore issues related to the three constructs. These issues are embedded in
many of the topics already studied in different subjects; they do not have to be introduced
from outside. The issues are there, perhaps just beneath the ‘surface’ of the content, and the
young need to learn how to ‘uncover’ them.
Just identifying the emerging spiritual-moral issues is in itself a valuable exercise. It takes
well-informed and skilled teachers to be able to ask the telling questions, provide relevant
information, comment on examples and pertinent anecdotes, and give vital leads to young
people that can engage them in thinking about and debating these issues; eventually, in their
own time, they may consider personal implications. If this spiritual-moral dimension to
content is not attended to by teachers, there is a danger that it will be excluded de facto; this
could give students the impression that school education ignores these issues, or worse, that
they are not worth considering.
16 Reasons for Living Part 1: Education and young people
schools has improved the academic status of Religious Education but it has not solved the
problem. Students can be expected to bring to Religious Education the same lack of interest
in religion that is common in contemporary society.
The difficulty is not limited to Religious Education. Personal Development studies
in government schools have similar difficulties. As an example, where these studies were
programmed into seminars on the last few days of the school year, the low status and
perceived irrelevance of the work were amplified by the hidden curriculum – the school
treated this curriculum requirement as nominal.
Finally, there is another influential element in students’ negative perceptions of spiritual-
moral studies which is difficult to counteract. They have an innate resistance to being told
what to do in their own lives! Any school study to do with beliefs and values can only too
easily be perceived as an exhortation; and this is enough for students to keep the study at
arm’s length – militating against even the minimal level of intellectual engagement that is
usually taken for granted in regular subjects. It underlines the importance of making any
spiritual-moral studies an open, inquiring, student-centred learning process; any approach
that remotely resembles an exhortation from authority runs the risk of being dismissed as
irrelevant. This is a natural problem that Religious Education in church-related schools has
to acknowledge and address.
While the English studies on ‘Changing self ’ focused on identity from a psychological
perspective, another study called ‘Power play’ looked at the dynamics of personal power and
politics. A topic like this readily leads to reflection on social and political issues. Yet another
English study, ‘In the wild’, examined writers’ depictions of the conflict that has arisen from
the ways humankind has perceived its ‘dominion’ over the natural world. It shows what can
happen when humans do not take environmental responsibility seriously.
Studies such as these (which can be paralleled in other subjects) have the capacity to
become windows on contemporary life, sensitising students to new perspectives and helping
them become better interpreters of meaning. In facilitating these explorations, teachers
educate their students in the spiritual and moral layers of life. But what they are doing is no
more than being good teachers in their own subject area; they are attending to its natural
spiritual-moral dimensions. It is not a separate layer of moral education added to their
teaching from outside like a superstructure. It is not asking teachers to go beyond normal
teaching requirements; and it is not ‘adding’ spiritual content to the curriculum. But what it
is expressing is a holistic education. It is fostering personal learning.
How much of this kind of teaching and learning is needed across the curriculum? It
is a question that needs careful attention, one that has to do with the overall personal
relevance of schooling. In a subject like Religion or Personal Development, there should
be a significant amount of value-related content. In other subjects, if attention to spiritual-
moral dimensions is to be a natural part of the teaching, then excessive attempts to engage
students in this way would be counterproductive because it would undermine the principal
subject matter. Subjects have a coherence in their intended knowledge and skills outcomes.
Some parts of the content may occasion personal learning; much of it may not. Personal
relevance is not an element that can be readily or easily injected. So, the short answer to the
‘how much’ question is ‘occasionally’. The answer is consistent with the view that the school
has a limited capacity to bring about personal change.
The more insight teachers have into the development of meaning, identity and spirituality,
the better equipped and more sensitive they will be in leading investigations of value-related
questions that emerge in the classroom; in turn, the potential of all learning areas to have
some personal relevance for students can be increased. While such an approach is ‘searching’
and not confrontative, it can challenge young people to expand their understanding of
the issues; in turn, it can sharpen their focus on what impinges on their own personal
development, and on what affects the social environment.
A holistic education should address these concerns. In proposing a role for school
education we do not want to give an impression that we think education is the principal
means of communicating meaning, identity and spirituality to the young; family and
cultural experience are considerably more influential. But it can help them develop a better
understanding of how these three dimensions develop and of the cultural dynamics that
influence them. A shorthand for this process is an education that explores reasons for living; it
presumes that young people’s meaning, spirituality and identity will be more healthy if it is
open to educational improvement, particularly through the use of reason.
The opportunity for the school curriculum to bring about personal change in young
people is limited. It revolves around helping them learn how to become well informed and
to think critically – educating them to learn better from their own experience. Hopefully,
they will learn how to identify wise traditions from the past, as well to appraise the social
environment that has a shaping influence on people’s thinking and behaviour.
The idea of an education that will help young people become more wise, alert to the
spiritual and moral dimensions to life, emotionally mature and environmentally responsible
is very noble, but it must be understood in terms of the real possibilities and limitations of
appealing to reason as the basis for personal change. How the school models the values and
virtues it proposes for its students will also be an influential factor. The hope of educating
young people towards wisdom, maturity and responsibility applies to the whole curriculum
and is not limited to one subject like religion. Hence the importance of clarifying a holistic
approach. This is one reason that teaching is aptly called a profession – in the original
sense of the word: it describes the work of those whose contribution to the welfare of the
community is like a vocation or personal calling.
Notes
1 R Eckersley et al. 2006, Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people,
p. 8.
2 Accessed from the Viktor Frankl quotations website, May 2006 http://www.worldofbiography.com/9124-
Victor%20Frankl/quotations.htm
3 This chapter was developed from material published earlier as ML Crawford and GM Rossiter 2003, Reasons
for living: Education and young people’s search for meaning, spirituality and identity.
4 In the United States, church–state legal language has stifled discussion about the place for study of religion
in education. See for example, G Moran 1978, What Now? What Next? In P O’Hare (ed.) Foundations for
religious education, p. 65.
5 Bishops’ Committee for Justice, Development and Peace 1998, Young people and the future, p. 1.
6 ibid., p. 15.
7 An investigation of the educational use of the construct wisdom is reported in ML Crawford and GM Rossiter
1992, Teaching Wisdom. Some of that material was reworked and included in Chapter 14.
8 Curriculum Corporation 2003, Values education study: Final report (prepared for the Australian Government
Department of Education, Science and Training), p. 175.
9 Congregation for Catholic Education 1999, The Catholic school on the threshold of the third millennium, p. 1.
20 Reasons for Living Part 1: Education and young people
10 T Metherell 1990, Excellence and equity: New South Wales curriculum reform. Originally appearing in NSW
Government 1989, White Paper on curriculum reform in schools in NSW, p. 65, Note that there are important
parallel statements to this one in other normative curriculum documents; see note 11.
11 Australian Education Council (& MYCEETYA) 1999, The Adelaide Declaration on national goals for
schooling in the twenty-first century (the Adelaide Declaration); Curriculum Corporation 2003, Draft national
framework for values education in Australian schools, p. 6. The final version of the Framework was published as
Department of Education, Science and Training 2005, National framework for values education in Australian
schools.
12 Civics Expert Group 1994, Whereas the people: Civics and citizenship education: Report of the Civics Expert
Group; NSW Department of School Education 1991, The Values We Teach; A Refshauge 2004, Values in
NSW public schools: A Ministerial statement; Report of the Review of the Queensland School Curriculum
1994, Shaping the future, vol. 3. South Australian Department of Education 1991, Common knowledge 8–10;
Victorian Ministry of Education 1988, The social education framework: Effective participation in society, P–
10.
13 BV Hill 2004, Values education in schools. Also referred to in Department of Education, Science and Training
2004, National values education forum report.
14 Curriculum Corporation 2003, Values education study: Final Report; Department of Education, Science and
Training 2004, National Values Education Forum Report; Curriculum Corporation 2004, Values Education in
action: Case studies from 12 values education schools (Prepared for the Australian Government Department of
Education, Science and Training).
2
PART
Antoine de Saint-Exupery1
He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche 2
Much has been written about young people’s need for ‘meaning’ and ‘identity’. While they
have a key role in personal development, what is understood by these terms, especially in the
educational domain, is often not well articulated. This and the following two chapters will explore
questions about what constitutes meaning, what are its psychological and social functions, and
about how it is constructed and communicated. These chapters work towards a typology of
meaning. While they will not attempt to survey all the relevant literature, they will examine
a number of basic understandings of the construct, and they also provide starting points for
further research on young people’s search for meaning.
Because the approach taken is analytical, many of the concepts are abstract. Ideally, practical
examples would help both understanding the concepts and their educational implications. But
limitations of space have kept this to a minimum, so readers will need to draw from their own
experience to contextualise the material.
This is not the most easily read part of the book but it lays the conceptual groundwork for much
of what follows. Chapter 2 begins with an introduction that looks briefly at what has been called
23
24 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
the ‘search for meaning’ in some contemporary writings as well as the way in which meaning
has been understood in anthropology, psychology and religion. It argues that the search for
meaning is a defining human characteristic, and that links between meaning and reason justify
a role for education in the communication and evaluation of meaning. Questions about meaning
that the young have to negotiate are then listed; this signals an agenda for educators and other
professionals serving the welfare of youth: they need a basic understanding of the psychological
dynamics of meaning. The analysis explores both personal and cultural meanings, and their
relationships.
There is a real crisis of meaning in the community, and the problems associated with
constant social change – the erosion of the old public morality, the breakdown of
family structures, high levels of unemployment and instability in the workplace, and
the public emergencies created by drugs, alcohol, crime and increasing suicide – have
shaken this country out of its former innocence and urged us to take stock of ‘what really
matters’ …
We can no longer afford to remain silent about matters of meaning … People who
idealise the relaxed social conditions of the past are refusing to engage the urgent crises
of our time, and failing to see these crises as a cry for clarification and affirmation of
human and social meaning … Speaking about our innate hunger for spiritual meaning,
David Millikan has said that ‘there is a distinctive quality or capacity in us all which
creates a restlessness with the limitations of our present life’. This spiritual restlessness
is dramatically accelerated when society goes through a period of critical instability and
uncertainty. Often, what inspires spiritual search is a profound disillusionment with
the present social system, especially in the fields of politics, social leadership, industry,
health, law and education. The search for new values and visions is frequently sparked by
frustration, disappointment or anger at the current state of secular society … It represents
a protest against the conditions of our all‑too‑human world, as well as a search for abiding
spiritual values that can provide a new stability and unity to society.3
You could ask if this is a relatively new phenomenon – part of the so-called postmodern
condition. Or whether it is an age-old problem that humanity has always had to face –
trying to make sense of life. It is both. In the 1960s, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, in his
book Man’s search for meaning, talked about a contemporary crisis in meaning, especially for
The nature, psychological function and construction of meaning 25
youth. But there are indications that there is a new urgency to questions about meaning in
life, on the part of both individuals and communities. In the past, such questions, particularly
about ultimate beliefs and values, were phrased more in religious language. Now, with a high
degree of secularisation in Western societies, another language is being used more frequently
to frame questions about human purpose and value.4
In the past, more of the meaning to life was implied or culturally embedded in institutions
and religious traditions. Human purpose may have been taken for granted by individuals and
perhaps there was less ‘searching’ for meaning. Nowadays, in Western societies in particular,
little is taken for granted; practically everything is questioned, and individuals have to do
more of the construction of meaning by themselves. People in great poverty or in oppressive
political situations may not have the luxury of spending time philosophising about the
meaning of life; most of their energy is spent just surviving. However, it may well be their
core meaning, socially reinforced by group identity, that sustains them.
While acknowledging that religion has long been important for human meaning, Zohar
and Marshall claimed that it has been superseded as a principal source of meaning. They saw
the meanings supported by religion as ‘unravelling’ in the wake of scientific rationalism. They
considered that their view of spiritual intelligence was based on evidence from psychology,
neurology, anthropology and cognitive science – as if religion and philosophy had little to
say that would be relevant to the contemporary human condition. They acknowledged a
role for religion in the communication of meaning. But their view seemed too narrowly
associated with a particular style of Eastern spirituality; the relevance of their book thus
depended on the extent to which readers could identify comfortably with that spirituality.
The construct meaning is a useful one because it can accommodate both religious and
non-religious views of life. It is important to probe the spiritual dimensions of human
experience in non-religious language, especially for educational purposes; but at the same
time, to neglect what religions and philosophy have to say about meaning is to ignore some
of the principal cultural inputs to human meaning throughout history.
As noted in the previous chapter, fostering young people’s search for meaning and purpose
in life is often listed as a contemporary aim for school education. But if such an aim is to be
followed through into relevant practice, it needs more clarification about what constitutes
meaning, how it functions psychologically, how it develops and matures, and how it can be
communicated in ways that respect the developing autonomy of young people. Also needed
are skills and criteria for identifying and evaluating meaning. Young people need to learn
how to judge whether particular meanings are healthy or harmful. Then there are questions
about how personal meaning relates to cultural meanings, and about the roles of institutions
in the communication of meaning.
More recently, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh (over 2500 years old), translated
from writing on a stone tablet, told the story of an individual’s search for a meaning to
life. Gilgamesh yearned for immortality; he did not want death to be the end of his self-
consciousness. While Gilgamesh failed to find satisfying solutions for the dilemmas of life
and death, the moral of the story was that humans are by nature mortal and must learn to
accept their mortality and adjust their view of life accordingly. Finding contentment in what
he could contribute to the community was the meaning that Gilgamesh ultimately accepted
for his own life.
The human search for meaning is as old as humanity itself. For all other animals, there
is no evidence of this level of self-awareness. Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the principal
architects of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, considered that knowledge that we
are mortal is one of the defining characteristics of the human species. He explained this in
his book The biology of ultimate concern (1966). Only humans can ask questions about the
meaning and purpose of their lives. For many, this revolves around belief in God and an
afterlife, and the practice of religion; for others, meaning is constructed in spiritual but not
necessarily religious terms (for example values and commitments); for some, the meaning
they decide on is that ‘there is no meaning’.
So people stand today in a long line of human searchers for meaning. Meaning is not
inbuilt as, by analogy, it appears to be in other animals. Instinctive, genetically determined
behaviour is prominent in other animals. In humans, this has been largely replaced by a
genetic ability to learn and to construct an interpretation of life. The quest for meaning is an
individual task; it does not come ready made. But the answers people develop are derived in
some way from their community experience. Children naturally absorb and take for granted
the meaning system of their immediate family – at least until they are able to think more
for themselves as well as take on meaning from other agencies and culture. Individuals are
born human, but they become persons through interaction with a community. Individuals
in the human species depend genetically on a non-genetic, cultural inheritance to become
as fully human as they can be. In this very basic sense, education (as natural learning) is a
fundamental formative process for the human being. This same basic principle justifies links
between formal education and people’s construction of meaning and purpose in life.
Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain
(they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was
less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches
and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some
prisoners of a less hardy makeup often seemed to survive camp life better than did those
of a robust nature.5
In his psychiatric theory of Logotherapy, Frankl argued that conscious cultivation of a sense
of meaning was a key to mental health and an aid in addressing some psychological problems.
He believed that a ‘will to meaning’ was a fundamental drive that energised human beings.
The term ‘meaning in life’ was also prominent in the psychology of Carl Jung. He
proposed that a sense of having some valuable, purposeful place in life was important for
mental health.
There is a strong reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is
that they are known to be useful. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that
will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe.
He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense;
he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that he is taking part
in a ‘tale told by an idiot.’6
Jung was also interested in the meaning that was embedded in the unconscious; and in the
collective unconscious, mediated by symbols and dreams.
In Abraham Maslow’s psychology, two concepts were pertinent to meaning: a ‘hierarchy of
needs’ and ‘self-actualisation’.7 While basic physical needs had priority, the full development
of the person required, according to Maslow’s scheme, meaning and purpose, together with
fulfilling life goals and satisfying relationships.
The movement known as humanistic psychology, typified by authors like Maslow,
Rogers, Fromm, Erikson, Allport, May and others, did not overtly highlight the construct
meaning, but had much to say about the meanings that were considered to be important in
becoming a fulfilled person.
cognitive therapy) is that constructive links are proposed between reason and meaning in life.
Through information, reflection on reasons, interpretation and evaluation, individuals can
adjust their understanding of their own lives in ways that help change damaging behaviour
and promote more constructive living. Input to understanding can change people personally
(even if it takes time), and it shows how education for understanding can, in turn, occasion
personal change.
Reason and religious beliefs: There are important links between religious beliefs and
reason. For our purposes here, only a few points will be made on a topic that is extensive.
The idea of ‘faith seeking understanding’ has been prominent in Christianity since the
time of St Anselm. Also, a close association between philosophy and Christian theology has
a long tradition, and there are parallels in other world religions, even if the word ‘theology’ is
not used. Central to this thinking is the presumption that there is (or ought to be) a natural
harmony and complementarity between reason and religious belief. In turn, it would claim
that where there is a clash between the two, it is an ‘apparent’ clash, with one or the other
(reason or faith), or both, being faulty. Some critics of religion tend to overplay a contrast
between religious faith and reason, seeing the former as ‘a-rational’ or even ‘non-rational’.
Religion and the social sciences: Similarly, we presume that there is (or should be) a natural
complementarity between religion and the social sciences. It is pertinent to a later discussion
of what is called ‘psychological spirituality’, where a religious perspective is blended with
psychological insights, and where religious spirituality is articulated in psychological terms
– religion interpreted from the viewpoint of its enhancement of people’s lives.
Another aspect of the relationship between religious beliefs and reason is the ‘rational
evaluation’ of religion – a contentious question for some, but important for the educational
study of religion. In education, religious beliefs and practice need to be held open to rational
evaluation. This does not mean creating conflict between faith and reason, but rather being
able to show how religious beliefs can enhance people’s lives; it also calls into question religious
behaviour that is harmful, judged in the light of community values. Such evaluation can help
identify where religious beliefs are used as a justification for prejudice and selfish or violent
behaviour; it acknowledges that not all religiously motivated behaviour is morally acceptable
and it warns against religious fanaticism. Evaluation is part of a ‘critical’ study of religion that
has a valuable place in both public and religious schools. In practice, it encourages the same
level of critical thinking about religion as is proposed in the study of other subject matter.
These comments highlight links between reason and meaning and are the basis for
relationships between education and meaning. While it is not therapy, education engages
young people in the same sorts of rational processes as those noted above. This provides
grounds for hope that education can make a useful contribution to young people’s search
for meaning.
people’s need for both meaning and identity. However, there is little research that explores
in detail what young people understand by ‘meaning’ and ‘identity’, beyond acknowledging
that they are important for personal development. It is presumed that if youth are somewhat
secure in their sense of purpose, and sure of who they are, they will be better able to cope
with and respond creatively to the psychological pressures of life in contemporary Western
societies.
• What constitutes ‘meaning’ in life? What counts for meaning for different people?
• How is meaning constructed by individuals?
• How is meaning generated in communities? How is it communicated?
• How do you ‘search’ for meaning and how do you know when you have found it?
• If you have to search for meaning, does this imply that meaning is not readily available or
is difficult to find; or that the meaning readily at hand is inadequate or unsatisfying?
• Do you only search for meaning when something goes wrong? Or when the implied
meaning with which you were comfortable is called into question?
• Is the search for meaning a result of a significant or traumatic experience, calling for more
thought about the fundamental values implied in the way one lives?
• Is a search for meaning a symptom of a more fundamental problem: dissatisfaction with
life or unhappiness that prompts individuals to think about what is wrong with their lives
and what needs to be done to improve it?
• Is the search for meaning a cognitive searching or an experiential testing of different values
that are available for adoption?
• Does meaning need to include values for day-to-day living? Or is it just concerned with
ultimate beliefs and values like God, death and afterlife?
• How well does one’s religion provide satisfactory meaning?
• How much time does a healthy person need to spend on the search for meaning?
• Can the search for meaning be a health hazard? Can you spend too much time and energy
searching instead of getting on with life?
• How do you judge when meaning is good or harmful for the individual? What are the
criteria for good and healthy meaning?
• Can meaning be manufactured and sold?
• Western culture is saturated with different meanings for life; does the search for meaning
involve evaluating and choosing what is valuable from the available meanings?
• Given that the search for meaning has a significant cognitive component (also emotional,
attitudinal and volitional dimensions), do the processes of interpretation, critical thinking
and evaluation become important for education in meaning?
30 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
This is a daunting list! It raises a substantial agenda, making it unrealistic to think that
there are simple answers.8 But it is in exploring these questions that there is significant
educative potential, for the professional as well as for young people. It is through such
inquiry that people can find some of the partial answers that help them make sense of
life.
Components
Other functions
2.10 Cultural meanings: Social and cultural meanings as reference points for
personal meaning
Cultural meaning
Contextual influences
Even when they behave inappropriately, people still have some justification in mind; this
makes it easier for them when their action conflicts with professed values. Later, they may
feel uncomfortable when the real meaning of their behaviour becomes more self-evident.
The justification of behaviour given to others is not always its ‘true’ meaning. People are
often reluctant to reveal their true motive. It may be as simple as being polite by not voicing
displeasure. Or it may be more complicated where there is deception, or, where people are
only partly aware of their real motives, there is self-deception.
Some distinctions help illustrate this complexity. Justificatory meaning can take three
forms: articulated personal meaning; unarticulated personal meaning; and implied personal
meaning. There may be differences between the meaning individuals articulate for themselves
and what they profess publicly. For some there is no difference; for others the discrepancy
is considerable.
There will naturally be variations in people’s level of awareness of their own motives, and
also in their consciousness of cultural influences. A mature person could be expected to have
good self-knowledge and a discerning awareness of the cultural influences that affect them.
On the other hand, people can try to avoid the discomfort of thinking about what actually
motivates them; they may be embarrassed to think that others can see their real intentions.
But with hindsight and growing maturity, they may develop a more realistic picture of their
own motivation, and this may lead to personal change.
This aspect of meaning parallels a later interpretation of the psychological function of
identity (Chapter 6). The content of meaning is an expression of the individual’s identity.
Here, meaning and identity are the same psychological reality looked at from different
perspectives. From the viewpoint of meaning, it is the explanation of the individual’s
intentionality. From the viewpoint of identity, it is the individual’s distinctive self-
understanding and self-expression.
account of themselves. Others do not have good self-knowledge; they may give little or no
conscious attention to clarifying their own meaning, and may live without much reference
to it.
Where individualism is prominent in the culture, there is general acceptance that people
have freedom and responsibility for determining their own meaning. This raises questions
about the role of parents and community in the communication of meaning.
healthy meaning. It is also related to the consideration of self-esteem in 6.4.) In other words,
acting with the justification of being your ‘true self ’ does not necessarily make what you do
morally good; it is not a licence to cut across the good of others. These issues highlight the
importance of the evaluation of personal meaning.
Another point can be made about implied meaning. It overlaps with the sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu’s construct of ‘life structure’. He proposed that the most telling description
of people’s values was embedded in the way they acted and how they spent their time. His
views are considered further in the later discussion of identity.9
Following up the earlier comment about the potential enhancement of meaning through
education, it is useful to note that study of articulated and implied meanings (hopefully,
with follow-up reflection) is the substantive content that education has to work with if it is
to educate the young with respect to meaning. It marks out the limited, rational ‘window of
opportunity’ that education has for promoting personal change in young people; it shows
the relevance of studying ‘reasons for living’. Such study may lead to the acquisition of new
meanings; it is an appropriate psychological channel through which classroom learning can
occasion change in beliefs and values. But there is a need to acknowledge that the ‘learning’
of meaning is more complex than learning knowledge and skills, even though it includes
both of these.
their meanings beyond present horizons; whenever meaning is concerned with the future,
imagination is involved.
Imaginative rehearsal of future possibilities is a ‘pathfinder’ for personal change (13.8);
on the other hand, if imaginations are not encouraged, they can stifle choice and action. In
both cases, imagination is a potent mechanism of human learning.
Imagination does not develop in the individual in an exclusively endogenous way.
While the capacity for imagination is genetic, it can be stimulated and enhanced, especially
by images – it needs raw material. It can be cultivated and refined (one of the aims of
education).
In the image-dominated mass media and entertainment industry, it is said that ‘little is left
to the imagination’. Here, so much imagining is done for us. To the extent that this dynamic
affects the imagination, life expectations can be influenced by those who orchestrate media
images. Hence, while significant for creativity, and while it can pave the way for personal
change, the imagination is a psychic area vulnerable to subtle manipulation. Marketing and
consumerism can affect (infect?) the imaginations of the young to secure their purchasing
power.
Intuition is knowing something by feeling or ‘instinct’. It is not a genetic instinct, as
in other animals, but a conclusion reached about a certain meaning that is not yet fully
understood or explained satisfactorily, or not yet justified by evidence or argument. Intuition
may draw on the imagination. Sometimes the phrase ‘gut feeling’ is used to stand for intuition,
but it is certainly the brain and not the alimentary canal where it is located physiologically.
Intuition is also about the synthesis of ideas, about discovering meaningful patterns in
data. Intuition is about anticipation; it is like a hunch – it is not irrational and may be based
on thorough examination of data relevant to the decision, but to some extent it is like a ‘leap of
faith’; one is not sure in advance that an intuition will be correct in its interpretation, and most
people learn that sometimes their intuitions are right and sometimes they prove to be wrong.
Being intuitive is a part of being creative and imaginative. Action cannot always wait
for the perfect solution to be worked out successfully in advance, with no margins for error.
Sometimes people have to act on their intuition as to what is the best course of action to
take; they then have to wait until the eventual outcomes emerge before judging how good
their intuitive meaning really was. In this way, intuitive meaning can be evaluated, and to
some extent, the intuitive capacity can be enhanced.
Components to meaning
Theology will propose the content for religious meaning, but in practice, people’s
personal faith and adherence to a religion cannot always be accounted for adequately by
their grasp of theology; a number of believers may well not understand the finer theological
points in their religion. What is also important can be described as their ‘emotional religious
meaning’. Theology can articulate what people think they need to believe to be members
of a faith community, but also relevant to their religious identification is what makes them
feel a part of that community. The emotional ties, social links, expressions of community
and the rituals of belonging are often central to people’s adherence to religion and to their
involvement in a local community of faith. Some research has suggested that, of the factors
that seem to prompt changing from one religious group to another, it is the emotional and
the social that are probably most influential.10 The sense of welcome, a feeling of belonging
and ‘at-homeness’, where people feel comfortable and their personal and social needs are
met, appear to be more significant in people’s joining a religious group than their judgment
about theological questions – whether this group has a better theology than another. In
some cases, this emotional meaning may also explain why people remain within a particular
local faith community – they feel comfortable there. Nevertheless, the level of satisfaction
with a group’s theology is still likely to be important as regards changing from, or remaining
within, a religion. Some who have joined a religious group because of its emotional appeal
have eventually left because of their judgment of its theological deficiency.
it recontextualises and places things in the largest frame of meaning available to us at any
given stage of our spiritual growth. When we ‘talk’ or pray to God, we are doing the best
we can to reach that innate wisdom within the heart of our own deepest being, which
puts us in touch with the whole of reality. When he answers, it is from our own deepest
selves that we are hearing. But for that reason ‘God’s word’, or the healing power of our
own SQ [or spirituality], can never be final.11
Initial success with more immediate and limited goals can be important for children and
young people in developing meaning for life.
The earlier comment about implied meaning (2.9.5) applies to life goals. The amount of
time and energy people put into particular projects, and even the time spent thinking about
them, will show implied life goals or purpose in life.
from a vantage point; decisions can then be made on more than a pragmatic basis. The story
motif is equally useful in interpreting identity (Chapter 6).
A recent research study on Australian youth considered that:
Young people make their lives by using various resources, especially those drawn from
trusted relationships, to create storylines about who they are and where their lives are
leading. The results of their narratives, or ‘storying’ are visible over time: different
understandings shape the way individuals engage in the world, the way they engage
shapes experience, and experience, in turn, shapes understandings.
… Research has explored how personal stories or narratives can be useful for nego
tiating complex social spaces. For example, for 40 years, social theorists have explored
how individuals make meaning and construct identities in story (e.g. Strauss 1977).
Moral philosophers have suggested that individuals’ stories are narratives of progress,
charting the journey towards and away from ‘the good’ or valued goal-states (e.g. Taylor
1989).12
Myth or meaning-embedded story will be considered later in this chapter in section 2.10.6
on cultural meaning – myth-making as meaning. But it is pertinent here to consider the idea
of personal myths, understood in much the same way as master story. People understand
themselves through their own mythology. As one education writer expressed it, ‘literally
every human being on earth, weaves a tapestry of beliefs and myths with which to make
sense of reality. In short, every young learner has to build his or her own explanatory system
for the universe.’13
In addition, people use personal myths to express some of the principal motifs that they
would like to see as distinctive of their way of life; to some extent, they may consciously act
in ways that seek to identify themselves with these myths.
of an internal ‘orchestra conductor’; it gets all the parts into perspective or, in narrative
terms, it gets all the internal ‘actors’ working together to present a coherent personal story.
Just how well the different aspects of psychic makeup are integrated will vary from person to
person. The integration may not be perfect; even where there are conflicts between reason
and non-rational dimensions – and this is a natural part of being human – there can still
be an overall rational orientation to living. It is considered to be a principal quality of the
mature person. Mental health is impaired when this integration is disturbed, and mental
health is enhanced when it is restored. The importance of understanding in this view of
meaning is critical for education, because understanding is the main channel through which
education might enhance personal meaning.
Meaning can thus be important in regulating emotions, or in putting feelings into some
perspective. This does not take the feelings away; it does not repress emotions, but it can help
the individual take other things into account and action can be based not just on immediate
feelings. For example, people can feel depressed, but on thinking the situation through,
a particular way of interpreting the situation or acknowledging the apparent reasons for
the feelings of depression (even if these are physical) can help them understand what is
happening at the emotional level; as a consequence, the emotions can be better managed.
Management of emotions – not stifling them, and not exciting them inappropriately – is a
major part of coping and resilience.
Other functions
prioritised above the economic. Some of the writings emphasised ‘spiritual health’ as its
key dimension.19
The notion of wellbeing seems to have arisen from the scientific study of the personal
and social situation of people, and of youth in particular – hence the significance of its
aptitude for quantitative research and population statistics. A variety of health and welfare
indicators are used, together with measures of education, employment, disposable income
and other variables. It does not necessarily minimise the importance of spiritual dimensions
that are not so open to empirical research. But it does serve the political purposes within
youth studies to advocate the development of government youth policies. These points are
evident in the publication of the Wellbeing Manifesto by the Australia Institute in 2005.20
Youth wellbeing does focus on young people at risk, and on social problems. But it also
registers concern for the life enhancement of all youth.
Eckersley and co-researchers at the Australia 21 Research company and the Australian
Youth Research Centre, in a comprehensive review of research, considered that:
Many of the attributes of meaning as explained in this chapter are relevant to wellbeing, as
well as the later discussion of identity and spirituality.
Resilience: This construct refers to the capacity to cope with difficulty and not give up. It
is dependent on inner resources. Meaning is central to resilience as people rely on their
interpretations of the situation to help them manage, along with qualities like courage and
character that also enter into their efforts to overcome setbacks.22
Resilience is closely related to coping (2.9.19). Other aspects of meaning are also relevant.
For example, the research report quoted above noted that young people with strong personal
narratives were better able to negotiate chaos, hardship and crisis – ‘weaving storylines
through chaos, change and complexity … a significant task for young people’.23
lost, at least temporarily, because the usual signposts are missing or inadequate for making
sense of their new situation. What helped previously to give life balance and direction now
does not seem to work.
Sometimes the feeling of being mentally adrift can result from a lack of balance or
integration in the personality. If people are stressed or over-emotional, or in manic depressive
moods, their behaviour will not be regulated as it would be normally by their beliefs.
Irrational behaviour, or behaviour that is contrary to the individual’s personal meaning,
may stem from emotion – fear, anxiety or guilt. Just how much personal change to such a
condition can be facilitated by therapy remains difficult to determine; in many cases, the
inclination to such psychological states is based in a genetic imbalance in brain chemistry
and it can be triggered or exacerbated by stress.
of bringing the powerful, oppressors and antagonists down to ordinary size, and of treating
them with disdain; humour is a way of protecting oneself, and taking the focus away from
one’s vulnerability.
Film and television provide wide-ranging sources of wisdom statements. Comments like ‘Stay
cool’, ‘Chill out’, ‘I’m dealing’ become parts of everyday language used to help interpret and
cope with situations. Other statements seem to develop a cult-like following: ‘May the Force
be with you’ (Star Wars). ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ (Spiderman). ‘Be kind
to your self and each other’ (Jerry Springer). ‘You are free to choose a particular behaviour.
But you are not free to choose the consequences of that behaviour’ (Dr Phil McGraw).
No matter what the source, meaning statements can be wise and instructive.
One can get the impression that belief and values statements are always positive. This
is not the case. People have quoted scripture to justify harmful behaviour, racism and
homophobia. Combatants on opposite sides in a war have prayed to the same God to justify
their cause and to give them success in battle. So too, quotations from literature, film and
television can be used to justify violence and negative behaviour.
To this point the chapter has examined the nature and function of personal meaning, and the
ways in which meaning takes hold and develops psychologically in people. But meaning does
not develop or function in a psychic vacuum. It relates to meanings outside the individual: in
other people and in the cultural environment. The following sections look at the meanings
embedded in culture and at the interactions between personal and cultural meanings.
Cultural meaning
like. In an age of television and information technology, young people are tuned in more
widely to international sources of meaning.
more visibly in the media. Also more prominent is concern about the global environment
and the potential for natural disasters. At any point in time, the changing topography of
meanings in the local culture needs to be taken into account as it colours the meaning young
people develop.
While people absorb meaning from culture, they also help maintain and change cultural
meaning. It is a two-way process. Individuals and groups may introduce their own distinctive
variants. This is how ideologies are born. National Socialism, Leninism and Maoism, for
example, had humble beginnings on their way to becoming political ideologies that changed
the course of history. Judgments of such manipulative ideologies do not necessarily imply
a canonisation of capitalism or the liberal democracy; the latter too are in constant need of
appraisal. The lessons of history need to be learnt in terms of critical evaluation of cultural
meanings – an important role for education.
the media and formal education (along with other cultural factors) appear to have lifted the
level of suspicion and critique that people bring to the interpretation of what happens in
politics and business. People are more alert to the existence of hidden meanings in culture,
even if they are not sure what they are. However, there remains a naivety, especially among
the young, as regards the influences on lifestyle that flow from the meanings implied in film
and television (see Chapter 15).
heroines and demigods; and the events become cosmic struggles. Sometimes the stories
are based upon actual events to which added significances are attached. Sometimes the
stories are invented for the purpose. It really does not matter which. The meanings are
what is important.27
Of growing concern for the community … is the question of who is creating the myths
of modern societies, how those myths are being promulgated, and what collective
set of meanings is being legitimized. Clearly, film, television and video libraries are
mass‑producing stories and images which have the power of myth, and which deliberately
create attitudes about the world and about life itself. There are millions of persons
generating music and song which carry their own powerful and recurrent messages …
the consistency of violent depictions on screen and records shapes impressionable people’s
beliefs. The print media – especially the paperback industry – is producing more books,
especially novels, than ever before in human history. Collectively, then, there is a huge,
worldwide industry in myth‑making. It is generally left to schools, as a formal part of
their curriculum, to teach the skills to discriminate, to critique, to appreciate, to classify
and to respond …
That modern society has failed to comprehend the fundamental nature of mythic
consciousness and of story, is all too evident across the globe. Teachers almost by default
have inherited that role of cultural priest.28
Beare also drew attention to techniques for the evaluation and development of mythologies,
considering that the mythopoetic dimension was an important one to develop in education,
which was still dominated by learnings that were too scientific, rationalist and utilitarian.
backpackers which support that particular subculture and its associated meanings. Travelling,
both nationally and internationally, as well as distinctive places for recreation and holidays
(skiing, the beach, golfing) can figure in personal meaning.
Similarly, places of work or study can carry subcultural meanings; in turn, those who
inhabit these places contribute to the maintenance and change in cultural meaning. Schools,
universities and the workplace function as ‘mini-communities’ of meaning.
Lifestyle is often a key element in both identity and spirituality (see Chapters 7 and 9).
Contextual influences
in commanding compliance if their influence is not so visible. They are less likely to be
challenged if they appear as natural and commonsense, and not recognised as constructed
by the powerful and maintained by social interaction.
An ideological statement is intended to promote the cause of a particular ideology. It
is likely to be more effective if its ideological status is not identified. De Botton defined
it as ‘one that is engaged in subtly pushing a partial line while pretending to be speaking
neutrally’.30 This view was prominent in the thought of Marx, who saw ideology as the
instrument of those in power: ‘The ruling ideas of every age are always the ideas of the ruling
class.’31
Hegemony, derived from the Greek word hegemon – leader, and by association, the
dominant group – is the sphere of political influence flowing from a particular person,
institution or movement. It is like the ‘cultural momentum’ of an ideology – the ideological
dominance of one group over another. This can take the form of subtle control over people’s
thinking by some ideas being more important and influential than others, often excluding
or marginalising contrary views. Like ideology, hegemony may not always be readily evident
– such cultural influences need to be identified and tracked to their sources.
The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci developed a theory of cultural hegemony (in the
late 1920s and early 1930s) to show how the dominant power maintained the political
status quo through the influence of its ideological, cultural values.32 He proposed the need
for counter-hegemonic thinking and education to critique prevailing cultural values as a
prelude to social change. His thinking has been applied in contemporary cultural studies
to explore the ways in which themes in popular culture can have a shaping influence on
people’s thinking and behaviour.
What is common to the three terms considered here is the exercise of power and its
subversive influence through cultural meanings. Hence, detecting these meanings and
‘auditing’ the trail of power are essential elements in what can be called a political education.
It empowers individuals, giving them more scope for self-determination. It may not always
deliver real power to those in unjust or oppressive situations, but at least it can liberate their
thinking. This can be a first step towards social change.
alone in their construction of meaning. They can find it difficult to locate helpful meaning,
while at the same time sensing that there is a virtual supermarket of meaning available if they
care to shop for it.
they perceive as the dominant cultural meanings, while others may be antagonistic to them
to varying degrees.
Change in personal meaning is often catalysed by cultural change. History and events
change popular concerns, resulting in shifts in meanings. At the macro level, events like
wars, natural catastrophes and changes in government become markers of change in cultural
meanings. Currently the world is adjusting to global terrorism in the wake of the September
11, Bali, Spain and London attacks, as well as to the war and violence in Iraq, social unrest
in many countries, and various natural disasters. High levels of poverty are still evident even
in prosperous countries. Environmental degradation and global warming are also worrying
concerns. These developments have multiple consequences for individuals, communities,
commerce and nation-states. People wonder where these developments may lead over the
next decade, and what will be the consequences for them.
Changes in cultural meanings can be relatively sudden or drawn out and almost
imperceptible, like a gradual change in cultural mood or change in fashion. The metaphor
of fashion is apt because change in fashion is orchestrated by commercial interests and it
involves complex interaction between the ‘leaders’ of change in cultural meaning and the
‘followers’ who sustain it. Cultural meanings, like traditional beliefs and values, change
gradually as they are handed on and reinterpreted by each generation.
For those unfamiliar with critical theory, the following is an introductory summary that
highlights the perspectives from which it addresses questions about meaning. Some of the
constructs used in critical theory have already been considered, such as ideology, hegemony,
and the critical evaluation of culture.
Critical theory is used as a collective term to cover a number of theoretical developments in
philosophy, sociology, the humanities and social sciences that occurred mainly in the last half
of the 20th century. It has been influenced by philosophies such as structuralism and Marxism;
more recently it has taken some account of post-structuralism and postmodernism, while it is
distinct from these philosophies because of its political focus and concern for social change.
The word ‘critical’ is consistent with the special attention it gives to the interpretation and
critique of society, particularly the critique of domination – in the pursuit of the emancipation
of marginalised groups.38 Giroux considered that one of the central aspects of critical theory
was a ‘commitment to penetrate a world of objective appearances to expose the underlying
social relationships they often conceal. In other words, penetrating such appearances meant
exposing, through critical analysis, social relationships that took on the status of things or
objects’.39 For example, a projection of the ‘good life’ could be little more than subtly promoting
a ‘satisfying consumerism’, thus reducing it to the exercise of purchasing power.
The philosophical-sociological branch of critical theory made use of the notion of
cultural meaning for interpreting social interaction and the dynamics of societies, as well as
for analysing social, political and cultural change.
The term ‘critical theory’ was first used to describe the work of scholars from the Institute
for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, which dated back to the 1930s (for example
Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Fromm and, more recently, Habermas). For some, the
Frankfurt School is critical theory. But the term has come to include other social theory with
different historical and philosophical roots, for example the psychoanalytic theory of Lacan,
hermeneutics and feminist theory.
The encyclopaedia quotation below summarises the approach of the Frankfurt School:
[By doing this] they end up advancing a philosophical commission that propagates
hegemonic class rule and re-establishing the rule of the capitalist class. What this has done
is precisely to continue the work of reproducing class antagonisms and creating a new
balance of hegemonic relations favouring dominant class interests. According to Glen
Rikowski, ‘the insertion of postmodernism within educational discourses lets in some of
the most unwelcome of guests – nihilism, relativism, educational marketisation.’43
The nature, psychological function and construction of meaning 57
More will be said about critical theory in section 6.3.3 with reference to identity, and
later in section 12.5.1 in relation to critical pedagogy.
Semantics is concerned with the study of meaning in linguistics and is beyond our scope
here. The following summarises developments in hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is a branch of philosophy that studies interpretation and understanding.
Originally it involved the interpretation of texts and had its origins in biblical exegesis, but it
has been extended beyond written documents to cover other aspects of communication and
culture, giving rise to a number of different but related hermeneutic streams. Hermeneutics
is concerned with seeking meaning, truth and consensus through dialogue, although some
versions question whether this can ever be attained.
In the 19th century, Dilthey emphasised systematic and scientific interpretations,
acknowledging the influence of sociohistorical context on both author and the meaning of
texts. In the 20th century, the scope of hermeneutics spread beyond texts, and in addition,
Heidegger initiated a philosophical hermeneutics that included existential understanding –
taking in the idea of being in the world and not just about knowing and interpreting the world.
The idea of linear progress from knowledge to understanding to interpretation was regarded
as simplistic, and the very act of understanding implied an active interpretation. Heidegger,
followed by Gadamer, proposed that there was another element in the understanding and
interpretation process and that was self-understanding – in other words, sensing what the
meaning had for the individual in his or her particular life situation.44
Habermas considered mainstream hermeneutics too insulated from political realities,
and his approach was strongly influenced by critical theory.45 Ricoeur is associated with
hermeneutics, particularly through his work in trying to relate hermeneutics (interpretation)
to phenomenology (description of society). His writing of Time and narrative 46 included
special attention to the idea of a narrative interpretation of identity (6.3.2).
Hermeneutics is concerned not only with the meanings in texts and culture intended by
their authors, but with their interactions with social and political contexts; texts and culture
can have something like their own ‘different voices’ when considered from other perspectives,
or when applied to new circumstances. As Gadamer claimed: ‘Not just occasionally but
always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not
merely a reproduction but always a productive activity as well.’47
Ricoeur differentiated between a ‘hermeneutics of trust’ and a ‘hermeneutics of
suspicion’.48 The former involved a basic trust in texts and language and that interpretation
can recover and restore original meanings. Contrasting with this, the hermeneutics of
suspicion questioned much of cultural consciousness as false (drawing on Nietzsche, Marx
and Freud), implying that the task of hermeneutics is to unmask false consciousness and
expose ideologies in culture, organisations and people. The principle of deconstruction is
prominent here, and in the extreme it distrusts both consciousness and language.49
In his consideration of the implications in hermeneutics for education, Gallagher
grouped it into four main streams (each with its particular relevance for education).50 Table
2.1 summarises his analysis, together with notes on pertinent educational issues.
58 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
Approach to Focus of the approach Key contributors Some issues for education
hermeneutics
Moderate Fully objective interpretations Exemplified in the Readers and interpreters participate in
hermeneutics are not possible due to the work of Gadamer the construction of meaning from texts
influences of socio-historical and Ricoeur. and culture.
and personal contexts.
Intersubjectivity is a more realistic
Interpretation is an active aim than achieving absolute truth and
dialogical process, ‘fusion objectivity.
of horizons’ and creative
Active role of learners in the
communication between text
construction of meaning, imaginations
and interpreter.
and aesthetic experience.
Truth can be interpreted, but
it is not absolute.
Critical Hermeneutics influenced Typified by the work The need for the interpretation of
hermeneutics by the social and political of Habermas. ideological and hegemonic influences
agenda of critical theory on thinking and behaviour.
– concerned with challenging
A hermeneutics of ‘suspicion’, not
the interpretation method
presuming good-willed, ideology-free
and its results that are
institutional or cultural meanings.
marginalising, and with
promoting emancipation. Tries to develop ‘distortion free’
communication.
What passes for truth is
usually distorted by ideology; Promotes the critical interpretation of
it needs ‘purification’ to arrive culture with an emancipatory and social
at an undistorted consensus. justice orientation.
The nature, psychological function and construction of meaning 59
Notes
1 A de Saint-Exupery, ‘From generation to generation’, http://www.uua.org/news/91101/pbeedle.html Accessed
18/04/05.
2 F Nietzsche, quoted by R Eckersley 2006, What is wellbeing and what promotes it? Paper published on the
Wellbeing Manifesto Website of the Australia Insitute, http://www.wellbeingmanifesto.net/wellbeing.htm
Accessed 26/06/06, p. 7.
3 D Tacey 2000, Reenchantment: the new Australian spirituality, p. 6.
4 For some people, however, it is not a ‘replacement’ religious language, but the natural way of articulating
religious faith today.
5 V Frankl 1964, Man’s search for meaning, p. 35.
6 CG Jung 1964, Man and his symbols, p. 76.
7 AH Maslow 1968, Toward a psychology of being; AH Maslow 1970, Motivation and personality.
8 These questions and the typology developed in Chapters 1–3 are a prelude to literature reviews that look at
how meaning is used in different disciplines and professional practice; and it might also be a stimulus for
further research on young people’s meanings.
9 P Bourdieu 1977, Outline of a theory of practice.
10 R Stark & WS Bainbridge 1985, The future of religion: Secularization, revival and cult formation; T Robbins
1988, Cults, converts and charisma: The sociology of new religious movements.
11 Zohar & Marshall 2000, p. 196.
12 R Eckersley et al. 2006, Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people,
pp. 8, 26; AL Strauss 1977, Mirrors and masks: The search for identity; C Taylor 1989, Sources of the self; The
making of the modern identiy.
13 H Beare 2001, Creating the future school, p. 47.
14 D Hay & R Nye 1998, The spirit of the child, p. 20.
15 See for example: RF Baumeister 1993, Meanings of life; RS Lazarus 1991, Emotion and adaption.
16 Lazarus 1991, p. 112.
17 Eckersley listed the following as key references on wellbeing in the 2005 paper What is wellbeing, and what
promotes it? Background to a manifesto for wellbeing’. Accessed from the Australian National University website,
May 2006. http://nceph.anu.edu.au/Staff_Students/staff_pages/eckersley_publications.htm: M Bond 2003,
The pursuit of happiness; C Hamilton 2003, Growth fetish; E Diener & MEP Seligman 2004, Beyond
money: Toward an economy of wellbeing; R Eckersley 2004, Well and Good: How we feel and why it matters; R
Eckersley 2005, Well and good: Morality, meaning and happiness; DG Myers 2004, Happiness (excerpted from
60 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
Psychology, 7th edn); H Shah & N Marks 2004, A wellbeing manifesto for a flourishing society, http://www.
neweconomics.org/gen/; Time 2005, The science of happiness. See also: R Eckersley 2005, The quality of life.
In P Saunders & J Walter (eds) Ideas and influence: Social science and public policy in Australia; R Eckersley et
al. 2005, Life in a time of uncertainty: Optimising the health and wellbeing of young Australians; R Eckersley
2006 Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people.
18 Eckersley et al. 2006, pp. 9, 19.
19 J Fisher 2000, Understanding spiritual health and well-being: Becoming human, becoming whole; J Fisher
2001, The nature of spiritual well-being and the curriculum: Some educators’ views.
20 Australia Institute 2005, The Wellbeing Manifesto. Available on http://www.wellbeingmanifesto.net/wellbeing.
htm.
21 Eckersley et al. 2006, p. 37.
22 T Witham 2001, Nurturing spirituality in children and young people by developing resilience.
23 Eckersley et al. 2006, p. 30.
24 One recent example of a study that looks into this question is JC Conroy 2002, Transgression, transformation
and enlightenment: The trickster as poet and teacher.
25 This view was evident in a number of the writings of Neil Postman, for example in Amusing ourselves to death:
Public discourse in the age of show business (1987).
26 See CG Jung 1964, Man and his symbols; J. Campbell et al. 1988, The power of myth and J Campbell 1990,
Transformation of myth through time.
27 H Beare 2001, Creating the future school, p. 47, 50.
28 ibid., p. 50.
29 Quoted in A de Botton 2004, Status anxiety, p. 213.
30 ibid., p. 214.
31 Quoted in ibid.
32 A Gramsci 1971, Selection from the prison notebooks.
33 CG Jung, Psychotherapists or the clergy, Collected works, vol. 11, referred to in Zohar & Marshall 2000,
p. 166.
34 Man’s search for meaning, p. 28.
35 SQ, pp. 29, 166.
36 ibid., p. 170.
37 The billboard advertised the youth helpline on the World Wide Web at http://www.reachout.com.au Accessed
31/01/05.
38 This summary description has drawn on sections on philosophy from the Web encyclopaedia, Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
39 HA Giroux 2003 [1983] Critical theory and educational practice, in Darder et al., The critical pedagogy
reader, p. 28. Quoted from the original: HA Giroux, 1983, Theory and resistance in education.
40 JJ Shapiro 2005, From the chart Critical theory of society, retrieved from Wikipedia, The Frankfurt School of
Critical Theory, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School Accessed 18/04/05.
41 J Habermas 1987, The theory of communicative action; see R Young 1990, A critical theory of education:
Habermas and our children’s future.
42 Giroux 2003, p. 33.
43 P McLaren 2003, Revolutionary pedagogy in post revolutionary times: Rethinking the political economy of
critical education. In A Darder et al. (eds) The critical pedagogy reader, p. 161.
44 H-G Gadamer 2001, Gadamer in conversation: Reflections and commentary, p. 37.
45 Philosophy section of Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics.html Accessed 01/05/05.
46 P Ricoeur 1984–88, Temps et récit (Time and narrative), 3 vols.
47 H-G Gadamer 1989, Truth and method, p. 126.
48 P Ricoeur 1981, Hermeneutics and the human sciences.
49 S Gallagher 1992, Hermeneutics and education, p. 21.
50 ibid., pp. 9–11.
51 ibid., p. 24.
3
The psychological
development of meaning and
issues related to change and
development in meaning
The previous chapter explored the nature and function of meaning, setting out a basic typology.
It also considered cultural meanings as reference points for the individual’s construction of
personal meaning. This chapter continues in the same vein, looking at how personal meaning
develops and at a number of issues related to change and development of meaning. While the
sections serve as brief introductions, some of the issues will be explored in more detail than
others; as before, it is beyond our scope to investigate the related literature.
61
62 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
are naturally dependent on community meanings to some extent; but becoming mature
presumes they will increasingly take personal responsibility for their own meaning, whatever
its degree of congruence with normative community meanings.
Development of meaning usually occurs through adjustments. As people change with
age and experience, they adjust their meanings accordingly; some of this change is the
result of choice; some is not – when things happen they have no option but to accept
reality. Meaning develops to accommodate these challenges. Sometimes individuals make no
adjustment; they feel that there is no reason to change meanings to meet new circumstances.
The personal meaning system can be particularly resistant to change.
Some take a more proactive approach to changing their meaning; they can develop it
by reading, watching educational television, studying and attending personal development
programs – as well as by reflecting on the events of daily life. They are consciously looking
for ways of enhancing their understanding of life.
Religions, also psychiatry and counselling, as well as the self-help movement, tap into
fundamental human needs for conserving or changing meaning. Individuals may draw on
different parts of their religious traditions to update their meaning in new circumstances, to
get a more satisfying or fresh interpretation. Similarly, they may access community meanings
from other sources – from other religions, philosophy and psychology, popular writings, and
the example of heroes and friends – as well as from the media.
Opportunities for the enrichment of meaning are extensive since people have access to
ancient and new traditions of wisdom, as well as to contemporary psychological movements.
But not all change in meaning is healthy. Where there is great scope for change in meaning,
there is also scope for manipulation.
It is not that personal meaning should be able to provide perfectly satisfying answers
for all problems, but it should help people address them in a constructive way, or at least
take up some psychological stance that helps them cope. Sometimes their meaning does not
give them answers that are comforting or easy to accept; but more importantly, it can help
them adjust to reality, especially when that reality is not favourable. What is crucial here is
whether their meaning is a ‘true’ explanation – to this they can be committed, even at some
personal cost. For others, particularly when it is a matter of acknowledging responsibility,
their meaning does not serve them well when it proposes all sorts of explanations and excuses
rather than acceptance of a reality that is painful.
Labour → work
job → vocation
predict how others are likely to behave. Developing one’s own meaning and interpreting the
meanings of others are part of forming and maintaining personal relationships; this also occurs
when people create psychological distance from others, when they learn to dislike particular
people or when a personal relationship is breaking down. Discovering harmony and conflict
between meanings is pertinent both to the development and dissolution of relationships.
Many problems in relationships stem from a failure in this process. Some individuals
may not learn well enough about what others are really like – until it is too late. They may
not comprehend adequately the character of the other with whom they want friendship or
love. A good personal relationship would seem to require a healthy exchange of meanings.
Without adequate communication at this level, and without some verbal confirmation, both
where meanings are shared as well as where they are different, a relationship may remain
fairly superficial. Compatibility and harmony in relationships would seem to presume some
fundamental common meanings together with respectful acceptance of differences.
There is more to relationships than exchange of meanings. Emotional attachments,
perceived beauty and sexual attraction all contribute. However, communication at a meaning
ful level seems crucial for satisfying, long-term relationships, where commitments endure
beyond the initial momentum of mutual attraction and infatuation.
Interpreting relationships in this fashion is useful in exploring gender differences in
meanings; that is, how individuals in a relationship may misinterpret what the other says
and does. Learning how to understand and respond to such differences and complementarity
between the sexes is crucial for effective communication between men and women.
people are likely to suffer in some way. A lack of meaning may lead to unhappiness and
feelings of frustration. For some, however, this may not appear to be a problem, especially
if their attention is occupied elsewhere; nevertheless, from the value position taken here,
insufficient attention given to meaning is regarded as a deficiency in humanness.
Restlessness and boredom can result from an inability to put repetitive actions into
perspective; or from not seeing that experience that is neither exciting nor entertaining
can have useful meaning (this is also pertinent to education). It may be that a need for
excitement and finding things that grab one’s attention have become such a strong addiction
for some that looking for a larger meaning is neglected. When faced with what was referred
to above as repetitive ‘raw’ experience, they cannot provide any meaningful context for it,
with the result that the experience is regarded as pointless. In the extreme, when the usual
run of experience has little meaning, and when excitement levels ebb, they can become
bored and turn to substance abuse, self-harm and violence. This explains the link Frankl
made between youth lack of meaning and boredom.
If young people want to do just what they feel like doing, when and where they want,
they can become prisoners to the existential and to fluctuations in their own emotions.
Such a narcissistic preoccupation with self lacks adequate reference to meanings from
larger contexts; it does not make adequate reference to the individual’s whole life, to the
community and the environment. We presume that healthy meaning includes reference to
this larger context. Self-centred youth have meaning that tends to revolve almost exclusively
around their own needs and plans; others, especially family, are regarded more or less as
useful infrastructure to their lifestyle – or, for those who do not fit this role, as threats.
Similarly, this view provides an interpretation of escapism: people may seek to engage in
various activities that help them avoid the demands of meaningful commitment. Or they
may be completely occupied with trivial pursuits because of a lack of perceived meaning.
Either way it is a retreat from meaning.
3.2.3 Range or scope of personal meaning, mental health and propensity to self-
harm
An individual’s meaning would normally have a range or scope that relates to different
aspects of life such as work, leisure, relationships, family, ethnic and national identity,
religious beliefs, the environment, and animals.
When people have too few meanings informing their lives, they can get things out of
perspective, resulting in a distorted interpretation of what is happening to them. In some
instances of mental illness (and this can be caused as much by an imbalance in brain
chemistry as by psychological problems), there is a shrinkage in the basic meanings that
have previously served to help maintain mental health. They lose sight of the bigger picture
to their lives. Normally, they cope with problems by referring to their supportive meanings.
But if their meaning becomes ‘tunnel-visioned’, narrowly preoccupied with particular issues,
they can become distressed and paranoid. When sick, people will often concentrate on their
own illness to the point where they neglect the wider range of meanings that usually sustain
them.
For those who take their own lives, particularly the young, it is difficult to interpret
where they stood in relation to meaning, and difficult to propose what community or
Issues related to change and development in meaning 67
personal intervention might have steered them away from suicidal action. Logotherapy
proposes that many who suicide do so because they did not have enough cogent meaning
left to live by; they may have given up on finding adequate meaning. But suicide may be
precipitated by strong emotions, depression or a sense of hopelessness where people seem to
have had adequate meaning, but in this condition, this meaning is inoperative. What is of
great community concern is that suicide seems to be one of the life options that a significant
number of the young are considering.
When people are gripped by clinical depression or severe manic episodes, all the meaning
in the world will not help. The physiological basis of their condition is such that therapeutic
inputs of meaning may have little or no impact. This highlights the complex relationship
between the physico-chemical and the psychological. It shows how drug therapy may be
important for the mental health of some at particular stages of their lives.
Suicide is the extreme indicator of disconcerting levels of youth anxiety; other indicators
are high frequencies of depression, and substance abuse. At an international conference on
young people and drugs in Sydney in 2006, disturbing data was aired about young people’s
participation in excessive drinking and use of recreational drugs.3 The conference director
from the Australian Drug Foundation noted that:
We’re not downplaying the impact of illegal drugs such as ecstasy and amphetamines, but
it’s too easy to ignore that alcohol is not only a potentially dangerous drug, but one that
is most accessible to young people and the one most commonly used …
[The level of ] liquor consumption by young girls was disturbing … Higher admission
rates to emergency rooms for young girls is objective proof that young girls are drinking
far more than they have in the past.
Drug and alcohol education is thought to be one of the front-line defences against these
problems; this presumes that pertinent information and meanings will help the young both
identify and avoid them. But the power of reason, good information and even counselling
to change young people for the better should not be overestimated. These community
interventions can be expected to help, but not to perform behavioural miracles. Enhancing
and repairing meaning is an important way of helping people overcome psychological
difficulties and avoid potential health problems, but not an infallible remedy; it can, however,
be a valuable precursor to personal change. Thus there is important scope for an education
in meaning that can contribute to the personal development of young people (see Chapter
10).
meaning can be sources of liberation or of domination. There is no escaping the need for a
critical evaluation of criteria used for assigning meaning and for uncovering the sources of
cultural meanings, in the process exposing their political and economic interests.
For example, a particular meaning may be helpful for accommodating necessary, repetitive
labour. But if this condemns someone to remain in such a station, it becomes dehumanising;
justificatory meaning can support manipulative practice.
The manipulation of people’s meanings is an abuse of power; it can occur as much in
a household as in the workplace and government. These dynamics are evident in social
problems such as sexism, racism and ‘social class-ism’; and they can be detected in policies
related to globalisation of markets, casualisation of employment, economic competition,
workplace agreements and industrial relations.
Social meanings can be developed and utilised for all sorts of purposes. Both classic
propaganda and classic advertising draw on the same psychological dynamics (see Chapter
15). Even the apparently harmless notion of ‘what it means to be cool ’ has been orchestrated
by commercial interests so that young people’s desire to be cool can be steered in consumer
directions that will turn a profit; this ‘conditioning’ of meaning preys on their identity
vulnerability (7.3).
Cultural meanings can provide the impetus for revolution as well as reasons for quietly
accepting and never challenging the status quo. Appraisal of cultural meanings often initiates
cultural and political change. The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire illustrated this dynamic:
the development of critical literacy was instrumental to helping peasants break free from
social and political oppression.4 The first step towards freedom from manipulative power
is to stop using the language and meanings of the oppressive group; now, where image
consciousness is a driving force in marketing and consumerism, the critical evaluation of
cultural meanings also needs a deconstruction of commercially proposed images.
meaning system – they will want to protect it; and it is understandable that they will look
for ways of bolstering it and shoring it up. Threats to the belief system can be dismissed
or attacked. As will be considered later, what might be a challenging opportunity for one
person to extend their meaning is for another a threat that appears to undermine it.
One way of strengthening the meaning system, especially a religious one, is to appeal
to miracles, portents or signs of fate. Some feel that the performance of particular religious
rituals reinforces the assurances they get from their beliefs.
Some will bolster their meaning system by appealing to an external authority. If there
is great trust in, and respect for, leaders (whether they are religious, political, or business
leaders, or even trusted friends), individuals can come to depend on them as guarantors
of meaning. Such leadership can give plausibility and credibility to personal meaning. For
some, the authority of a revered institution underpins their meaning.
context in which they were originally developed. Take for example the evolution of ideas in
Christology. Scripture scholarship and studies of the historical Jesus have uncovered more of
the complexity in understandings of the Christ of Christian faith. In turn, this has affected
what it means to be ‘saved by Christ’. Formerly, many lay Christians would not have probed
the theological meaning of these doctrines, even though they had great emotional significance
and were cornerstones of their religious faith. Debating their meaning was the province of
theologians and clerics, and latterly of educated lay people. Now the wider culture raises
so many questions about interpretation that ordinary believers find it difficult not to think
more critically about the meaning of their religious beliefs. They are affected by the modern
tendency to appraise meaning in terms of personal experience: what a belief means for them
personally, and what bearing it has on their lives. There appears to be widespread concern to
find satisfying psychological insights into theological beliefs. But for those who draw little
meaning from their religion, these questions will not attract much attention.
One controversial example of change in theological meaning in Christianity will be
considered here. The traditional, ‘popular’ interpretation of Jesus for many centuries is now
questioned by scriptural and theological scholarship.5 It is not questioning the importance
of Christian belief in Jesus, but it draws attention to the complexity and problems in
understanding the three central questions about Jesus: his identity, his mission and his
message. The traditional interpretation had clear answers to these questions: He was the
Divinely Begotten Son of God. His mission or his purpose was to die for the sins of the world.
And his message was primarily about himself and about the importance of believing in him.
This image of Jesus as Divine Saviour was crystallised in the well-known phrase from John’s
Gospel, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’ (John, 3:16).
In relation to these three questions, scripture scholarship suggests that the historical Jesus
(or the pre-Easter Jesus) in all likelihood did not think of himself as the Messiah or with any
of the other exalted terms ascribed to him in John’s Gospel. Also, this scholarship proposed
that the historical Jesus did not see his own purpose as dying for the sins of the world. In
addition, it considered that Jesus’ principal message was not about himself or the importance
of believing in him. This interpretation comes as a shock to many believers because it seems
contrary to their cherished beliefs and to traditional images of Jesus. But its proponents
argue that it is not undermining Christian faith, but moving towards a better understanding
of the complexity both in the historical life of Jesus and in the way early Christians came
to believe in him as the Christ.6 It considers that today’s believers have access to insights
from scholarship that were not available throughout most of the history of Christianity.
With a better account of what the historical Jesus was actually like, it suggests that a better
interpretation of Jesus’ identity, mission and message is possible; and that in turn this can
enhance Christian faith. Also, this scholarship tends to highlight scripture as the theological
documents of the early Christian communities; Christians today stand on the shoulders of
their forebears in faith.
Scripture scholarship has led to significant change in Christian theological meanings.
But there is a considerable range of views. At one extreme is a strictly literal interpretation of
the gospels. Then there is a spectrum of theological opinions that should not be represented
simplistically as a polarisation between fundamentalist and liberal positions. Some scholars
accept the need for good contextualised biblical analysis, but are wary of interpretations that
72 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
seem to move in the direction of questioning the uniquely revelatory nature of the gospel
record and the particularism of Christian truth claims.
One of the consequences of scholarship is an increasing significance of the relationship
between the biblical texts and their originating communities. The plausibility of the religious
message in scripture is linked with the fidelity and credibility of its religious community. The
same might also be said about the teachings of contemporary communities of faith.
Because of the diversity ranging across the areas of normative church doctrines, scholarly
theological opinions and personal interpretation or beliefs, conflicting views are inevitable;
meanings perceived by some as not orthodox will inspire new faith insights for others.
Different churches define what they regard as orthodoxy as a guide for their adherents. This
sort of diversity has always characterised religions. In school religious education, there is
the problem of deciding how extensive a range of interpretations should be studied – about
which particular meanings from a religious tradition should be included, about what level
of theological controversy is to be introduced for different age groups, and about what how
much attention should students give to the appraisal of religious truth claims.7
resulted in conflict between religion and science because both were concerned with explaining
the world, even if this was done from different perspectives and with different methods.
Further attention will be given to this conflict below.
As one individual commented: ‘My God has to have at least a PhD in quantum physics’.
Understandings of the complexity of nature cannot but impinge on thinking about creation.
A mechanistic or atomistic interpretation of reality that dominated science for a long time
has given way to discoveries about the sub-quantal nature of matter and about the origins,
age and evolution of the universe. A built-in uncertainty exists at the most basic levels of
wave and particle physics. Issues raised by the New Physics have created an interesting
agenda for philosophical and theological meanings.
For some, the scientific story is a more attractive and realistic alternative than a literal
reading of Genesis; so they dismiss the latter as myth in the negative sense, and as a result,
dismiss Christianity (and religion generally) because its validity was presumed to be
dependent on the historicity of Genesis. For others, this interpretation helped justify an
already established view that religion was irrelevant to their lives.
Still others reacted differently. Their religious beliefs were bolstered by reading Genesis
literally; this historicised the creation stories, interpreting them as scientific facts. This view
read Genesis as if it were like a science text, dictated by God to the biblical author. Ironically,
this approach seemed to want historical or scientific verification of beliefs (as explained in
3.2.8). It did not differentiate the theological message from the literary form. The stories
took such strong historical roots in their religious meaning system that any questioning
of the stories’ historicity was experienced as a threat that might undermine religious faith.
The logical alternative for this group was to dismiss the scientific account of human origins
as false. And as far as scriptural meanings were concerned, a fundamentalist position was
taken.
Another variant of the fundamentalist position is evident in the Creation Science
movement. It began with a rejection of generally accepted scientific views of the origins of
life and of humans in particular. But in its place, bolstering their religious interpretations,
was a ‘new’ scientific theory for the origins of life. It was called Creation Science and it
sought to establish a scientific case for creation as described in Genesis. It is well established
in the United States and Australia and from it has arisen the Creation Science magazines Ex
Nihilo and Creation Magazine.8 While the group has exerted some political pressure to have
Creation Science included in the public school curriculum, generally this has been rejected
on the grounds that it is not ‘science’.
We consider that the Intelligent Design movement is a ‘softer’ version of Creation
Science. It accepts a limited view of evolution, suggesting that there are points in the
diversification of life where the direct intervention of the creator is needed to explain the
emerging complexity. The ‘scientific’ case for Intelligent Design proposes that there are
gaps and inconsistencies in Darwinian theory; in particular, it claims that some organs and
organisms are so complex they must have been created at a particular point in time by an
intelligent designer independent of other influences.
Part of the popularity of Intelligent Design theory is the affinity it has with teleology
(the philosophy of purposes) in medieval philosophy. A number of philosophical arguments
were developed as demonstrations of the intelligibility of the existence of God; they were
often, but mistakenly, referred to as ‘proofs’ of the existence of God. The argument from
‘design’ (contrasting with arguments related to God as prime mover and first uncaused cause)
proposed that the purposes that humans discern in the adaptation of animals and plants to
the environment, and in other complexities in nature, are intelligible and are thus consistent
with the idea that God as an intelligent being designed this complexity into creation; the
purposiveness and splendour of the development of life in all its forms point to the existence
of an intelligent cause. This philosophical interpretation of the role of God in creation
remains compatible with evolutionary theory because it interprets God’s role as immanent
and not physically interventionist; it is different from the Deist interpretation which saw
God as setting creation in motion and then letting it run according to the laws of physics in
a mechanical fashion; it regards evolution as a distinctive ‘signature of creation’, considering
that God can be purposive even through an evolutionary process that involves chance and
Issues related to change and development in meaning 75
natural selection. By contrast with these views, Intelligent Design considers that God plays
an interventionist role, especially at key points in the development of life-forms.
Hence Intelligent Design, from this point of view, is not science because it sees divine
intervention in the emergence of life as a good scientific argument, and not just as a philosophical
or religious interpretation. Its contemporary prominence needs to be understood within the
historico-political controversy about the teaching of evolution in schools. It was only in 1968
that the US Supreme Court overturned earlier laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution
in schools. Lobbying for the inclusion of Creation Science, and now Intelligent Design,
within the school science curriculum has continued. So far these moves have been resisted.
Our concern is that Intelligent Design, particularly as represented by Phillip Johnson, the
Discovery Institute and the Centre for Science and Culture, as well as in the writings of
Dembski and Behe, is something of a cover for propagating a conservative religious and
political view; it sees the scientific theory of evolution as dangerous because it is considered to
be necessarily anti-theist and in conflict with the Bible and the Qur’an.9 It seems to be a subtle
way of getting around the prohibition on teaching Creation Science in American schools.
Ironically, Creation Science and Intelligent Design could well be investigated critically
and appropriately within school subjects such as religious education and philosophy; they
can more readily deal with the ambiguity of the claims to be scientific, or mixtures of
science, religion and philosophy. This question could be located within a broader study of
the perceived conflict between science and religion.
To conclude this section we refer to a contrasting interpretation of Genesis. A theological
and symbolic approach reads the Genesis account theologically, with an appreciation of the
literary form of creation myths. And it reads the scientific theories about the origins of the
universe, earth and human life strictly as such.
1 the problem of evil and suffering and how this is to be reconciled with a God who is all-
powerful and all-loving;
2 a perceived conflict between what was taught in science lessons and what is thought to
be involved in holding religious beliefs.
76 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
Another British study of young people’s beliefs in the mid-1970s suggested that if
young adolescents did not make a transition from a simple literal view of Genesis to a more
theological interpretation, it was increasingly likely that they would give up their religious
beliefs at about the same time they stopped believing in fairy stories:
Childhood belief is breached with incredible ease on the basis of a simplistic scientism …
the first incursion into a simple Biblical literalism seems to be the automatic death blow
to ‘belief ’. There is in fact a complete vacuum at the point in intellectual development
where the ‘fairy story version’ ends and anything more ‘grown up’ might take its place.
What takes over is a vocabulary of empirical science. Any sort of idea, however fantastic,
will be given house room if it can be dressed up in a scientific, or more accurately perhaps,
a ‘science fiction’ garb.12
A study by Francis (1990) looked at the perceived clash between religion and science.13 Only
20 per cent of the sample of 11–15-year-olds disagreed with the statement ‘True Christians
believe the Universe was made in 6 days’. Nineteen per cent thought that Christians could
not believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution, while a further 65 per cent were unsure whether
Darwin’s theory was compatible with Christian belief. Twenty-eight per cent considered that
‘Nothing should be believed unless it can be proved scientifically’, while a further 22 per
cent were unsure whether this was the case. Forty-four per cent thought that ‘Theories in
science can be proved to be definitely true’, while a further 37 per cent thought this might
possibly be true.
In these British samples, now some years old, a simple scientism seems to have influenced
adolescent thinking. Just how students in Australian schools stand on this question remains
to be determined. In any case, the science–religion interface remains an important one for
education. Young people need to be helped to become more aware of the range of meanings
that contribute to their emerging worldview. An adequate understanding of science and of
the possibilities and limitations of scientific explanation are pertinent.
change in religious meaning for Christians, and both have been rejected by fundamentalists.
This thinking, also evident in groups that are not fundamentalist, tends to be intolerant
of deviations from traditional meanings (deviants are treated as subversive). They can be
emotional in expressing beliefs and convictions. Truth tends to be perceived in ‘black and
white’; ‘complexity’ in truth or ‘degrees of uncertainty’ in truth are not ideas with which they
are comfortable. They feel that if only people would go back to what happened in the good
old days, problems in the Church would go away.
event or view challenges the plausibility of the meaning system, it can provoke a strong, and
at times violent, reaction; the secure meaning is felt to be at risk. If critiques or new ideas are
correct, it would cause an ‘earthquake’ in their meaning system. New ideas may not even be
considered because of their threat.
The picture painted here is an extreme one. But to varying degrees, resistance to change
in meaning is something that all people experience. Being aware of possible challenges to
students’ meaning is an important question for education. Teachers need to be wise enough
to understand that new ideas that can be accommodated comfortably by some young people
may be distressing for others. This does not mean that all potentially controversial content
should be omitted from the curriculum to avoid stressing students’ meanings; rather, the
average school curriculum is probably too non-controversial. But it does suggest the need
for care in thinking through in advance the difficulties that challenges to meaning can cause
for children and adolescents. This is an aspect of the teachers’ code of professional ethics.
When students are studying meaning, teachers need to ensure that the investigation does not
pressure them to resolve the questions then and there in the classroom.
Notes
1 Accessed from the Viktor Frankl quotations website, May 2006 http://www.worldofbiography.com/9124-
Victor per cent20Frankl/quotations.htm
2 R Eckersley et al. 2006, Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people,
pp. 36–7.
3 M Wood 2006, Young at risk from binge drinking, Sun-Herald, 21 May 2006, p. 25. Before the conference
this article reported the following: 19% of 12-year-olds and 20% of 17-year-olds in the survey sample were
drinkers; 31% of 15-year-olds and 44% of 17-year-old drinkers consumed levels of alcohol that were considered
risky for adults [indicating the tendency to ‘binge drinking’] Source: Cancer Council of Victoria. Figures for
admission to emergency wards for excessive drinking show that from 1998 to 2001, the hospitalisation rate
for teenagers (15–19-year-olds) increased by 4% and for young women (2–24-year-olds) increased by 7%.
4 P Freire 1971, Pedagogy of the oppressed; P Freire 1980, Education for critical consciousness.
5 This example is paraphrased from a public lecture on the historical Jesus by Dr Marcus Borg at the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington DC in 1997 as part of a seminar on Jesus conducted by the Society for Biblical
Archaeology.
6 The following is a sample of references on the academic debate about the historical Jesus. Crossan & Funk
would represent a more ‘radical’ interpretation; both are members of the ‘Jesus Seminar’ group of scholars. M
Bockmuehl 2001, The Cambridge Companion to Jesus; MJ Borg 2003, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering
a life of faith; MJ Borg 2001, Reading the Bible again for the first time: Taking the Bible seriously but not literally;
JD Crossan 1991, The historical Jesus: The life of a Mediterranean Jewish peasant; JD Crossan 1994, Jesus: A
revolutionary biography; JD Crossan & JL Reed 2002, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the stones, behind the texts;
JD Crossan et al. 1999, The Jesus controversy: Perspectives in conflict; R Crotty 1996, The Jesus Question: The
historical search; RW Funk 1996, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a new millennium; W Herzog. 2005, Prophet and
Teacher: An introduction to the historical Jesus; B Witherington 1997, The Jesus quest: The third search for the
Jew of Nazareth (2nd edn).
7 In studying theological diversity in religious education, other pertinent issues include:
• finding a wise balance in covering orthodox religious teachings while identifying areas of difference and
controversy;
• teaching critical skills in interpretation;
• sustaining a ‘critical’ study of scripture and theology while not exceeding the intellectual capacity of
children and adolescents;
• avoiding the use of theological controversy in a sensationalist fashion, as if this might promote student
interest in the topic;
Issues related to change and development in meaning 79
• being sensitive to the potential within a critical study to make some students feel that their personal
interpretation of religious beliefs is being threatened, while honouring the commitment to educate students
in critical interpretation;
• avoiding references to theological controversy in a way that might appear to promote agnostic
interpretations;
• if students do not learn about theological controversies in religious education, later, when they find out
what happened they can feel that the truth was concealed from them at school;
• students need a basic knowledge of the theological views that unite and divide the Christian churches (as
well as of key similarities and differences between world religions);
• as part of the evaluation of religion, students need to learn how beliefs can enhance personal and community
life while they can also be used to justify violence (for example, the use of Christian beliefs as a so called
justification for the killing of Muslims during the Crusades; terrorists claiming that suicide bombing is
justified by Muslim faith, although they would prefer to use the word ‘martyrdom’).
8 For example, The Creation science foundation, Box 302, Sunnybank Qld; Creation Industries International,
http://www.creationontheweb.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/ and writings by K Ham, A
Snelling and C Wieland; Creation magazine http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3871/ (similar
to the former journal Ex nihilo).
9 The following examples present the case for Intelligent Design: WA Dembski 1999, Intelligent Design: The
bridge between science and theology; WA Dembski 2004a, Signs of intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design;
WA Dembski 2004b The design revolution: Answering the toughest questions about Intelligent Design; MJ Behe
1998, Darwin’s black box: The biochemical challenge to evolution; MJ Behe 2000, Science and evidence for design
in the universe (Proceedings of the Wethersfield Institute); J Wells 2002, Icons of evolution: Science of myth? Why
much of what we teach about evolution is wrong; PE Johnson, various writings on http://www.origins.org/
pjohnson/pjohnson.html. The organisation Origins features resources on Intelligent Design and philosophical
theism: http://www.origins.org/menus/design.html. The Discovery Institute (http://www.discovery.org/) and
its subsidiary The Centre for Science and Culture (http://www.discovery.org/csc/), based in Seattle, promote
Intelligent Design. A supplementary biology textbook for students outlining the case for Intelligent Design
is P Davis & DH Kenyon 1993, Of pandas and people: The central question of biological origins; see a critique
on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People. An account of the ‘wedge’ theory used to get a
conservative religious agenda into public education is B Forrest & PR Goss 2004, Creationism’s Trojan horse.
For critiques of Intelligent Design on the Web, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design.
10 LF Francis. 1989, Drift from the churches: Secondary school pupils’ attitudes to Christianity.
11 R Goldman 1964, Religious thinking from childhood to adolescence.
12 M Hare Duke & W Whitton 1977, A kind of believing?; see also B Martin & R Pluck 1977, Young people’s
beliefs.
13 LJ Francis, HM Gibson & P Fulljames 1990 Attitude towards Christianity, Creationism, Scientism and
interest in science among 11-15 Year Olds.
4 The search
for meaning
Viktor Frankl 1
This chapter examines what is understood by the notion of search for meaning, which is
regarded as a key developmental task for adolescents. It proposes a preliminary set of criteria
for what constitutes healthy meaning. Taking a value stance on what sort of meaning young
people need is a prerequisite for planning an education in meaning.
The phrase ‘search for meaning’ was popularised by Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s search for
meaning (1964).2 As shown in the last two chapters, searching for meaning has long been
a defining characteristic of the human person. But over the last fifty years it has become a
more prominent issue for three reasons: first, a decline in the relevance of traditional sources
of meaning like religion and family; second, a greater emphasis on individualism where
people rely more on their own resources for constructing personal meaning; and third, that
‘progress’ and ‘development’ in Western technological societies have not always equated with
increased happiness, and people are puzzled about the causes of personal and social unrest.
Hence more time and angst is going into trying to make sense of life, whereas in the past
more of the meaning people relied on was taken for granted.
Research and writings about youth have suggested that the search for meaning and
identity is a more problematic developmental task for young people than it was formerly.3
But not enough attention has been given to what this search entails and why it is needed.
More needs to be done in clarifying just what is understood by ‘meaning’ and how it
functions psychologically.
80
The search for meaning 81
A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness, but rather in search of a reason to
become happy.
The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.4
Frankl stressed a genetic ‘will to meaning’ and its dimensions of rationality and
commitment. This provides a basis for an education in meaning. However, it would be
mistake to presume that all young people show an overt need for meaning, or an interest
in searching for it. For some adolescents the search for meaning is a central concern; others
may not want to give it much thought; while for others, the search for meaning may be
a health hazard! For many, the pursuit of immediate happiness and satisfaction is more
important than finding meaning. Some young people occupy each of these positions at
different periods of their life. Nevertheless, the idea of promoting personal meaning is a
good ideal to propose for personal development, and as such it can be a valuable educational
goal.
The idea of a search for meaning suggests that
• people consciously look for theories that give satisfying insight into life;
• conscious effort is required for appropriating and developing meaning – it does not come
automatically or easily;
• there may be a felt deficit of meaning that motivates people to look for something more
meaningful than currently held theories;
• usually the individual is the one who ultimately decides for himself/herself what is
meaningful;
• the search may involve a conscious evaluation of available meanings;
• meaning or a satisfying interpretation may come after the event – it can develop through
attempts to understand what has happened.
82 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
one necessary condition for meaning is the attachment to something larger than the self;
and the larger that entity, the more meaning you can derive.
To the extent that it is now difficult for young people to take seriously their relationship
to God, to care about their relationship to the country, or to be part of a large and abiding
family, meaning in life will be very difficult to find. The self, to put it another way, is a
very poor site for meaning.5
Young people can feel caught in a bind. The culture lauds individualism; the commercial
world does everything it can to make individualism a marketable commodity. But excessive
individualism can be the cause of a pathological aloneness; it can erode a sense of community,
and it can put unnecessary pressure on young people to have to work out meaning and
purpose by themselves.
While meaning ultimately needs to be appropriated by the individual, it may be expecting
too much of the human condition to have children and adolescents construct meaning
entirely by themselves. They need resources in meaning from the community. It is a question
of balance.
other theories of personal development that involved structural developmental stages (such
as those of Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, and Kegan).
One of the focal points of Fowler’s theory was evident in the subtitle to his book:
The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. He explored the processes
through which meaning was constructed across the life cycle. His developmental stages
showed how children were dependent on parental figures for meaning; as they grew
older, they were socialised into community meanings. He highlighted the ways in which
individuals progressed from authority-dependent meaning to more autonomy. In the later
stages of development, they did not need to defend the boundaries of their meaning so
strongly, and they could be open to a wider range of new meanings without anxiety or
threat to their own identity. They did not need to collapse the polarities and tensions
within their meanings.
Fowler’s work is a useful resource for appraising maturity in meaning. Any such appraisal
inevitably involves value judgments. Also, maturity needs to be assessed in both the content
and the process of meaning-making. The extent to which personal meaning flows into action
is an additional aspect of maturity; this thinking moves closer to the relationship between
meaning and character or virtues.
While the notion of a self-appraisal of meaning can readily be recommended, the extent
to which others and community agencies (like schools) might be engaged in the appraisal
of personal meaning is difficult to determine, and it involves ethical questions. While in
therapy and counselling people give privileged access to their personal meanings, their
meaning needs protection in the public domain; here, the evaluation of meaning is more
appropriately concerned with a general educational exploration of content and process in
meaning-making, leaving individuals free to draw their own personal implications.
It is not just that a lot of new uncertainties have been introduced but that the incipient
uncertainties that were always there in the past, just beneath the surface, have become
more visible. This is disconcerting for a greater number of people. No longer is it a matter
of finding meaning within an accepted framework; cultural postmodernity tends to call
frameworks into question. Where the questioning of meaning becomes excessive, there is
a danger that people will become increasingly self-centred and will channel most of their
energies into satisfying present needs in an individualistic way, with disdain for both the
support and the responsibilities associated with communities of meaning.
A first step in addressing the crisis of meaning is to acknowledge and articulate the
naturally high levels of complexity and uncertainty in life across many domains that have
resulted from cultural and technological progress – although the meaning of what constitutes
‘progress’ is part of the problem. Hence it may be unrealistic to expect that meanings should
be absolutely certain or true, and that they should be totally secure; that is not the nature
of human meanings. They always have some measure of inbuilt uncertainty, even though
people may have been unwilling ever to acknowledge this; human meaning always involves
interpretation, even if an interpretation of reality outside the person. In other words, there
may be access to absolute truths outside the individual, but this access will always be partial
as far as the individual’s knowing and meaning is concerned.
Then there is the question of how one can live constructively, comfortably and securely
with partial meanings; and how one can accept a tolerable level of uncertainty that goes
naturally with both the personal meaning-making process and a culture that is very critical and
questioning. It is not a matter of being unable to know absolute truth, but of acknowledging
that one cannot know all of the absolute truth, because it is too large and complex. This is not
relativism, classic agnosticism or a pragmatic functionalism. Constructive, functional meaning
does not have to be perfect or absolute. Fidelity in commitments can be maintained while
admitting natural uncertainties in the personal knowing and meaning-making processes.
From this point of view, growth towards maturity in meaning involves replacing false
certainties with true uncertainties. It means learning how to cope with a natural level of
complexity and live with the valuable partial meanings that individuals can construct in
connection with community life; and it includes valuing traditional meanings even if they
are reinterpreted anew from generation to generation. This approach to meaning-making
applies to those who are religious believers as well as to those who are not. Admittedly, it is
the sort of maturity that might be expected of adults. Also, it can be more suited to some
personalities than others; some find it difficult to live with too many ‘loose ends’, especially
as regards their ultimate meanings. Inevitably, some will reject this view as relativism of
a sort because it admits to a level of uncertainty in personal knowledge that they are not
prepared to accept.
This interpretation has implications for religious people: for example, acknowledging a
degree of uncertainty in the physical or historical details related to their religious beliefs and
accepting this as a normal part of faith, as well as accepting that religious doctrine is socially
constructed and has usually evolved over time. Some, however, would want a stronger place
for historicity and unchanging doctrine.
The differences in epistemology implied in the above discussion need to be acknowledged;
this is significant in the public debate about what might be entailed in an education in
meaning. We think there will never be full community consensus about the issues. But it is
still possible to work at clarifying what can be attempted in an education in meaning.
86 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
A capacity to live with some uncertainty in the meaning system has probably always been
a part of the makeup of mature people. It is just that in contemporary Westernised societies
there is a greater need for such a capacity just for psychic survival and mental health. Those
who favour a more absolute and certain meaning system will be in for a harder time, even if
they are supported and reassured by a strong group of the like-minded.
It is too much to expect that this sort of adult maturity in meaning can be realistically
achieved by children and adolescents. Nevertheless, if it is an appropriate ideal, it should
have implications for school education.
Personal meaning
• a view that healthy, satisfying personal relationships are a key to happiness and wellbeing;
• an understanding of the human value of work and leisure.
• access to the basic shared understandings of one’s family and primary community of
meaning; this may include the beliefs of the religious group to which the child’s parents or
guardians belong (whether or not they are practising members);
• knowledge and understanding of a range of cultural meanings; this should include
knowledge of the beliefs of various religious groups in the community (usually the most
common ones) as well as of non-religious worldviews and political meanings, and a
tolerance of religious and ethnic diversity within the limits set by the law of the land;
• while acknowledging and assimilating community meanings, development of a capacity
to be more autonomous in one’s own personal meaning, at the same time not neglecting
the need for interdependence with the community.
Normally, trust in authorities and commitment to institutions can be healthy parts
of personal and social life. But this does not mean an ultimate surrendering of personal
judgment and informed choices.
Notes
1 V Frankl, from the Frankl/Logotherapy website, http://www.top-biography.com/9124-Victor%20Frankl/
quotation.htm Accessed July 2001.
2 V Frankl 1964, Man’s search for meaning.
3 For example, R Webber 2002, Young people and their quest for meaning; M Mason et al. 2006, The spirit of
generation Y: Summary of the final report of a three year study.
4 Frankl/Logotherapy website, http://www.romus.co.nz/ezine/m_meaning.htm Accessed July 2001.
5 R Eckersley 1997, Portraits of youth, p. 246.
6 JW Fowler 1980, Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning.
5
The elusive self:
Psychological
and social functions
of identity
Karl Marx1
Professionals who work with youth need to understand how identity is formed, as well as being
able to evaluate its functions – to judge when it is healthy and when it is unhealthy. These needs
are addressed in this and the following two chapters.
The chapter looks at the construct identity in a general way, identifying its personal and cultural
dimensions. It concludes with a discussion of a number of identity-related issues. It is followed
by a chapter that considers research insights into identity, working towards a view of identity
and identity health that will be useful for education. Because identity has a prominent place in
young people’s personal development, and because consumer culture gives special attention to
youth’s identity vulnerabilities, the third chapter examines this developmental task, particularly
the way young people negotiate perceived social reality about identity.
89
90 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
Identity has to do with answers to the question ‘who am I?’ Inevitably, it has both
psychological and sociological dimensions as individuals think of themselves as distinct
persons while also belonging to cultural reference groups. Also inevitably, to varying degrees,
culture will have a shaping influence on individuals’ personal identity. Thus a key to analysing
identity will be the complex interactions between individuals and cultural identity resources.
Identity is the term that indigenous peoples (such as the Native Americans and Australian
Aborigines) often like to use in preference to culture or religion, as do many in the Jewish
community. While all in society usually have some sense of ethnicity, the strength of the
identification varies considerably, from the passionate to the indifferent. Sometimes ethnicity
may be a more pronounced part of people’s felt identity when they are a minority group
because it helps distinguish them from the dominant groups in society. As well as being
important for self-expression, ethnicity has a supportive and defensive function, particularly
if the group is oppressed or marginalised. Nothing binds a group together more than a sense
of being oppressed.
A common concern of ethnic communities in Westernised societies is the maintenance
of their distinctiveness in terms of cultural continuity in the context of a wider culture that
is secularised. They consider that the survival of ethnic identity requires the preservation of
history, language, customs and religion against the eroding effects of the host culture. Of
particular concern is the tendency of many youth to identify more with a global teenage
culture than with their ethnic heritage; if they are ‘homogenised’ into popular culture, their
role as historical carriers of a distinctive tradition may be eclipsed. For some young people,
the situation prompts questions like ‘How much traditional ethnic culture do we really
need?’ ‘Can I not retain some sense of distinctive origins while fitting in harmoniously with
the popular culture?’ Also, there is the possibility of conflict in values and lifestyle.
By acknowledging a national identity in relatively multicultural countries, people can
see their distinctive ethnicity within a wider framework. Similarly, a religious identity can
be part of an ethnic identification, while it can also cut across ethnic boundaries because
it includes a diversity of cultural or ethnic groups. How well and how harmoniously such
identity diversity works will vary from place to place and from time to time. People can
feel comfortable with it, seeing the diversity as a source of cultural riches; but it can also be
uncomfortable, and in the extreme, ethnic or racial prejudices and hatreds fuel violence.
This situation in multicultural countries can be summarised as follows. People develop a
sense of personal identity through complex interplay between five centres of influence:
The particular profile of an individual’s identity depends on the psychological mix from
these influences. Many identity issues emerge from these interactions, for example multi
culturalism, multi-faith society, intercultural communication, limits to tolerance, racism,
The elusive self: Psychological and social functions of identity 91
• When the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986 and when the Columbia disintegrated
during re-entry in 2003, there was some soul-searching in the United States, and not just
in NASA.
• The Vietnam war, now more than thirty years on, still tears at the American psyche –
success in war had been an important part of national identity in the United States, but
Vietnam called it into question; in addition, it challenged the morality of US involvement
and it created identity problems for the Vietnam veterans. There were some national
identity concerns over the 1991 Gulf war and even more related to the invasion of Iraq in
2003.
• Personal trauma like loss of a job, the breakdown of a relationship, divorce or death of a
family member can jolt identity, calling for a personal evaluation.
• The persistent loss of games by one’s favourite team can cause depression and may raise
identity questions. Often the coach is treated like a scapegoat before a new leader is signed
up to resuscitate the team identity. On the other hand, when the team is on a winning
streak, the sense of identity it supports is secure and makes all of those who share it feel
the success.
92 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
Moral The core values and moral code that show what the person is like
Personality How one appears to friends and acquaintances; how one ‘presents’ to others
Spiritual How people see themselves as spiritual; how they perceive and relate to a
spiritual-moral dimension to life
Religious How religion affects people’s sense of themselves as spiritual; how they are linked
with an organised religion; how religion enters into their lives
Psychological What and how individuals think about their own psychological functioning; their
understanding of their idiosyncratic mixture of needs, interests, attitudes, values and
patterns of behaviour; their understanding of why they behave and live as they do
Ideals, passions, Particular ideals, passions, interests and commitments that occupy the individual’s
commitments attention and that illustrate the direction being taken in life
Ethnic The extent to which people identify with a particular ethnic group or groups
Cultural The extent to which people refer to particular cultural groups or cultural styles in
their lives
Regional and national Whether regional and national reference points are prominent in the individual’s
identities makeup
Historical How personal and social history help define the individual
Dress The relative emphasis on dress styles and fashion; how important dress may be to
self-perception
Work The extent to which work/employment is prominent in the individual’s sense of self
Sport How prominent are sport and sporting groups in people’s thinking, interests and
behaviour
Leisure The types and extent of leisure pursuits that characterise the individual
Retail How the purchase and use of consumer goods enter into self-understanding and
self-expression
Conflictual How an understanding of the identity of self and others affects conflict; how
identity influences the liking or disliking of other individuals or groups
personality dynamic, it can contribute to the healthy development and fulfilment of indivi
duals and it can be psychologically damaging, with both personal and social repercussions.
Take, for example, the place of identification in relation to employment. Sometimes it
is said that an individual is too strongly identified with a job. Men who have invested too
many personal resources in their jobs have little time or emotional space left for other aspects
or people in their lives; and then, if their jobs are made redundant, or if they have a midlife
crisis that results in a loss of satisfaction with their work, the result can be traumatic. There is
a high frequency of suicide in men over retirement age. The tendency to define individuals’
personal worth in terms of their jobs is a potentially dangerous identification. On the other
hand, if individuals do not identify with their job to a minimal level, then the work itself will
probably suffer because they take no pride or satisfaction in it.
The attentions of others might be said to matter to us principally because we are afflicted
by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value – as a result of which, what others think
of us comes to play a determining role in how we are able to view ourselves. Our sense of
identity is held captive by the judgments of those we live among.4
He pointed to a level of vacillation about self that is common. Addressing the problem
would seem to be an important step towards identity maturity.
society to settle the question of our significance. Neglect highlights our latent negative
self assessments, while a smile or compliment as rapidly brings out the converse. We
seem beholden to the affections of others to endure ourselves … There is something
sobering and absurd in the extent to which we are cheered by attention and damaged by
disregard.5
The issue is significant for identity health (6.7) and for youth identity dynamics (Chapter
7).
The beliefs and values of religious traditions can be interpreted as a basic starting point
or repository of resources for young people’s search for meaning, identity and community.
There can be the hope that they might later embrace (and even enhance) the religious
identity that an older generation believes to be of value for them, but what eventuates will
be theirs to determine.
This interpretation is not a bland endorsement of the view that youth should be
encouraged to feel free to piece together their own idiosyncratic religious identity according
to their needs and interests, whether or not this has much congruence with orthodoxy in
their faith tradition. However, it does acknowledge that in the interplay between individual
and faith tradition there will inevitably be the exercise of personal freedom and a resultant
distinctive, personal religious identity profile. The colourings of personal religious identity
will be diverse; for some it will be strongly linked with religion; for others it will not.
5.6.3 Identity, conflict and violence in the Australian context and internationally
Despite the Cronulla racial tensions of late 2005, it remains difficult for Australians to
comprehend fully the ramifications of ethnic violence and conflict in Europe, the Middle
East and elsewhere, even though in recent years the spectre of terrorism has loomed ever
closer to home. Since Australia has become increasingly multicultural, all of the ethnic and
religious groups seen to be in conflict overseas are now represented here, and their various
feelings of prejudice, oppression and hatred have been brought with them. But somehow
the new situation seems to have diffused the potential for ethnic violence though it does not
deny the presence of racism in Australia, or the need to address it. (Apart from domestic
disputes, most of the violence in the community is crime-related and not specifically ethnic
or religious, even if it shows up more in some particular areas rather than others.)
Perhaps some contributing factors to the situation in Australia may be: people’s wish to
make a new life away from the divisive problems in their country of origin; the desire to
embrace the peaceful elements of their ethnic cultures; to give others fair treatment in a land
of new opportunity for all; and as far as the country is concerned, an egalitarian national
spirit (at least as an ideal), and no long-term tradition of ethnic violence. (This view does
not discount the history of violent treatment of Aboriginal Australians, which continued
well into the 20th century.)
Domestic violence, especially the abuse of women and children, remains a problem in
Australia. It is related to identity questions, especially to what some men accept as a part of
masculinity. In some Aboriginal communities, the problem has reached crisis proportions; it
is affected negatively by patriarchy and a community code of silence.
In the non-crime-related violence outside the domestic circle, racial and religious
identities are often involved. When people act violently against others, they usually have some
rationalisation in their mind, no matter how vague and fleeting. The others are perceived as
free-loaders, foreigners, threats, enemies or even as un-Australian. Their perceived identity
is negative and impersonal; it gives some justification for the ill feeling and aggressive
action. For those who in other circumstances see violence as wrong, such a justification
can precipitate their action. While not so much a problem in this country, terrorism and
religious or ethnic identity-related killing remain global problems.
The more clearly others can be pictured as threats, the easier it is to do violence against
them. When these pictures are built up as stereotypes that are socially reinforced, it is even
98 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
easier for the individuals doing the violence – they can call up a ready-made justification;
they do not have to think about it.7
Of the various options a community may consider in trying to address racial violence,
one is the promotion of a better understanding of the links between identity and violence. It
involves looking into the ways both community and individuals construct identity vis-à-vis
‘others’; it includes clarifying history, questioning prejudices and stereotypes, and exploring
new constructive, peaceful interpretations.
Another aspect that warrants analysis is the anatomy of violence itself. For example, it is
worth considering why violence is inherently satisfying and why it can be pleasurable – and
less tedious than negotiated compromises.
Also pertinent is the way in which film and television have provided value-embedded
narratives that subtly shape thinking about the public acceptability of violence (cf. Chapter
15); at least it makes violence – especially in the ‘action film’ genre – an acceptable and
popular diet for entertainment. Similarly, the widespread popularity of video and arcade
games that are based on combat needs to be considered (9.2.15).
Alternatives to violence also need to be studied: how non-violent conflict resolution and
anger reduction can be made to work. (A novel strategy was proposed by one student in
an Arizona school. Students’ essays explored ways in which the community might reduce
violence. One student suggested that more should be taught about how to be violent, and if
it was as boring as most of their schooling, then it might put children off violence.)
West Bank, makes their revolt against the Israeli government understandable, even if one
cannot accept suicide bombing as a justifiable response. They have experienced their share
of violence and misery. The possibility of halting the spiralling cycle of violence that engulfs
both Israel and the Palestinians seems a dim hope. Peaceful negotiations, mutual respect and
understanding may sound like hollow solutions – but ultimately, these are the only viable
ones. Revenge and eradication through force are unlikely to be long-term solutions, and they
probably exacerbate the problem.
The Chechen terrorism reached new heights in the atrocity in a Russian school building.
But it too had historical roots: the horrendous historical treatment of the Chechens
themselves. In 1944, most were exiled to camps in Siberia by Stalin as punishment for so-
called Nazi sympathies; those who did not die returned in 1957. With the breakup of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen impetus for freedom from Russia gathered momentum,
but was thwarted by the Russian invasion in 1995; in that and the later 1999 war, over
60 000 Chechens died and the capital Grozny was effectively razed by Russian bombing and
shelling.
In Indonesia, the rise of terrorism is not just motivated by anti-Western feelings; state-
orchestrated violence in Aceh, Papua, East Timor and elsewhere have also sowed seeds of
dissent.
Similarly, with the cycle of violence in Northern Ireland that now seems to have ebbed, it
was social and economic disadvantage that fuelled discontent, with divisions along sectarian
religious lines being used to reinforce antagonisms.
The United States does not have an untainted history as far as meddling in the affairs
of other states is concerned; its actions in supporting dictatorial regimes with poor records
on human rights have become well known around the world. A sort of paranoia about
communism taking over the world not only informed US involvement in the Vietnam War,
but also motivated the clandestine support of other conflicts like the Iran–Iraq war and the
Russian Afghan war, as well as the destabilisation of various South American governments
that appeared to veer towards communism. Ironically, the United States supported the
subversive action of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation.
The points being made here are not trying to lay blame, nor to justify causes, but to suggest
that the problem of terrorism needs to be understood in terms of its historical complexity,
and not just in the simple black-and-white terms proffered by the media. Problems are not
likely to diminish until historical injustices and inequities are addressed. There is no simple
solution.
What happened in South Africa warrants consideration. While the situation there still
has many apparently insurmountable difficulties, there has been a relatively peaceful end to
apartheid and a relatively smooth transition to a more representative government. While
there is still much street and township violence, it is remarkable that the political changes in
the early 1990s did not result in violence with civil war proportions.
Nowadays, the words ‘Islamic’ and ‘terrorist’ are readily associated in the West. It is
true that not all Muslims are terrorists; but it is equally true that most terrorists today are
Muslims. Even though killing of the innocent is clearly contrary to the Qu’ran and Islamic
law, terrorists have espoused Islam and Jihad as justifications for their activity. The words
‘suicide bombing’ are never used by the protagonists, but rather being ‘martyrs’ for the cause;
100 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
the modern religious rationale for terror tactics arose from the action of an Iranian child
‘martyr’ during the Iran–Iraq war, and it developed further in the Palestinian conflict – as
well as becoming prominent in the 9/11 and Bali attacks, and more recently in Iraq, which
remains on the brink of civil war.
The Islamic religion has been pushed by terrorism to the forefront of a clash of civilisations,
and religious meanings have been distorted in a fundamentalist way to bolster the cause and
motivate those who would give up their lives to kill ordinary people who are identified as
‘enemies of Islam’. What has been lacking is a clear, unequivocal and widespread public
condemnation of terror killing by Islamic religious leaders. While in different places they
have spoken out, and while some have even decreed a fatwah against Muslims who murder
innocent people, the general impression in Western countries is that terrorism is not strongly
renounced by the Islamic faith.
The final point to be made here has to do with the words ‘terror’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘war’.
‘Terrorism’ is commonly used with reference to the action of political groups but not nation-
states; the phrase ‘non-state actors’ is the term used in international law. This usage can give
an impression that nation-states by definition do not engage in terrorism – they engage in
more legitimate activity like war! Terrorism is the tactic of non-state actors. But what is
unfortunately missed is that war itself is one of the most extreme forms of terror. If human
fear, suffering, maiming and death are the measures, then war cannot easily be justified as
righteous while at the same time condemning the violence in terrorism. This interpretation
is not a justification of terrorism, but a plea for a closer examination of the terror that is in
war.
In all of the discussion in this section, the perceived identity of self and others runs
through the dynamics of violence.
they have a long tradition of co-joining the human and non-human in the world. But, when
it comes to economic gain, Eastern countries have been as adept as others in degrading the
environment in the interest of economic gain.
In addition to looking at current spiritual and ecological perspectives on environmental
stewardship, it will also be valuable to consider more fundamental issues that are emerging
in discussions about relationships between philosophy, religion and the ‘new physics’ – the
last mentioned being concerned with new scientific, cosmological understandings of the
nature of matter and the universe.
The success of the Newtonian mechanical model at the macro level in science and industry
in recent centuries has reinforced dualistic thinking about human beings and nature, as well
as the mythology of an objective, positivist, infallible science. But since the revolution in
physics dating from Einstein, Bohr and quantum theory, there has been a fundamental shift
in scientific thinking about the nature of the universe. And now it is a question of the flow-
on of this thought into the human sciences, philosophy and religion.
The sequence of change in thinking, beginning with atoms, has now proceeded through
sub-atomic particles, waves, energy quanta, indeterminacy and complexity, and sub-quantal
interactive self-regulating systems. Increasingly, the leading edge of scientific thought on
nature uses language that resembles talk about meaning and relationships – metaphor could
be becoming as relevant an explanatory principle at sub-quantal levels as the old mechanical
model is at the macro level. Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, the astronomical level,
scientific inquiry is pushing ever further into understanding of the origins, maintenance and
‘end’ of the universe.
While there is a relatively small number of people pursuing a better popular understanding
of what is happening in the new physics, a considerable distance remains between this
thinking and its relevance to the wider community. Nevertheless, efforts are required to
help bridge the gap. For example, there is a need to appraise the claims of authors like Zohar
that ‘there is a rich repository of language, metaphor and allusion in these new scientific
ideas, as well as practical applications for understanding human nature and consciousness.
Quantum physics in particular almost cries out for use as a more general model for a whole
new kind of thinking about ourselves and our experience.’9 Books like The Quantum Self
and The Quantum Society10 and the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? show some of the
popular interest in these developments. It remains to be seen what implications, if any of
significance, the behaviour and relationships of entities at sub-quantal levels will have for
understanding human meanings, identities and relationships.
Another area that also warrants attention in relation to identity and meaning is biology,
and the issues it raises about the nature of life, consciousness and evolution.
are economic ones. Competition, profit and fiscal efficiency seem to be regarded not just
as economic principles, but as taken-for-granted ‘laws’ of human progress, making them
appear beyond question. These concerns can override human values, and people can be
regarded and used as means of production, or – in the polite organisational jargon – as
human resources.
The evaluation of economic issues needs to take account of human identity – what it
means to be human. The nature and purpose of humans need to figure more prominently.
While it is beyond our scope to explore these issues in any detail, a cluster of economic
questions that have identity implications are listed below.
• consumerism
• economic rationalism
• economic competition
• globalisation of markets
• market forces as ‘value-free’
• priority of shareholder profit in business
• free trade, tariffs and the development of a country’s industries
• growth of the economy
• casualisation of employment
• the human meaning of work and labour
• unemployment.
Some topics cut across a number of these questions: for example, the death of country towns
– where free-ranging competitive market forces can result in the gradual decline and loss
of viability of country towns, leaving a trail of social problems; and the casualisation of
employment – where a so-called key principle of business efficiency can have many deleterious
social and personal consequences for casual workers.
Even questions like unemployment have significant identity implications. The changing
place of work in many Western countries affects personal identity and self-esteem.
Traditionally, there has been a tendency to define the identity and worth of individuals in
terms of their useful work. Personal and social stress inevitably flow from unemployment,
but not just from the economic hardship it entails. A significant component is low self-
esteem, which arises in part because individuals have become too strongly identified with
their capacity for gainful employment; it affects men more than it does women.
Despite government rhetoric about the need for a more technologically skilled workforce,
there remains a significant problem that has not been adequately addressed: the likely scenario
that in technologically advanced countries the availability of full-time employment will drop
to a consistently low level of perhaps 75 per cent or less of those seeking jobs, because less
labour is needed to sustain the economy.
Whatever the economic response to the problem, it would seem that the community is
faced with the task of rethinking the role and meaning of work in human identity. Education
could be in the forefront of community efforts to develop new understandings. And not just
for work – but new understandings of human meaning and purpose, standard of living and
quality of life.
At a more global level, there is a need for awareness that changes in international
markets can have significant and widespread human repercussions. For example, the idea
The elusive self: Psychological and social functions of identity 103
of free trade is widely touted as necessarily good for every country, but it does not always
imply fair trade because it will suit some economic interests more than others. If some
countries and people suffer as a consequence, it tends to be dismissed as the ‘natural
consequences of competition’, and competition is always presumed to be ‘good’. Take one
example: trade restrictions with quota limits on clothing exported from various countries
to the United States and European Union domestic markets protected the national
industries to some extent and gave a wide range of countries access to those markets.
It regulated a global industry of about $490 billion annually. However, the free trade
agreement for clothing concluded at the end of 2004. Markets like the United States
and Europe could then contract the previously regulated purchasing spectrum of sixty
countries down to say twenty, with no quota restrictions, and perhaps eventually to about
ten, depending on where the cheapest products can be manufactured.11 There is growing
concern that China, which now has the capacity for volume production with such low
labour costs that other countries would find it difficult to compete, could increase its
market share from the current 16 per cent (2004) to 50 per cent. It would mean that
millions of relatively poor workers in countries like Bangladesh (with 1.8 million textile
workers), Nepal, Burma, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Swaziland and others would be in danger of
losing their regular livelihood.
The dominant economic rationalist identity affixed to the deregulation and globalisation
of markets usually does not factor the human cost into the equation. The negative effects
of such processes on employment in different countries, including increasing poverty and
lower standards of living, tend to be accepted as a natural ‘collateral damage’ of ‘free markets’.
‘Competition’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ can be thought of as a sort of justification for such
‘economic progress’.
Economic questions like the above raise significant identity issues. As trade has
become more planetary, more thought and responsibility need to go into regulation. So-
called unlimited economic growth cannot be presumed to go on forever. Answers to the
question ‘what people are for’ need to have a pre-eminent place in international commercial
considerations; people should not be treated as if they were no more than human resources for
economic growth. The issues are complex, and call for thinking that goes beyond personal,
commercial and national identities to concerns about the global human community. What
economic responsibility should richer nations take for the wellbeing of poorer countries? It
involves more than providing humanitarian help in times of crisis. The cancellation of debt
has helped but there is more to be done.
• National identity is like a ‘cultural given’ that arises physically out of the geographical
location of birth or ethnic group. But it is not physically genetic – it is cultural inheritance,
constructed and maintained by social interaction, and therefore it should be open to
analysis and evaluation.
• How much overt nationalism is appropriate in a healthy personal identity? How can
it include acknowledgment of national origins, a sense of national belonging and com
munity, while not being xenophobic and closed to social interaction with people of other
nationalities?
• To what extent will the mass media, particularly film and television, with their global
village capacity for communication, affect national identities?
An article by Shields (1996) proposed that the globalisation of media is pertinent to these
questions.12 He noted that the current struggle among giant media corporations for power
and profit was being waged ‘on a planetary scale’. The small number of transnational
media companies (such as Sony, AOL Time Warner, Disney and News Corporation) were
manoeuvring to be able to deliver television and audiovisual products across the globe’s
geographic and social space (China was like the last frontier of relatively unconquered
territory). Shields labelled it as ‘cultural imperialism at a new level’. In particular, it seemed
to be spreading a worldwide ‘Americanisation of culture’.
Could this lead to a homogenisation of world culture with consequent erosion of regional
and national identities that are not perceived to be as relevant as they were formerly? Would
the continued globalisation of communication markets affect national integration?
These questions seem to assume that a large public ingestion of international
(Americanised) television will erode identity and reduce cultural diversity. It may do so
in some respects; it may not in others. The comparisons people make through such inter
national exposure, in spite of the cultural borrowings and homogenisation of some aspects,
may well reinforce basic differences and therefore reinforce national identity.
The media-centric argument that national identities will be eroded seems to exaggerate
television’s social significance and social influence. Even though there is evidence of a growing
world cultural imperialism in television, there is equal evidence of a growing world education
through the same medium. The claim that television will weaken national identity does not
seem to understand adequately the complex social forces that shape national identity and
the wider national integration enterprise. National identity should not be thought of as just
a non-contested natural fact; neither should it be considered exclusively as something that
groups might construct to secure their position of dominance in their society; it has both
natural and constructed aspects.
Because sources of differentiation exist within nation-states (for example religion, lan
guage, ethnicity), multiple collective identities or even other national identities will coexist
cooperatively or subordinately, or perhaps antagonistically within the official national iden
tity. The most serious threats to national identity usually come from within the country
itself rather than from the outside. Also, waves of nationalist fervour, such as the neo-Nazi
movement in Germany and white supremacist movements in the United States and elsewhere,
The elusive self: Psychological and social functions of identity 105
need to be understood within the particular social and economic situations in which they
take root. In these instances, nationalism is fuelled by widespread unemployment, poverty,
social change and social inequalities. Such understanding does not diminish the problem,
but it may be a starting point for addressing it.
On the other hand, if television helps towards even a mild softening of national dis
tinctiveness and a greater openness to an international cultural perspective, then it will
have achieved something for the wider sense of human community. Healthiness in national
identities would seem to need a balance between international and local perspectives; just
as there is a need to preserve genetic and species diversity in the animal world, the global
human community needs to preserve national and ethnic cultural heritages – as well as
religious heritages – in ways that maintain social harmony.
Notes
1 K Marx, The German ideology, quoted in N Postman 1993, Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology,
p. 21.
2 JM Hull 1994, Religionism and religious education. Paper presented at the International Conference on
Religion and Conflict, Armagh, Ireland.
3 A Quart 2003, Branded: The buying and selling of teenagers, p. 8.
4 A de Botton 2004, Status anxiety, p. 15.
5 ibid., p. 16.
6 S Price 2004, Christianity is fine, but please don’t mention the church.
7 Two relevant points: 1. The ambivalence that US soldiers had about the ‘identity’ of the enemy in the
Vietnam War, and the ambivalent feelings in the community about the morality of US involvement were not
insignificant factors in the postwar psychological traumas of some servicemen. 2. Military (and paramilitary)
uniforms facilitate violence because they give the wearer anonymity and distance from the normal moral
restrictions that operate at community level. They may feel that they are doing this as part of an institutional
action; they are not doing it personally; they were ‘obeying orders’.
8 S Burchill 2004, What exactly are we witnessing?
9 D Zohar & I Marshall 1993, The quantum society: Mind, physics and a new social order, p. xii.
10 D Zohar 1990, The quantum self: A revolutionary view of human nature and consciousness rooted in the new
physics.
11 A Adiga et al. 2004, Hanging by a thread: Textile factories throughout Asia face extinction as a long-standing
global trade pact is set to expire.
12 P Shields 1996, State, national identity and media.
6 Research perspectives
on the nature and
development of identity
This chapter considers insights into identity from research and theory, mainly in psychology and
sociology. The analysis will be more concerned with interpretations that could be the starting
points for further research on identity development in young people than a comprehensive review
of existing research. The chapter concludes with an interpretation of identity and identity health
that will be useful for educators and professionals engaged in the care of youth.
The analysis of research related to identity is organised under the following headings:
106
Research perspectives on the nature and development of identity 107
responsibilities and commitments, together with a greater capacity to separate the view of
self from self-centred operations) signalled the development of the ‘Institutional self ’.
In the light of the changing personal competencies proposed by Piaget, Kohlberg and
Fowler, one could predict a further stage of self-development within Kegan’s theory where
individuals became more mature by transcending the structures that previously sustained
the sense of self. The individual, with growing internal spiritual resources, could become
even more autonomous; but significantly, this new autonomy would not be a return to
self-centredness, but a transition to a greater appreciation of relationships between a more
independent individual and the world shared interdependently with others.
A valuable aspect of Kegan’s theory as far as identity is concerned is his focus on ‘self-
understanding’. As with the other structural-developmental theories, it gives insight into
the way people make sense of themselves and their relationships with others. Kegan’s
picture of identity maturity emphasised the ways in which they struggled out of successive
forms of psychological embeddedness to achieve greater capacity to make meaning of their
experience.8
All of the structural developmental theories have stages through which the individual
progresses. The notion of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ has an implied value judgment about
human improvement – a notion of human health and even of human perfection: you become
better as you progress to ‘higher’ stages.
The metaphors ‘growth’ and ‘development’, as used in psychology, derive much of their
meaning from Western economic thinking. Hence there is a tendency to interpret personal
growth and development quantitatively as psychological ‘increases’, like growth in individual
wealth or in the national economy; it must be ‘bigger’, ‘better’, ‘higher’ or ‘deeper’. Also,
the stage theories almost inevitably lend themselves to ‘scores’ for measuring personal or
spiritual development; and this appeals, partly because it harmonises with the mentality of
a consumer society. Even personal development can be commodified and planned in linear
lock-step stages (there is good evidence for this in the burgeoning personal development and
self-help ‘industry’ and in ‘consumer spirituality’; see Chapter 8). Higher scores or stages
are indications of success and achievement. So there is a danger that personal development
may take on the note of increasing perfection and performance – in short, spiritual success
according to an acceptable social scale, like improving IQ (also EQ [emotional intelligence]
and SQ [spiritual intelligence]). This metaphor for personal development is too limited. As
Moran suggested, a wider range of metaphors is needed to interpret personal development
to account for its complexity and unpredictability9 (18.1).
We consider that wise use of the developmental theories can give useful insights into self-
knowledge and personal growth. But we caution against use of psychology in the quest of
‘getting it all together’, especially when this becomes too self-centred. It depends too much
on an unrealistic notion of human perfection. A more down-to-earth image is not ‘getting it
all together’ but ‘getting most of the fragile pieces pointing in the same direction’.
For any progression from psychological theory of identity to practical care of youth,
the professional needs some notion of identity health (which includes a moral component)
to guide the translation. Criteria are needed for deciding whether an identity was good
for the individual (and for others), and respected people’s freedom, uniqueness, rights and
responsibilities. The notion of identity health implies a view of the nature of the human
person. This chapter works towards a definition of identity health, making use of the hints
within the various psychological theories. While the theories usually do not address identity
health specifically, they suggest directions that desirable personal development might take,
and by implication the reverse directions that could lead to ‘identity sickness’.
The summary of theories in Table 6.1 shows whether or not they are referenced to
internal categories such as a sense of continuity of personal identity over time, and to external
or cultural categories concerned with social roles. The theories are grouped into major types.
This analysis was drawn from a review paper on identity by the European psychologist
Professor Bert Hermans, with some additions from other sources.10
Types of theory Particular Any major focus on Any major focus Preliminary ideas on the
of identity and theories of internal categories on external or notion of ‘identity health’
self identity and (psychological cultural categories implicit in, or related to, the
self construction with (social roles, public theories
continuity over features, cultural
time) reference points)
Private, public The self interpreted in The public and A satisfying sense of self
and collective terms of interaction collective selves can derived from internal and
selves (Triandis between be reference points external representations.
1989) understandings of the for the individual’s
individual, his/her sense of identity.
public expression and
the identities of the
groups in which the
individual
participates.
D. Psychological Narrative theory The world and Cultural elements A sense of satisfying meaning
constructs of identity personal experience contribute to the is derived from narrative
with a dynamic (Bruner 1986; are given meaning experience of understanding of self and
multiplicity of Cohler 1982; as parts of a individuals and experience.
components Gergen & Gergen narrative or stimulate narrative
and a narrative 1988; Hermans autobiographical interpretation.
perspective. 1996a,b; structure. A history
McAdams 1993; of ‘episodic’ events
Sarbin 1986; influences self-
Thomae 1988; understanding.
Tomkins 1987)
E. Psychological CH Cooley’s idea The image of self is Social interaction Achievement of a satisfying
constructs of the ‘looking in part derived from has a major image of self that is in
which glass self ’ as reflections of the self influence on self- harmony with the culture.
emphasise developed in that an individual understanding.
the influence the symbolic encounters through How individuals are
of culture or interactionist interaction with viewed and treated
others on the school of others. by others has a
development of sociology significant bearing
identity (Cooley 1998, on their acquisition
from work of values, beliefs,
written at the and sense of self.
turn of the
century; see
also Blumer
1969)
A common initial reaction to a summary like the one in Table 6.1 is perplexity at
seeing so many theories of identity – and this is not a complete list. As Hermans noted, the
contemporary situation is characterised by ‘increasing multivoicedness in self and society,
a development unprecedented in the history of the human mind’.12 People find themselves
awash with a multiplicity of proposed ways of ‘being yourself ’, all of which seem to have
easily accessible resources for helping them achieve it.
Yet, in spite of this apparent cultural richness, there is evidence of alarmingly high levels
of alienation and lack of meaning. The problem is not so much the multiple voices per se,
but the way people respond to the contemporary situation. Hermans felt that dialogue was
the crucial element for finding meaningful relationships between ‘unity’ and ‘multiplicity’;
he rightly pointed out that a retreat towards unity and ‘fixed-ness’ of identity, and away
from multiplicity was not an appropriate solution for the times. We suggest that dialogue
is important, but not enough; what is also needed is the evaluation of what is proposed for
identity. But this cannot be done in a value-free way, hence the importance of establishing a
baseline position on what constitutes identity health.
Within the limitations of this exercise, issues are raised by questions about what consti
tutes identity health within the different theoretical frameworks. Most of them appear to say
little explicitly about identity health – we make this judgment tentatively because we have
only elementary knowledge of many of the theories. However, most of them seem inclined
towards a notion of identity health that is more concerned with the successful engagement
114 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
in psychological processes than with the acquisition of desirable identity content. By content
is meant qualities of self that can be evaluated in ethical terms – that is, an evaluation of
how identity meets individual needs and how it might impact on others. At first sight, most
of the theories seem to presume a value-free position as regards the content dimension to
identity health.
Even where social interaction was an influential factor in the theories, the focus was
predominantly psychological and on the individual. Hence, when interpreting what each
theory might imply for identity health, it was difficult to avoid using the phrase ‘satisfying
for the individual’ as the ultimate criterion. In one sense this ultimacy is natural, because it
is the province of the individual to make such judgments. However, this may lean towards
narcissism if identity health were to be judged exclusively by what pleases individuals or
meets their personal needs. Other more objective, community-related values are also needed
for the moral evaluation of identity.
A body of work has emerged around narrative, exploring the increased importance of
story in the multiple and changing ways in which people make sense of their lives and
identities in a now complex and changing world (E.g. see Bruner 1987, Gergen and
Gergen 1988).
… the capacity to hold strong personal narratives also allow[s] young people to
negotiate chaos, hardship and crisis.16
Research perspectives on the nature and development of identity 115
The category story or narrative is a central one for meaning (2.9.17) and spirituality. In
addition, it is a key category for interpreting the spiritual and moral influence of film and
television (Chapter 15).
Grimmitt’s account of the role of education in personal identity formation regarded
individuals as ‘actors’ in their own personal stories which unfold in the context of, and
through interaction with, the larger cultural story or cultural history. The role of education
is to help the young become more aware of the historical cultural origins of their identity, as
well as opening up new identity horizons. In the light of new options, they can change the
direction of their own identity stories or personal histories.17
ways that cultural institutions – ranging from media, to religion, to scientific and academic
work – are used to shape identities, dictating what is accepted as true, normal, or acceptable
within a culture, offering privilege to some, and marginalising or denying others. Critical
theory looks at the mechanics of this process of privilege and marginalisation, and often
thinks about the possibility of political action against this process.18
Our purpose here is to signal the importance of critical theory for the interpretation of
identity dynamics. Some of the relationships between aspects of critical theory and identity
will be referred to in the discussion below.
Different theories have emphasised a relatively fixed psychic basis to identity; others
emphasised the capacity to change identity in response to new circumstances. A robust
view of personal identity needs both properties – having permanence and flexibility is
not contradictory. An enduring stability to personal identity is not incompatible with
its functioning like a ‘working hypothesis of the self ’, which is always being revised to
some extent. This notion is important for education in identity, because if either aspect is
emphasised at the expense of the other, an unbalanced view will result.
make the world over in its own image by reducing the lively heterogeneity of living
nature and diverse cultural orders to a grey mirror of sameness. And it can only do this
by consuming living nature in producing a proliferation of goods and services whose
possession becomes the sine qua non of the good life. Of course, if nature is endlessly
consumed in the pursuit of a totalising course, then that course is dangerous for living; it
constitutes a danger to one’s own survival, as well as that of others.22
Brennan also considered that Western societies have a degree of social angst arising from
ambivalence about its various descriptions as post-industrial, post-Christian, post-structural,
Research perspectives on the nature and development of identity 117
postmodern, post cold-war (and now post 9/11), while anxious that there appears to be no
compelling analysis that will readily give a hopeful sense of future direction.
In Western countries in particular, people seem to have become more preoccupied with
personal identity and individuality than formerly. As far as their motivation is concerned,
finding ‘themselves’ appears to be a more prominent and immediate concern than finding
a secure career or working towards a more secure society. This signals a fundamental shift
in their outlook on life. Glasser identified this trend many years back in his book Identity
society (1972):
Previously people’s lives were governed by achievable goals or ideals. Now people are
raising questions about their own personal development as a unique identity rather than
as the means to some social end … almost all Western people are first concerned with how
to fulfil themselves as human beings, the quality of their life, recognition and pleasure
rather than life itself. This has occurred because people who live in the West have gained
basic economic security, or if they have not, they have gained the illusion of security
which seems to serve the same effect – hammering home the message to fulfil and enjoy
yourself in a world where this is possible …
The struggle for a goal – a profession, a diploma, a home, a family – had been
superseded by the struggle to find oneself as a human being, to become aware of and
enjoy the pleasures implicit in our own humanity … ‘identity’ is about the same for all
people. Everyone aspires to have a happy, successful, pleasurable belief in self. Role or
identity is now so important that it must be achieved before we set out to find a goal.
[Quoting Marshall McLuhan, 1969:] ‘youth mindlessly acts its identity quest in the
theatre of the streets, searching not for goals but for roles, striving for an identity that
eludes them.’23
Glasser went on to argue that institutions like schools would not be effective if they
ignored this ‘new priority in human motivation’. They needed to be responsive to identity
needs as few students would be ‘willing to work towards school goals before gaining self
recognition’.24
From Bourdieu’s perspective, some individuals had identity conflict. This means a hiatus
between their view of their own identity and the implied identity others perceived in their
behaviour. Such a hiatus indicated unrealistic reflection on the self; their self-understanding
was deluded.
This view of identity naturally points towards education as one process that might
inform self-understanding. The goal here would be fostering an identity that is open to
enhancement through education.
‘some’ or ‘none’ – and this has consequences for wellbeing and behaviour; some negative
behaviour is attributed to low levels of self-esteem. Therefore, the idea that increasing self-
esteem must be good for individuals is widely accepted and not contested.
But the interpretation of self-esteem as an undifferentiated, quantitative element of
identity does not readily accommodate the situation where self-esteem is not unconditionally
positive. For example, some individuals have a sense of self that is arrogant, intolerant and
aggressive – and they are comfortable with this self-image; technically, they have high self-
esteem! Self-esteem needs to be understood as more than the level of good feelings about the
self. Self-esteem has a ‘content’, and this content – the self-image – has a moral value and
should be open to moral evaluation. The construct self-esteem needs to include something
about the ‘quality’ of self-image and identity. While the general principle of being respectful
of all identities is an important one, this democratic ideal has limits protected by law – we
should not be equally tolerant of identities that clearly compromise the rights and freedoms
of other people. This principle is also important when examining relationships between
identity and violence.
Hence we propose a need for greater differentiation within the construct self-esteem to
make it less ambiguous. It needs to include scope for evaluation of the self. A step in this
direction would be to identify two dimensions to self-esteem, content and affect. In this way,
self-esteem can be interpreted as the dynamic link between what individuals think about their
personal identity and how they feel about it. This interpretation has both descriptive content
(the image of the individual’s qualities as a person) and an affective dimension (how comfortable
or satisfied they feel with that image). For example, people may feel more or less comfortable
with their self-understanding, and about how they are perceived by others; or they may have
a lingering, vague feeling of doubt about their value – they may feel that if others only knew
what they were really like, they would find them unattractive and undesirable.
While it may be transparent to a perceptive adult that a particular young person feels he
or she is unloved, this may be something that the young person is not able to comprehend
or admit. Adults, teachers and counsellors periodically make diagnoses of this condition
in young people; but it is not an easy one to change. It is not just a matter of telling the
young person that he or she has a problem. Neither is it readily resolved by a dose of what
has been called ‘unconditional affirmation’ – or by telling them they are ‘special’. It can be a
psychological difficulty that individuals carry throughout their lives, often a cause of distress
to themselves and to those close to them.
Therefore it remains an issue for the community to work out how best to address the
problem of low self-esteem in youth. A first valuable step is to understand the problem.
What is usually described as low self-esteem has two aspects:
1 The image of self that individuals with low self-esteem have is often harsh and
unfavourable; it is usually not an accurate picture, but for them it represents reality.
2 Despite any outward show of self-confidence, they feel unhappy with their self-image.
Therapeutic efforts to redress the problem, as well as any generally informative edu
cational process, need to focus on both these aspects. This means looking at the degree of
satisfaction individuals have with their perceived self-image or identity, as well as proposing
a self-evaluation of its humanness. Highlighting this evaluative dimension can help address
120 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
education that focuses too narrowly on psychological self-enhancement might end up being
narcissistic; it might distract attention from social and community aspects; it could overlook
the importance of analysing economic, political and social factors that have an influence
on how people are valued and devalued. These ‘structural’ identity aspects might be having
more influence on self-esteem than any educational self-analysis procedures.
The idea of linking education with the fostering of self-esteem is not in question; the
point being made here is the need to acknowledge first that self-esteem is a complex but vital
factor in identity and psychological health; second, that self-esteem education should not
be thought of in clinical psychological terms, but rather as studies that can contribute to
young people’s understanding of self-esteem as a component of identity. It is likely that the
quality of the personal relationships between teachers and students will be more important
for student self-esteem than the formal curriculum.
writing has not been in English, what has appeared in English language books and journals
has shown that the development of personal identity has come to be regarded as an important
goal for school education.32
It may well be that one of the driving forces behind this has been the emergence of the
European Economic Community and the European Union. As one European educator noted:
‘Europe must decide now on the criteria for civil cohabitation and make new provisions
concerning the conditions for education in European citizenship.’33 These political and econo
mic developments prompt questions about relationships between national identities and a
new European identity.
Economic unity is evidently more easy to achieve than the notion of ‘European’ identity.
Questions revolve around the extent to which a European identity is desired, and the extent
to which it might draw on a common cultural and religious heritage – particularly when
it is acknowledged that there is great cultural and religious diversity in Europe. There is
also much secularisation that has little linkage with any religious traditions. The interest
in admitting Turkey to the community is testing the thinking even further: it is a Muslim
country and not European in its geography, history or culture.
The impression coming from these writings is that an education in identity is an impor
tant one for contemporary school education. Since little attention has been given to this in
Australian educational thinking, the European literature warrants attention.
The European writings on identity education that we have examined fall roughly
into two categories. Some have concentrated on developing a notion of identity that fits
comfortably with modern Western education and culture;34 others have said less about the
nature of identity but more about how identity development might be promoted by different
educational pedagogies.35
An example of the former is evident in two articles by the Dutch academic Meijer
published in 1991 and 1995.36 She considered that the more traditional understandings
of personal identity were too biological and inflexible; she felt that they defined personal
identity as a relatively fixed entity that is influenced by particular group self-understandings
into which individuals are socialised. She saw this emphasis as educationally problematic
because in Western countries the cultural milieu is characterised by rapid social change and
international, interethnic, intercultural and interreligious communication. She claimed that
it was inappropriate to propose the development of this notion of identity as an educational
aim because its narrowness was incompatible with democratic and pluralistic ideals.
Meijer looked at two views of identity at opposite ends of a spectrum. The first under
stood personal identity as a fixed inner core or kernel to the individual that remains constant
throughout the life cycle. At the other extreme was the view typified by Nietzsche that
personal identity is an illusion or an artificial construct; the individual is an aggregation
of changing ideas, emotions and desires. Meijer considered that these interpretations were
problematic; and in rejecting both the inherent identity and the option of no identity at
all, she turned to the philosophy of Ricoeur, which understood identity as a process of
interpretation of personal history. This regarded identity as the end product of reflection on
personal experience, allowing for continual adjustment.
Meijer sidestepped the problems within a socialised personal identity, with its relatively
permanent characteristics, by stressing personal interpretation as the primary identity-
forging process.
Research perspectives on the nature and development of identity 123
This human potential for reflection is more fundamental than identity, for identity-as-
interpretation is the outcome of reflection. Personal identity, therefore, is necessarily
tentative, to be reflected upon, reconsidered and revised again and again. Education
should therefore not aim at identity-development or identity-formation, but at rational
autonomy, independence and responsibility, the capacity to make informed choices or at
personhood.37
Meijer’s approach is useful for identifying problems that result from defining identity as
too fixed or as an illusion; she also showed how personal reflection and interpretation
allow for continual change and development in self-understanding. However, this seems
to overstate the importance of psychological reflection and to underrate the place for the
less reflective, unconscious and socialised elements of identity. Her interpretation does
not give an adequate account of the important role that the externals of culture and social
interaction play in identity processes. Also, a legitimate concern to educate young people
within a particular identity (for example, a religious, ethnic and/or cultural identity) is not
necessarily opposed to promoting rational autonomy and informed decision-making; these
latter ‘critical’ qualities are an appropriate part of a healthy, mature identity.
Meijer’s ideas on education for identity development seem more relevant to mature
adults, who are in a better position than children to choose components in their identity;
young people are only taking initial steps in this direction. Intercultural, inter-ethnic
and interfaith communication are desirable processes, but they are not a natural ‘given’
in pluralistic communities (an impression one gets from Meijer’s writing). Such levels of
dialogue are difficult goals to achieve, even with adults. School education should certainly
aim at fostering first steps in such communication; but this is not incompatible with an
education that is also attempting to communicate some basic sense of ethnic or religious
identity. The crucial matter is how both cultural inheritance and developing individuals’
autonomy are balanced. It need not imply the sort of indoctrination that Meijer is concerned
about.
A school education in identity needs to account for the aim of handing on a particular
cultural identity, while allowing for the critical skill development that would help young
people gradually take a more responsible role in the negotiation of their identity.
The second group of (mainly European) writings about education in identity focuses
more on pedagogy. Their objective is to help young people ‘negotiate’ their own personal
identity development. Some of the theorists considered that the individuals’ construction of
meaning and identity needs to take into account the pluralistic cultural environment, while
giving special attention to their own particular religious and cultural heritage. For example,
the development of young people’s identity should involve learning
how to take on a personal and civil identity open to otherness, that is, being able to
communicate with other identities, which are equal in dignity and legitimacy … [It]
should develop reciprocal tolerance and the capacity for intercultural dialogue between
persons and ethnic groups; it should promote religious capabilities in terms of critical
information, of capacity for judgement and personal decision; it should develop the
possibility of confronting the historico‑cultural heritage of Europe, and of [the individual’s]
own nation in particular.38
124 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
Other writers said less about the communication of a particular religious, ethnic or
cultural identity, as if this was not something that school education should be concerned
with.39 Their focus moved away from cultural identity traditions and concentrated almost
exclusively on developing the personal meaning and identity of students. Earlier on, the
study of religious traditions had been central to cultural education in Europe; this new
thinking tended to see such traditions as not important as content in their own right, but
only instrumentally in terms of possible source material that might help young people in
their own idiosyncratic personal quest for meaning and identity. Segments, or ‘contextual
quanta’, from different religions were considered as raw material for exercising students’
capacities for interpreting meaning. The idea of learning to assimilate a particular cultural
or religious identity receded to the background, and in some instances disappeared from
educational thinking. This approach exhibited strong postmodern assumptions about
a minimal role for historical traditions in education. According to this view, culture as
educational content was subordinated in an instrumental fashion to young people’s quest
for personal meaning and identity.
How far this thinking extends from theorists through to classroom teachers is difficult to
estimate. There have been other writers who question this approach for being too strongly
influenced by cultural postmodernity.40 In brief, they consider that it suffers from excesses in
subjectivism, individualism, constructivism, relativism and contextualism, while depending
too much on an epistemology of uncertainty in human knowing. This is more than a
‘mouthful’ of critique, and there is no room for further explanation of it here. But at least it
indicates that there is much lively debate in European and British circles about education in
meaning and identity. Nevertheless, in relevant parts of our chapters on meaning, identity
and spirituality we have tried to address issues arising from postmodern uncertainty about
knowledge (for example 4.2.4).
points and resources for self-understanding and self-expression – that is, as cultural identity
resources. They can be appropriated and further developed for the construction of meaning.
This view highlights people’s integration of ideas, beliefs, values and images as internal identity
resources to make sense of their lives – that is, making sense of both their inner experience
and their interactions with the world and people. Cultural identity resources can be used in
two ways: they can be assimilated (as noted above), resourcing self-understanding; and they
can be utilised for purposes of distinctive self-expression, that is, helping individuals express
themselves in ways they feel are consistent with their identity.
This notion of both process and content in identity suggests that it makes use of external
elements of culture (family life, heroes and heroines, peers, religion, school, artefacts, work,
lifestyle, leisure, television, consumer products), in relationship with internal elements (needs,
beliefs, values, ideals, attitudes, emotions and moods), to fashion the ‘internal clothing’
of individuals through which they identify and understand their own characteristics as a
person. It is meshed with their sense of individuality and uniqueness. When individuals
think about their identity, these self-defining elements come to mind as reference points.
From this perspective, identity health can be regarded as a harmonious balance between
internal and external identity resources. It is proposed as a value judgment that personal identity
should be based primarily on internal resources like beliefs, values and commitments. These
can be thought of as spiritual resources; they may or may not include religious elements.
Too great an identification with externals weakens individuals’ autonomy and makes them
slaves to expectations from outside, rather than being inner-directed. However, it would be
unrealistic to expect people to be so spiritually strong and independent as to rely exclusively
on their own internal resources for identity and meaning. It would be even more unrealistic
to expect this of children and adolescents.
External reference points and links with culture (family, peers, cultural groups, film and
television) are fundamentally important for personal identity. It is a basic part of the human
condition to need the help of others, and access to cultural resources, for making sense of life,
for achieving a worthwhile sense of self, and for the experience of happiness and fulfilment.
Identity development and maintenance have an important interpersonal component. Some
identity problems may be interpreted as too great a dependence on externals, or too much
dependence on internals. Identity is displayed by what individuals think of themselves and
what they do to express themselves.
A healthy identity is mainly self-validated. It does not need to be continually propped
up somewhat artificially by externals, such as the approval of others or identity-related
consumerism. Also, a healthy identity does not require too much energy for its maintenance,
allowing for personal energies to be directed outwards and not tied up in self-analysis and
self-assurance.
This view of identity and identity health is useful for education and the care of youth in
a number of ways:
• It readily allows for an educational role in helping give young people access to cultural
resources to assist with their development of self-understanding and self-expression.
• It is a useful construct for the interpretation of behaviour in the light of identity
motivations.
• It has a strong psychological focus and is related to self-knowledge and self-esteem, and to
purpose and meaning in life.
126 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
• Yet it retains significant links with social interactions and cultural identity resources.
• It allows for the identification of ‘identity content’ that is open to moral evaluation.
This interpretation of identity is like ‘meaning’ viewed from the perspective of self-
expression and self-understanding. It regards identity as the consistent moral picture of
people that emerges from their behaviour; it is an expression of what sort of a person they are,
of what they think of themselves and what sense they make of life. Identity has a momentum
about it; it is relatively fixed, but it can change. It can be influenced by new experience
coupled with personal reflection and interpretation. It can be affected by perceptions of
what others think of the individual; also, it can change in the light of perceptions of the
identity of others, especially if they are favoured role models. Personal identity can be
influenced and sustained by social interaction, including relationships with groups and
institutions.
This view includes the Ricoeur-inspired notion of identity as personal interpretation
arising from reflection. But it suggests that identity is not just a process of reflection that
articulates the current working hypothesis of self; it acknowledges that externals and social
interaction are crucial reference points and raw material for identity. For some, the problem
with identity is precisely a lack of the sort of reflection that Ricoeur saw as constituting
identity. They may give little or no thought to identity but may live with the stereotypes and
values they have absorbed unconsciously. They are less consciously involved in their identity
construction – it could be said that they display an identity by default.
Personal identity development needs some basic socialisation into the beliefs, values and
culture of the individual’s family and immediate community, and into some sense of the
identities of the groups in which they will participate – hopefully positive and non-exclusive.
These components should not be fixed and unchangeable, but open to confirmation,
evaluation and modification.
This view of identity and identity health can be expanded within a values framework. A
strong sense of personal identity can be the driving force behind idealistic and humane action;
it can reinforce links with others from various groups; and it can serve as a source of courage
in adversity. But at times, for various reasons, individuals can feel fragile and uncertain about
their identity. A diffuse identity can be related to erratic and immoral behaviour.
A natural interest in maintaining and enhancing identity is healthy, though a concern
to project a particular identity may be a facade protecting inner uncertainty. Individuals
may appeal to a particular identity to justify their actions – both moral and immoral ones.
Anxiety about identity can be caused by various things ranging from, for example, the poor
form of one’s favourite sporting team to fear that immigrants may threaten one’s jobs and
lifestyle.
How individuals and groups define themselves, and what cultural elements they draw
on to do this, will reveal something about their values and their understanding of what it
means to be human.
This view of identity health stresses the importance of inner identity resources. It shows
identity intimately linked with meaning and spirituality. The advice that Polonius gave to
Laertes is pertinent here: ‘To thine own self be true; then it follows as surely as the day follows
the night that thou shalt not be false to any man.’ Inner truth is achieved first by knowing
what one’s moral identity and values are; then there is fidelity to those commitments.
Research perspectives on the nature and development of identity 127
Notes
1 R Eckersley et al. 2006, Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people,
p. 8.
2 A useful discussion of personal development as portrayed by the developmental theories is provided in BV
Hill 2004, Exploring religion in school: A national priority, pp. 117–24.
3 See the following titles by EH Erikson: 1963, Childhood and society; 1965, The challenge of youth; 1968,
Identity: Youth and crisis; 1974, Dimensions of a new identity; 1980, Identity and the life cycle.
4 L Kohlberg 1984, Essays on moral development: The psychology of moral development.
5 JW Fowler 1981, Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning; 1986,
Becoming adult, becoming Christian; 1987, Faith development and pastoral care.
6 FK Oser 1993, Toward a logic of religious development: A reply to my critics. In Fowler et al., Stages of faith
and religious development: Implications for church education and society.
7 R Kegan 1982, The evolving self: Problems and processes in human development, p. 87. See also AL Strauss
1977, Mirrors and masks: The search for identity; C Taylor 1989, Sources of the self: The making of the modern
identity.
8 C Leavey et al. 1992, Sponsoring faith in adolescence: Perspectives on young Catholic women, pp. 89–95.
9 G Moran 1990, No ladder to the sky; G Moran 1980, Religious education development.
10 HJM Hermans 2001, Conceptions of self and identity: Towards a dialogical view.
11 See the Bibliography under Identity: Writings on psychological and sociological theories of identity related to
Table 6.1.
12 HJM Hermans 2001, Conceptions of self and identity, pp. 59–60.
13 CH Cooley 1998, On self and social organisation: Charles Horton Cooley.
14 H Blumer 1969, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and method.
15 P Berger 1963, Invitation to sociology: A humanistic perspective; P Berger 1980, The heretical imperative:
Contemporary possibilities of religious affiliation; PL Berger & T Luckmann 1967, The social construction of
reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge; PL Berger & T Luckmann 1969, The sacred canopy: The sociology
of religion.
16 R Eckersley et al. 2006, pp. 26–7. See J Bruner 1987, Life as narrative; KJ & MM Gergen 1988, Narrative
and the self as relationship.
17 MH Grimmitt 1987, Religious education and human development: The relationship between studying religions
and personal social and moral education, pp. 71–81, 196.
18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory Accessed 19/04/05.
19 T Brennan 1993, History after Lacan, p. xii.
20 JA Miller 1977, Index, J. Lacan, Ecrits: A selection, p. 137.
21 Brennan 1993, pp. 1–25.
22 ibid., p. 4.
23 W Glasser 1972, The identity society, pp. ix, 8.
24 ibid., p. 8.
25 P Bourdieu 1977, Outline of a theory of practice. Bourdieu’s ideas relevant to identity are explained in M
Warren 1994, Life Structure and the material conditions of living.
26 For example, G Barna 1994, Baby busters: The disillusioned generation; G Barna 1995, Generation next:
What you need to know about today’s youth; T Beaudoin 1998, Virtual faith; M Butcher & M Thomas 2003,
Ingenious: Emerging youth cultures in urban Australia; M Cohen 1993, The twenty something American dream;
D Coupland 1991, Generation X: Tales for an accelerated culture; W Dunn 1993, The baby bust: A generation
comes of age; R Eckersley 2004, Well and good: How we feel and why it matters; R & K Hicks 1999, Boomers,
Xers and other strangers: Understanding the generational differences that divide us; C Hamilton 2003, Growth
fetish; N Howe & B Strauss 1991, Generations: the history of America’s future 1584–2069; N Howe & B Strauss
1993, 13th generation; N Howe & B Strauss 2000, Millennials rising: The next great generation; R Huntley
2006, The world according to Y; D Lipsky & A Abrams 1994, Late bloomers: Coming of age in America; P
Loeb 1994, Generation at the crossroads; C Lumby 1997, Bad girls: The media, sex and feminism in the 90s; H
Mackay 1997, Generations: Baby boomers, their parents and their children; M McCrindle 2003, Understanding
generation Y; W Mahedy & J Bernardi 1994, A generation alone: Xers making a place in the world; M Mason et
128 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
al. 2006, The spirit of generation Y: Summary of the final report of a three year study; S Pitman et al. 2003, Profile
of young Australians: Facts, figures and issues; W Roof 1993, A generation of seekers; E Watters 2003, Urban
tribes: A generation redefines friendship, family and commitment.
27 The review of A Kohn is a useful starting point: 1994, The truth about self-esteem.
28 S Coopersmith 1967, The antecedents of self-esteem, p. 5.
29 Kohn 1994, p. 273.
30 ibid., p. 273.
31 For example, C & M Borba 1978, Self esteem, a classroom affair: 101 ways to help children like themselves; J
Clark 1978, Self esteem: A family affair.
32 See Bibliography under Identity and Education – a selection of European and British writings that show a
special interest in identity development as an aim for education. Their main focus is religious education in
public schools; we have not had an opportunity to determine whether this interest in identity is also evident
in more general writings about European education. Links between identity and education are also taken up
in pertinent sections of Chapters 16, 21 and 22.
33 F Pajer 2003, School‑based education and religious culture: A European approach to the problem of teaching
religion in school, p. 4.
34 Examples from the list of European and British writings referred to in note 32 that focus on the nature of
identity from an educational perspective are: Alma & Zock, Altena et al., Carr, C Hermans, Meijer, Pajer.
35 Examples from the list of European and British writings referred to in note 32 that look at strategies and
pedagogies intended to develop students’ personal identity are Erricker, Heimbrock, C Hermans, Jackson,
Pajer, Ploeger, Schmalzle. Some critiques of the approaches that emphasise personal identity formation are
given in writings by Cooling, Watson and Wright.
36 W Meijer 1991, Religious education and personal identity: A problem for the humanities; W Meijer 1995,
The plural self: the hermeneutical view on identity and plurality.
37 Meijer 1995, p. 95.
38 Pajer 2003, p. 8.
39 For example, Erricker, Heimbrock, as listed in the Bibliography (note 32).
40 See the writings listed for Cooling, Watson and Wright in the Bibliography (note 32).
7
Young people’s
search for identity:
Finding a way through
the cultural maze
129
130 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
As shown in the last chapter, research on identity has been mainly, but not exclusively,
psychological. It has given special attention to the process of identity development through
structural stages, but little to the moral content of identity or to identity health. These latter two
dimensions are important for education. The other crucial educational element is identifying and
evaluating the influence of culture.
Young people’s self-understanding and self-expression are worked out through complex
interactions between their identity needs and the identity resources they find in culture. Their
quest for a sense of authentic self is a major developmental task. It is complicated because
the culture is saturated with many attractive identity proposals, not all of which turn out to be
helpful. At the same time, the traditional family and community identity resources do not appear
to have the same cogency and plausibility they seemed to have formerly.
This chapter will discuss some of the identity issues that young people have to negotiate. The
better the understanding adults have of the problems young people face while finding their
way through the identity maze, the better they will be able to contribute to a critical education
in identity for youth – in the home, school and other contexts. Special attention will be given
to the cluster of issues related to consumerism, advertising and the media because of the
psychological sway these have over the development of youth identity.
7.1.1 The changing place of religion as a basic reference point for youth identity and
spirituality
7.1.2 Constant change as the baseline reference point for youth identity and spirituality
7.2.12 Consumer without a cause: The marketing of rebellion to youth and the
domestication of nonconformity
7.2.13 A spiritual dimension to marketing?
7.2.14 From James Dean to Clueless: Teenage angst to teenage makeover
7.1.1 The changing place of religion as a basic reference point for youth identity
and spirituality
As noted in chapter 1, the constructs identity and spirituality are closely interwoven –
spirituality is a core expression of identity, and vice versa.4 For many, but not all, religion
enters into their identity and spirituality.
Traditionally, religion has been an important identity resource for people, both personally
and culturally. For many this still remains the case. Religious beliefs and practices can have
a powerful influence on self-understandings and behaviour – and not only on formally
religious behaviour.
However, as considered in later chapters on spirituality, there is an increasing tendency
among young people in Western societies not to see religion, including their own particular
tradition, as having a prominent place in their personal development. This is not a new
phenomenon; the description fits many nominally religious adults. Today’s youth, as well as
inheriting a tradition of secularisation, are subject to an electronically conditioned, global
village culture that colours their view of religion itself and offers many alternative sources of
meaning and values that can be incorporated into identity.
7.1.2 Constant change as the baseline reference point for youth identity and
spirituality
Many young people do not start life with a relatively static cultural-religious baseline;
for them, the constant as regards lifestyle and entertainment is change itself. Change may
132 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
therefore have become more of a natural ingredient in the formation of their personal
identity. They can seek self-understanding and self-expression by keeping in tune with the
latest trends in music, film, fashion, leisure, gadgets like mobile phones and mp3 players,
and the Internet, with little reference to traditional beliefs and values; even family traditions
may have a minimal place in self-definition. Similarly, there can be problems as regards the
extent of young people’s participation in ethnic and national identities.
In the sort of world they experience, many conventional distinctions between groups
of people have tended to lose their meaning and force. They can go beyond conventional
boundaries and draw elements of meaning and identity in a trans-religious, trans-ethnic
and trans-national way. This could be regarded as valuable for developing a sense of global
human community; but there remains an ambivalence about identity that is evident in a
tension between wanting to be universal yet distinctive.
While religion and education may be slow to acknowledge these identity issues for
youth, this has not been the case for the commercial world. The marketing of consumer
products has readily picked up on the identity tension between universalism and individual
distinctiveness and it targets young people for purchases that will reinforce both aspects.
Music and fashion, especially that generated initially in the United States and the United
Kingdom, serve as an international fund of identity resources for youth.
identity is better articulated and more self-sustained, group membership can become more
individualistic and allow for more diversity of expression and interaction with other groups.
Identity vulnerability underlies much of the psychological experimentation of youth.
Needs for group membership will vary from individual to individual; but for most young
people it is fundamental to their search for personal identity. Groups provide an ‘identity
haven’, but the cost requires conformity in dress, interests, in-language, music and where to
‘hang out’. Youth will look for many options for group membership and for easy and fluid
ways of joining and leaving; if a group does not meet needs, it can readily be abandoned.
This uncertainty and experimentation are ripe for commercial colonisation. Industries have
developed more or less to cater for the identity experimentation of youth; they manufacture not
only the clothes, food and CDs for individual self-expression, but, through slick advertising,
promote the images and moods that will be most likely to fuel young people’s desire to buy
their products. As will be explored in more detail later, this sort of marketing actually focuses
on selling images and values – and the ‘things’ to be purchased are the means for acquiring the
attractive lifestyle. Advertising is directed towards individualism, experimentalism, person-
centredness, direct experience, pleasure and escape. This taps into the intangibles of youth
identity development: human relationships, feelings, dreams, and hopes.
Youth consumer choices are not just a matter of individual taste; what they buy
demonstrates their ‘style’:
things like listening to a particular piece of music, buying [a CD], buying a particular
style of clothing are all means of identification. In such a process young people move
closer to others who share those same likes and choices. It is a very free, democratic and
easy way of finding common identification with others – even at the level of musical and
fashion tastes.6
Identification can be as simple as buying a particular cap or wearing the casual ‘uniform’ of
the group; or by identifying with causes like Amnesty International or a protest movement.
This is easier than expressing intentional membership in a political party or in organised
religion, and it does not call for much responsibility or commitment, or for assent to an
ideology or system of theology and morality.7 Despite the manipulative uniformity that
some adolescent groups or gangs can require of members, it is most often a democratic and
egalitarian spirit that is evident.
Commerce has long been interested in making a living from marketing products that
meet individuals’ needs for distinctive self-expression. For many youth, this can have a
disproportionate influence in channelling their self-expression. In turn, it helps create the
idea of a distinctive youth subculture: its creation depends heavily on the choices they make
in what they buy. Being ‘creative consumers’, their purchases have symbolic meaning as well
as functional utility.
To reinforce its power over youth consumerism, commerce needs to sustain the myth
of identity-oriented purchasing: it purports to be an essential part of identity development.
To make the myth even more attractive and potent, it is coloured strongly with images
of freedom and individuality, where the operative notion of freedom is choice from a
multiplicity of products. Smith and Standish considered that current ambiguity about what
constitutes morality is:
134 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
This interpretation helps explain the sharpness in some young people’s negative reaction to
any move that threatens the scope of their choices. In turn, it illustrates the strength of the
hold that consumerism can have on them because it is closely associated with their drive
to establish an identity. It is therefore difficult to lead young people to see that marketing
for distinctiveness can, from another perspective, be a means of mass homogenisation of
identity: individuality through the mass marketing of commercial packages.
Young people in places as diverse as Sydney, Los Angeles, Cairo and Moscow can be seen
wearing a style of clothing that had its origins with African American youth. The tension
between distinctiveness and universality has been aptly caught by the fashion industry’s
name for this clothing as ‘international urban tribal streetwear’. Somehow for those who
wear such clothing the distinctiveness and the universality are harmonised; their dress allows
a type of global youth identification, while at the same time making a distinctive statement.
When so much clothing like caps and T shirts with brands, names, teams or comments
stamped on them is marketed, the specificity of the ‘statements’ may end up being diluted;
an item without some identification would become the exception.
To some extent the patterns in young people’s social group membership, especially after
they leave school, relate to the current sociopolitical settings. The style of groups in the
1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s has varied according to the prevailing cultural climates. In
the social mix are factors like ideas of romantic liberalism, phases of economic depression,
economic rationalism and unemployment, together with trends in the globalisation of
commerce, worldwide environmental crisis, and expanding communication technologies.
Adolescent groups can shield young people from the harsh realities of the world, and they
provide scope for personality experimentation. They also serve as starting points for the
exploration to find a meaningful and constructive place in life.
identity development; they can stock up with gear and products that seem to exude desirable
image and self-definition.
Such marketing strategies engage in a seduction of individuality. This they do in two
ways. First, their images and messages promote individuality as a seductive theme: it is very
desirable, something that all youth need; they want it; they have a right to it; and they are
prepared to pay for it. Phrases like ‘be yourself ’, ‘do your own thing’, ‘be an individual’, ‘be
all you can be’, ‘go for it’ are examples of seductive messages. So, marketing to youth tries
to seduce them through an appeal to individuality – they are seduced with individuality.
Second, through the purchase of products that are supposed to enhance distinctiveness,
young people are seduced away from their individuality – they buy consumer packages that
short-change them as far as their authentic self is concerned. Through promoting, and then
profiting by, a view of individuality as a profile of consumer products (or a ready-made
identifying package), the commercial world insinuates a marketable, external, and therefore
materialistic notion of identity. If young people are influenced by this thinking and imagery
to an excessive degree, they can neglect internal identity resources, thus compromising the
health of their identity.
The many thousands of television advertisements that young people watch each year, as
well as those in print media, strongly promote the development and expression of individuality.
They suggest what clothes, shoes, toothpaste, acne cream and perfume are needed to express
individuality. But while the enhancement of a personal sense of individuality is promoted,
at the same time youth are seduced into accepting a pre-packaged public individuality, which
is in part created by the media and the leisure industries. Television advertising fuels the
fires of individuality, but in a subtle way then draws people away from it towards a public
conformity to the images and lifestyle it projects.9 Consumer advertising can tell you what
you need to conform to if you want to be ‘cool’, ‘in’, ‘hip’, ‘whatever’.
The collective aura of participation, together with its presence in the private space of
people’s homes, make television a powerful instrument for promoting public individuality.
The comments of Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s now sound like a prophecy fulfilled:
‘Television seduces us from the literate and private point of view to the complex and inclusive
world of the group icon. Instead of presenting a private argument it offers a way of life that
is for everybody.’10
Youth conformity to advertised images poses a significant dilemma for individuality.
Where cloning and clichés sustained by television images are relied on too much for
desirable individuality, young people may come to wonder if they have any inner private
life or identity at all.
webs of ‘logos’ or ‘corporate brands’ came to be more prominent in marketing and retail
success than the actual products themselves. Her explanation for this was in the psychological
mechanisms of identity development.
Nike, for example, is leveraging the deep emotional connection that people have with
sports and fitness. With Starbucks, we see how coffee has woven itself into the fabric of
people’s lives, and that is our opportunity for emotional leverage … A great brand raises
the bar – it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it’s the challenge
to do your best in sports and fitness or the reaffirmation that the cup of coffee you’re
drinking really matters.12
Similarly, the Diesel Jeans owner said, ‘We don’t sell a product, we sell a style of life. I think
we have created a movement … the Diesel concept is everything. It’s the way to live; it’s
the way to wear; it’s the way to do something.’ And the Body Shop founder explained that
‘her stores aren’t about what they sell, they are the conveyors of a grand idea – a political
philosophy about women, the environment and ethical business’.13 The pursuit of beauty
with a conscience!
Klein continued:
The effect, if not always the original intent, of the advanced branding is to nudge the
hosting culture into the background and make the brand the star. It is not to sponsor
culture but to be the culture. And why shouldn’t it be? If brands are not products but
ideas, attitudes, values and experiences, why can’t they be culture too? This project has
been so successful that the lines between corporate sponsors and sponsored culture have
entirely disappeared.14
Peer pressure emerged as a powerful market force [for teenagers], making the keeping-up-
with-the-Joneses consumerism of their suburban parents pale by comparison …
It was not going to be sufficient for companies simply to market their same products
to a younger demographic; they needed to fashion brand identities that would resonate
with this new [youth] culture. If they were going to turn their lacklustre products into
transcendent meaning machines – as the dictates of branding demanded – they would
need to remake themselves in the image of nineties cool: its music, styles and politics.
Cool, alternative, young, hip – whatever you want to call it – was the perfect identity
for product-driven companies looking to become transcendent image-based brands [for
the youth market] … [Marketing made a] frantic effort to isolate and reproduce in TV
commercials the precise ‘attitude’ [young people] were driven to consume … Everywhere,
‘Am I cool?’ became the deeply dull and all-consuming question of every moment [both
for teenagers as well as marketing executives.] … The quest for cool is by nature riddled
with self-doubt … except now the harrowing doubts of adolescence are the billion-dollar
questions of our age.15
Klein drew attention to the market research of so-called ‘cool hunters’ who sought to identify
new trends for market exploitation; she considered that, armed with the trendspotting of
their:
138 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
cool hunters, the legal stalkers of youth culture, … the superbrands became the perennial
teenage followers, trailing the scent of cool wherever it led … With the tentacles of
branding reaching into every crevice of youth culture, leaching brand-image content not
only out of the street styles like hip-hop but psychological attitudes like ironic detach
ment, the cool hunt has had to go further afield to find unpilfered space.
The youth culture feeding frenzy … [tended to make youth] victims of a predatory
marketing machine that co-opted identities, [personal] styles and ideas and turned them
into brand food.16
Sydney racing’s day of embarrassment. The day only a few hardy souls turned up to watch
the worst Randwick meeting since 1962. 53 horses, 22 jockeys, 39 trainers, 6 races, 20
bookies and 150 punters. Sydney racing hit rock bottom yesterday … Just 6 sorry races
in front of empty grandstands and ghost-like betting rings.19
But whatever the problems for mid-week racing, Royal Randwick bustled with large crowds
at the Easter carnival. In fact, over a few years, attendance had increased by 40 per cent
– that is, by more than 50 000 people. There had been a decline in attendance during and
after the 1970s. But this was turned around in a most dramatic ‘fashion’.
What brought about this change? The answer: Arguably, the most successful advertising
campaign in recent Australian history. At the beginning of 2002, Tony King, CEO of the
Australian Jockey Club, introduced the ‘Princesses campaign’ developed by the firm Ad
Partners.
The strategy of specifically targeting women who were believed to be ‘commercially
vulnerable’ to the image of glamour was evident in commentary on the Princesses campaigns
in the advertising industry journal B&T (‘Australia’s highest circulating advertising,
marketing and media magazine’). The titles of three articles in recent years were ‘AJC woos
younger crowd to “party”’, ‘AJC pampers women to boost racing numbers’ and ‘AJC relies
on princess pulling power’.20
140 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
The Australian Jockey Club is continuing its campaign to position the races as a sexy
social event with the launch of its latest campaign … [It] features provocative images of
a beautiful woman preparing herself for a day at the races and features the new tagline
‘Princesses approve’ replacing [the earlier] ‘Princesses welcome’. (2004)
The AJC is celebrating the role women play in modern day racing … The campaign,
targeted at females aged 20-30 years, features images of immaculate women and
racehorses, set to the ‘Strangers in Paradise’ soundtrack. [The] AJC marketing manager
said the campaign highlighted the social nature of the racing event … ‘[It] is about ladies
dressing up and feeling good about themselves. Our research indicates that ladies consider
Royal Randwick as one of the only social places where they can dress up, put on a hat, feel
safe and have a great day.’ (2003)
[AJC spokeswoman Martin said] ‘In a sign of the potency of the princesses concept,
ticket sales for the ‘Springfest’ lawn party were up by 60% on last year, and many corporate
hospitality areas had already sold out’ [despite the lateness of the campaign and the cuts to
advertising spending]. ‘The princesses campaign was so successful, we are running with it
again. The AJC was confident its target market would respond.’ (2005)
At the racetrack, much was done to make the potential princesses feel welcome and suitably
entertained. There were extensive ‘lawn parties’ (which might cost $200 or more), corporate
hospitality areas, fashion prizes for the best dressed (over $250 000), themed villages, DJs
and bands, plenty of alcohol, and pampering sessions for the ladies including massages,
make-up artists, hair stylists, hot tubs, clairvoyants, and tattooists. There were also some
horse races.
The billboards showed women in various poses from the bubble bath through to haute
coutured perfection, capped with exotic millinery – projecting the imagery of princesses
preparing to attend the race carnival. This was complemented with limited radio and
television advertising, together with the ‘secondary’ advertising from newspaper articles, for
example ‘Just as the horses need to be race track ready, so do the fashionable fillies’.21
It worked. A large number of women in the age range 18–35 responded. And where the
princesses went, the princes were sure to follow. One of the radio advertisements said:
While the initial increase in attendance (2002–2003) was 19%, numbers of women
attending increased by 33%. The commercial implications were significant. In addition
to heavy trackside expenditure on drink, food and entertainment, the princesses campaign
had significant off-track spinoffs. Princess related dress sales were notable; demand was
sufficient for David Jones department store to resurrect its millinery department; also,
their suit sales to men increased. As a result, David Jones signed up to sponsor the AJC
Easter Saturday Derby for five years. In addition, there was a related upturn in business
for day spas and nail, hair, tanning and beauty salons – all concerned with the business
of princess preparation.
But, one might ask: ‘What is the problem? Dressing up has always been a part of “going out”
– from the country town show to the Melbourne Cup. And if young people are more often
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 141
than not “dressing down”, then dressing more formally is a welcome change.’ This is true,
but it is a question of balance – how lifestyle maintenance enhances or distorts the larger life
project, and the extent to which it consumes financial resources. Ultimately the issue here is
about the evaluation of lifestyle and the extent to which lifestyle becomes a core element in
personal identity. Having a fun outing is a basic part of being human; but if this becomes too
strong a preoccupation, perhaps an obsession, it will impact negatively on personality and
wellbeing. Also pertinent is the way in which commercially orchestrated imagery can have
such an impact on lifestyle and expenditure on entertainment – the Princesses campaigns
raised the ‘fashion stakes’ to a new level, and the trend has spread to other cities.
The princess myth has powerful archetypal roots in the psyche – as considered in a
newspaper article entitled ‘Princess power: A nation of Princesses; the favourite fantasy of
Australian women; From theatre to reality TV, the myth of the princess has never been more
popular’.22 And consumer advertising has been attuned to this mythology; it taps into primal
anxieties about not being attractive and accepted. For example, this article noted that:
At the heart of the Princess myth lies the notion of transformation. Inside the female, the
myth goes, waits a flawless being, gracious and pure. . and physically beautiful of course.
It just takes someone – a fairy godmother, Prince or reality-television producer – to pare
back the soiled layers and scrub off the tarnish, and the true, perfect self is revealed. The
delicious moment in so many fairytales, books and films is this rebirth, when the true self
emerges shyly.
The key word that wannabe princesses … use to describe this transformed being is
‘power’, in various forms – ‘empowered’ and ‘powerful’ … This kind of transformation
gives women . . a path to discovering themselves.
In the 1950s, it was unlikely that the AJC princess campaign would have been successful,
or even thought of. It was not that young women at the time were unaffected by a princess
mythology; but for most, the chance that the myth would become a reality was presumed
to be the lot of royalty and the rich. They seemed content that such a magical change would
never happen to anyone in their accepted station in life. But today things have changed. A
consumer-oriented lifestyle is now more widely accepted and practised, even by those who
cannot afford it. ‘What once might have been a mythological process, a fairy tale or a story
that was a metaphor for something has become something that people see as quite real and
potentially doable.’23 The expectation is there; and all can participate in it to some extent by
wearing the right ‘uniform’, being in the right place and behaving in the ‘proper’ fashion.
And smart industries can capitalise on this expectation.
The popularity of the AJC campaign was partly because of its explicit use of the word
‘princess’. It was like a badge, ticket or brand for the young women seeking psychological
cachet by participating in the process. The word was an instant reminder of their identity
aspiration. In a world where appearance was everything, assigning yourself a ‘princess label’
was at least a good start, and it might be the turning point for a successful future. But even
better than that, you are ‘told’ you are a princess by someone else; you are validated by a
recognised external source.
In 2005, when the television reality program Australian Princess was in production, the
call went out for fourteen young women contestants. More than four thousand applied. The
142 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
executive producer responsible for recruitment talked about the candidates: ‘They genuinely
felt that they wanted to change. They felt it might give them a platform to make a difference.’
One of the candidates who made it through to the final rounds said: ‘I think every woman’s
desire is to be the beauty of the story. I guess I believe in myself as a princess in a way. Not
royalty and blood, but I know the woman inside of me and I desired the opportunity to
shine.’ Moses, the author of the abovementioned article, summed it up as follows: ‘It’s clear
the appeal of the Princess goes far deeper than the desire to walk nicely and wear the ball
gown. The aspiration is as much about transforming the personality as it is about polishing
the exterior.’24
No doubt the transformation of Tasmanian girl Mary Donaldson into the Crown
Princess of Denmark, with its ongoing TV and magazine coverage, has helped fuel the
princess mythology.
The princess imagery is now prominent in advertising for racing around the country,
even if the word is not used explicitly. Being treated like a princess also features in other
advertisements (for example for the Crown Casino). The power of the princess myth has
even resonated in religious circles. The ‘Hillsong [Pentecostal] church [in Sydney] frames
segments of its women’s ministry in the language of royalty – instead of being Christ’s
brides, women are now his princesses’.25 Michael Carr-Gregg, a prominent Australian child
psychologist, has a different take on the princess myth. He was concerned about the level of
behavioural problems in adolescent girls; his guide for helping them is published under the
title The princess bitchface syndrome.26
While there may not be many schoolgirls at the racetrack, the glamour princess mythology
is alive and well in girls of school age. It may well be that its expression in 18–35-year-olds
is more a prolongation of unresolved teenage identity needs than an agenda that schoolgirls
face for the first time when they leave school.
At this point, we will return to the central question raised earlier about the evaluation of
lifestyle and its relationship with identity dynamics.
If you are young and cashed up … glamour rules. It’s the dominant aesthetic, but it’s
also an attitude and way of life, one with its own rules and role models. More than
that, however, the lust for glamour is deeply emblematic of our age. We are fixated with
celebrities, image and style. Prosperity has given us the cash to spend, and a consumer
culture that rewards self-absorption encourages us to spend it on ourselves …
[Those strongly influenced by the myth of glamour] are also the ultimate products of
consumer culture. Rather than rebelling against it, they have turned up the volume and
embraced it with a look that is maxi consumer.28
What she says is no doubt true for some, and is more pertinent to women than men; for
men, glamour includes more of the following in the mix: ego, competitiveness, physical
prowess, ‘toys’ like cars, and success in work – rather than glamorous appearance as such. But
if the words self-validation through lifestyle – that is, activities that make one feel valuable,
accepted, important and attractive – were substituted in place of glamour, this paragraph
would become much more insightful into young people’s identity dynamics, both men and
women.
People’s identity or sense of self needs to be affirmed not just once but continually;
some regular recognition and acceptance from outside the self are needed to nourish the
identity and keep it alive. Lifestyle activities, probably even more than possessions, have
become the principal source of this external validation; and this taps into basic meaning
and purpose, perhaps with more influence than one might expect in a healthy identity.
Externals, especially consumer items, help give a ‘concrete’ sense of identity. In a sense
people can feel that they do not have to wait until after death to go to heaven; they can
have ‘consumer paradise’ right here and now. Access to a particular lifestyle and reference
groups supplies people with an instantaneous feeling of identification; the kudos readily
rubs off on them; it can underscore what they think they need for the rest of their life. But
if the external validation they depend on breaks down (for example when a strongly career-
oriented person is retrenched or retires) an identity crisis may result. In addition, lifestyle
can even tap into people’s natural concern that their passage through life should leave some
mark; if they do not see themselves making a mark through family, work achievements
and their own personal integrity, there is the temptation to make a statement through
lifestyle.
If people do not have a strong sense of doing something meaningful and satisfying that is
not so strongly indexed to lifestyle, they are more likely to look continually for self-validation
in lifestyle activity. In other words, if there are not influential internal goals and values, people
will be more inclined to pursue the immediate feel-good or buzz to fill the void. Periodic
doses of external self-validation can keep them going; the princess and night-out activities
144 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
referred to earlier can top up their needs. The more self-validation from lifestyle, the more
they feel that it also gives them meaning and purpose. Identity health is compromised if the
psychological and financial cost of continual feel-good validation becomes excessive. On the
other hand, a healthy lifestyle (in the broadest sense) enhances identity.
Another factor also enters the equation: where self-validation is primarily external, it is
open to commercial colonisation.
Advertising not only markets specific items for self-validation, but promotes and sustains the
rationale for an external self-validation. It keeps the myth of consumer or lifestyle identity
on low simmer.
People sense that they belong to a particular lifestyle; it identifies them. And every sign
of lifestyle advertising is like a banner affirming who they are – hence television and glossy
magazine advertising provide an identity infrastructure that reminds them ‘this is where
you belong’; this may operate at a relatively unconscious level through an iconography of
consumerism. The identity imagery in advertising is atmospheric; it assures people that they
are on track as far as lifestyle – and meaning in life – are concerned; you have identified with
the right group and the right brands. Some examples: ‘Absolutely everything you desire’
(Lancôme Paris); ‘Limited time Unlimited luxury’ (Target USA); ‘Because you’re worth
it’ (L’Oréal Paris); The full-page advertisement for Bluefly USA, online retailers, lists an
extensive range of consumer feelings, in which the word NEED was highlighted – ‘Joy rage
envy desire passion jealousy hurt elation success thirst victory boredom fury NEED want
lust sex crave rapture hunger triumph stress thrill pleasure ache rush conquest revenge That’s
why I NEED Bluefly.’29
Young people need money to pursue the common consumer- and entertainment-related
forms of self-validation, even if it eats up more than a healthy proportion of their total
earnings. For those who are supported financially to some extent by their family, lifestyle
maintenance is even easier; they can live more extravagantly, or they can spend less time
working to reach the desired level of disposable income, leaving more time for lifestyle
options.
Advertising psychology is well aware of these dynamics; it is in the best commercial interest
to keep this mythology alive and well. Most advertising in television and magazines therefore
has a dual function: it promotes the targeted item while at the same time sustaining the myth
of consumer-related identity development. This mythology in turn fuels consumerism. As
discussed in Frank’s book Luxury fever, ‘luxury purchases, if adopted by enough people,
become the status quo. In order to fit in or just to keep up, we have to spend more money,
as in some sort of consumer arms race’.30
‘Gawk’-related identity
become a tourist attraction, like the pink-haired punks who used to hang out around the
Tower of London. Here, self-validation is achieved by being noticed or stared at for looking
different. For some, it may be rebelliousness expressed in a conformist sort of way; but
getting attention provides a self-validation.
Gawk-related identity usually requires wearing a recognised ‘uniform’ that demarcates
the tribe. There have been a succession of types since the bodgies and widgies of the 1950s.
One of the most recently documented is the Emos (designating a special relationship with
emotional punk music), with preferred music, dress, hangouts and heroes/heroines.31
There is much more to identity dynamics within groups than being noticed (7.2.1), but
in some instances it exercises a powerful influence on behaviour as young people experiment
with self-expression.
Lifestyle is a natural part of being human; we all display one. The importance of people’s
planning and implementing a particular lifestyle is not in question. What is proposed
here is the need for reflection about the meaning of lifestyle and about factors that have a
conditioning influence on it. This can help with an evaluation of one’s lifestyle, to check
whether it is consistent with core values. Also, the value stance taken here presumes that the
life project needs to be ‘larger’ than lifestyle; otherwise, excesses in lifestyle can eventually be
damaging for the individual’s wellbeing and that of others. Problems can arise with respect
to the sources, scope and spread of identity affirmation.
Hence the purpose of analyses like the above is to inform self-evaluation in the light of
what it means to have a healthy identity. It seeks to promote substantial rather than ephemeral
resources for identity development. And it seeks personal truth in self-understanding rather
than an identity that includes pretence and illusion; in other words, it tries to identify and
name what is illusory. The warning in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Mother night is pertinent: ‘We
are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.’32
Consideration of links between lifestyle and identity is always difficult because it is close
to the bone. It is ultimately about individuals’ reviewing how their life structure shapes up
against their ideal self. And this is a very personal activity. The bulk of this chapter provides
raw material that can assist in the self-evaluative process, which usually begins with analysis
of what is happening out there in the culture before personal implications can be teased
out. One of the difficult tasks of an education in identity is to resource young people’s
capacity for self-evaluation by helping them access the pertinent issues and ideas. Precisely
because of their identity vulnerability, they are not always receptive to critiques of lifestyle or
culture, particularly if they feel that this threatens their options. So it is realistic not to expect
evidence of too much progress; even pointing young people in the right direction may be the
first helpful step towards a mature identity.
Ambiguity abounds in the personal self-evaluation process. We have met young people
who are able to discuss many of the above-mentioned issues in an intelligent and responsible
way; but we are also aware that the profile of their own lifestyle (how they spend their time
and money) is evidence of these very problems. A critical awareness of problems in identity-
146 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
related consumerism does not seem to be inconsistent with being avid consumers who need
the identity cachet of their purchases and leisure activities.
Trying to resource young people’s evaluation of self and lifestyle means taking a value
stance with respect to materialism and consumerism; and this is not the most attractive
stance to commend to today’s youth. But at least those involved in education and care of
youth can acquaint them with such views, together with the concerns for human wellbeing
that motivate them. For example:
Another key issue to consider is the time, energy and cost (both psychological and financial)
that go into self-validation. A healthy identity should not need too much attention; it is not
narcissistic. If too much has to be done to ‘prove’ an identity, especially to outsiders, this is
an indicator of identity sickness. Rather, a healthy identity should be able to channel energy
into worthy projects outside the self; it should be altruistic and even self-forgetful. In this
sense, one’s life needs to be larger than one’s identity.
A preoccupation with external self-validation may be part of a more enveloping self-
centredness. For young people who by nature and/or nurture are highly self-centred, their
lives tend to revolve exclusively around self-satisfying activities. But a life spent in pursuit of
just what pleases the self can end up feeling empty, because it does not have the emotional
space to engage meaningfully with others. Some young people suffering from this problem
may seek psychological help, asking ‘What do I need so that I don’t feel so empty?’ But
a helpful solution cannot be found within this limited frame of reference; it requires
questioning the value of ‘meeting needs’ as the ultimate criterion for fulfilment. Just as
identity should be more than lifestyle, so fulfilment should be more than self-satisfaction.
Also in need of evaluation is the way that focus-on-self is a mantra for lifestyle advertising.
This consumer orientation can so occupy young people’s attention that it inhibits the
development of an identity based more on internal resources, extending the identity
resolution tasks that are usually judged to be a part of adolescence.
Many of the lifestyle and identity issues discussed here have been referenced to the 18–35
age group, even though they are often evident in older people as well as in young people
of school age. One could expect that sorting out a balance between internal and external
identity resources is a project that gets under way in adolescence, and that substantial
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 147
progress would be made by the early twenties. But ambivalence about links between lifestyle
and identity remains an ongoing problem for young adults. It is as if the developmental tasks
of adolescence are being prolonged.
A cluster of cultural factors is extending the time between leaving school and becoming
financially and domestically independent: More time is spent studying at university and
technical colleges; the high cost of independent living inclines post-school youth to stay at
home; finding secure employment with a clear career pathway is more difficult, as is taking
time out for travel. The drive to have a satisfying lifestyle and the associated financial and
social costs interrelates with these factors and the resultant mix has a significant effect on
personal relationships. The most obvious statistic is the increasing average age at marriage;
the idea of marrying, ‘settling down’ and raising a family is being postponed or perhaps even
taken off the agenda.
In addition, consumer-lifestyle self-validation affects relationships because the tendency
to seek existential ‘feel-good/buzz’ experiences makes instant satisfaction and enjoyment the
focal point; and this may not be a good recipe for successful, enduring friendship. If people
carry a mainly self-centred interest into their relationships, it is understandable that this will
naturally make the association more ephemeral; if the survival of a relationship depends
only on the level of self-affirmation each partner derives from it, then it is less likely that
the couple will be able to make a long-term, meaningful project together with shared goals,
values and commitments. Such an association could readily stall once the couple passed the
initial stage of being ‘in love’ when feelings of infatuation provided copious self-validation;
this occurs when, for various reasons, they are unable to progress to an ongoing loving
relationship that is sustained by commitment and not just emotion (even though emotional
compatibility will always remain important).
[The book shows] how teenagers succumb to constant commercial battering designed
to reduce their individuality and creativity, the effects of targeted messages on emerging
teen identities and how they are subtly taught to market to each other … also the
bravery of isolated young people who fight back, turning the tables on the cocksure
mega-corporations striving to crack the codes of teen[age] cool. These kids prove it isn’t
necessary to give in to branding, but it’s a drop in the ocean when an entire generation is
being raised to consume.
148 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
In addition to the move by brand names to market products for ever younger children, there
is even a luxury product range for babies. A newspaper reported the trend as follows:
Why babies need luxury gear. Fussy cashed-up parents are digging deep for the right
look.
Baby gear (clothing, cots, prams, nappy bags, feeding chairs and the rest) has gone
from the stuff of necessity to that of status – for the parents anyway … But the strange
thing about the current obsession for the best, coolest and latest for our babies is that it
has nothing to do with our babies at all.
In the United States, annual sales of specialty baby toiletries . . have tripled since 2001
to USD$75 million. First time parents are getting older (one in ten first time mothers
in Australia is aged over 35). They have more money, know what they want, have lived
and breathed the dominating culture of consumption and, at the end of a long day, the
shopping is guilt-free when it is for someone who can’t say ‘No’. 34
Older children and teenagers, both rich and poor alike, seem to be prone to seeking status
and desirability through the brands of the consumer goods they purchase – the brand label
apparently carrying more identity weight than the actual products themselves.
Today’s teens are victims of the contemporary luxury economy. Raised by a commodity
culture from the cradle, teens’ dependably fragile self-images and their need to belong
to groups are perfect qualities for advertisers to exploit … They look at every place of
children’s vulnerability, searching for selling opportunities … Kids are forced to embrace
the instrumental logic of consumerism at an earlier than ever age … finding self definition
in logos and products.
[Marketing themes for youth often are] about ‘melodrama’, about mastering rules,
about the search for identity and a theme called ‘hanging out’.35
From their ubiquity, logos derive psychological power that affects teenagers’ hopes and
dreams. Once, brands could be thought of as being externals that might be used to identify
individuals with a group or differentiate them from a group. But now, ‘brands have infiltrated
pre-teens and adolescents’ inner lives’.36 As well as appealing to teenagers’ felt needs, branding
also tapped into their idealism: their wish to have an ideal world to live in could be subtly
played upon so they might accept a ‘branded’ one instead.
The branding process is not only pervasive, it is often perceived as natural, taken for
granted and not questioned – just the way things are. There is a danger here that a culturally
constructed and commercially motivated process can begin to distort, and perhaps even
substitute for, the process of identity development. Young people may come to feel that
they themselves are just a brand – a distinctive combination of commercial brandings that
expresses who they are.
In a sense, [branding] provides kids with a sense of self-hood before many of them have
even recognised that they have a self … consider[ing] their own characters and personae
brands unto themselves.
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 149
[Teenagers] suffer more than any other sector of society from wall to wall selling. They
are at least as anxious as their parents about having enough money and maintaining their
social class, a fear that they have been taught is best allayed by more branded gear. And
they have taken to branding themselves, believing that the only way to participate in the
world is to turn oneself into a corporate product.
Many of the [teenagers] … who are drenched in name-brand merchandise are slightly
awkward or overweight or not conventionally pretty. While many teenagers are branded,
the ones most obsessed with brand names feel they have a lack that only super-branding
will cover and insure against social ruin.37
As noted earlier, research studies have shown that both rich as well as poor teenagers and
children are affected by this branding mentality; and both rich and poor are targeted for
what they can spend to achieve it. This amounts to corporate manipulation of youth; one
Australian columnist referred to it as ‘corporate paedophilia’.38
Whether at school or in other contexts, efforts to help youth become less naive about
the implications of participating in consumerist branding need to introduce them to an
‘unbranding’ or ‘decolonising’ agenda – that is, identifying seduction, and deconstructing
chic images and brand mystique.
Advertising that increasingly aims at younger children tries to ‘hook’ them at an early
age, and retain them as loyally branded for life. Magazines like Teen people, Elle girl, Cosmo
girl, and Teen Vogue prepare pre-teenage girls for the more adult versions to which they will
graduate as they get older. These, and many consumer products, especially in cosmetics
and body-building, appeal to young people’s anxiety about body image and their hopes for
improvement. The stylised professional wrestling programs on television (in the USA) are
said to appeal particularly to the young men who are interested in muscular body image.
[Magazines for teenagers] construct an unaffordable but palpable world of yearning for
girls. We are all too familiar with the negative effects of the model body on girls’ self
images, but these magazines do something new: they help to solidify feelings of economic
and taste inadequacy in girls. By introducing very young teens to female celebrity and the
dressmakers who helped create it, these magazines underline that girls are not complete or
competitive if they don’t wear label dresses at their junior high school dances.39
Teenagers can be overwhelmed by the constant reminders across media and advertising that
they have to measure their attractiveness against the mostly impossible standards set by fashion
models. The permanent gap between the ideal and their own appearance is a constant source
of depressive feelings. This goes hand in hand with frustration from the gap between the
150 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
social reality of the media – ‘you can be what you want’ – and their own experience that this
does not happen no matter how hard they try. There are apparently limitless opportunities
advertised, but the high hopes they raise are followed by a sense of failure and impotence,
and a feeling of not knowing where to go (see the discussion of youth angst and anomie later
in this chapter and in Chapter 9). Klein called the resultant feeling ‘globo-claustrophobia’.40
Nevertheless, these negative feelings can fuel hope that a combination of labelled clothes and
footwear, cosmetics, the right mobile phone and mp3 player, and the right likes and dislikes
in music, film and television will give them a successful identity ‘makeover’. This teenage
angst is fertile for marketing consumer salves. Klein reported that in 2000, teenagers (in the
United States) spent about AUD230 billion in clothing, CDs and makeup.
Marketing and advertising finely tune the perceived social reality that supports branding
and consumerism for teenagers. They try to show that this is what normal teenagers do
– that teenagers all round the world do it. Specific magazine articles as well as the imagery on
television promote this global view. For example: ‘Cool hunting articles in teen magazines
convince American teens that all the world is a mall promoting a global youth materialism
and homogeneity; these international fashion round-ups also reflect a worldwide teen
consumerism and an erasure of the national youth identity.’41
7.2.11 Body image: The marketing strategy of inadequacy and the buying of
beauty, sex appeal, and performance
Youth marketing, like marketing in general, gives special attention to body image and sex
appeal, promoting a heightened body-consciousness to drive consumerism. For young
women, clothing and cosmetic products can enhance their sexual desirability. The right
body shape and the right ‘boys toys’ can strengthen young men’s sexual magnetism. For
adolescents, who are like ‘hormones on feet’, but not fully aware of it, the advertising and
media imagery can make their negotiation of sexuality and relationships even more fraught
than it need be.
Quart expressed concern about the invasive nature of this marketing:
All this intrusive marketing would be fine … if it didn’t deeply affect teens themselves.
The personae, self-images, ambitions, and values of young people in the United States
have been seriously distorted by the commercial frenzy surrounding them. What do the
advertising images of teens, breasts augmented and abs bared do to teenagers? These
images take their toll on a teen’s sense of self and his or her community.
‘You have to be thin to be popular,’ one girl told me, and the array of flat, bare
stomachs at her summer camp certainly backs this up. Other girls told me about their
eating disorders and their friends’ body-image problems. Their self understanding doesn’t
change their behaviour, though. They are like birds that know every bar of their gilded
cage by heart. ‘Can you believe this ad? No one’s body looks like that!’ one fourteen-
year-old told me, pointing to an ad in Vogue. ‘A bunch of old men are telling me how
to look!’ Thirteen-year-old girls expressed pained astonishment at ‘11-year-olds who get
their eyebrows waxed’ – but the 13-year-olds shaved their legs every day.42
No matter what they purchase and no matter what beauty formulae they try, the problem does
not go away. But it has much value in marketing terms: teenage angst is like an unslakeable
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 151
identity thirst, fuelling a secure market. At considerable psychic and monetary cost, many
teenagers will do whatever they can to become more beautiful and acceptable, and to be part
of a desired lifestyle or atmosphere. Being insecure about their identity is one thing, but to
be an outcast from groups is worse – to have no identity at all!
Another problem with the sexual imagery in this marketing is its potential to affect
young people’s attitudes to sex and personal relationships. If they do not have any other
significant values input to their thinking, it is understandable that some youth will see sex as
just one of a number of pleasures there for them to enjoy; and to be free to use or exploit it
is desirable. The overwhelming sexual imagery in the media, and the taken-for-granted place
of ‘easy’ sex that comes across as ‘normal’ in much film and television programming can
insinuate a naive view of sex among the young. It is readily associated with fun and pleasure,
with little room for the emotional and commitment dimensions.
Many teenagers would not have to look far beyond their parents to learn that feelings
of inadequacy (physical and personal) can be relieved by consumer products. Belief in
beautification through consumption and acquisition is like a religious faith transmitted
from parents to their children. And now, as suggested in the reality television series Ultimate
makeover, it is not just hairstyle, cosmetics and clothing but cosmetic surgery that can enhance
your prospects. It is of concern that youth are vulnerable to the ‘manufacturing of [body
image] inadequacy [as] a sales strategy’. In the United States, ‘Among teenagers 18 and under
in 1994, only 392 had breast augmentations and 511 liposuction; in 2001 there were 2596
augmentations and 2755 liposuctions among the group, a 562 percent increase.’43
Young people are particularly vulnerable as far as body image is concerned because:
the idea of permanent change to the body – made practically overnight – appeals to
adolescents, people who are by definition shifting identity daily … Many teenage
cosmetic surgeries emanate from self-aversion, camouflaged as an emblem of self-esteem
and normalcy. The girl who chooses cosmetic surgery chooses obsession with the body
and mastery over it rather than an attempt at the transcendence that means forgetting the
body … the line between self-betterment and a morphic pathology is a blurry one.44
Body consciousness and making it look as attractive as possible is not a new idea. But the
cosmetic surgery era has taken it into new and much more expensive territory. The 1998
book by Gilman, Creating beauty to cure the soul: Race and psychology in the shaping of aesthetic
surgery, suggested that cosmetic surgery was part of a larger movement, the ‘medicalisation
of psychological pain’:45 anti-depressants for the depressed, tranquillisers for the stressed,
and cosmetic surgery for those who fear the physical effects of ageing. In this sense, it is just
another variation on drinking alcohol to feel relaxed and euphoric. In more general terms it
is like, ‘Buy this and it will ease the pain’, where this can range from headache tablet to new
clothes or an overseas trip.
But there are a number of issues here that need further analysis related to fundamental
questions about what constitutes health, beauty and happiness. In both surgery and
medication, there is great potential to enhance human life; and there are problems where
people have not made use of such help when really needed, for example the need for anti-
depressants for someone who was clinically depressed; or cosmetic surgery that could correct
deformities and disfigurement. Again, it is a matter of balance. The point being made is
about the problem of excess where medication or surgery is marketed as an immediate feel-
152 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
good solution, but a solution that can often exacerbate rather than heal psychological pains.
This view of medication and surgery, along with other views considered above, can insinuate
an identity that is skewed by consumerism, particularly as regards what constitutes health,
beauty and happiness.
A preoccupation with improving body image also seems to have a social class or social
mobility dimension. An obsession with body image consumer products (including surgery)
might be expected to be a characteristic of the more well off – the so-called middle and upper
classes, who have more discretionary income for such purposes. However, even the working
class and poor can respond to advertising that proposes the body beautiful as an image for
all. Perhaps this encourages those less well off economically to believe that they are really
part of a more expensive social group, and they readily subscribe to the level of commercial
activity expected of such status. ‘[T]his has speeded teens’ mass internalisation of the middle
class ideology that worships the perfect body.’ But there is little critical awareness of the
commercial drive behind such worship. As Quart went on to note:
[this is] symptomatic of a new sort of adolescence in which kids ratify their family’s social
status through looking the part. Marketers have convinced these kids that they need a
specific set of physical attributes … For the large subcultures of teens who self-brand into
lookalikes with tiny waistlines, bulging biceps, deracinated noses, and copious breasts,
the supposed freedom of self-creation is not a freedom at all. What they have is consumer
choice, no substitute for free will.46
Another problem related to identity and media-image is the increase in anorexia among
teenagers. The unattainable but persistent image of perfect thinness noted earlier can drive
young girls (and some young men) to damage their health. Quart reported the websites
of ‘Pro-anas’ – pro-anorexic young women who shared their identity and lifestyle over the
Internet, giving the group some identity by association.47
Constructing a more appealing body image is not just a project for adolescent girls. For
boys, body image problems are more likely to show as excessive efforts to acquire a more
muscular shape. Weightlifting, high-protein diets and even the use of steroids have been part
of the regimen.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport is another item that fits this stable of
problems, all of which have identity-related dimensions.
7.2.12 Consumer without a cause: The marketing of rebellion to youth and the
domestication of nonconformity
Rebellion has long been a supposed central theme for the personal development of youth:
‘cutting the teenage umbilical cord’, ‘becoming an individual’, ‘autonomy from parents’ and
so on. In the 1950s iconic teenage film The Wild One, Marlon Brando was asked: ‘What
are you rebelling against?’ His reply was ‘What have you got?’ It was as if traditional values,
beliefs and behaviour were the natural things to rebel against to achieve independence and
individuality.
The James Dean Rebel without a cause image was played up as if rebellion was de rigueur
for teenagers. From that time, teenage rebellion had recognised marketing potential; dis
tinctive branded products could help express rebelliousness. Non-conformism, anti-authority
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 153
and questioning have been promoted as perennial themes underlying the youth search for
‘individuality’ and ‘freedom’. Perhaps the most influential sustainer of these myths has been
the popular music industry – it keeps these emotional themes on low simmer.
In his book Subculture: The meaning of style, Hebdige considered that:
nonconformist fashions were not just ‘irreverent posturing’. Alternative style was part
of a youth resistance to, and defence against, consumer capitalism. Then the marketers
found that they could make use of nonconformism as a marketing ploy. That is no longer
a creative resistant force but just another quirky fashion need to meet.48
He suggested that marketing has become so subtle as to take into account people’s resistance
to advertising, and their concerns that extensive consumerism might erode individuality.
Even the desire to protest particular causes and to resist conformity to prevailing ideologies
can be taken into account commercially. It is as if ‘you show me a need and I’ll find you a
product’. You can buy the soft drink Che, made by the Revolution Company in honour of
Che Guevara.
For some teenagers, the quest for attractive body image and social acceptability seems
to become distorted when they display body and clothing styles that for average people
are repulsive. Dressing in bizarre outfits, black or multicoloured, as well as extensive body
piercing that looks more like self-mutilation, seem at first sight to be different from the trends
noted above. However, it may represent the same underlying psychological process, where
these teenagers are trying to express rebelliousness against ‘whatever’ precisely through what
others will identify as distasteful. It is a matter of a different, and perhaps more ‘off-beat’
reference group to which they are conforming – but an identity reference group nevertheless.
Also, what is often important for such young people is the need to be noticed, no matter
what, even if repulsiveness is the mechanism for attracting attention (7.2.8). The interesting
question is to see for how long this style of self-expression persists. Will it be just a ‘teenage
thing’ or will it continue into adult life? It is noteworthy on this question that some adults
retain a strong association with motorcycling culture throughout their lives; for them it was
not just the ‘easy rider’ image from their youth.
If something can be sold to be part of a cause, then a market will develop. This is
evident in the way that ‘identity politics’ became incorporated into marketing in the 1980s
and 1990s. Identity politics had to do with the recognition and ‘visibility’ of minority
and marginalised groups in society; it included protests and movements to draw public
attention to the issues. The gradual appearance of different groups in films and television
dramas and sitcoms (and in advertising), which contrasted with the traditional ‘white,
anglo-saxon two-parent family’, appeared to be part of the changing perception of what
was regarded as ‘normal’, ‘average’ or even ‘PC’ (politically correct). Afro-Americans, single
parents, divorcees and gays became a much more prominent part of television fare than was
the case in the 1950s and 1960s. Whether it was simply mirroring ordinary life or whether
it actually affected people’s attitudes, it gave some level of public acknowledgment and
acceptability to such groups, and at the same time provided an advertising basis for niche
marketing.
Marketers and the film and television industries were quick to accommodate identity
politics. The thematic advertising appeal was to diversity. As one consumer research report
noted:
154 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
As we look towards the next twenty-five years, it is clear that acceptance of alternative
lifestyles will become even stronger and more widespread as [Generation X] grows up and
takes over the reins of power, and becomes the dominant buying group in the consumer
marketplace … Diversity is the key fact of life for Xers, the core of the perspective they bring
to the marketplace. Diversity in all its forms – cultural, political, sexual, racial, social – is
a hallmark of this generation.49
Diversity, plurality and multiculturalism made up the broader thematic within which protest
could be commercially harnessed. It is not that protests against injustice, inequalities and
environmental questions are inappropriate – they are desirable. But there is a need to be
suspicious about the extent to which marketing potential can readily tap into social causes.
For example, if protests or being politically correct can be easily signified by displaying what
you have bought or what you wear, then there is some danger that the valuable human
impulse to bring about worthwhile change can be domesticated and trivialised, and in the
long run this might inhibit social change. As is usually the case for many of these identity-
related issues, it is a matter of balance.
There is no doubt that advertising has contributed to positive change in public awareness
of health and environmental issues, and this needs to be acknowledged. But because of the
overwhelming presence of advertising and marketing, there remains a persistent need to look
beneath the surface of what is being promoted, and to try to keep some perspective. The best of
causes are open to colonisation by marketing, branding and consuming. Even ethical business
practice has now been advertised as a desirable and marketable quality for companies.
youth’s uncertainty about identity and future. However, these were gradually superseded
by films with the subtle, underlying theme of ‘youth makeover’ – material success through
consumption; the heroes and heroines became more ‘cool’. Quart comments: ‘The characters
in contemporary teen films are empty vessels, slathered with beauty products.’50
It is beyond our scope to analyse the developments in film and television that affect
teenagers’ social reality as far as consumerism is concerned. However, it is an area in need
of further research (see Chapter 15). Technological developments have added considerably
to the mix. Product placement in computer games has a potential influence, given the
extensive time that children and teenagers spend entertaining themselves in this fashion.
Also, television watching now has to compete with the Internet and video/DVD players for
young people’s entertainment time. Advertising has not neglected the possibilities in mobile
phone texting, picture/video sharing, podcasting and the like – new technological territories
on which the consumer brands can plant their flags.
Marketing, and particularly branding, seek to keep name brands imprinted on youth
consciousness as essential elements in their cultural environment, and a staple diet for self-
expression. Maintaining a cool brand image is the ongoing project of youth market research
– ever trying to create an enduring positive association between consumer and brand. The
group Teenage Research Unlimited publishes a magazine called Omnibuzz that regularly
reports surveys of the views of young people aged from about 12 to 18 years; it is like a
teenage opinion poll, not the newspoll on preferred political party or prime minister, but on
consumer tastes. One of its retail barometers is the ‘Coolest Brand Meter’ – in 2003, ‘Sony,
Nike, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Old Navy were the top performers’.51
Already we have considered how being cool was a desirable image for young people to project
(7.2.5). And we referred to ‘cool hunting’ (7.2.10) where adults, or young people themselves,
are recruited to a ‘youth intelligence service’. These ‘youth consultants’ search the local area
for potentially new styles or trends in clothing, music and lifestyle. This information is then
quickly relayed to market research headquarters for commercial appraisal and possible action
for youth commerce. The idea is to be first with something cool and exploit it before it loses
its gloss and becomes ‘old hat’.
The image of cool applies to those who are perceived by peers as trendy and individualistic,
while being laid back, somewhat emotionally detached and unflappable – a kind of
undemonstrative distinctiveness. On the face of it, this seems like a tricky posture to pull off
– likely, therefore, to be a difficult code for the marketers and advertisers to crack. However,
their efforts to do this have been evidently successful. This is instructive, because it gives
insights into the way in which the social construction and marketing of cool enters into the
identity dynamics of young people.
Those who decide what is to be the latest in cool, and how this is to be advertised, need
to do two things: they have to promote the mystique of being cool while targeting the
identity needs of young people. This gives commercial access to the considerable money the
young are prepared to invest to maintain their coolness. For example, the cool trend some
years back for girls to wear crop-tops with hipline skirts or jeans with bare midriff has now
become a well-established and profitable fashion – along with baggy clothing for young men
– whether or not these styles are actually comfortable. What teenager would dare to ignore
this dominant fashion and run the risk of being labelled as a dork or uncool? But, almost
inexorably, this fashion will change and eventually be eclipsed by something different.
Young people know when they are cool because this is expressed in peer-credentialled
cool behaviour, fashion and musical tastes; their coolness is verified by being reflected back
to them by others who affirm their lifestyle choices. Also, their coolness is measured by
congruence with the media images that are constructed specifically to promote and maintain
cool within the social reality of teenage culture.
Some scholars have suggested that cool has a history with origins in the coping mechanisms
of oppressed groups, and that it has developed into a widespread, culturally desirable attitude
in personal identity that has become highly commercialised.
In 1992, Majors and Billson, in their book Cool pose: The dilemmas of black manhood
in America,52 looked at cool as a quintessential characteristic of the masculine identity of
African American men. Others considered that the notion of cool had gone beyond the
African American community and had become more broadly based in popular culture in
Westernised countries, in the 20th century (for example in Stearns, American cool: Constructing
a twentieth century emotional style, 1994).53 Still others looked into cool as a key behavioural
characteristic of teenagers (Danesi, Cool: The signs and meanings of adolescence, 1994).54
Finally, the commercial implications of cultivating and marketing cool were considered,
particularly with respect to youth consumerism (Frank, The conquest of cool: Business culture,
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 157
counterculture and the rise of hip consumerism, 1997. He analysed the significance of cool in
the rise of youth-targeted consumerism since the 1960s.55)
The analysis we found most informative, even if not all of their ideas were equally
compelling, was Pountain and Robbins’ book Cool Rules: The anatomy of an attitude (2000).56
They interpreted cool as an influential cultural phenomenon that had a history dating back
into the roots of African American identity in West Africa, as well as having comparable
manifestations in different cultures over the centuries. They traced the development of
contemporary cool in art, music, fashion, cinema and lifestyle, showing how it has exerted
a great influence on identity development and behaviour. Through this psychological
mechanism, cool became a powerful theme in the shaping of cultivated images and marketing
strategies by businesses that thrived on lifestyle-related consumerism. Pountain and Robbins
analysed cool as a socially constructed lifestyle attitude that strongly reflected contemporary
ideas about individualism. As regards young people’s interest in cool, they considered that:
Cool has been a vital component of all youth subcultures from the ’50s to the present
day, although it has sometimes had to change its name (and even more frequently its
costume) to confuse its parents. But … this attitude, which originally expressed resistance
to subjugation and humiliation, has been expropriated by the mass media and the
advertising industry during the ’80s and ’90s, and used as the way into the hearts and
wallets of young consumers.57
Pountain and Robbins considered that cool was ‘in the process of taking over the whole of
popular culture’,58 and that it had a popularity and global appeal that competed with various
religions, ideologies, nationalisms and fundamentalisms for the ‘modern heart and mind’.
They listed the following as characteristics of cool:59
While some of the claims of commentators about cool seem extravagant, what they demon
strate well is that the phenomenon can be investigated and its influences appraised.
Traumatic events will always test people’s meaning and identity as the internal resources they
draw on to cope and make sense of what is happening to them. But life in contemporary
Westernised countries now carries with it a continuous experience of low-level trauma.
Hence there is continuous pressure on the meaning and identity systems just to manage,
let alone propose a successful plan for life. The trauma is not just in wars, terrorism and
periodic natural calamities, but increasingly it runs through the social fabric affecting a
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 159
images of the richest, most beautiful and most fulfilled people on the planet and compared
to them, everyone feels like a loser … Celebrities invent an unattainably attractive cool
personality, an image which makes insecure teenage fans feel so inadequate that adopting
the cool pose is in turn their only way of coping with their enhanced anxiety.61
The irony of this situation is that trying to be cool is basically a coping and defence
mechanism, giving you a relatively secure group identity that defines who you are and sets
your individuality apart; but if this is taken to excess, the psychological cost of trying to be
160 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
cool can end up being just as stressful and anxiety-ridden, and perhaps more so, than just
being plain uncool. Then the cost of the coping mechanism itself can become too difficult
to cope with; and the hoped for defence mechanism exposes more painful vulnerabilities.
‘Cool operates as a defence mechanism against the depression and anxiety induced by a
highly competitive society … [We also admit] that it is a very imperfect defence and that
furthermore, maintaining cool actually imposes its own different kind of psychic strain.’62
In addition, the financial cost of maintaining a cool image can exacerbate the psychological
cost.
The problematic behaviour of young people can often be explained by this mechanism. In
response to perceived difficulties, they may think they are following a path towards coping
with, or rising above, the problems. But it may end up making their situation even more
onerous. For example:
[S]chool students [especially boys] who feel that they are failing in the classroom, or
who do not fit in socially, adopt a strategy of disengagement from school activities, and
develop anti-academic cliques, or subcultures, that provide an alternative route to self-
esteem. By acting cool you declare yourself to be a non participant in the bigger race, for
if you don’t share straight society’s values then you can stop comparing yourself to them.
Cool cannot abolish social comparisons entirely, but it can restrict their scope to your
immediate peer group …
For several successive generations of marginalised and disaffected young people …
subcultures [and peer groups], with their own rules, rituals and obligations, had provided
a magical alternative to being written off as a hopeless loser in the rat race. In the language
of youth subcultures, ‘I’m cool’ equates to ‘I’m in control’.
Studies continue to show that the academic performance of many boys deteriorates
rapidly between 13 and 19 as they come to see learning and academic success as ‘girlish’
and ‘uncool’, and this disabling tendency among boys is being accompanied by increases
in the rate of suicide and attempted suicide (as well as in other indicators like depression,
abuse of alcohol etc.).63
For young people, the identity defence and coping function of wanting to be cool seems to
work through:
a kind of mental empowerment that their circumstances otherwise fail to supply. In this
sense, cool is a sub-cultural alternative to the old notion of personal dignity, since dignity
is a quality that is validated by the established institutions of Church, state and work.
Cool, on the other hand, is a form of self-worth that is validated primarily by the way
your personality, appearance and attitude are adjudged by your own peers.64
The expressive styling in the projective identity function of cool comes together with its
defensive function. But to get any defence and coping services from your cool image, you
first of all have to construct and maintain such an image. And to do this requires conformity
to a peer-validated and certified style – across fashion, leisure pursuits, entertainment
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 161
preferences, slang, attitudes to parents and school. And it is precisely through this quest for
image conformity that the door is opened to youth-targeted consumerism and marketing.
Hence, while the quest for a cool identity may offer young people a way of coping with
life and negotiating the psychological pains of adolescence, it may well end up being the
cause of much of their unease, frustration, stress and depression. And for some youth, this
can reach pathological proportions.
experience, and to the seeking of intense experiences as part of a cool lifestyle. Young people
can build up a checklist of the intense experiences they wish to collect and repeat. This can
include a wide range of items, all of which contribute to their unique self-expression: travel,
sex, school formal, sporting success, sky diving – and especially branded consumer products.
It is not that ambition for intense experience and achievement is a bad thing; there are
striking examples of teenagers who have put years of hard work into projects like becoming
an Olympic athlete. As is usually the case, it is a matter of balance.
Some cool interests are more attractive to post-teenagers and young adults. For example,
it is becoming evident on television that a burgeoning interest is being taken in cooking
and home improvement, as well as the more longstanding interest in travel. These are
like barometers for quality of life, where people are seeking intense lifestyle experiences.
Marketing is quick to identify the changing cool interests of the different age cohorts, and
different economic strata in the community.
7.3.4 Classic cool: Nike’s successful recipe for cracking the Chinese market
As noted before, China is like the last frontier on the planet for consumerism to conquer.
Nike’s successful Chinese campaign is a classic example of how the notion of cool has figured
prominently in successful marketing.66
Phil Knight, Nike’s founder, who has been interested in the China market since 1980, is
reported to have said to company executives: ‘There are 2 billion feet out there. Go get them!’
Nike did not manufacture its own products; they were made by Chinese contractors
– like all of the other apparel and footwear in the country. What Nike sold was ‘status’.
Hence the basic aim of their Chinese marketing campaign was to convince the new middle
class that status was desirable, and that Nike could provide it – at a cost. This required a
prerequisite conditioning of Chinese culture to become more interested in individualism
and its expression through the purchase of consumer products. Also required was getting
Nike, and its trademark ‘Swoosh’, recognised and implanted in the public psyche.
To get Nike identified in China, the company chose to sponsor sport, and basketball in
particular. It outfitted prominent Chinese athletes and sponsored all teams in their national
basketball league in 1995. In addition, the Nike Basketball League was set up for high
schools; in 2004 it ran in seventeen cities. The Nike director of sports marketing in China
claimed, ‘Our goal was to hook kids into Nike early and hold them for life.’ Michael Jordan,
the best-known athlete on the planet, and other American NBA basketballers, were brought
to China as visiting Nike icons.
Nike television commercials and public events were concerned with much more than
advertising particular Nike products. They were about massaging public feelings into
becoming receptive to a new style of culture that was more individualistic; in short, images
of American/Western consumer culture were promoted in a Chinese format. For example,
a television commercial highlighted a more American individualistic style of basketball play
– contrasting with the more traditional Chinese team-oriented approach – and asked the
viewers: ‘Is this you?’ Nike theme songs were developed for high school basketball games
that blended traditional Chinese music with American hip-hop. The rap message ‘connects
the disparate elements of [American] black cool culture and associates it with Nike’, a Hong
Kong marketing director reported. Nike promotions influenced the rapid rise in popularity
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 163
of hip-hop culture among young Chinese. A new Chinese name for the music emerged:
‘Hip Hoop’. Other new usages were like markers of cultural change. Many young Chinese
used ‘Nai-ke’ for sneakers. Perhaps more importantly, there was a new word for cool: ‘Ku’.
Inevitably, market research would test the retail potency of the theme ku. A sample of the
results is given in Table 7.1. They show consistency with the characteristics of cool discussed
earlier. Not a single Chinese company figured in the list of what were perceived as the
‘world’s coolest brands’.
And so, despite some setbacks, the strategy worked. Nike shoes cost twice that of competitors,
but enough Chinese considered the value-added name to be worth it. In 2003, Nike sales
in China were estimated as above USD$300 million and growing. In 2004 there were new
stores opening at the average rate of 1.5 a day. No doubt the company is gearing up for the
2008 Olympics when there is likely to be an all-time high in Chinese interest in sports.
Much of Nike’s success in China, as elsewhere in the world, is related to the way it
orchestrates imagery that affects people’s emotions: it helps maintain an identification
between Nike and the quest for sports achievement and glory. Within days after Liu Xiang
became the country’s first Olympic gold medallist in a short-distance track event (110 metres
hurdles on 28 August 2004), Nike aired a television commercial based on the successful run.
Taunting questions such as ‘Asians lack muscle?’ and ‘Asians lack the will to win?’ were
superimposed over the event, ‘designed [as Forney’s article said] to set nationalistic teeth
on edge’. Then as the hero raised his arms highlighting the Nike trademark swoosh on his
shoulder, came the punchline of the commercial: ‘Stereotypes were made to be broken!’
Much the same formula for selling cool in Western countries has proved successful in
China. A phrase from Forney’s article summed it up. ‘The story of how Nike cracked the
164 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
China code has as much to do with the rise of China’s new middle class, which is [as] hungry
for Western gear and individualism, as Nike’s ability to tap into that hunger.’
7.3.5 The quest for cool: The new opiate of the masses?
The spread of a cool attitude through youth and young adults has no doubt contributed
to decreased respect for authority figures and for established cultural traditions, and to the
greater store set on freedom, individuality and autonomy. This goes hand in hand with a
decrease in a sense of social responsibility. What cool tends to increase is hedonism and
existentialism – and consumerism is strongly tied to both.
Where young people are apparently dominated by a cool mentality, they can distract
themselves (and thus protect themselves) from pressing social and environmental issues by
distancing themselves from these concerns and concentrating on what is more immediate,
their own lifestyle. This can also serve as one of their coping mechanisms for the ‘trauma
of living in the 21st century’. ‘Cool enables [young] people to live with uncertainty and
lowered expectations by concentrating on present pleasures. In short, when the going gets
tough, the cool go shopping.’67
Thus while there is a growing youth awareness of environmental and social problems,
and while this causes anxiety, the responses are many and varied: some respond positively,
others remain indifferent. There is concern that where the notion of cool is well established
in young people it can dampen their readiness to become critical interpreters of culture, and
it can dull the idealism that motivates social action. Cool can therefore encourage young
people to put up with some of the problematic aspects of contemporary social life (like
globalised capitalism, the casualisation of employment and questionable business ethics)
as long as their lifestyle is not impaired. They may tend to grudgingly accept work during
the week as the irksome cost of being able to ‘live it up over the weekend’. Ideas like career
path, settling down, raising a family, and even the notion of ambitions or goals in life
may not be serious items on their agenda – so different from what was the case for older
generations. Previously, when people followed goals and ambitions, their level of lifestyle
followed consequentially, changing according to financial circumstances. Now, lifestyle may
have first priority on the agenda, with work and career having to accommodate to lifestyle.
Many in the older generations find it hard to understand how the young appear to put travel
and enjoying the world above what they valued so much – a secure job, settling down and
raising a family.
The cool lifestyle is antagonistic to the traditional Protestant work ethic. Its hedonism and
self-centredness are inconsistent with the virtuous life as proposed by Christianity (and other
world religions).
But it is not useful – for parents, educators or community agencies – simply to dismiss
cool because it is contrary to these values. Just telling youth that cool is bad for them would
be more likely to increase its appeal. Rather, what is needed is engaging them in critical
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 165
deconstruction and appraisal in the light of specified values; and this includes understanding
the history and psychological dynamics of cool.
At the extreme opposite end of the social spectrum to cool are the various religious fun
damentalisms that offer certainty and authority as their ‘psychic shields’ against the trauma
of living in the 21st century. These too need critical evaluation as different, but also flawed,
ways of coping.
For some people, identifying with a socially oppressed minority can be part of their way of
finding a cool identity. It can motivate social action; but generally speaking, the consumerist
and hedonist emphases in cool tend to soften the idealism.
It appears that the mentality of cool is more supportive of the consumer and marketing
industries than it ever will be of social activism. It remains to be seen if the young people
who are more motivated by the quest for cool are less interested in politics, social concerns
and community action. If this is the case, then the notion of cool can function like a
new ‘opiate of the masses’, keeping them happy with image-oriented consumerism, while
distracting their attention from social issues and politics. In the workplace, this could
mean, for example in the information technology sector, that a company is perceived by
its employers as a hip and cool place to be; while at the same time, the competitive casual
basis to their employment leaves them with demanding performance standards and no job
security. Pountain and Robbins considered that the mentality of cool had infiltrated some
businesses, making them more trendy, while at the same time making it easier for them to
use employees manipulatively – as long as the workers focused on their own pleasures, they
could accept lower expectations and job uncertainty:
Far from being a mere matter of fashionable slang, sartorial style, or some passing
behavioural fad, cool provides that psychological structure through which the longest
standing contradiction in Western societies – that between the necessity for work and the
desirability of play – is apparently being resolved. In short, cool appears to be usurping
the work ethic itself, to become installed as the dominant mindset of advanced consumer
capitalism …
Advanced capitalism no longer depends on sober and puritanical notions of virtue to
maintain its labour discipline. Cool is a new mode of individualism, flexible enough to
cope with the pace of transformation of work in the deregulated global economy. It is far
better adapted to a life of service and consumption than one of toil and sacrifice.68
this new democratised, flexible form of capitalism creates uncertainty, and that the public
welfare services must be reconstructed to act as a buffer if widespread discontent is to
be avoided. However, it is by no means certain that employers, who love the flexibility
element, are so keen on this side of the equation. Flexibility can mean insecurity and
de-skilling, accelerated by the abandonment of unions and collective bargaining as the
means to promote the interests of employees.69
166 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
through people’s thinking and behaviour; and it implies that product consumption is
an integral part of identity development. Products, acquisitions and lifestyle activities all
naturally contribute to self-understanding and self-expression.
A healthy awareness of these dynamics would be desirable to encourage in youth. As
regards their identity development, it is a matter of balance. It is also a matter of not
being manipulated, even unconsciously, by interests that seek to exploit their identity
development for financial payoffs. Advertising psychologists have perceptive insights into
young people’s identity development – albeit with profitable intentions. (An example of
advertising research – an extensive marketing research project on community values – is
noted in Chapter 15.) Those engaged in the education and care of youth need equally
perceptive insights – but for the more noble purpose of enhancing young people’s spiritual
and moral development.
Boys are treated, and are expected to behave in certain ways defined as masculine …
the masculine role says that we males are supposed to seek achievement and suppress
emotion. We are to work at ‘getting ahead’ and ‘staying cool’.
As boys we learn that getting ahead is important in both work and play. Grades are
handed out in school, teams are chosen on the playground and both of these events tell
us how well we are doing and how much better we could be doing. Here our masculinity
is tested in immediate physical competition with others. Moment by moment, our
performance is measured in relation to others. Both in winning and in losing, the
masculine role exerts strong influence. It is not enough to win once, we have to keep
winning. The continuing evaluation in relation to others encourages us to keep trying,
but also ensures that we can’t ever really make it, once and for all. Our learned need to
168 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
keep proving ourselves helps explain why many of us – no matter how hard we work or
how much we achieve – remain vaguely dissatisfied with our lives.
As males grow older, the bases for evaluation change, but the importance of
establishing a ranking of work among individuals remains. As adults, the physical skills
that were reflected in sports become less important than the mental and social skills that
are reflected in prestige and income. What we learn growing up prepares us for these adult
skills and rewards. As adolescents, one important area we were rated on was our social
facility with females. Trying to get on well with females created anxiety for many of us,
but mainly we accepted the situation as just another place where we should try to ignore
our fears and go ahead.
Staying cool, no matter what, was part of what we learned growing up male. We
knew that big boys didn’t cry, and that real men didn’t get too excited except in places like
football games. Spontaneous emotion – positive or negative – was suppressed or restricted
to certain settings. We learned to mute our joy, repress our tenderness, control our anger,
hide our fear. The eventual result of our not expressing emotion is not to experience it.
Our restriction of emotionality compounds the stress put upon us by our striving to
get ahead: we are often unable to acknowledge fully how the striving makes us feel. We
suffer in many ways that may related to the strain our emotional denial places upon our
physical body. Compared with women, we die younger, have more heart attacks, and
contract more stress related diseases.
The drive towards getting ahead and staying cool has functioned, more or less well
for men as individuals and for society as a whole for a long time. Much work has been
accomplished, and many troubling feelings have been avoided. The masculine role has
provided answers about who we are and what to do. But for … some men what the
masculine role offers is insufficient. Some of us no longer find our fulfilment in external
rewards that come from meeting masculine standards; instead we seek internal satisfaction
that comes from fuller emotional involvement in our activities and relationships.
The issues raised so many years ago are still evident, even though poor employment options
and a greater sense of public anomie are now more prominent; and it seems that they have
not yet been addressed in a way that has made significant inroads into changing the patterns
through which young men seek a sense of masculinity. This remains the case, even though
there has been much public discussion of the topic as evident in the publishing of a number
of books and articles on masculinity, as well as the introduction of various educational
initiatives for boys.71 There remains an urgent need for more ‘carry through’ from the
thinkers, writers and researchers on masculinity to young people, families and educators.
By contrast with the apparently slow progress of a ‘men’s movement’ and programs for boys,
in the same period since this reader was published, the objectives of ‘women’s movements’
have been prominent, and many of them have been achieved. Boys have acknowledged that
girls seem to have more social support and sense of direction from women’s movements in
their various forms (this term is used here with considerable generalisation, without the
opportunity to look at the meanings attached to the phrase ‘women’s movement’). Young
men do not seem to have similar useful identity resources compared with those available to
young women. Traditional concepts of masculinity have been challenged by the women’s
movement, adding to uncertainty about the male role. Greater freedom of expression and
Young people’s search for identity: Finding a way through the cultural maze 169
acceptance of homosexuality within the community are also relevant to the question. For
some young men, perhaps even a significant proportion, the way to express their masculinity
in a meaningful way remains a considerable problem.
No doubt it is not only appropriate but urgent that these issues be widely discussed in
the community and included for study in any education in identity.
Notes
1 M McLuhan 1969, quoted in W Glasser 1972, The identity society, p. 8.
2 LG Engedal 2006, Homo viator: The search for identity and authentic spirituality in a post-modern context.
In K Tirri (ed.) Religion, spirituality and identity, p. 48.
3 R Eckersley 2006, What is wellbeing, and what promotes it? http://www.wellbeingmanifesto.net/wellbeing.
htm, pp. 11–12. Accessed 26/06/06.
4 Engedal 2006.
5 P Ward 1993, Worship and youth culture: A guide to alternative worship, p. 41.
6 ibid., p. 43.
7 Young people’s experience of the local church or faith community is not often one where they feel a
democratic, egalitarian atmosphere that welcomes them and makes them feel at home, or where their ideas
and contributions would be regarded and accepted as valuable.
8 R Smith & P Standish (eds) 1997, Teaching right from wrong: Moral education in the balance, p. 141.
9 This question was first addressed in M Crawford and G Rossiter 1988, Missionaries to a teenage culture:
Religious education in a time of rapid change, in the chapter ‘Overcoming media naivety’, p. 176.
10 M McLuhan 1967, Understanding the media, p. 245.
11 Klein quoting comments by Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks. Klein 2000, No Logo, p. 20.
12 Scott Bedbury, quoted in ibid., p. 21.
13 Klein 2000, p. 21, quoting Renzo Rosso (Diesel) and Anita Roddick (Body Shop).
14 ibid., pp. 28–30.
15 ibid., pp. 68, 69.
16 ibid., pp. 72, 73, 79, 81.
17 H Byrnes 2004, Why the school formal is the new teen wedding.
18 A Quart 2003, Branded: The buying and selling of teenagers, p. 18. See also R Wiseman 2003, Queen bees and
wannabes: Helping your daughter survive cliques, gossip, boyfriends and other realities of adolescence.
19 C Nicolussi 2005, Sydney racing’s day of embarrassment.
20 M Ligerakis 2003, AJC pampers women to boost racing numbers, B&T Advertising, marketing and media
magazine, 31 March 2003, http://www.bandt.com.au/articles/62/0C015662.asp Accessed 5/06/06; B & T
2004, AJC woos younger crowd to ‘party’, B&T Advertising, marketing and media magazine, 27 February
2004, http://www.bandt.com.au/articles/EA/0C01E0EA.asp Accessed 5/06/06; W Sinclair 2005, AJC relies
on princess pulling power, B & T 2004, B&T Advertising, marketing and media magazine, 1 September 2005,
http://www.bandt.com.au/news/9c/0c03619c.asp Accessed 5/06/06.
21 K Davenport 2005, Just as the horses need to be race track ready, so do the fashionable fillies.
22 A Moses 2005, Princess power: A nation of princesses; the favourite fantasy of Australian women; From
theatre to reality TV, the myth of the princess has never been more popular.
23 C Cole 2005, quoted in ibid., p. 7.
24 Innes 2005, quoted in ibid., p. 6.
25 ibid., p. 6.
26 An advance notice of M Carr-Gregg’s book The Princess bitchface syndrome is given in M Devine 2006,
Training for parents lost in a world ruled by puberty blues.
27 B Delaney 2006, Absolutely fabulous: Spend, glam up and party, but is self-indulgence all it takes to make a
young woman happy?
28 ibid., p. 21.
29 Advertisements for Lancôme Paris, Target USA and Bluefly were from Instyle (USA) November 2005; and for
L’Oréal Paris in screened television advertisements, 2006.
170 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
30 Delaney 2006, p. 22, referring to RH Frank 1999, Luxury fever: Why making money fails to satisfy in an era of
excess.
31 L Carne 2006, Meet the emos, our latest tribe.
32 Vonnegut 1961, Mother night, quoted in Delaney 2006, p. 22.
33 Eckersley 2006, quoted in ibid.
34 J Lunn 2006, Nice romper, but will it go with the couch? High-end baby gear.
35 Quart 2003, pp. xxiv, xxv, 95, 59.
36 ibid., p. 4.
37 ibid., pp. 59, xxv, xxvi, 31.
38 ibid., p. 8.
39 ibid., p. 6.
40 Klein 2000, p. 64.
41 Quart 2003, p. 6.
42 ibid., p. 17. See also C Lumby 1997, Bad girls: The media, sex and feminism in the 90s.
43 Quart 2003, p. 147.
44 ibid., pp. 164, 173.
45 SL Gilman 1998. Creating beauty to cure the soul: Race and psychology in the shaping of aesthetic surgery, p.
158.
46 Quart 2003, pp. 177, 183.
47 ibid., p. 177.
48 D Hebdige 1979, Subculture: The meaning of style, p. 12.
49 J Walker Smith & A Clurman 1977, Rocking the ages, p. 111.
50 Quart 2003, p. 117.
51 ibid., p. 12.
52 R Majors & JM Billson 1992, Cool pose: The dilemmas of black manhood in America.
53 PN Stearns 1994, American cool: Constructing a twentieth century emotional style.
54 M Danesi 1994, Cool: The signs and meanings of adolescence.
55 TC Frank 1997, The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture and the rise of hip consumerism.
56 D Pountain & D Robbins 2000, Cool Rules: The anatomy of an attitude.
57 ibid., p. 12.
58 ibid., pp. 13, 19, 22, 26.
59 This summary is drawn from ibid., pp. 19–31, 155.
60 A Giddens 1998, Conversations with Anthony Giddens, p. 31, quoted in Pountain & Robbins 2000, p. 164.
61 Pountain & Robbins 2000, pp. 151, 155.
62 ibid., p. 158.
63 ibid., p. 152, 153.
64 ibid., 2000, p. 153.
65 ibid., 2000, p. 157.
66 The source of the information and the quotations reported here are from M Forney 2004, How Nike figured
out China.
67 Pountain & Robbins 2000, p. 165.
68 ibid., 2000, pp. 161, 165.
69 ibid., 2000, p. 164.
70 J Pleck & J Sawyer 1974. Men and masculinity, pp. 3–4.
71 Some Australian publications on boys and masculinity include: S Biddulph 1995, Manhood: An action plan
for changing men’s lives; S Biddulph 1997, Raising boys: Why boys are different and how to help them become
happy and well balanced men; RW Connell 1995, Masculinities; M Drummond 1998, Bodies: A real emerging
issue for boys; N Edley & M Wetherell 1995, Men in perspective: Practice, power and identity; D Tacey 1997,
Remaking men: The revolution in masculinity; D Tacey 2000, Reenchantment: the new Australian spirituality; P
West 2000, From Tarzan to the Terminator: Boys, men and body image, Conference paper presented at the
Institute for Family Studies Conference, Sydney, 24 July; P West 2002, What’s the matter with boys? Showing
boys the way towards manhood.
8
From St Ignatius
to Obi-Wan Kenobi:
An evaluative perspective on
spirituality
Traditionally, the word ‘spirituality’ referred to the spiritual life of Christians: prayer and
spiritual exercises. It was primarily religious both in definition and practice and it was
applied beyond Christianity to religions generally.
Gradually, spirituality acquired a cachet beyond its specific ‘religious’ meaning; it has
become a catch phrase that sits comfortably as a term that encompasses a certain lifestyle, a
personal philosophy or even a way of doing business. A distinction between the spiritual and
the religious emerged – and in some cases, a divergence. Religion no longer had a monopoly
on the spiritual. This is illustrated in the sample of quotations below:
[Some of the world’s leading psychologists] have all agreed that the ‘farther reaches’ of
the unconscious connect humanity with a wider spiritual environment. This quest for
higher states of consciousness has been an enduring theme in … [the] pursuit of spiritual
awakening.
Using our Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) means stretching the human imagination. It means
transforming our consciousness. It means discovering deeper layers of ourselves than we
are used to living. It requires us to find some grounding in the self for meaning that
transcends the self.
Zohar & Marshall 2000, SQ: Spiritual intelligence, the ultimate intelligence 2
Sport cannot equal the sacred traditions as a means of cultivating the inner life. But, as
this book makes clear, sport does possess its own unique genius for revealing and opening
to people the spirit’s ‘gem-like flame’.
171
172 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
Although sport is a most secular activity in a highly secularised world, in its ability to
provoke wonder, to elicit deep feeling, to grace our lives with glimpses of timeless beauty
and freedom – in these and other ways sport is, though not religion, something religious.
Murphy (cover comments) & Cooper 1998. Playing in the zone: Exploring the spiritual
dimensions of sports 3
Thought Field Therapy: The most powerful technique you will ever experience. Learn how
to eliminate fear, anxiety, stress, trauma, guilt, anger, phobias, jealousy, procrastination,
addictions, lose weight and increase confidence and energy in minutes!!
Piccinotti 2004, Nova: Keeping body and soul together. Nova is a Perth/Sydney-based
magazine ‘committed to exploring leading edge ideas, services, practices and products that
help foster a more liveable world’.4
These excerpts show how ‘spirituality’ is being used like a new buzz word with reference
to education, medicine, business, sports and travel, and by diverse groups from the religious
to the New Age. The understandings and definitions of spirituality have been expanding to
accommodate these developments. However, the broader and more generic the definition, the
more that everything in life seems to become a part of spirituality – hence the problem in
interpreting what is to count as spirituality.
This chapter sets out to give some perspective on the ‘geography’ of spirituality that will inform
the work of those involved in the education and care of youth.5 It will provide a framework for
interpreting the development and diversification of spirituality and its relationships with religion;
and in turn, this can inform judgments about the appropriateness or healthiness of different
spiritualities on offer.
The questions to be explored revolve around the functions of spirituality, for example: What is the
psychological role of spirituality? How does it relate to religion? Does it substitute for religion?
When is spirituality healthy? Hence the chapter works towards a critical, evaluative perspective
on spirituality. This may help stop the term sliding into the realm of clichés and hyperbole, as
noted in some of the quotations above and in the comments of Christian minister and ‘stealth
evangelist’ Rick Warren. ‘I’m not a bureaucrat … I’m a spiritual entrepreneur’, he maintained.
He promised to ‘reduce your stress, focus your energy, simplify your decisions, give meaning
to your life and … prepare you for eternity’. As the article on Warren noted, he appealed to the
notion of a ‘comforting God who acts like a great therapist in the sky’.6
This exploration of the function of spirituality sets out to honour the religious heritage of spirituality
while addressing the diverse manifestations of spirituality that have arisen from outside religion.
After commenting further on the need for an evaluative perspective on spirituality, the chapter
gives a detailed account of a particular religious spirituality to illustrate the strong traditional
ties between spirituality and religion. It then considers the divergence between the ‘spiritual’
and the ‘religious’. It concludes with proposals for what constitutes a healthy spirituality. The
chapter serves as a prologue to the examination of youth spirituality in Chapter 9.
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 173
few lay people had opportunities for a formal education in spirituality, apart from what they
received at school and in the local church. Since the Second Vatican Council, however, this
has changed; it was to be accessible to all Catholics.
At the same time, there were significant changes occurring in theology, scripture and
spirituality. One of the driving forces was scripture scholarship. Better understanding of
biblical authorship informed a more theological and less literal interpretation of the gospels.
Interest in the quest for the ‘historical Jesus’ informed understandings of the ‘Christ of faith’.
The changes in emphasis in Christian theology and spirituality between the 1950s and the
1970s were extensive and dramatic. This was paralleled by, and related to, equally dramatic
changes within the religious congregations, especially those involved in Catholic schooling.
Another driving force in Catholic spirituality at the time, which has left an indelible
impression, came from the social sciences. What emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s in
English-speaking countries was a Christian ‘psychological spirituality’. There was vigorous
exploration of the experiential and relationship dimensions to spirituality, and there was a
special interest in the personal ‘development’ and ‘fulfilment’ of individuals. Psychological
insights from what was called the humanistic psychology movement melded with the rapidly
evolving spirituality. The work of psychologists like Rogers, Erikson, Maslow, May, Allport
and others was influential, along with other literature and practice related to personal and
organisational change.
What was happening at the local level is typified by the Catholic Institute of Counselling,
established in the late 1960s in Sydney. The Institute mediated Christian psychological
spirituality for many lay people and religious and had a profound spiritual influence on its
participants and it is still functioning effectively. Since the 1960s, many institutes, seminaries,
conferences, retreats, lectures, adult religious education programs and study groups have
provided the Australian Catholic community with access to an education in spirituality (and
to theological-scriptural education that informed spirituality). These developments were
supported by a growing literature of Christian psychological spirituality.
A good picture of emerging Catholic spirituality at this time can be drawn from the books
that were popular. Jesuit John Powell’s books Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?: Insights
on self-awareness, personal growth and interpersonal communication and Why am I afraid to
love, and his audiotaped lectures (My vision and my values) were classics. His book A reason to
live, a reason to die: A new look at faith in God, while not as popular as these, was well ahead
of its times and still speaks to contemporary uncertainty about meaning and purpose in life.
Many books by Andrew Greeley (The friendship game) and particularly by Eugene Kennedy
(Fashion me a people: Man, woman, and the church; A time for being human; The pain of being
human; If you really knew me would you still like me?), and by others like Henri Nouwen
(Intimacy: Pastoral psychological essays; Reaching out: The three movements of the spiritual life),
and Adrian Van Kaam (On being yourself: Reflections on spirituality and originality; In search of
spiritual identity), provided substantial resources for psychological spirituality in those earlier
years. This list is a sample of the literature that informed this new Catholic spirituality in the
1970s.7 The titles of the books showed the human, psychological emphasis on personalism
and relationships. These and other books of the time represented a significant development
in Catholic spirituality in the English-speaking world after the Second Vatican Council.
There are comparable literatures for other Christian denominations.
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 175
But this new spirituality did not extend throughout the whole Australian Catholic
community. It was more influential for those who actively sought out a theological/scriptural/
spirituality education; and it was not acceptable to all. For perhaps the majority of Catholics
who attended church, their access to this spirituality depended on the opportunities within
their parishes, and this varied significantly. There was also some opposition, some seeing the
development as an unwelcome move to liberalism – they saw no need to change the Church
or their spirituality. This conflicting view tended to have a different selection of prominent
176 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
words in its spiritual vocabulary, for example doctrine, authority, orthodoxy, ‘true’ faith, ten
commandments, obedience, committed. It was also concerned about the increasing sense of
freedom, autonomy and individuality in the new spirituality. Among Catholics there was
a complete spectrum from ‘conservative’ through to ‘liberal’ spirituality. This has perhaps
always been the case, and always will be, but at that time the distinctions seemed to be
prominent.
The question of ‘languaging’ the spiritual and the religious became significant. Some
opponents of psychological spirituality dismissed it as mere ‘psychology’, drawing attention
to the predominantly psychological emphasis in the key words listed earlier. However, such
criticism missed the point that the religious quality in what is said or done is not determined
merely by the use of words that traditionally have a religious connotation. The essential
religious quality flows from the faith and religious motivation of the individual; when a
religious person consciously acts or speaks from their faith, the actions (for example of
kindness) and the words (for example about their spiritual life) are genuinely religious, even
though in the external domain the words used might not be explicitly religious. Psychological
spiritual language became a new authentic religious language for religious people (though
this did not imply that psychological language as such was necessarily religious).
For many Catholics, their psychological spirituality put God in a more pivotal position
in their consciousness and behaviour, and made them more prayerful; this seemed to be
good evidence of its authenticity. Also, this spirituality, while steeped in religious traditions,
because it was not restricted to traditional religious language, was able to flow more easily
in everyday life; it thus seemed to have a more permeating effect on people’s lives than the
spirituality of the 1950s. Critics suggested that such a ‘humanisation’ of spirituality was
not necessarily an infusion of ordinary life with religion, but more likely to be the first
stage of secularisation in which the traditional religious impulses would be dissolved and
forgotten. All of this remains part of the ongoing debate about what it means to be religious
in contemporary Western society; religious actions and words are not so distinguishable as
they were in traditional societies, making them more difficult to identify and interpret.
Initially, many members of religious congregations adopted the new spirituality enthu
siastically; then it was taken up by lay people. Soon it became well established in Catholic
schools and religious education. It had less impact on those who, for various reasons, did not
have an adult religious education. The extent to which the new spirituality spread through
the parishes depended on the efforts of local clergy and on the extent to which parishes
provided access to adult religious education; changes in liturgy and community prayer were
most noticeable, but this was not always complemented by theological development. How
much the new spirituality entered into popular Catholic piety thus varied significantly from
individual to individual.
Some who were initially opposed to the new spirituality eventually accepted much of its
style and practice (for example liturgy in the vernacular), even though their basic theological
understandings remained unchanged. In the main, there was relief among most Australian
Catholics that spiritual life was becoming less authoritarian and more personally relevant.
Even today, however, there remain levels of disquiet and conflict about the impact of this
spirituality on Catholics in Australia.
These developments in religious spirituality can be judged as having made a significant
long-term contribution to Catholicism and Catholic education in Australia. For those born
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 177
and educated after the Second Vatican Council, who never experienced the Latin Mass,
their perspective on this ‘new’ spirituality is somewhat different from that of those who
experienced the rapid transition – for the former, it was not ‘new’, and the exhilaration of
the years of change was not their experience.
There has been continuity in this religious spirituality since the 1970s; it can now rightly
be called ‘traditional’ Catholic spirituality. But again, there are Catholics who have a different
view of what traditional and authentic spirituality entails.
It is beyond our scope here to trace the history of Australian Catholic spirituality in
more detail, looking at other significant variants. We have not attempted to look at the full
complexity in areas such as continuity of 1950s Catholic spirituality; the spiritualities of
different cultural groups in Catholicism; charismatic or Pentecostal Catholic spirituality;
the changes in religious order spiritualities; or links between spirituality and theological or
cultural changes.
This section will be concluded with notes on other influential themes that have entered
into the mix of contemporary Australian Catholic, Christian spirituality. These are:
• Creation spirituality – giving special attention to the theme of ongoing creation and
ongoing revelation.
• Feminist theology and spirituality – acknowledging the patriarchal hegemony of Christian
and especially Catholic spirituality, and the need for addressing the agenda coming from
the perspective of women.
• Ecological spirituality – stressing the need for responsible environmental stewardship,
ecologically sustainable commerce, respect for the physical and biological environment
and all living species, critical awareness of problems of pollution and environmental
mismanagement, and a global perspective on ecological relationships.
• Charismatic spirituality – Catholic Charismatic Renewal is a Catholic version of Pentecostal
spirituality that emphasises emotional prayer, healing, community, and the overt spiritual
influence of the Holy Spirit.
• Ecumenical and multi-faith perspective – acknowledging the need for a positive perspective
on ecumenical relationships with other Christians as well as respectful dialogue with
people from other religions. In particular, for some Catholics special attention has been
given to indigenous Aboriginal spirituality.
• Social justice and social analysis – adding a critical evaluative perspective to spirituality that
judges culture and prompts committed social action.
Belief in a personal God A keynote of religious faith. Belief in God provides personal meaning
within a larger ‘divine’ framework; correspondingly, it provides
individuals with the unique significance of being known personally and
loved by the Creator.
Balanced personal and community The frame of reference for spirituality is larger than the immediate
frame of reference personal needs and interests of the individual; frame of reference
includes a balance between personal/individual and community
concerns. Community concerns are not just for a local community of
faith, but for the wider human community. This spirituality is not always
‘comfortable’ for individuals – it can be challenging and personally
demanding in its commitments.
Community of faith A local community reference point for beliefs; provides plausibility
and support for faith; context for communal spiritual activities such as
prayer and worship.
Historical connection with religious Knowledge of the continuing historical religious tradition; familiarity
tradition with theology and scripture.
Inputs that inform and challenge Openness to reading, study and personal development programs that
spiritual understandings prompt continual development of spirituality; may include religious and
other studies such as psychological, sociological, historical, literature.
Desire to develop constructive, resilient meaning to life.
Spiritually motivated values and Informs and inspires values and commitments, and a sense of social
commitments justice.
Critical interpretation of culture Skills in interpreting the potential shaping influence that cultural
and evaluation of influences on elements can have on thinking and behaviour; critical consideration of
people’s spirituality and lifestyle the cultural effects on people’s spirituality and lifestyle choices.
choices
Motivation of community service Spirituality that carries through into action where individuals make
and social action adjustments to their own lives; as well as motivating committed social
action.
Sense of responsible stewardship A sense of sharing in a corporate responsibility for the health of
for both the physical and social physical, animal and social environments. This is to include local and
environments global perspectives. Believing in more than just individual personal
development can motivate concern for the wider human community
and its environment.
experiences and curriculum that have the potential to educate towards such a spirituality.
In the curriculum of a public school, it would be just as useful in relation to the study
of spirituality, but not as regards a spirituality that the school would try to promote in
students.
The list can be helpful for differentiating between a religious and a non-religious
spirituality; and in working towards criteria for the profiling, interpreting and evaluating of
religious spiritualities. If internalised, a list of categories like this could help individuals in
their own religious quest.
For many churchgoing people, spirituality is the active style of their religious practices:
prayer, spiritual reading, reflection, response to homilies, social commitments. One of the
distinctive features of Christian spirituality, and to some extent of spiritualities in other
world religions, is that it is challenging and demanding on the individual; it calls individuals
to commitment to something more than just their own interests, needs and fulfilment. It
challenges them to acknowledge the absoluteness of God who transcends human interests
and needs while still intimately concerned with both. The challenge in Christian spirituality,
for example, is the demand on Christians to be altruistic, and not to make their own needs
and interests exclusive concerns. The measure of its authenticity is principally in terms of its
action on behalf of the marginalised.
It is evident that a particular value stance, even a particular theological stance, informs
the above listing. These need to be articulated and acknowledged if the criteria are to be
debated and used for evaluative purposes. Also to be acknowledged here is a presumed stance
about how religious spirituality can contribute to psychological maturity. It is admitted
that in some instances religious views may contribute to psychological immaturity. Hence
this psychological dimension will become even more prominent later in the chapter when
consideration is given to what might constitute a healthy spirituality in a generic sense.
for others, it was concerned with daily life as affected by values and commitments, and by
other aspects like the aesthetic.
8.4.3 Public rituals and private devotion (external observance and the personal)
There was a tendency to associate ‘religious’ with formal, communal rituals in the faith
community, while ‘spiritual’ was associated with personal, private devotion. This distinction
was often used by those who wanted to distance themselves from religious rituals. But
the usage can create a false dichotomy, as if communal religious activity was empty of a
specifically personal connection to God or devotion – an idea that has long been foreign to
the religious traditions.
Scientific rationalism over the last two centuries (influenced by the Enlightenment)
has tended to undermine simple views of religious truth, as well as bringing traditional
religious authorities into question. If science and reason have provided such a successful
explanatory account of human life and culture, this can give the impression that religion has
been superseded. However, while this interpretation may be dismissive of religion, if it still
recognises a spiritual-moral domain, then it will further the distinction between the religious
and the spiritual, and will support a non-religious spirituality.
Perhaps more than any contemporary religious studies, biblical scholarship has had a
profound influence in enhancing Christian theology, and in turn, enhancing Christian
spirituality. Nevertheless, from outside Christian circles, systematic studies of religions
can give some the impression that religions are generic (variations on a common theme),
and that the idea of absolute religious truth is a myth that religions foster. This furthers
the distinction between the religious and the spiritual; it sees religions as merely different
‘avenues’ to the spiritual.
While for many people the spiritual and the religious are so closely related as to be
indistinguishable, the comments above show that distinctions or polarities have emerged
between the two, with consequent implications for the understanding of spirituality; this
is summarised in Table 8.2. However, the tabular summary remains problematic because
the generalisations do not apply to all. For some, differences between the two sides do not
exist; the qualities ascribed to the spiritual are precisely those of their religious approach to
life. For example, someone may commonly participate in formal religious practices, while
these are accompanied by considerable internal reflection that show personal autonomy and
creativity. Some people may be ‘either/or’ on some variables, and they may be ‘both/and’
on others. For other people, the differences are important. For yet others, the distinctions
may reflect unjustified stereotypes about the spiritual and the religious. The distinctions
do, however, tend to project negative stereotypes about the religious, while the connotation
of spiritual appears more ‘human’ and ‘liberal’. So, while caution is needed not to read the
distinctions or polarities too stringently, they do highlight important issues for both religion
and spirituality.
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 183
Table 8.2 Summary of stereotypical distinctions and polarities that may apply between the ‘spiritual’
and the ‘religious’
Secularisation External, formal and public Internal, more informal, While this table shows
subjective and private polarities between
Privatisation of religion
perceptions of the terms,
Contemporary emphasis Emphasis on formal Emphasis on personal the distinctions do not
on experience religious practices and spiritual experience always apply to particular
observances individuals. They may
Valuing personal
have the qualities noted
autonomy
Regulated by requirements Guided by the individual, in both columns because
Meeting existential of religious authority emphasis on personal the characteristics are
spiritual needs autonomy not necessarily exclusive
e.g. 1). Substantial
Consumerism
Normative teachings and More reliance on participation in organised
Commodification of the doctrines personal interpretation religion can enhance
spiritual/religious personal spirituality rather
Can have an institutional Tends to be than inhibit it.
Scientific rationalism and
modern religious studies emphasis individualistic 2.) A personal non-
religious spirituality may
Postmodern Organised and structured More informal, be a substantial part of
interpretations of religion individualistic an individual’s reflective
life; in other instances it
Absolute truth claims A more constructivist
might be superficial and
proposed authoritatively notion of personal
specious.
truth; admits to
more uncertainty
and existential best-
estimates
The table helps with understanding secularisation and the problems religions have where
they fail to meet the spiritual needs of their members. In addition, it may help in dialogue
between religious groups and with those whose spirituality is not religious – this will be
important in the public discourse about spirituality and education. Also, it can help avoid
the relegation of religion in such discourse.
The differentiation between religion and spirituality has been taken up by David Tacey,
particularly in his books Reenchantment: The new Australian spirituality (2000) and The
spirituality revolution: The emergence of contemporary spirituality (2003). He illustrated many
of the distinctions made in Table 8.2. For Tacey, a key to the development of a popular
184 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
spirituality vis-à-vis religion is in the strength of the cultural themes of freedom and
individuality within a context of plurality.
Tacey considered that the increasing prominence of spirituality represented a force for
spiritual renewal within society which was distinct from, and to varying degrees in conflict
with, traditional religion and fundamentalism. He stressed the mystical and experiential
dimension to spirituality. The lack of dialogue between religion and spirituality he ascribed
to the inability of the churches to move beyond ‘conventional ideas of the sacred’.
Tacey’s interpretation did not presume that religion and spirituality are incompatible; his
ideal would be a healthy spirituality within a religious tradition. His views are therefore
accommodated by religious people who want a spirituality that is not always forthcoming in
the local church; and those who want a non-religious spirituality can also identify with his
interpretation. Some religious people and mainline religious authorities find his views too
liberal and unorthodox – as do fundamentalist Christians, who see him promoting relativism
and a privatised spirituality. Tacey drew a distinction between the ideology of ‘relativism’
and a practical ‘relativity’ that acknowledged ‘that all religious systems are to some extent
productions of time, place and history, and that when we enter into any religious system
we are necessarily participating in the historical and social influences of that system’.11 He
also pointed out that this is a natural consequence of contemporary culture where ‘many of
our modern assumptions and absolute conceptions had been transformed by post-modern
fluidity and uncertainty, and by a new exposure to process and mystery’.12
While not all will agree with the solutions Tacey suggests, and while there is more
complexity and diversity to the spirituality of religious people than Tacey was able to show
in his books, there is no doubt that he has raised an agenda of great importance for all
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 185
who would consider relationships between spirituality and religion. What requires further
attention is the spirituality of those who are not religious and who are not attuned to the
mystical-experiential themes that Tacey considers fundamental to spirituality.
8.5.1 Spirituality, belief in God, and belief in a transcendent dimension to human life
8.5.2 The need for a new, non-religious language for addressing spiritual-moral issues in
the public domain
8.5.3 Non-religious spiritualities
8.5.4 A new spiritual awakening? A resurgence of religion?
8.5.5 Secularisation and spirituality
8.5.6 Spirituality and cultural postmodernity
8.5.7 Consumer spirituality
8.5.8 Dimensions of emotion, imagination and the aesthetic in spirituality
8.5.9 A style spectrum of spiritualities
8.5.10 Values in education, values/moral education and the spiritual-moral dimension to
education
creator and sustainer of life. Other qualities including immanence (permeating life) and
omnipresence or ubiquity (present everywhere) are ascribed to God. Such views are also
prominent in other world religions, especially Islam.
In generic writings about religions, and particularly about spiritualities that are not
explicitly based in religion, reference to God as central to transcendence is still evident, but
expressed in more abstract terms. God may be referred to variously as the ‘creative spirit’,
‘life force’, ‘higher power’ and ‘transcendent other’. The idea of ‘the greater cosmic scheme
of things’ has also been used as an equivalent for God.13 Other images used were ‘greater,
deeper sense of order’ and ‘new vibration’.14 It is not difficult to see the connection with ‘The
Force’ in the Star Wars films, and to see why some educators tried to use the popularity of the
phrase as evidence of a ‘resurgence’ in youth spirituality.
Process philosophy and theology emphasise the nature and role of God as remaining
involved in the process of continuing creation and unfolding of the universe.
Belief in God implies a transcendence that fits comfortably within a notion of the spiritual
and spirituality. However, there are people and spiritualities that do not have any belief in
God but still use the words spiritual and transcendence. Here, the spiritual dimension is
regarded as central to human nature, even if for individuals it does not endure beyond
death. For such spirituality, transcendence is understood as a human construct. It may be
the spiritual quality of humans; it may be experiences of value or beauty that inspire people;
it may be mystical experiences; or it could be the notion of a non-personal, permeating life
force in the universe.
Then there are spiritualities that exclude both belief in God and in spiritual transcendence.
Some would argue that it is inappropriate to apply the word spirituality to such movements,
and that they would be better described as psychologies concerned with personal wellbeing.
As noted earlier, we do not want to enter the extensive debate about the nature of spirituality,
but we need to point out that the way transcendence and belief in God appear in (or are
absent from) a spirituality is an important issue when it comes to the analysis and evaluation
of spiritualities.
Belief in God and transcendence enlarge the domain of spirituality beyond personal
wellbeing – a religious spirituality is not focused exclusively on the immediate concerns and
personal needs of the individual. A religious spirituality does not guarantee that people will
not be self-centred or that they will be self-transcendent; but at its best, it provides a strong
challenge to self-centredness.
8.5.2 The need for a new, non-religious language for addressing spiritual-moral
issues in the public domain
Previously in Western societies, when there was little distinction between the words religious
and spiritual, any public discourse about spiritual and moral dimensions to life tended to
be in Christian theological language. However, given the almost universal acceptance of
pluralism in these societies, and the distinctions being made between the religious and
the spiritual, a new non-religious language is needed for public discussion of spiritual and
moral issues. In areas like public education, social work, social science, business, and health
sciences, words like spiritual, beliefs, values, commitments, ethics, justice and equity became
more appropriate for discourse because they avoided the evangelising agenda that was readily
associated with religious words; also, many traditionally religious and theological words were
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 187
no longer perceived as relevant. In this context, the word spirituality was used to cover a
spiritual orientation to life that did not specify a particular religious affiliation. Inclusive
spiritual language and a broader conception of issues were likely to be more appropriate for
dialogue across religious and non-religious groups, and for gaining the consensus and moral
support of people for common values.
For religious people in such public dialogue, their use of a language somewhat indepen
dent of religion helped them explore how particular religious concerns could be translated
into a pluralist social situation. There was another benefit for religion: this language would
also help believers see how their religion was pertinent to their personal lives – it was like
religion trying to find a new spiritual language to address the secularised situation.
In the old external order there is a hierarchy. ‘God’, or some ultimate authority figure, sits
at the top, followed by his ‘Church’, the priest, the institution, men, women, children,
animals – in that order. To relate to ‘God’ you must go through a priest, and a church. But
that is no longer the case. We are all being urged to connect to spirit directly …
Instead of relating through the old triangle, the old hierarchy, we are being asked
to connect directly with God, or the force of spirituality, or the force of the creative
– however you see it, the words often confuse the issue. It means that, as well as dramatic
changes in your relation to spirituality, the role of the priest or the guru is also changing.
Altogether. They are no longer your link to spirituality or God.17
This argument has appeal for those interested in spirituality, but who want little or
nothing to do with organised religion. It does, however, propose something of a ‘straw man’
image of religious spirituality; there are many practitioners of a religious spirituality who
188 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
would claim much personal autonomy and direct access to God. For example, there are
many Christians who draw strongly on their denomination’s religious traditions for their
spirituality, while being relatively autonomous in relation to church authority; they will
make up their own minds when it comes to disputed questions.
Nevertheless, there are a significant number of people, including many youth, who feel
that religion is mainly irrelevant to their spiritual quest and this understanding motivates
their search for a non-religious spirituality.
A major type of non-religious spirituality is evident in groups that consciously espouse a
spiritual nature for humans and propose practices to enhance spiritual wellbeing. Fuller, in
Spiritual but not religious, gave an account of a wide range of such groups; some examples
of metaphysical philosophies from the 19th century were: the Universalisers, Freemasonry,
Swedenborgianism, Transcendentalism, Shakerism, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Mind Cure,
and Theosophy. There is an even greater range in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Other non-religious spiritual groups focus on astrology and the occult, or they constitute
some form of New Age spirituality. In addition, there are groups that draw to various extents
on Eastern religious and Eastern non-religious thought and spiritual practice.
Then there is a considerable number of psychological/spiritual movements that have been
used in association with both religious and non-religious spiritualities. These range from
traditional Rogerian Encounter Groups, to the popular Myers Briggs personality inventory,
the Enneagram and rebirthing etc. Useful psychological insights and wisdom are readily
incorporated into spirituality. The word spirituality has also been appropriated by what has
been called the ‘self-help’ personal development industry. This is a diverse group including
various therapies, holistic movements, meditation and other activities, catering for people’s
interest in furthering their own psychological development and wellbeing; they purport to
promote spirituality as a central aspect of human development.
In Western societies, there is now a large smorgasbord of spiritualities ranging from
particular religious spiritualities to many different non-religious spiritualities. In addition,
people may be eclectic in borrowing from different spiritual sources and practices without
changing their basic religious orientation. For example, Christians will incorporate spiritual
insights from various psychological movements, or they may borrow from Eastern religions
and spiritualities.
to contemporary social contexts. But we suggest that this be done unconditionally, and not
dependent on the intention of getting youth back into church. It may well be that religious
agencies like church schools can enhance the spirituality of young people, but this will not
necessarily be a successful formula for increasing Sunday church attendance.
[T]he secular movement which I think had begun in the 13th century has in our time
reached a certain completion. People have learnt to cope with all the questions of
importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis. In questions concerning
science, art and even ethics this has become an understood thing which one scarcely dares
to tilt at any more.20
This draws attention to a process with a long history that now has a contemporary
prominence and universality in Western countries. It has been accelerated by social change
over the past forty years through communications, economic policies, technology, travel,
education and the media – all of which foster a lifestyle characterised by a strong sense of
freedom, individuality and relativism, even if there is a significant gap between what people
hope for and what they actually experience.
Bonhoeffer’s comments are particularly pertinent to contemporary society where
many people, especially the young, construct their spirituality without much reference
to traditional religion or to the ‘God’ they see reflected in the teachings and practices of
this sort of religion. While he probably did not imagine the extent to which secularisation
would have developed by the end of the 20th century, Bonhoeffer thought that the changes
in emphasis flowing from secularisation were not necessarily a bad sign for Christianity.
190 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
He saw secularisation changing religion – moving it from cultural control of thought and
behaviour to a more autonomous, personal Christian spirituality. Some labelled such a
development dangerous, ushering in a type of ‘religion-less Christianity’ – a term that
was used to encapsulate this trend in its quintessential form. However, it is important to
note that Bonhoeffer never proposed excessive individualism; for his view of authentic
Christianity, the believing community was fundamental; and developing community in the
wider society was central to the Christian mission. (Bonhoeffer’s doctoral thesis was titled
Communio Sanctorum.) The big issue in secularisation, as far as religion was concerned,
was that God and religion were no longer formally at the centre of everything. Religious
doctrines, symbols and rituals are no longer the principal sources of meaning for individuals
and societies.
One of the corollaries of secularisation is the privatisation of beliefs. As the social
prominence of religions in pluralist societies decreases, so the tendency to regard religion as
a matter of private belief increases. This helps shift the notion of religion from the historical
and objective towards the existential and the personal. In turn, this tends to make spirituality
a more personal and private affair, less linked to formal religion.
From one point of view, the privatisation of beliefs emphasises, and can enhance, the
personal dimension to spirituality. This can go hand in hand with a community dimension,
or it can diminish the latter, with individuals feeling that they have less need for organised
religion. Religious people are concerned about this trend. Part of their concern is the
diminished moral power of religion over individuals. Another concern is the way in which
religion can be domesticated and its capacity for social action and justice limited. Religion can
be treated as a matter of private, personal opinion, where it may offer personal meaning and
motivation without getting in the way of business and life in general. So it is not surprising
that many people in contemporary Western countries will favour the idea of spirituality
in preference to religion; a decline in participation in organised religion is occurring at
the same time as an increasing popular interest in the spiritual. For some, this may well
be because they are disenchanted with organised religion. Some indeed see religion as an
obstacle to their spirituality – they may see religion as more concerned with social control
than with promoting personal spirituality and autonomy, and they may resent the idea of
being ‘told’ what to believe; for others, it may just be more convenient and less demanding;
for still others, they will retain certain links with religion and religious beliefs, while having
a stronger personal say in determining their own spirituality.
One author summarised this trend as follows:
The big difference between the older forms of spirituality and 21st century spirituality
is the movement away from an external authority figure and a movement toward an
empowerment of each seeker. 21st century spirituality is not about being told what to do
… It’s about becoming one’s own authority, so that our moral behaviour and our cosmic
awe stem from the inside out.21
Secularisation is not so much a decline in belief in God, but a ‘repositioning of religious belief
in a manner that reflects a more general shift of emphasis within society from institutional
to domestic life’.22 Many people are religious but in a more private and general way, and
not in the traditional institutional way. They may still draw on their religious tradition for
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 191
beliefs and spirituality, but they will not ever be likely to become actively involved in a local
community of faith.
Also related to secularisation and privatisation of beliefs is a tendency for people to
consider spirituality as nominal and implied. While not having any clearly recognisable
practices that might sustain and enhance spirituality, some people may claim that spirituality
is inherent in their lifestyle and that spiritual values give direction to their lives. This can go
with a claim to be ‘spiritual but not religious’, and is given as a reason for not needing formal
links with religion. It might be described as an ‘invisible’ spirituality or ‘invisible’ religion.
This may well be the case for particular people. Spirituality may permeate their lives without
being obvious or too explicit. How much individuals need explicitly spiritual activities and
how much time needs to be spent in specifically educating or otherwise enhancing their
spirituality are matters for discernment; it would be rash to make judgments about what
is or what is not appropriate for them on the basis of presuming they have little implied
spirituality. However, we want to draw attention to the problem situation where a claim
to an implied spirituality is little more than a cover for giving no conscious attention to
spirituality. In such cases, a relatively ‘invisible’ spirituality may well tend towards the non-
existent. This remains an issue for the evaluation of spirituality.
centre stage and long-term human goals become less cogent. This favours a spirituality that
is existential and primarily focused on individuals’ current needs.
It is understandable that religions feel under attack from cultural postmodernity. However,
some of its agenda needs to be addressed constructively by religion and spirituality rather
than dismissed, for example conflicting claims by different religions to absolute truth.
One of the values of postmodern thinking for religion is that it reminds people that
knowledge is socially constructed and its meanings are conditioned by historical and
contextual factors. Sometimes religious discussion can give the impression of being arrogant,
presuming that all will accept authoritative statements as somehow absolute. For example
statements like ‘The Bible says this’ are challenged by a realisation that it is really a particular
individual or group interpretation of what the Bible is thought to be teaching. Similarly
a phrase like ‘Authentic Catholic theology’ has to be interpreted in terms of its history,
development and authority base. Such challenges do not necessarily do away with religious
authority, but they call for a more rigorous justification and clarification of what is said.
Sometimes interpretations said to be ‘postmodern’ are more appropriately labelled ‘the
results of scholarship’ or ‘development in the interpretation of religious doctrines’. This is
illustrated in the following example. For some, what the Catholic Church teaches about Hell
is simple and straightforward. The Green Catechism (1939–62) said:
The relatively new official adult Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) confirms
traditional teaching about ‘the existence of hell and its eternity … for the souls of those who
die in a state of mortal sin … [and] the punishments of hell, “eternal fire”.’ But it extends the
interpretation as follows: ‘The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in
whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he
longs’. And ‘This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed
is called “hell”’.26 Critical studies in scripture, theology and history (as well as psychology) yield
a more complex and less clear-cut interpretation of Catholic teaching on Hell. Those familiar
with this complexity may not have heard the word postmodernity, let alone understood its
meaning. But it is useful as a label (or state of mind) for the more questioning, complex
interpretations of traditions. Some cannot bear to live with the complexities of meaning that
critical scholarship uncovers – and it certainly makes the teaching of religion much more
complex. Others cannot bear to live with what they perceive as simplistic interpretations.
Some address the problem by turning their back on it and ‘sticking to the traditional formulae
they were brought up with’. Others see the problem as just ‘reality’; and they feel more in tune
with reality, and vitalised by living comfortably with the complexities.
The value position presumed here favours the complex interpretation over the simple,
because the latter is too limited a representation of the truth. This proposes that we need
to accommodate the natural levels of complexity and uncertainty in religious knowledge
because we believe that such built-in limitations are part of the nature of such knowledge.
This does not mean that it is untruthful but that it is unlikely to express all of the truth. The
complexity of truth was always there, but it is in recent times in Western societies that people
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 193
have been more widely challenged to acknowledge it. It is presumed that truthful meaning
and personal integrity can be achieved within this knowledge framework. Different people
can grasp the same truth, God, for example, although they have different understandings
of what God is like. Similarly, some practical level of objectivity can be achieved despite the
postmodern emphasis on subjectivity and relativism.
Those involved in education and the care of youth can be committed to helping young
people acquire better understandings and interpretations of the truth; hence, from this value
stance, an unwillingness to help them explore the challenges in this greater complexity is a
failure in professional commitment. This is a view that is contested, particularly with respect
to the role of religious authority. But it is one authentic response to the postmodern cultural
situation.
This discussion relates back to section 3.2.14 where we proposed that acceptance of
a natural degree of uncertainty in personal knowing need not compromise its meaning
and truthfulness. Also, some practical objectivity can be achieved despite the postmodern
emphasis on subjectivity and relativism.
An excessive emphasis on postmodernity can lead to a spirituality that is exclusively
existential, and to a large number of religions – each with only one member! Extreme
postmodernism seems to have swung so far in the direction of individualism, subjectivity and
relativism that people are left all alone to construct their own unique personal packages of
meaning that give them some feeling of ‘ontological security’ about their value and purpose
in life, with little or no connection with any community of meaning or historical traditions
for meaning. That level of individualism seems inhuman and unhealthy.
Strictly speaking, personal meaning systems are unique for each individual. But at the
same time, the similarity and commonality in human experience results in meaning systems
with a lot in common, particularly for people with similar beliefs and outlook on life.
Individualism can be over-emphasised at the expense of shared meaning and communities of
meaning. After all, shared meanings are essential for the integrity of personal communication
and human relationships; this is the case while acknowledging the natural degree of ambiguity
and uncertainty in personal knowing and communication.
Hence the fundamental importance of communities of meaning and individuals’ contact
with, reliance on and nourishment from such communities needs to be acknowledged. The
uniqueness of the individual’s meaning system coexists with significant amounts of shared
meaning.
It is proposed that a healthy spirituality needs a broader base within both community
and historical traditions. This is where religious spirituality has something valuable to
contribute.
This is evident where religion and religious spirituality become ‘business oriented’.
For example, the Christian minister Rick Warren referred to at the start of this chapter
calls himself a ‘Stealth Evangelist’. He saw himself capitalising on a ‘new great Awakening
spiritually in America’. The newspaper article on Warren said that he ‘encouraged ministers
to think of their churches as businesses and congregations as customers.’ It concluded that he
was appealing to a notion of ‘a comforting God who acts like a great therapist in the sky’
– thus compromising religious concerns for social issues and social justice.27 The author
considered that ‘while the desire for personal change is admirable, an obsession with self-
fulfilment distracts from the need to change the world’. She quoted favourably a more
desirable alternative view from another pastor:
Is it enough to preach sermons that centre on individual struggles and offer guidance
along the path to a more meaningful and fulfilling personal life? I can’t help thinking
this is a time when we should be challenging our people to move beyond the personal
to the public – indeed, the political – and commit themselves to transforming the world
… Jesus, our role model, not only cared for hurting individuals but also shattered the
cultural conventions of his day and turned his society upside down.
• Consumerist lifestyle emphasis: In relation to the popular contemporary quest for spiritual
fulfilment, it is evident that a ‘plethora of spiritualities, each with its own claim to provide a
final answer to existential angst, reflects exactly the pattern and dynamic of consumerism’.30
This pattern is evident in some who search for meaning and satisfaction in religion, or in
esoteric religious practice, alternative spiritualities, the New Age and even in alcohol or
drugs.
• Existential gratification: There is an emphasis on the gratification of personal needs and
interests here and now. How people feel about spirituality will be more influential than their
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 195
thinking; feelings about comfort and wellbeing will sway choices about the spiritual. On
this point Bridger considered that: ‘The “instant satisfaction” culture of the shopping mall
is so deeply embedded in the Western psyche that, insofar as the search after spirituality
represents the consumerist ethic, it is to be expected that those engaged in the search will
conform to this ethic.’31
• Consumer notion of freedom: Personal freedom tends to be interpreted in terms of individual
consumer choice from a variety of options.
• Private and personal: Spirituality tends to be regarded as more of a private and personal
matter than something that is rooted in community and historical tradition. Spirituality
can then be like ‘personal opinion’ and ‘one opinion is as good as another’s’ and is ‘entitled
to equal respect’.
• Individualistic frame of reference: The emphasis is on the individual constructing his or
her own version of spirituality. ‘Spirituality becomes a matter of subjective experience
whose efficacy is judged by the extent to which it meets the subject’s self-perceived needs
and desires. And since these are in a constant state of flux, consistent only in being driven
by the impulse to gratification, the spiritual search consists of a never-ending stream of
sensation‑gathering as the individual moves from one attempt at fulfilment to the next.’32
The individual’s own experience becomes the touchstone for authentic spirituality.
If spirituality embraces values and commitments that are not just self-centred, then at times
it will conflict with personal feelings and individual interests. Fidelity to commitments will
not always be emotionally comfortable; life motivated by a healthy spirituality will not
always take the easiest ‘feel-good’ path. Commitment to other people and to long-term
life goals can be aspects of spirituality that ‘transcend’ self-centredness, and thus transcend
consumerism. This echoes a particular interpretation of Christian religious spirituality that
it is precisely in a level of self-forgetfulness that goes with concern for others that individuals
may find their ‘true’ selves.
this way, imagination of possibilities and consequences is a precursor to human action and
personal change. Imagination helps people identify with the feelings, understandings and
situations of others and is thus important for empathy. It is a key to creativity and originality,
and is an important aspect of spirituality.
The aesthetic dimension to spirituality has to do with the appreciation of beauty, creativity
and originality – it is an integral part of human responses. Beauty is perceived and enjoyed both
in nature and in human constructions like architecture and art. The aesthetic is also linked
with symbolism and its role in human self-expression and communication with others. An
understanding of spirituality needs to attend to the spiritual dimension in the creative arts.
DIY spirituality suits those who cannot abide such a restriction on their freedom and who
want to be involved in selecting and choosing the components of their spirituality.
It is somewhat tailor-made to help negotiate life ‘on the run’, dealing with spiritual
questions as they arise, with interpretations and constructions that are felt to be the best
available wisdom. It may well draw substantially on the individual’s own traditional religious
heritage (for example scripture and theology), but it will be a well-developed and usually
complex interpretation. It is focused on present life (a psychological emphasis) and not
much concerned with a hereafter, although this is not dismissed, especially when death
looms closer with old age. It adverts to the spiritual and moral dimensions of ongoing life
experience; it may seek transcendent and religious experience as well.
Some individuals have moved towards this style of spirituality in varying degrees because
they were not functioning comfortably within the organisational/structural framework
described earlier. Others may find themselves towards this end of the spectrum by default, by
being too busy, or through lack of much conscious attention to spirituality. Some may be in
this position being consciously spiritual but not religious. Others have this style of spirituality
while remaining identified with their traditional religion, but their mode of participation in
the church or religion is markedly different from the organisational/structural style.
Some of the characteristics of a DIY on-the-run spirituality are as follows (resonating
with issues discussed earlier in the chapter).
Becoming more personally autonomous and responsible for one’s spirituality may result
in wanting to select aspects that have a desired function or meet particular needs – hence
the standard set of teachings in a worldview and organisational religious practice will not
be satisfying; or the individual will not take much notice of beliefs they feel are marginal.
Multiple comparisons of religions and non-religious views of life can incline individuals to
de-absolutise religious truth claims, seeing them as more symbolic than historical or factual,
pointing in a valuable spiritual direction perhaps but not expressing all of the truth. They
can be eclectic in sourcing spirituality beyond their own religious tradition. They experience
secularisation but do not see it as a spiritual problem for them; and being busy, they may not
have the time for a lot of religious practice if it does not seem to meet any real need.
This style of spirituality seeks to be relevant to people’s lives and moral decision-making,
and its emphasis is psychological. It values individuality, but it is not necessarily anti-
communitarian. Nevertheless, communities of this type, whether religious or not, have a
different mode of social and spiritual functioning from that of the organisational/structural
type.
It is common for local religious faith communities to be far from homogeneous, having
a great range of spiritualities represented from across the complete spectrum. Hence it is
usual in communities of faith, perhaps even normal, for there to be give and take, and
even some conflict arising from different spiritualities and different needs. Sometimes faith
communities can work together and rise above such differences in spiritualities; sometimes
they cannot. Much depends on the leadership, key personalities and distribution of power. It
is not uncommon to find these same differences in spiritualities within a family group.
Some with a DIY style of spirituality remain very active and involved in their faith
community; for others, it is their style of spirituality that draws them away from organised
religion.
DIY on-the-run spirituality can get by comfortably with a measure of acknowledged
natural uncertainty about the big spiritual issues of life – God, death and the afterlife. It
198 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
does not need to rely on the traditional package of beliefs, selecting wisdom from a variety
of sources that makes sense of people’s experience and can guide their moral life. Such people
are more aware of the ‘real uncertainties’ both in life and religion than the ‘unreal certainties’
they sometimes perceive in the organisational/structural style of religious spirituality. For the
DIY style of spirituality, there is less need for religious identity boundaries.
This spectrum ranging from structural/organisational to DIY spirituality is significant
for interpreting the diversity of spiritualities in youth. It also signals the natural problems
that can be expected with an education in spirituality that is sponsored by the Church (see
Part 4). Formal religious education in religious schools tends to have a curriculum that
naturally leans towards the organisational/structural because it is institutionally sponsored.
Hence there are difficulties to be negotiated for both teachers and students whose spiritual
orientation is towards the other end of the spectrum.
Table 8.3 Evaluative criteria for the identification and appraisal of spirituality
Frame of reference: the The frame of reference for spirituality needs to respect the uniqueness of the
individual, as well as individual; however, if the frame of reference is no larger than the immediate
something larger than the personal needs and interests of the individual, there is a danger of self-
individual centredness and narcissism.
To what extent does the frame of reference for this spirituality take into account
community at both local and wider levels? (human or social environment).
What historical traditions in spirituality give perspective to contemporary
concerns, and a balanced interpretation of existential needs?
Is there a custodial concern for the physical and animal environments?
Personal reflection Cultivation of a habit of reflection on life experience and contemporary issues.
Includes critical interpretation of culture.
Development of a constructive, resilient personal meaning for life.
Confidence in human A healthy spirituality needs to come to terms with uncertainties about meaning
knowing and value that go with postmodern characteristics of contemporary Western
society.
This includes confidence in personal knowing, while recognising the natural
limitations to socially constructed knowledge. Personal knowing may be imperfect
and in need of ongoing evaluation; however, it can provide an authentic basis for
human meaning and can inform constructive decision-making and commitments.
Inputs that inform and A healthy spirituality is presumed to be not static. It includes openness to
challenge spiritual activities (reading, education, new experience) that prompt reflection and
understandings continued development of spirituality. It encourages openness to learning from
other spiritualities.
This view of spirituality presumes that it is not enough to claim to be spiritual in
a nominal way: there needs to be some activity that challenges and enhances
spirituality, or that shows spirituality in ‘action’.
Spiritually motivated Spirituality that informs and inspires values and commitments, and a sense of
values and commitments social justice. Spirituality that affects personal action and action on behalf of
others.
Gender equality Authentic spirituality is available for both men and women without prejudice. It is
not paternalistic and is accessible to all. From this perspective, questions can be
raised about the role of women in religions.
Criteria such as these (with amendments and additions) imply a value position about
what constitutes spiritual health and a ‘healthy’ spirituality. The list is based on a particular
view of the human person. Here are three of its principal concerns:
1. There is no doubt that a healthy spirituality should enhance the personal and social
life of individuals. However, if the personal needs and interests of the individual are the
exclusive frame of reference for spirituality, this can more easily move into self-centredness
and narcissism. A balance is needed so that the personal meaning of the individual embraces
something larger than the self. This is needed for both religious and non-religious spiritualities.
Fundamental to this view is the belief that individuals are born human but they become persons
through social interaction. In other words, being both a contributing and a receiving member
200 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
of human community is central to human nature. When applied to spirituality, this means
that authentic spirituality has to be community-related: you cannot be fully spiritual on your
own. This thinking proposes that the frame of reference for spirituality needs to include family,
local community and the wider human community. In addition, it considers that responsible
stewardship for the environment should also be part of the value base of spirituality.
2. A healthy spirituality should not be static and not just ‘implied’ in the way people
live a particular lifestyle; it needs to be sustained and developed by reflection, education (in
the broadest sense) and habits of spiritual activity. For example, it is considered not enough
to claim that ‘I have beliefs and values’, ‘I believe in God’ or ‘Spirituality is implied in my
lifestyle’. An authentic spirituality is one that motivates behaviour and leads to personal and
social action. Healthy spirituality continually challenges the individual to practise, extend
and deepen spiritual insights. Healthy spirituality is ‘cultivated’.
3. A healthy spirituality needs confidence in the personal knowing process. The post
modern strand in contemporary Western culture calls absolutes and meta-narratives into
question, and its emphasis on the uncertainties and ambiguities in socially constructed
human knowledge have led to excessive subjectivism, contextualism, existentialism and
relativism. While it may be unrealistic to claim full knowledge of absolute truth, it is both
realistic and pragmatic to believe that one can know part of absolute truth with confidence,
and act on this with integrity. Given that the uncertainties in personal knowing are natural to
the human condition, and if this is accepted, it is both possible and reasonable to claim that
one can construct a spirituality that is authentically human with respect to self and others.
This spirituality will not be perfect; it will advert to spiritual traditions, but it will not be
constrained by them; it will make mistakes; it should be open to revision and enhancement.
But it can help people chart a meaningful and hopeful life in uncertain times – times that
seem to have unprecedented opportunities for human life and wealth, while at the same
time having pressures, gross inequities and threatening uncertainties that affect basic human
meanings and quality of life. Such a spirituality can turn the contemporary emphasis on
being ‘critical’ to advantage by engaging in the critical interpretation of culture to discern the
influences on people’s thinking and behaviour, and to evaluate their significance.
Other views of spiritual health, not unlike what has been proposed here, have been
discussed in the literature. For example, a recent research report on youth proposed that
‘Spiritual wellbeing reflects the deepest level of meaning for individuals, a sense of having a
place in the world, being part of “the grand scheme of things”; its essence is mysterious and
elusive, so hard for science to grasp and explain.’33
Fisher noted the emergence of the term in writings about health; he considered that it
was a pervasive dimension to overall health and wellbeing, and that it involved harmonious
relationships in four domains: the personal, communal, environmental and transcendent.34
This is consistent with writings about spirituality that understand it as self-awareness
coupled with relationships with others and the environment – in other words, a ‘relational
consciousness’.35 Others have considered the importance of spirituality for overall personal
health,36 and its contribution to personal ‘resilience’,37 as inner resources that help people
cope with life, particularly when there are difficulties to be overcome.
The evaluative criteria proposed here need to be developed and further refined, and
the process of discernment needs to be informed by the beliefs and values of the particular
groups seeking to enhance the spirituality of youth.
An evaluative perspective on spirituality for educational purposes 201
Notes
1 RC Fuller 2001, Spiritual, but not religious: Understanding unchurched America, p. 58.
2 D Zohar & I Marshall 2000, SQ: Spiritual intelligence, the ultimate intelligence, p. 35.
3 Murphy, cover comments, A Cooper 1998, Playing in the zone: Exploring the spiritual dimensions of sports, p. 1.
4 D Piccinotti 2004 in Nova: Keeping body and soul together, 10, 12, 40.
5 This chapter was developed from GM Rossiter 2005, From St Ignatius to Obi-Wan Kenobi: An evaluative
perspective on spirituality for school education; ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 2005, Editorial: Spirituality
and religious education, Journal of Religious Education 53(1): 1–2.
6 J Baird 2004, A life lived for business purposes.
7 For a list of books by John Powell, Eugene Kennedy, Adrian Van Kaam, Andrew Greeley and Henri Nouwen,
see Bibliography under Catholic psychological spirituality of the 1970s.
8 F Bridger 2001, Desperately seeking what? Engaging with the new spiritual quest, p. 10.
9 D Tacey 2003, The spirituality revolution: The emergence of contemporary spirituality, p. 4.
10 ibid., pp. 31, 45.
11 ibid., p. 45.
12 ibid., p. 61.
13 Fuller 2001, p. 4.
14 M Levin 2000, Spiritual intelligence: Awakening the power of your spirituality and intuition, p. 34.
15 D Zohar & I Marshall 2000, SQ: Spiritual intelligence, the ultimate intelligence, p. 8.
16 ibid., p. 9.
17 Levin 2000, pp. 38, 39.
18 A useful discussion of this question is provided by Bridger 2001.
19 FL Boumer 1977, Modern European thought: Continuity and change in ideas, p. 439.
20 D Bonhoeffer 1966, Letters and papers from prison, ed. Edehard Bethge, pp. 194–5.
21 E Lesser 2000, Insider’s guide to 21st century spirituality, quoted in Bridger 2001, p. 12.
22 A Wright 2004, The justification of compulsory religious education: A response to Processor White, p. 166.
Wright refers to the thesis about secularisation proposed in G Davie 1994, Religion in Britain since 1945:
Believing without belonging.
23 See for example the discussion of modernity and postmodernity in R Jackson 2004, Rethinking religious
education and plurality, p. 10.
24 Z Bauman 1995, Life in fragments: Essays in postmodern morality; 1997, Postmodernity and its discontents.
25 Catholic Church 1939, Catechism of Christian doctrine, Lesson 5, questions 11-13, p. 8.
26 Catholic Church 1994, Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1035, p. 270 and #1033, p. 269.
27 Baird 2004, p. 29. While agreeing with the author’s appraisal of Warren’s spirituality, we disagree with her
proposal that the implied spirituality in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ is a desirable alternative.
28 Bridger 2001, p. 10.
29 ibid., p. 10.
30 ibid., p. 11.
31 ibid., p. 12.
32 ibid.
33 R Eckersley et al. 2006, Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people,
p. 41.
34 J Fisher 2000, Understanding spiritual health and wellbeing: Becoming human, becoming whole; 2001, The
nature of spiritual wellbeing and the curriculum: Some educators’ views.
35 D Hay & R Nye 1998, The spirit of the child.
36 Two examples that illustrate the discussion of spiritual health are R Goodloe & P Arreola 1992, Spiritual
health: Out of the closet; J Hjelm & R Johnson 1996, Spiritual health: An annotated bibliography.
37 T Witham 2001, Nurturing spirituality in children and young people by developing resilience. This also
relates to the discussion of religion as a ‘coping’ mechanism: see K Pargament 1997, The psychology of religion
and coping.
9
Young people
and spirituality:
Negotiating the perils
of adolescence
The previous chapter explored spirituality as the diverse ways in which people identify a spiritual
and moral dimension to life. There the focus was philosophical and theoretical. This chapter
looks more specifically at the spirituality of youth, concentrating on a number of questions that
adolescents have to negotiate in the construction of a personal spirituality.
We are aware of significant differences in the ways boys and girls approach spirituality. It
has much to do with the generally stronger ‘personal relationship’ orientation in the social
interactions between young women. Gender differences enter into a number of the categories
explored in this chapter, but to attend to them is beyond our scope here. Nevertheless, the
discussion provides a useful starting point for further research on this question.
While many young people do not readily identify with the word ‘spirituality’, they have a stronger
affinity with ‘spiritual’. In societies where there is much secularisation and lack of interest in
religion, as well as ambivalence about what constitutes spirituality, it is important for those
202
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 203
involved in the education and care of youth to take into account the areas where young people
encounter the spiritual; these are the starting points for community efforts to support them in
their spiritual quest.
It is also beyond our scope to survey the extensive writings about youth spirituality, much
of which is written from a religious perspective.2 And while acknowledging that a significant
proportion of youth are religious, having a spirituality that is associated with a faith community
and religious practice, our concern here is to address the situation of those whose spirituality is,
for various reasons, out of sync with the more traditional spirituality of their religious traditions.
Nevertheless, the questions examined are just as pertinent to the personal development of
religious youth as they are for the non-religious, and they are therefore relevant to church youth
ministry.
What follows is a diagnosis of a selection of problems and issues affecting youth spirituality,
acknowledging the plurality of both religious and non-religious spiritual views. First, attention
will be directed to the youth dimensions of the questions raised about spirituality in the previous
chapter. Then we will address a number of questions related to the psychological wellbeing of
youth. The aim is to illustrate the complexity and problematic aspects of youth spirituality rather
than provide a full account of it.
Looking into these matters should not be interpreted as substituting humanism for
spirituality. Rather, we consider that an understanding of the ‘human dimensions’ to
spirituality is important for professionals who wish to help young people become more aware
of, and responsive to, the spiritual, transcendent, idealistic and altruistic elements in their
experience. And this is just as important for a developing religious spirituality as it would be
for a non-religious one.
This does not mean that it is absent in children and adolescents, but that it has very concrete
and sometimes mundane starting points for them; it can develop into a more mystical
synthesis as they become adults with an enhanced capacity for mytho-poetic expression.
While it is not unknown for young people to excel in mathematics and music at an early age,
we rarely see evidence of great creative writing or poetry in children (while not disparaging
their excellent efforts); their capacity for verbal and symbolic expression takes longer to
mature. Efforts seeking to provide self-transcending spiritual experiences for children and
adolescents therefore need to be wisely selected and planned; the purpose is to help them
attend to the ‘signals of transcendence’ that are natural for the young at that age, while
not expecting them to respond as adults would, and while not expecting them to feel fully
comfortable with experiences that are more adult-oriented.
way young people respond to the efforts of adults to hand on historical traditions – be they
family, community, ethnic group or religion.
The very idea of ‘handing on’ a tradition and identity has now become problematic.
For example, in response to adult concerns to foster a religious identity through religious
practice and education, young people may not so much question the appropriateness of the
experiences, methods and content as wonder why there is any need to be concerned about
religious identity at all.
The last thirty years seem to have been a critical period for this change. In the 1960s
and 1970s, questions about religion and traditions often provoked argumentative responses
from young people; now such questions are hardly provocative. The response, or rather lack
of response, gives an impression of apathy and lack of interest. But this is too simple an
interpretation; it fails to acknowledge the complexity. Many young people are not apathetic
about the spiritual, nor are they uninterested. But they can show a detached, almost
clinical anthropological interest in organised religion and structured traditions. They find it
interesting that people can believe in particular doctrines and are committed to expansive
belief systems while they feel they can get by without such formal religious connections.
They may be more interested in spiritual ideas and practices that have some immediate felt
relevance or serve some pragmatic function. They seem more concerned about coping with,
and succeeding in, their own existential life-world; the idea of a coherent and systematic
religious worldview is not something they see a great need for. They may perceive aspects
of their own religion as outmoded elements in the belief structure of an older generation
– quaint and antiquarian, with little relevance for them or for today’s society. They may see
what the Church offers as just one of a number of spiritual contributions available to them
from different religious and non-religious sources.
The characteristics of cultural postmodernity noted in the previous chapter are prominent
in youth spirituality, even though many young people may not have heard those words used
as descriptors of their spiritual orientation.
mark of secularisation and they have been affected by a global village mentality that colours
their view of religion itself and offers many alternative sources of meaning and values that
can be used for developing spirituality and identity.
Even where young people live in religious households and local communities that try
to shield them from a secular environment, they will still be conscious that there are others
in the wider society who are not so shielded, and who think about life and form values
more from their own initiative, with less dependence on traditional religious guidance. For
many youth, the Church no longer speaks with a voice they wish to hear, or a voice that is
believable.
As noted in a recent Catholic book on youth spirituality: ‘An important part of youth’s
dissatisfaction with the Church stems from the absence of a spiritually challenging and
world-shaping vision that meets their hunger for the chance to participate in a worthy
venture.’5 However, while this may be true in some instances, it is not universal. Even if the
Church were to create such challenging adventures, young people would not flock back to
church on Sundays. Just how many young people have a ‘real hunger for spirituality’ needs
more investigation. Some may be spiritual but not religious; some may be neither spiritual
nor religious.
Many youth sense that, unlike the older generations, they have a ‘real option’ to be or
not to be part of organised religion. It is not likely that they will drift into, and remain with
regular religious practice through cultural inertia. A lot of older people were never really
free to make that choice; their participation in organised Christianity was more culturally
determined for a long time (even if that is now no longer the case). But young people know
they can ‘get by’ spiritually without organised religion. They do not see any problem in
having only tenuous connections with their religious tradition. If they are to be religious,
it will be by intention rather than by convention. They know they have a choice as to what
elements of religion they will believe and include in their spirituality – and consequently
in their sense of religious identity. They know they are more selective than were previous
generations that tended to accept the traditional religious identity in packaged form with
little personal modification.
It is also significant that they can choose to keep away from religious practice (even where
this is contrary to parental wishes) and can do this without feeling guilty or uncomfortable
(older people who have given up religious practice can have lingering guilt feelings).
This is more than reacting against a religious upbringing; they are choosing to seek out
a spirituality more independent of their traditional religion. It does not necessarily mean
giving up identification with their religion; it is just that they see no need for much formal
religious practice. It is consistent with their inclination not to see religion, including their
own particular tradition, as likely to have a prominent place in the way they work out their
values and purpose in life.
Many young people can comfortably dissociate their search for spirituality from their
religion. Also, they do not see ‘real’ religion (that is, a personalised belief system) as separate
from life; any secular/religious dichotomy tends to have little meaning for them. They react
against a division that in their view ‘strait-jackets religion into an exclusively Sunday morning
affair’, ‘stifles the spiritual dimension of ordinary life’ and ‘allows people to take refuge from
God in their local church’.
As a consequence, social action and involvements that formerly were associated with
religion, and that were religiously motivated, now flow into secular commitments. If they have
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 209
concerns about the environment, human rights, personal relationships and sexuality, there are
organisations in society, unaffiliated with religion, that seem to be more attractive; perhaps
this is part of the general drift from religion; perhaps these groups are perceived to have a
more relevant and legitimate voice than religious organisations. Young people have nominated
associations like Amnesty International and Greenpeace as action groups for which they have
more affinity than church groups. The relatively more democratic style of membership in
these organisations is also significant. Even when they recognise the contribution of church-
related organisations to social causes, their perception is that these groups are not typical. The
movement away from organised religion often seems to have more to do with their experience
of the Church than with a disinclination to believe in God.
Given these trends, it is foreseeable that many young people will continue to develop a
spirituality that is more individualistic, eclectic and personal than communal and formally
religious in its expression. This does not mean that they no longer need any link with their
religion or other spiritual reference group. But it suggests that in our type of society, most of
the youth who seek religious affiliation will look for a community that supports spirituality
that is personal and eclectic, and that focuses on both local and world issues (depending on
age and level of social awareness) and makes room for their freedom and individuality.
9.1.6 Young people and the distinction between the spiritual and the religious
The distinctions made between the spiritual and the religious (Chapter 8) are significant for
interpreting youth spirituality. The researcher Robert Coles noted that:
I have worked with boys and girls who go rarely or never to church, to synagogue; who
may not in any way consider themselves religious; indeed, who shun such a word as
utterly inapplicable to themselves; and yet who ask all sorts of interesting, even stirring
questions about the nature of this life, and who can be heard sweating over and playing
with ideas that are clearly spiritual in nature – wondering about the meaning of life,
expressing their own sense of what truly matters.6
Coles reported on thirty years of work interviewing children about their spirituality. He
suggested that for children, spiritual/religious issues do not surface initially as religious
questions per se, but in the form of questions about life’s meaning – questions asked even at
an early age about death and the importance of life on earth, about animals and plants and
the natural world.
It is mainly in the context of their family that these beliefs are formed. However, he
considered that schools have an influential role in helping young children get into some
perspective their relationships with parents and siblings, as well as with the wider natural
world of animals and pets.
Adolescents are showing increased caution about organised religion; they are wary that
religion might restrict their growing sense of autonomy, for religion is readily perceived as
‘moral restriction’. There is probably a developmental anti-authority component operating
here, as it does with respect to parental authority. But it is also affected by their negative
perception of religion. All of this inclines them more favourably towards the spiritual than
the religious. More research is needed to see how extensive is any tendency among youth to
become relatively more spiritual but less formally religious.
210 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
The relativism that dominates our culture is drawn from the market economy. There are
no abiding values. People choose their values as they do their goods at the supermarket.
Some people like this, others like that. It is all a matter of taste. There are no abiding
standards beyond personal predilection, and hence there are no norms in terms of which
we can judge society as a whole. Relativism of this kind is ultimately cynical. The final
position is, ‘anything goes’.
Since we live in a market society, we are profoundly influenced by this sort of
relativism. Political scientists speak of the ‘commodification of values’. Everything
becomes a commodity; everything has a price, including human relations and happiness.
If we find it on the shelf and have the money, we can purchase it. In our culture, we
have witnessed the commodification of sexuality. Sex has become merchandised. Sex in
advertising enhances sales, and sex in the entertainment industry increases profits.
We are also witnessing the commodification of religion [and spirituality]. We turn
to the spectrum of sects, cults and esoteric practices; choose our own religious style;
pay for it with our own money; follow it as long as we like; and then move into another
involvement. This market relativism is an ideology built into our mainstream culture. In
my opinion, it is hostile to the great religious traditions.7
Some young people (as do some parents) show evidence of this eclectic and consumerist
approach to spirituality. Many are not much interested in any formal religion or in informal
spirituality. Others come from homes that try to shield them from what parents (and some
educators) believe to be confusing comparisons and relativism, by opposing the study of other
traditions at school (such as other Christian denominations and world religions). However,
such shielding at school is not likely to be effective if students still have access to their regular
sources of information – television, radio, newspapers and magazines – and to their own
friends. The classroom should be one place where it might be expected that students could
look at different traditions respectfully to become better informed. In practice, this broader
focus seems to be in tune with the pluralism that young people take for granted as valuable
in their society; such an approach may well stimulate more interest in their own tradition.
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 211
For some young people, their attitude to religion, and perhaps also to the spiritual, is
more than relativism, and could better be described as a form of ‘indifferentism’. Webster’s
Dictionary defined indifferentism as ‘A state of indifference; a want of interest or earnestness,
especially a systematic apathy regarding what is true or false in religion and philosophy’.
Interestingly, two centuries back, indifferentism was condemned as heresy by some Christian
church leaders; it was held that ‘Indifferentism equalises all religions and gives equal rights
to truth and error’.
Some young people, perhaps many in particular communities, show apathy towards
what religions may say on contemporary spiritual and moral issues; they are not interested in
what anyone has to say about such issues, as long as it does not interfere with their lifestyle.
Nevertheless, these same young people may feel that religion is important because it gives
solace and meaning in relation to ultimate questions like death and the afterlife; but they
feel little need to have recourse to religion to solve the ordinary traumas that occur in their
daily lives. So they tend to see religion as important but peripheral in the sense that it does
not have much to do with their day-to-day living.
Freedom and individualism are values that strongly influence the pattern of beliefs of
young people. A consequence is the ‘privatisation’ of belief. This trend is part of a general
acceptance of the atomisation of our culture. A person’s life seems to be increasingly
split up between various parts … There was a time when the Church claimed to be the
unifying influence standing over everything else that happened in life. Now it is seen as
one among many institutions competing for attention.8
Privatisation of beliefs moves both religion and spirituality more into the subjective domain.
Just as young people are supposed to respect the opinions of others, so it has become politically
correct to put beliefs in this same category because they are personally constructed, just like
having your own opinion. Religions are unhappy about this trend because it diminishes
the importance of the communal expression of faith in local church communities. Some
religious people think that one of the psychological ills of contemporary societies is the
alienation of individuals from shared belief systems – a loss of corporate religious memory.
In this sense, privatised religious beliefs are isolating because they play down any role for
a local community of faith as a spiritual reference point. In addition, individualism and
subjectivity, while prizing autonomy and personal freedom, can contribute to an alienating
sense of spiritual aloneness, lack of meaning and anomie; this can arise from having to
take too much responsibility for the construction of one’s own spiritual meaning without
supportive contact with some reference community for meaning and value (2.10.2, 4.2.1).
Demographers of religion noted that in 1900 there were about 3.7 million Pentecostal
Christians worldwide. Today the number is estimated at above 500 million. If the current
rate of growth is maintained, Pentecostals could soon account for more than a quarter of all
Christians. There are some parallels in other world religions, notably in Judaism and Islam.
In his book Fire from Heaven: The rise of pentecostal spirituality and the reshaping of religion
in the twenty-first century, Harvey Cox looked at the appealing qualities of the movement
and how its influence may end up being comparable in scope to that of the Reformation.9
Pentecostal spirituality involves people in lively, emotional prayer and worship orchestrated
with pop music, where special emphasis is placed on the presence of God who can make a
palpable difference to the way believers conduct their lives. Personal testimonies, healings
and praying in tongues are also prominent. There is a strong sense of personal community
that reinforces faith, forgives sinners and supports the needy. Pentecostal theology stresses
the role of the Holy Spirit and it tends to take the Bible literally; it is interested in prophecies;
it stresses the Kingdom of God and is strongly eschatological (interested in the ‘last things’
and the second coming of Christ). The prominence of testimony, songs and tongues appears
to put theology more in the background; all members feel free personal access to religious
experience and God – and this is not as dependent on church structures as it appeared to be
in other Christian churches.
The apparent success of Pentecostal churches at attracting youth membership is a matter
of concern to mainline Christian denominations. Should they imitate the style of Pentecostal
services to make their spirituality offerings more attractive to youth? Or is the Pentecostal
style suited to particular personality types or those with particular spiritual needs?
Much of Sunday morning religious television is of the Pentecostal type. It highlights the
charismatic preacher, rousing worship in Bible and song, and often features healing. It often
links its style of religious faith with ‘success’ in life, and has interesting systems for generating
revenue.
but gives only a partial insight into the complex psychological world of young people and
the intricate mosaic of influences on their spirituality and identity.
Hence the need for making sense of the complex research findings about young people,
working towards a more holistic understanding of their life-world. Caution is needed with
generalisations about young people’s beliefs, attitudes and values. Ambiguity, changeability
and contradiction are part of the mix. It is by holding a range of factors in creative tension
and not trying to collapse the polarities that the most useful picture of youth spirituality is
attained, helping one to understand influential trends while at the same time acknowledging
the different responses of individuals. What is needed on the part of professionals working
with youth is a capacity to join with them as fellow seekers for meaning and wisdom in a
confusing world.
In March 2006, the Australia 21 Research Company and the Australian Youth Research
Centre published a report on an extensive interdisciplinary research study on youth:
Flashpoints and Signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people. It
considered that ‘questions about spirituality sit at the heart of understanding how individuals
negotiate life, and how collectively as communities we negotiate uncertainty’.10 The report
gives a comprehensive picture of the social situation of Australian youth; it notes a number
of the issues for youth spirituality (as well as meaning and identity) that are considered in
this volume.
[Y]oung people are deeply cynical, alienated, pessimistic, disillusioned and disengaged.
Many are confused, and angry, uncertain of what the future holds and what society expects
of them. While they may continue to work within ‘the system’ they no longer believe in
it [n]or are they willing to serve it. From this perspective, the suicidal, the depressed, the
drug-addicted and the delinquent represent the tip of an iceberg of psychological pain
and distress that includes a substantial proportion, perhaps even a majority of young
people today.12
At first sight the findings seem to be contradictory: one view seems optimistic, the other
more pessimistic. But these apparently opposite characteristics may hold true for some young
people at different stages of their lives, depending on their life experience. The perspective
of a young person living in rural Australia, or on the fringes of society, will be different from
214 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
that of one from a comfortable, economically stable supportive background who sees that
life offers a variety of favourable options.
We ignore [the] dreams [of youth] at our peril; young people’s vision of a better, more
equitable society puts less emphasis on individual competition, material wealth and
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 215
enjoying ‘the good life’ and more on community, family cooperation and the environment.
This is a vision young people might be prepared to sign on for and work toward.14
In pre-1960s society, smaller, less fragmented, more structured communities, which had
family and church as a common backdrop, fulfilled many of the needs for community and
belonging. Since then there have been ever increasing economic and other pressures that
erode family and community relationships. As personal contact with parents and extended
families decreases, family and community bonds weaken. This can contribute to young
people’s feeling disconnected and alone. If in addition (for various reasons) they have
difficulty in finding and staying in friendship groups both at and outside school, they can
feel an isolation that is pathological.
The other complicating factor here is that many young people feel a need for different
ways of connecting with community groups by comparison with those that were taken for
granted by earlier generations. If youth needs for community meanings are different from
the traditional, then different styles of community may be required if they are to be expected
to participate (see later on SMS texting and instant community).
A feeling of belonging and being part of a community comes with sharing the values, likes
and dislikes of a certain group. A defining feature of most groups or associations which offer
community to the young is the democratic and easy way in which they operate. Despite what
may appear as a manipulated uniformity that some groups require of members, it is most
often a democratic and egalitarian spirit that is evident. One survey interpreted this as young
people floating ‘from tribe to tribe’.16 Being in different groups is an experiment in personality
development – trying the fit of individual to group identity. However self-evident the need for
group endorsement of identity, young people may well resent being categorised. The survey
went on to note: ‘Don’t dare call them generation X and don’t even think about categorising
them in a “tribe” such as doofs, goths or crusties. Today’s young − those aged 18 to 30 – are
universal in their rejection of what they see to be extreme, oversimplified pigeonholes.’
The fundamental human need to experience belonging to some groups is something that
most of us experience, not just youth. Group belonging gives young people reference points
for exploring their place in life and helps them develop and sustain a sense of meaning and
purpose. What they want are hospitable reference groups that are not manipulative.
Autonomy and individuality are all about freedom to make choices. Again, there is no
problem in affirming the desirability of such a principle for promoting personal and spiritual
development. But children and young adults (as well as adults) are under a lot of cultural
pressure from advertising in Western societies to interpret personal freedom as consumer
choice (Chapter 7). Some common phrases are like media mantras: ‘You choose’, ‘Unlimited
choice’, ‘Yours – on demand’, ‘Your call’, ‘For every mood’, ‘Entertainment at any time’,
‘You’re in control’, ‘Just hit the remote – the symbol of freedom’, ‘Megamart – megachoice’,
‘All that you want to be’.
Reportedly, some shoppers suffer from what has been called ‘retail choice overload’ as
they have to decide what to buy while trawling the supermarket aisles – ninety types of cereal,
thirty types of yoghurt and so on. For young people, a similar problem seems to apply across
their life-world. They have to engage in constant decision-making about consumer choices
in clothing, food and entertainment, as well as with regard to the many school, university or
TAFE courses and career options they might follow up, what health and medical treatment
options to keep up with – let alone choosing which of the myriad cosmetics might improve
a young woman’s chances of being more attractive. They feel that if only they were able to be
‘better’ they would make the right choices and therefore be happier. This inevitably makes
them vulnerable to a retail identity (Chapter 7). In an environment of hyper-consumerism,
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 217
some young people feel a little overwhelmed and this can lead to inertia or a vague feeling of
psychological discomfort they cannot understand or articulate.
As well as promoting a basically problematic, and eventually dissatisfying, notion of
freedom, this situation can affect young people negatively in other ways. The social reality
about what life should be like is seductively promoted in the imagery of media advertising.
What is proposed is very attractive, but the gap between the ideal image and reality can be
depressing.
What is also of concern is that the driving force behind this situation is commercial;
it fuels a never-ending cycle of consumerism. For example, while there are hundreds of
brands of cosmetics, these are manufactured and marketed by just a small group of cosmetic
conglomerates who believe that considerable apparent product diversity caters to individual,
distinctive needs – they want women to be able to identify ‘my brand of cosmetics!’ Young
people are aware of this consumer/commercial dimension to some extent and of its potential
for manipulation, but there is little they seem to be able to do to escape it or come to terms
with it in a way that makes them feel wholesome. Lifestyle has great prominence in their
priorities, making it a favourite and profitable target for marketers – as the mobile phone
advertisement said, ‘Get a phone that is in tune with your lifestyle.’
In addition, the advertising bombardment can subtly promote dispositions of disposability
and competitiveness. These can become woven into young people’s meaning for life in a
relatively unconscious way, having negative consequences for personal relationships, work,
individuals’ finances and other aspects of lifestyle.
Understanding youth spirituality requires holding a number of tendencies in tension.
Young people’s feelings range across all of the following, sometimes in apparently haphazard
and contradictory ways. And the intensity of the feelings also varies over time and according
to the situation.
• confidence – anxiety
• coping with chaos – despair over meaning
• individualism – need for group membership
• self-centredness – altruism and a sensitivity to justice issues
• not ready for commitment – a need for committed role models
• radically different from parents – similar values to parents
• apparently carefree lifestyle – insecurity about life
• materialistic lifestyle – maintaining a sense of the transcendent.
A number of young people retain a personal website, often with a diary of reflections
on their ongoing experience. It is another way of affirming who they feel they are; it is an
opportunity for affirmation by others who share similar experience, likes and dislikes and it
gives a ‘virtual’ yet tangible sense of community. It is beyond our scope here to investigate
the psychological and educational significance of young people’s use of the Internet.
For individuals not wanted in friendship groups, their lack of participation in the SMS
inner circle can be a sharp reminder of their lowly social status. These same communication
technologies have been used for bullying and manipulation. It will be interesting to see how
far down into childhood the SMS texting community reaches; and also to see how long it
endures in young people’s habits as they grow older.
Girls appear to be more frequent SMS users, in tune with their desire to spend a lot of
time talking about relationships with intense interest – recalling and constantly analysing
the dynamics of their social relationships. Their world seems to be interpreted through
the prism of their powerful friendship groups, so to be on the negative end of friendship
group pressure can be very upsetting. Boys do not engage in the analysis of their social
interactions to the same extent; their relationships appear generally more ‘action’-oriented.
Their behaviour appears to be more affected by ego vulnerability, status and their notion of
masculinity.
Given the impact of new technologies on lifestyle, a young Descartes, if he were around
today, might have said: ‘iPod therefore I am’.
are trying to promote – a proven tool for inducing a warrior spirit in the military, but not
in the suburbs.
In 2006, lawyers for the families of three murdered Alabama police officers claimed
that exposure to the popular game Grand Theft Auto (tenth top seller in Australia in 2005)
had modelled the crime for the 18-year-old killer: ‘The video gaming industry gave him
a cranial menu that popped up in the blink of an eye. That menu offered him the split-
second decision to kill the officers, flee in a police car, just as the game itself trained them
to do.’19
It is difficult to prove this assertion, just as it remains not yet substantially proven that
extensive engagement in video gaming develops ‘game brain’, a functional deficiency in the
prefrontal lobe. Nevertheless, the long and ongoing association of leisure with increasingly
realistic and violent games says something about the players’ interests and needs (cf. cinema
and television violence in chapter 15). At least, this is a question that youth themselves need
to ponder in terms of its potential impact on many aspects of their social interactions and
personal relationships.
Similar patterns appear in the use of Internet games. A newspaper article entitled ‘Web
bullies put kids in therapy’, illustrated the problem of bullying that has become increasingly
prominent in net game participation: 20
Children as young as 10 are receiving counselling from psychologists after being bullied
while playing popular Internet games. Bullying via the multiplayer games is done by
players insulting other contestants or stealing their virtual property and credits. The
attacks are often personal, with the bully continuing a schoolyard dispute …
‘There can be sexual harassment and racial vilification’ [Carr-Gregg, psychologist]
‘The core of harassment is the classic name-calling and insults, just trying to debase
the other person.’ [Beetson, for Sulake web game company owning the Habbo Hotel
program].
One networked online game, the World of Warcraft has millions of global players or
gamers interacting with each other via the Internet. Another popular game, Habbo Hotel
received 271,000 visitors in April [2006] …
Some game manufacturers have created comprehensive security programs in response
to the growing incidence of bullying. On the company’s Australian website [Habbo
Hotel], players are warned that questionable behaviour will be reported to police.
9.2.8 Soundtrack to your life: Contemporary music and its relationship with youth
spirituality
Contemporary music provides a vivid universal language and medium for the expression of
youth needs, interests and aspirations. It is like a pervading atmospheric presence that keeps
many ideas and life expectations on a ‘low simmer’. This is particularly the case for sexuality,
relationships, and the ideas of freedom, individuality, pleasure, and what is ‘cool’ (7.3). In a
Canadian study, music rated second only to friendships as the element that gave teenagers
most enjoyment. The researchers considered that music was for young people a ‘major path
to both happiness and freedom … Symbolising energy and release and freedom’.21
220 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
The way in which young people all over the world share a common language and interest
in pop music is not without its significance. It supports an international approach to forming
an outlook on life, which is relevant to youth spirituality. Music and its lyrics can trigger
emotions and resonate with young people’s moods, concerns, hopes and anguish. Along
with film and television, it provides the backdrop to young people’s perception of the world,
and as such it is probably influencing moral decision-making.
In 2004, the documentary Soundtrack to a war was broadcast on television. Perhaps
more than any recent analysis of popular music, this film showed poignantly how central
music was to the emotions of young people, especially in stressful situations. It showed how
different styles of music accompanied the young men and women in the US armed forces
during the war in Iraq, as well as the music of various Iraqi groups.
It recorded interviews with soldiers in Iraq who were asked how music may have helped
them make sense of the conflict in which they were engaged. Heavy metal, punk, rock, rap,
country and western, as well as traditional folk and religious music, articulated a great spectrum
of emotions, hopes and fears. Music and singing evidently had significant psychological
functions, not the least of which was helping the soldiers cope in their precarious, stressful
situations. For some soldiers, heavy metal music helped pump up the adrenalin needed for
battle. For others, folk or rock music expressed the conflicting emotions they felt about
the war and about their desire to get away from it and go home. Some songs resonated
patriotism while others protested the war. There were also traditional as well as new religious
songs that helped soldiers cope with stress and express their hopes for peaceful outcomes.
Similarly, Iraqis both young and old showed how music and singing, either traditional or
Western, helped express their feelings and hopes.
While often an element of youth culture from which many adults prefer to keep at a safe
distance, the ‘music video’ is a key dimension to young people’s love for music. With their
wealth of evocative images, music videos increase the capacity of popular music to massage
young people’s emotions and moods.
The deconstruction of music videos has been a part of English studies for senior school
students. The following extended quotation from an English teachers’ journal illustrates the
insights that such a study can generate.
Music has long been recognised as a form of popular culture with certain potency for
communicating rhetorically. For young people struggling to find a place in communities
dotted with shopping malls but with few community centres, in an economy whose major
product is information, music videos play to the search for identity and an impoverished
community.
Music, particularly rock, has always had a visual element … [but] viewers typically
do not regard the music video as a commercial for an album or act. The videos cross
the consumer’s gaze as a series of mood states. They trigger nostalgia, regret, anxiety,
confusion, dread, envy, admiration, pity, titillation – attitudes at one remove from the
primal expression such as passion, ecstasy and rage. The moods often express a lack, an
incompletion, an instability, a searching for location. In music videos, those feelings are
carried on flights of whimsy, extended journeys into the arbitrary.
That music videos present compelling mood states that may claim the attention of
the viewer is not a matter of happenstance. In the struggle to establish and maintain a
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 221
following, artists utilise any number of techniques in order to appear exotic, powerful,
tough, sexy, cool, unique.
Born of an amalgam of commercialism, television and film, for the purpose of selling
rock albums, music videos frequently employed well-established verbal and visual symbols
in telling a story or making a point. If no such symbol exists, music videos coin their own
which, given the ubiquity of the medium, quickly find their way into the vernacular.22
The image of the world and ourselves that we see reflected in our culture including, and
perhaps especially, in the mass media are of great significance to us. They shape who we
are and what we become. These images should reflect important realities, but they should
also reveal of what we are capable. They must combine realism and idealism, inspire
as well as educate and entertain. They should never be so bleak that they demoralise
and discourage us. Images of ourselves that dwell on human perfidy, violence, greed and
selfishness ultimately destroy us.24
We found it interesting that when discussing this same question with Year 12 students, there
was resonance with the points Eckersley made. Some students’ analyses of the place of violent
images and obscenity were perceptively argued. Some verbal responses are included below:
The lyrics of songs from groups and singers like Eminem, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Doggy
Dogg, Marilyn Manson, Ice Cube and Niggers with Attitude, represent the outer mark
of youth culture where adults should feel uncomfortable – it’s a ‘no go’ zone where we
define ourselves as opposed to you [meaning adults] … It’s ‘in your face’ stuff; we expect
parents and teachers to get upset.
You might not like the lyrics and the ideas but they’re more honest about the ugly side
of people – at least we can say it; we don’t pretend that it does not exist.
We don’t pay much attention to the words; it’s just the music we like.
222 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
They just say those things to get a reaction and sell records.
It’s only the weird kids who might take it seriously – I guess you’d worry about them.
I like seeing how some of those people live … [rappers and lyrics about gang violence
and culture]. I wouldn’t want to be part of it though.
In the wake of violence in high schools, with the massacre at Columbine High School
standing out as an extreme example, there was renewed debate about the potential influence
of violence in the media – particularly the acceptability and popularity of violent themes
in entertainment. In her book Mayhem: Violence as public entertainment, Sissela Bok noted
that ‘These sources bring into homes depictions of graphic violence … never available to
children and young people in the past’.25 Young multiple killer Kip Kinkel’s favourite CD
was by Nirvana. The lyrics included: ‘Death / with violence / excitement right here / died /
go to hell / take a chance / dead.’
It’s not completely clear what Kurt Cobain had in mind with these lyrics, but they are
lush with nihilism … Luke Woodham, another young killer, listened to goth rocker
Marilyn Manson; and Mitchell Johnston to rapper Tupac Shakur. One doesn’t have to
support censoring any of these artists to see that hurt, isolated kids may not understand
any intended symbolism.26
Bok considered that media violence undermined children’s resilience and self-control –
psychological mechanisms that allow people to bounce back and to count to ten before they
lash out. Some biologists think that there is a genetic component to these traits: that young
men like Luke Woodham and Kip Kinkel possibly lack the DNA that keeps their fingers off
the trigger.
Eckersley noted that where teachers and parents had fought against the influence of mass
media, they mostly won. But he considered that ‘many adults had given up, defeated by the
relentlessness of the struggle, the media’s power, the many other demands on their time and
energy and their own moral confusion’.27
However, it is encouraging to see that when discussion about the spiritual and moral
influence of media culture was initiated with young people, they saw that there was no
agenda to decry or denigrate. Most were ready to deconstruct the media messages about
violence and were equally prepared to try to work out the place of such violent imagery in
the scheme of things; they tried to assess the extent to which these images might be harmful
and to canvass ways in which that harm might be minimised. Rather than see themselves as
opposing an ‘oldie’s’ view, they were happy in the classroom context to become partners in
attempting to understand the problem and find realistic solutions.
There is a strong spiritual dimension to the New Age. It is not only interested in
contemporary philosophies but in ancient wisdom, drawing in an eclectic way from Eastern
and Western spiritual-religious traditions, with a contemporary blend of psychology and
ecology and a profound interest in such things as metaphysics and sacred geometry. Some
New Age movements foster a mystical approach. It can fit within the category of non-
religious spiritualities (8.5.3), and for some adherents it is like an alternative to religion. For
others, New Age practices harmonise with their religious beliefs.
The New Age is particularly concerned with lifestyle and health. It meets a range of
human needs from immediate wellbeing to a sense of connectedness with others and the
world, and to meaning in life. It also has a commercial dimension catering to consumer
spirituality; some practices at the market end of the New Age can be regarded as part of the
self-help industry.
The literature on New Age highlights diversity and spirituality.29 While beyond our scope
here, an appraisal of the spiritual scope of New Age remains an important part of any critical
exploration of the contemporary spirituality that affects young people.
The New Age is mainly an adult and young adult interest. Nevertheless, adolescents and
children will be inquisitive about it when they encounter it in the culture. They may well
try some practices as part of their experimentation in identity and spirituality. What is likely
to appeal to young people is the fluid and non-institutional appearance of the New Age; it
does not prescribe beliefs but is based on individuals piecing together their own spirituality
to suit their needs and interests. Also attractive would be its existential and lifestyle focus,
and its holistic notion of the integration of mind-body-spirit.
process in which they are sorting out their ideas on the nature and extent of spirits, especially
evil ones, in the world.
Young people’s awareness of, and participation in, the movements noted in this and the
preceding sections need further research. Our principal concern is to establish a perspective
on spirituality that would be helpful in appraising the quality of what is offered as spirituality
by these as well as more traditional sources of spirituality.
1 Ideals: As regards direction for living, young people look for guidance in clear statements
of ideas and ideals about life and its management. This does not mean that they are always
ready to adopt these views. An ambivalence may appear in their reluctance to consider ideals
proposed by authority; some may oscillate between being idealistic and not caring. For some,
definite, black-and-white answers are needed; others can live comfortably with fuzzy ideas
about life by focusing on the here and now and on pursuing a particular lifestyle.
2 Varied sources of spirituality: Young people draw from varied sources in constructing their
spirituality: family, friends, personal mentors, their own religion, other religions, secular move
ments. Their values can be modelled on prominent people, heroes/heroines and celebrities.
Their eclectic spirituality can be affected by magazines, film, television and music. They
tend not to see any so-called division between the secular and the religious. They see a
spiritual dimension woven through life. Some actively search for meaning and are said to
have a ‘hunger’ for spirituality. But the proportion that does this may be small; a much greater
number are more concerned with lifestyle.
3 Being part of a community of faith: If they are interested in religion, it will need to appear
personalised, and not too prescriptive as regards morality and beliefs. The feeling of being
accepted and comfortable within a local faith community is crucial; they need to feel that
their needs and interests are being attended to, and they want to have a say in religious
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 225
affairs. It is not inconsistent for some youth to want to dismiss particular religious beliefs and
rules, while at the same time wanting to be part of the community. Some identify with popular
Pentecostal churches. Many youth have little or no interest in organised religion.
4 Group membership: Social and friendship groups often provide a psychological ‘home base’
for adolescents that has a major influence on their thinking and behaviour, especially for girls;
the ‘group’ is often their principal ‘interface with the world’. Online ‘chatting’ and their inner
circle of SMS have become prominent in group communication and identification. There is
often some internal conflict between the desire to be an individual while paying the price of
conformism for group acceptance. Some may see ethnicity as important while others will
dismiss it as irrelevant. Group identification can underpin aggression and violence.
Rather than join specifically religious groups, they may prefer to participate in movements
with social and environmental concerns such as Amnesty International or protest groups,
especially those concerned with improvement of the quality of life. Yet there are a significant
number of young people who do want to be part of a religious group. At universities, many but
not all of those in religious groups tend to be active in evangelising activities.
Some youth can appear to ‘amble’ along this path feeling reasonably self-centred and
comfortable until something dramatic leads to a change in their circumstances or confronts
their opportunistic approach to life – an experience that accelerates their development as
adults as the world intrudes on their thinking.
The prolongation of adolescence tracks back to those of school age and affects their expec
tations. Some can adopt the extended adolescent lifestyle well before they leave school,
regarding school attendance as an extension of their leisure time with some incidental
learning.
6 Cultural plurality: Young people value the global aspects of popular culture with which they
identify, especially clothing styles and music. But at the same time they are ambivalent about
the extensive cultural plurality they experience in Western countries. They are puzzled about
how to understand the extraordinary range of belief systems and behaviours in the culture
and they may take refuge in closed social groups.
226 Reasons for Living Part 2: Meaning, identity and spirituality
7 Social and political concerns: Compared with the politicised views of youth in the 1960s
and 1970s, today’s young people are generally wary of, and disillusioned with, political
institutions and large corporations; authority is questioned and not respected. Yet they do
little to challenge the status quo, realising that they do not have much political leverage
in any case. Rebellion and dissent are expressed through violent and anarchic lyrics in rap
and hip-hop. There is a level of acceptance of job insecurity; there is a pervading sense that
they will have to be adaptable in employment. Some will be prepared to barter a ‘good’ job
for lifestyle options. Still, there is concern about unemployment and exploitative business
practices such as problems with economic rationalism and the globalisation of commerce
– irresponsible economic activity on the part of the corporate world; ‘fair’ trade rather than
‘free’ trade that masks the production of goods by child labour or sweatshops; casualisation
of employment and the deregulation of the Australian workplace. Some young people will not
worry too much about these potential threats as long as they do not appear to affect their
lifestyle. For others, the gap between hopes for career and a successful life and the reality of
possible unemployment is an ongoing source of worry.
9 Anxiety about a violent society: While earlier generations were anxious about a possible
nuclear holocaust, since 9/11, Bali, and terrorist attacks in Britain and Spain, today’s young
people live with a backdrop of global terrorism that has almost daily reminders. As a result,
in perceptibly higher numbers, there is a hardening in prejudice against minorities and those
who do not appear to embrace lifestyle and belief systems similar to what they think is the
Westernised norm; in turn, this generates contrary antagonism on the part of minority groups.
A positive valuing of multiculturalism and a multi-faith community has been diminished as
the hopes for a peaceful and tolerant society recede. Other concerns contributing to anxiety
are levels of crime, more people in prison, increased evidence of security measures and
surveillance, and tighter immigration and refugee controls.
Notes
1 R Eckersley et al. 2006, Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people,
p. 37.
2 Two good examples of these writings are M Strommen & R Hardel 2000, Passing on the faith: A radical
new model for youth and family ministry, and S Reed 1991, Spirituality: Access guides to youth ministry. They
illustrate the interest in youth spirituality within Christian religious circles, taking the standpoint of church
ministry to youth. It is acknowledged that readers who work within such a framework may find that the
Young people and spirituality: Negotiating the perils of adolescence 227
material in this chapter, in terms of its basic aims and assumptions, does not address their particular context
adequately. However, we consider that the issues considered here are just as pertinent to church youth as they
are to those who are more secular in their spirituality. Hence this chapter should not be read as a litany of
young people’s lack of interest in the Church. While there are young people who are very religious and who
identify strongly with their church, there are many others for whom the spiritual relevance of the Church is
at a low ebb. Education in spirituality in any school context needs to take this into account.
3 D Hay & R Nye 1998, The spirit of the child.
4 Generational differences in spirituality have been explored through constructs: baby boomers; generation X;
generation Y. These interpretations give useful insights, particularly if the trends are considered as states of
mind rather than of set characteristics of particular age cohorts. They highlight the changing cultural contexts
and identify distinctive trends in thinking and behaviour. See, for example, T Beaudoin 1998, Virtual faith ;
D Coupland 1991, Generation X; H Mackay 1997, Generations; M Mason et al. 2006, The spirit of generation
Y: Summary of the final report of a three year study. See also section 6.3.8.
5 Reed 1991, p. 3, quoting R Osmer 1989, Challenge to youth ministry in the mainline churches: Thought
provokers.
6 R Coles 1992, The spiritual life of children, p. 278.
7 G Baum 1987, from a keynote address, ‘Pluralism and Religious Identity’, given at the Annual Conference of
the Religious Education Association of the United States and Canada.
8 M Hare Duke & W Whitton 1977, A Kind of Believing? p. 19.
9 H Cox 1995, Fire from Heaven: The rise of pentecostal spirituality and the reshaping of religion in the twenty-first
century.
10 Eckersley et al. 2006, p. 38.
11 R Eckersley 1997, Portraits of youth, p. 243.
12 ibid., p. 244.
13 We attribute this wisdom to Professor Charles Birch. However, he insists that he cannot remember using this
phrase in a lecture in 1965.
14 Eckersley 1997, Portraits of youth, p. 247.
15 C Bye 1998, Generation X is ‘dead’.
16 ibid.
17 D Cameron 2006, The dark side of the screen.
18 Reported in The Daily Telegraph 2006, Outplaying the movies, 2 June, p. 17.
19 D Cameron 2006, The dark side of the screen, Sydney Morning Herald, May 13, p. 13.
20 H Edwards 2006, Web bullies put kids in therapy, The Sun Herald, June 11, p. 49.
21 RW Bibby & DC Posterski 1985, The emerging generation: An inside look at Canada’s teenagers, pp. 32–8.
22 KC Rybacki & DJ Rybacki 2006, Cultural approaches to the rhetorical analysis of selected music videos, Metaphor
1, p. 59. For a more detailed account of the deconstruction of music videos, see also Cultural approaches to the
rhetorical analysis of selected music videos, http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans4/rybacki.htm.
23 R Eckersley 1997, The culture of meaning, the meaning of culture.
24 ibid., p. 8.
25 S Bok 1998, Mayhem: Violence as public entertainment, quoted in J Cloud et al. 1998, Of arms and the
boy.
26 Cloud et al. 1998, p. 40.
27 R Eckersley, The culture of meaning, p. 7.
28 M Ryan 1997, A New Age Dawning.
29 See the Bibliography under New Age spirituality.
30 See L Pastva 1986, Sects and cults, in Great Religions of the World, pp. 227–39. Pastva quotes a psychological
profile of those most likely to join a sect or new religious movement. Saul Levine, a US psychologist, has
researched the passage of young people through such movements; he concludes that psychological needs are a
principal factor; most youth eventually leave the groups without suffering too much long-term psychological
damage. See SV Levine 1984, Radical Departures, and Radical departures in psychology today.
10 Educating young
people in meaning,
identity and spirituality
The previous chapters in this part of the book provided background on the constructs meaning,
identity and spirituality, together with initial suggestions as to what constituted ‘health’ in each.
Judgments about what constitutes healthy personal development need to be based on values,
and they need to be clearly articulated as a prerequisite to any planning of an education in
meaning, identity and spirituality. The task of this chapter is to work from the notion of what
constitutes health in these areas towards content and pedagogy that might promote personal
development. This will be done in a generic way, with attention to implications and related
issues in different school contexts taken up in Parts 3–5.
228
Educating young people in meaning, identity and spirituality 229
While this book is mainly educational in its focus, much of the analysis in Part 2 can be useful
for professionals variously engaged in the care of youth. For these readers, the principles in this
chapter still have relevance in the sense that a broad understanding of education in meaning,
identity and spirituality is applicable to youth counselling, welfare and other activities in both
advocacy for, and care of, youth.
The generic education in meaning, identity and spirituality considered here is proposed as a
‘guide’ for giving direction to young people’s exploration of processes and issues in meaning,
identity and spirituality. In the school context, it would not be a new subject seeking a place
in the curriculum, but a thematic study that can be included in learning areas like religion or
personal development, as well as having potential for integration elsewhere in the curriculum.
It can serve as a template or a perspective for showing how an education in meaning, identity
and spirituality can enter into the key learning areas.
For convenience, the phrase ‘personal development education’ will be used in this chapter as
shorthand for an ‘education in meaning, identity and spirituality’.
ethnicity, multiculturalism, democracy, religious freedom, respect for individuality, the need
for shared values, as well as problems like racism and sexism.3 Students could learn about the
psychological and social functions of ethnicity, about its enrichment of the country’s cultural
resources, as well as about its potential for conflict.
School education contributes to young people’s ‘cultural exposure’ in a general way; it
may extend their cultural horizons beyond what they might absorb from their immediate
home and community environment. For example, young people need to know about
the religions in their society. A general study of religions may also contribute to a better
understanding of their own religious tradition, whether or not they are practising members.
The curriculum will inevitably deal with cultural, ethnic and religious diversity in a generic
way, but it is not responsible for trying to cover any particular tradition comprehensively.
Independent schools have more scope to do this and it is evident in the denominational
religious education that they often provide.
Schools, therefore, should provide a range of cultural resources for their students’ personal
development,4 though the extent to which these are assimilated depends on the individual.
The school’s contribution is one of many from the different cultural sources that influence
the young.
What is attempted at school in terms of education in meaning, identity and spirituality
complements but does not substitute for what should be done by the family and the various
communities in which young people participate. Children and adolescents have a right to a
basic level of cultural heritage as meaning and identity resources. Requiring them to start life
with a tabula rasa as far as these resources are concerned would be unfair.
An evaluative dimension is essential for any personal development education. The young
need to become more aware of the shaping influence of culture on people’s spiritual and
moral development so that they can be more discerning of the factors that affect their own
thinking and behaviour.
The extensive range of issues in meaning, identity and spirituality covered in this part of
the book can be overwhelming for educators if they read too much in one sitting, or wonder
about how they might deal with so much content in class. They might be intimidated
by the thought of themselves trying to become a classroom ‘Dr Phil’ (Dr Phil McGraw
conducts a popular television counselling program), forever dispensing packages of wisdom
to a youthful audience that is not interested or responsive. This image misinterprets the
educational role of the teacher and it overestimates both the time and scope that might be
available for addressing the issues. The agenda in the foregoing chapters is principally for
the education and personal development of educators. It can contribute to the background
knowledge and wisdom they bring to their educational dealings with young people – but
they do not have to tell all they know!
Nevertheless, there is a side to the Dr Phil analogy that is pertinent here, and it has to
do with pedagogy. The style of Socratic questioning employed by Dr Phil in his counselling
program has useful pedagogical implications for personal development education. This is
not to say that therapy or counselling should be a principal paradigm for classroom teaching,
but it does suggest that judicious questions asked by teachers about the meaning of what is
being studied can help young people learn how to think critically. Such Socratic questioning
probes for meaning but does not pry into students’ privacy. Much of the personal learning in
the classroom is unnoticed; it takes place within the safety of private reflection.
that students need to share at a personal level when discussing issues in the classroom, or that
they need to draw personal implications then and there as part of a lesson. If they feel free
enough to want to share personal views, then their contributions should be respected and
valued. But to expect such personal contributions on cue is to put unethical psychological
pressure on them.
The power of reason to change people for the better should not be overestimated. While
education can enhance young people’s meanings, it should not be expected to perform
behavioural miracles. So the popular notion of ‘transformative education’, which is intended
to change students personally, needs to be used with caution.6
10.1.5 Background of the teacher (or facilitator, counsellor etc.) in relation to the
educative process
The first and most important step for community activity designed to foster young people’s
meaning, identity and spirituality is the development of understanding of the relevant issues
on the part of the adults involved. The sorts of issues with which they need to be familiar were
illustrated in the previous chapters in Part 2. How educators understand these questions will
filter through into their interactions with students both in the formal curriculum and outside
the classroom. While teacher–student relationships can be significant in fostering young
people’s personal development, the focus here and in later chapters will be on classroom
teaching–learning transactions.
Having an explicit code of teaching ethics is essential if teachers are to enhance, and
never manipulate, the meanings of their students (13.11).
10.2.2 Knowledge of traditional cultural meanings about human nature and purpose
Young people need to know about the role of traditional agencies like family, religions
and community groups in the communication of meaning. This includes knowledge and
understanding of their own religion, world religions and non-religious worldviews (whether
Educating young people in meaning, identity and spirituality 233
or not they are affiliated with religion), as well as of issues like secularisation. There is also
psychology, which can help people make sense of their lives. Consideration of how beliefs
help give purpose and value to life provides an opportunity for young people to reflect on
their own personal search for meaning in a puzzling world.
The study of religions and worldviews needs to avoid being caught up in descriptive
details; it should include a strong issue-oriented component; attention should be given to
‘psychological’ and ‘social’ functions of systems of beliefs, while showing sufficient respect
for the traditions in their own right to avoid treating them in a purely instrumental way.
The study of traditional meaning systems needs to be complemented by an investigation
of the meaning-making significance of the media, especially film and television.
development. But this role needs clarification; it cannot be endorsed without qualification.
It is not principally concerned with the handing on of distinctive cultural and ethnic
heritage, but with helping young people understand how heritage affects identity, and how
they might make best use of identity resources.
Schools therefore have a limited role in young people’s identity development. Schools,
including religious schools, are not as influential as are other agencies and forums for the
communication of cultural, ethnic and religious identities. Sometimes parents and school
authorities tend to overrate the scope and the effectiveness of the school’s contribution.
In accord with sound teaching ethics, an education in identity should respect the
freedom and integrity of the individual, and his or her right to participation in the process
of identity development. Hence it involves not just the teaching of identity content, but
a study of the complex identity-forming process itself. Such a dual approach could help
young people become better informed about identity formation in a way that prompted
their own increasingly conscious participation (depending on their age and maturity). While
learning about aspects of cultural, ethnic and religious identity, they could become more
aware of identity-related issues. This could help them become more reflective about their
own identity as linked interactively with heritage and contemporary cultural elements, while
avoiding any excessive emphasis on self analysis.
Four areas merit special attention.
10.3.3 The relationships between cultural identity resources and the personal
construction of identity
The scheme for identity in Chapter 6 offers young people a useful interpretive framework
for exploring relationships between the external, cultural identity resources proposed by
agencies in the community (home, religion, peers, popular culture) and inner, personal
identity resources.
Their identity development needs to be resourced by community efforts to communicate
some basic sense of identity to them when they are children; this informs their initial self-
understanding and interpretation of society. They would be disadvantaged by an education
that kept them in a type of identity vacuum until they were mature enough to determine
their own identity; that is, choose rationally in the light of an appraisal of the many values
and identity components available in a pluralist, multicultural society. This is a more adult-
oriented process; it needs to be scaled appropriately for children and adolescents.
But educational efforts to communicate a particular identity should not be exclusive,
trying to impose a fixed identity that inhibits individuals’ growing conscious involvement
in determining their own identity. Rather, a basic starting point in identity development is
needed – a cultural identity inheritance. This will be one significant contribution towards
young people’s mature identity, but not necessarily an all-encompassing or predetermining
one.
Educational institutions (both public and religious) need to ensure that their curriculum
includes adequate attention to the culture and traditions needed by students as identity
‘building materials’ (with the qualification noted earlier about the limits to this role). The
idea is to give students access to these resources, along with those provided by home and other
agencies, as well as by the wider culture. Whether or not individuals incorporate particular
elements into their sense of identity cannot be determined by teachers. The school might
introduce some students to potential identity resources they might not otherwise encounter.
Education can open them to larger cultural horizons, and to a broader imagination of the
sort of person they could be.
achieving independence from, and less reliance on, traditional authorities like parents and
religion. But this does not necessarily require conflict or rebellion. It is more a ‘differentiation’
of the new adult. What is important is a new level of maturity in relationships between the
individual and authorities, flowing from a new level of maturity in values, commitments and
self-motivated behaviour. In some instances it will involve open conflict, and this may have a
variety of causes: it may be that either the individual or the authority (parents, for example),
or both, do not want the new level of independence. There is also a need to consider the
economic dimensions of this issue; shrewd marketing has played up teenage rebellion as a
selling point for consumer products. Advertising psychology is alert to capitalising on young
people’s identity vulnerabilities.
An evaluative approach can have personal implications for students because it covers
questions about the moral character of self-expression. It can inform their own self-evaluation:
they may or may not do this in their own time and space. This is a potential personal
enhancement arising from the educational process, but not an intentional educational
requirement. Education in identity is not concerned with moral evaluation of the students,
but with the moral evaluation of issues that may affect identity generally.
Some aspects of self-expression may not be in the best interests of the individual or it
may be harmful to others. This is related to popular thinking about what constitutes one’s
‘better self ’. There are both light and dark sides to the self. The mature, moral individual can
be interpreted as one whose better self is maximised in expression and behaviour, and where
harmful behaviours that may emanate from the negative self are minimised. Fidelity to one’s
own personal beliefs and values could be proposed as a mark of a morally mature self.
10.6 Conclusion
The chapters in Part 2 have covered a substantial range of issues related to meaning, identity
and spirituality. Educators and other professionals concerned with the care of youth need a
basic familiarity with this agenda, which can also serve as a stimulus for further research. If
young people are to be helped to identify and negotiate this agenda, then it first must take
root in the knowledge and understanding of youth care professionals.
This chapter has begun the task of considering educational implications; how these
might be implemented in different contexts will be taken up in the next parts of the book.
Notes
1 There are some variations in records of this quotation from Chief Sitting Bull. This version came from the
Carnegie Museum in Pittsbugh, PA. A more common version is ‘Let us put our heads together to see what
we can do for ourselves and for our children and for the Seventh Generation yet to Come’. Retrieved from
http://www.mhanation.com/main/news/11_29_01_hall_wins_ncai.html Accessed 5/5/05.
2 R Eckersley 2000, Wealth, health and youth: The impacts and implications of progress, quoted in T Wallace
2000, Values and spirituality: enriching curriculum development and teaching/learning processes for a new
millennium.
3 In Chapters 11 and 17 it will be suggested that studies which use these questions as titles for units or work
(e.g. tolerance, respect) are likely to be less relevant to students because they are perceived as exhortatory.
Where these questions emerge as part of a more general topic (e.g. the relationship between identity and
violence) they can be considered more effectively.
4 As considered in later chapters, the study of cultural traditions needs to strike a balance between descriptive
content and content or pedagogy that is more relevant to students’ needs and interests. There needs to be
respect for the integrity of the traditions being studied, while acknowledging that young people will make
differential use of these traditions as personal development resources in the fashioning of their own worldview.
In one sense, the traditions are being studied instrumentally to foster students’ personal development, rather
than for their own sake; seeking personal relevance should be an integral part of the study of traditions.
Correspondingly, the other extreme should be avoided: where this is such a strong focus on encouraging
students to construct their own personal meaning that the study of traditions becomes fragmented and
incoherent. A good balance between the two emphases is often promoted by the use of student-centred
pedagogies.
5 The contributions that the school might make to young people’s personal development will range from
comparatively insignificant to important; it will depend on the individuals, their personalities, their needs and
level of maturity.
6 Whether or not there is a transformational pedagogy, as opposed to a non-transformational one, is considered
in Chapter 13.
7 There has been an extensive debate about spirituality in public education in the United Kingdom for many
years. It is well documented in books and in journals like Journal of Moral Education, British Journal of
Religious Education, International Journal of Children’s Education, and the Journal of Beliefs and Values. A
tendency to be more hesitant about studying religious spirituality has been related to unvoiced fears about the
possibility of religious indoctrination. Watson (2004) has suggested that in theory and practice there is too
much bias towards non-religious spirituality, concentrating on generic aspects of spirituality. She argues that
both religious and non-religious spirituality need to be studied critically in public education. See B Watson
2004, Spirituality in British state education: An alternative perspective, Journal of Beliefs and Values 25(1):
55–62.
8 From a pedagogical point of view, a full range of evaluative activities can make useful contributions to young
people’s personal learning skills: studying issues, getting relevant information, reading, reflecting, getting
advice, listening to something inspiring, and informed discussion.
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3
Part
Even where there were no official statements detailing the school’s aim to promote the spiritual
and moral development of young people, it is likely that this purpose would have been implied
in the ways teachers looked after their students. They were always concerned with the welfare
of their students as persons, and not just with the development of literacy and numeracy. What
was said in a recent national education statement in 2003 had long been the case in practice:
‘education is as much about building character as it is about equipping students with specific
skills.’2 The importance of this spiritual-moral aim has probably never been in question, but
articulating what it implies for classroom practice has remained a perennial problem. Perennial,
because the problem has been not so much in finding the right content and pedagogy, but in
the very complexity of young people’s spiritual and moral development itself. The links between
teaching and learning processes and personal change in students are naturally much more
complex and tenuous than those with knowledge of mathematics or science.
This chapter is concerned with the public discourse about the spiritual and moral dimension to
the school curriculum. Ongoing clarification of what this dimension entails is needed if there are
to be both realistic purposes and effective implementation.
243
244 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
The first important distinction to be made is between the spiritual-moral influence of the school
as a community (through its social and organisational structures) and the curriculum (what is
planned and implemented in classroom practice). While not questioning the importance of the
former, the discussion here will be concerned mainly with the latter.
Problems appeared in the discourse because insufficient attention was given to the different
(but related) requirements of each area. For example, talk about ‘values education’ was often
diffuse and unfocused because it tried to address all four areas at once; the ensuing vagueness
hampered both the conceptualisation of a values dimension to education and implementation
The evolution in personal development aims for Australian education 245
in the classroom. More differentiation and precision are needed for the agendas in each of
these four areas. Most of our attention in Part 3 will be given to the fourth area.
Table 11.1 Emergence of personal development terms in national documents on the goals for Australian
schools
Personal development The Hobart declaration on New elements added by New elements added by
terms used to articulate schooling: Common and The Adelaide declaration the National Framework
the goals of schools agreed national goals for on national goals for for Values Education in
as introduced by each schooling in Australia schools in the 21st Australian Schools (2003)
document: (1989) century (1999)
Personal characteristics attitudes; values; self- self-worth; social, moral, character; personal
confidence; optimism; high spiritual and aesthetic fulfilment; commitment;
self-esteem; respect for development; healthy wellbeing;
others; personal excellence; lifestyle
resilience (as an antidote
judgment in morality, ethics,
to youth suicide and
and social justice
youth substance abuse);
engagement; belonging;
empowerment;
participation; service;
improved relationships;
holistic development.
Derived qualities active and informed stewardship of the personal and social
citizens; concern for natural environment; responsibilities; civic
balanced development and respect for our cultural participation.
the global environment. heritage.
Gradually, a comprehensive set of purposes emerged for public education that addressed
spiritual and moral development. This in itself is a significant achievement, as is the listing
of core values noted in section 11.1.2. However, persistent difficulties remain in areas 3 and
4 on implementation.
While the significance of personal aims for schooling is acknowledged, their ultimate
impact depends on the school context, which may be affected more by other aims. Depending
on where the relative emphasis is placed in practice, conflict in aims can occur, or the
marginalisation of some purposes. For example, the fourth national goal for schooling in
the Hobart Declaration (1989) signalled the growing importance that aims with economic,
employment and productivity implications would have in the decades ahead:
246 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
Aim 4: To respond to the current and emerging economic and social needs of the nation,
and to provide those skills which will allow students maximum flexibility and adaptability
in their future employment and other aspects of life.6
Government schools should actively promote the moral values which are shared by
the majority of people in our community. There is merit in the clear statement of this
responsibility.
In particular, this document will give greater emphasis to the link between education,
work and personal fulfilment, as well as encouraging imagination, creativity, excellence
and the search for meaning and purpose in life. It will give more recognition to the
place of the family and family values in our society and the rights and responsibilities
of parents in the area of morals and values. Greater stress will be placed on students
achieving high standards of self-discipline, personal conduct and social responsibility.
As recommended … the document will also acknowledge the importance of all students
developing spiritual values.8
The statement, with parallels in more recent national documents,9 is something of an icon
as regards the mandate for a spiritual-moral dimension to public education. But at the same
time, it creates considerable problems for educators. It will remain little more than rhetoric
if it cannot be translated into realistic, even if modest, practice. Addressing this question is
the basic agenda of this book.
While we consider that the spiritual-moral dimension to the curriculum is the most
extensive and useful construct for covering the personal development aims of education,
it would be a mistake to use it (or any of the other terms in Table 11.1) exclusively. All of
the listed terms highlight a distinctive aspect of personal development, even though they
overlap. They are all personal and complex, and difficult to define. As far as their links with
education are concerned, there is a natural ambiguity and uncertainty that is not there in
education dealing with knowledge and skills. For this reason, it is important to continually
clarify the discourse about the spiritual-moral dimension to education.
How to address this dimension to the curriculum has been approached in various ways.
The National Values Education Study is one; most of the school projects it has sponsored
revolve around promoting the common values listed in the national statement, as noted in
11.1.2 below. The approach proposed in this book is to explore a range of psycho-social issues
that youth need to negotiate in meaning, identity and spirituality as they develop and mature
as persons. This is not so much a list of potential personal development outcomes, but an
agenda for student study and investigation – and a prerequisite study of that same agenda by
teachers. A good education will at least inform young people about this agenda, with the hope
that their educational engagement with the issues may eventually have a positive flow-on to
their values, beliefs and attitudes. If and when personal change occurs, this will be the choice
of the individual and not an automatic outcome of the educational process.
The other crucial matter to note yet again here is the evaluative dimension to promoting
young people’s spiritual-moral development. While the ‘search’ for meaning and identity
is said to be important for young people, the potential for being ‘overrun’ with cultural
meanings and identities needs to be addressed by cultivating critical evaluative skills.
11.1.2 Listing of core values for education (both the values underpinning
education and the values it is hoped will be developed in students)
The construct ‘values education’ as a general term has two meanings: ‘values in education’ and
‘education in values’.10 The former refers to the values that are embedded in the particular
248 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
educational context, which influence both the content and process of the curriculum as well as
the organisational structure and function of the school. The latter refers to classroom strategies
for educating young people with respect to values (this is considered in 11.1.3 and 11.1.4).
Ideally, there should be congruence between what the school ‘teaches’ about values and
the values the students experience in the school’s operation. At least to some extent, they can
be socialised into community values in the school because they are affected by the way in
which they are treated by teachers and fellow students; they can ‘learn’ values through a type
of ‘social osmosis’. Hence it is important that these values be articulated.
In 1991, in his book Values education in Australian schools, Brian Hill claimed that the
potential influence of values in schools was not always properly acknowledged, and that
when this happened, negative values education occurred – negative by default.
Apart from anything else they might learn, [school] students get the message that, in
the things which it includes and excludes, the curriculum mirrors the priorities which
the community sets on things such as personal worth, job preparation, ‘the basics’, ‘the
disciplines’, the rights of minorities, and so on.
Values education goes on, therefore, even when we are not consciously planning for it.
But when its effect is not acknowledged or controlled, the result is often that the wrong
values for life are propagated by default. In schools where the emphasis is on learning
subjects to gain good marks in order to beat others into higher education and better
jobs, students are encouraged to develop a very self-centred and consumer-oriented value
system. 11
Hill argued for efforts to humanise the unwritten curriculum – that is, to identify, appraise
and make more positive the values implied in schools’ organisational life and curriculum.
Writing again on this topic in 2004, Hill acknowledged the significant progress that has
been made in articulating core values for Australian public education. He drew attention
to developments evident in State education department documents (values charters for
schools),12 to the cross-sectoral core values project in Western Australia,13 as well as to the
2002–03 (and ongoing) Commonwealth Values Education Study.14 Hill’s own individual
contribution to this progress is noteworthy. All of this established the notion of ‘values in
education’ more strongly in the Australian education discourse.
The statement of nine shared values listed in the National Framework for Values
Education is included here.15 (The draft version of ten values, 2003, was restructured into
nine in 2005.
The government has required that all schools display a poster listing the nine core values.
While not taking away from the significance of this progress, the charting of core values
for schools and the listing of personal development aims are simpler tasks than those needed
for area 3, and especially for area 4, where the focus is on teaching and learning strategies
and on content that might occasion personal change in young people.
11.1.3 Particular teaching programs in values, and in subjects like Ethics, Personal
Development, Religion and Philosophy
In the National Project, two prominent examples were Living Values Education16 and The
Virtues Project.17 Their attempt to educate young people in relation to values involved
The evolution in personal development aims for Australian education 249
Nine values for Australian schooling (2005) Notes referring to the 2003
These shared values, such as respect and ‘fair go’, are part of Australia’s draft list
common democratic way of life, which includes equality, freedom and the rule
of law. They reflect our commitment to a multicultural and environmentally
sustainable society where all are entitled to justice.
2 Doing Your Best (Seek to accomplish something worthy and admirable, try Had been named as
hard, pursue excellence) Excellence.
3 Fair Go (Pursue and protect the common good where all people are treated Had been named as
fairly for a just society) Social justice.
4 Freedom (Enjoy all the rights and privileges of Australian citizenship free from
unnecessary interference or control, and stand up for the rights of others)
5 Honesty and Trustworthiness (Be honest, sincere and seek the truth) Trustworthiness was
transferred from the earlier
value Inclusion and trust.
6 Integrity (Act in accordance with principles of moral and ethical conduct, Previously named as Ethical.
ensure consistency between words and deeds)
7 Respect (Treat others with consideration and regard, respect another person’s
point of view)
9 Understanding, Tolerance and Inclusion (Be aware of others and their The earlier value Inclusion
cultures, accept diversity within a democratic society, being included and and trust was absorbed into
including others) Tolerance and understanding
to give the new version.
What needs further clarification is the notion of ‘personal change or growth’ (and
‘spiritual and moral development’), which is both appropriate and realistic as a purpose for
public education. If this is not done, then it will remain a nominal platitude in educational
aims.
and informative study, leaving the question of potential personal change off the agenda,
and in the hands of the students themselves. Consistent with this approach, we propose
that the constructs meaning, identity and spirituality can be very useful because they yield
many relevant issues for across-the-curriculum studies – issues that the students will in all
likelihood need to negotiate at some stage in their personal and social development.
professional development, and revising the national framework and principles for values
education.21
Earlier we proposed that the idea of a spiritual-moral dimension to the school curriculum
is ‘larger’ than what can be covered under the auspices of values education, and that the latter
needs to be further contextualised within the former. Special attention also needs to be given
to across-the-curriculum studies.
The Final Report of the Project (2003) noted how difficult it was to define values and
values education, adopting definitions from its literature review:
Values: Values are ‘the principles and fundamental convictions which act as general guides
to behaviour, the standards by which particular actions are judged as good or desirable’.22
Values education: Values education refers to any explicit and/or implicit school-based
activity to promote student understanding and knowledge of values, and to inculcate the
skills and dispositions of students so they can enact particular values as individuals and as
members of the wider community.23
It also dealt with three ‘domains’ of values education: 1. articulating values in the school’s
mission/ethos; 2. developing student civic and social skills and building resilience; and 3.
incorporating values into teaching programs across the key learning areas.
What now needs consideration is how values education relates to the educational pursuit
of other personal
��������������������������������������������������������������������������������
development components like moral development, spiritual and religious
development and those listed in Table 11.1. The key to this task is their common concern
with bringing about personal change in students; and this depends on the ways in which
teaching and learning activities actually mesh with young people’s personal development
processes. In turn, these considerations raise fundamental questions such as: ‘Can we
intentionally “inculcate” or “teach” values in the classroom?’ ‘What are the possibilities and
limitations for promoting any personal change in that context?’ This fundamental agenda is
taken up in the next three chapters, which clarify the links between education and personal
change.
11.2.2 Reducing the problematic gap between personal aims for education and
classroom practice
The hiatus between personal development aims for education and classroom practice will
be interpreted in the following terms: the complexity of personal development; naturally
problematic links between teaching and personal change in students; and the lack of ade
quate theory to give teachers the confidence and scope to ‘teach for personal change’.
11.2.3 Developing adequate theory and realistic strategies for promoting students’
personal development through across-the-curriculum studies
The need for a more realistic conceptualisation of the spiritual and moral dimension to the
school curriculum applies particularly to across-the-curriculum studies; here, while not so
much the case in studies like religion and values education programs, it is more difficult to
The evolution in personal development aims for Australian education 253
see how the ordinary teaching and learning activities in the classroom can promote students’
personal development.
A common thread in the issues discussed in this chapter is the need for an adequate
theory linking educational processes with young people’s personal development. While this
book does not claim to solve the problem, it works in the direction of constructing a useful
theory.
Notes
1 W Campbell et al. 1992, Visions of a future Australian society: Towards an education curriculum for 2000 AD
and beyond, quoted in BV Hill 2004, Exploring religion in school: A national priority, p. 44.
2 Curriculum Corporation 2003, Draft National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (prepared
for the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training), p. 6.
3 NSW Government 1957, Report of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales
(the Wyndham Report), p. 40.
4 Listed here is a sample of state and Commonwealth education documents that illustrate the emergence of
personal development terms used as goals for education:
Australian Education Council (& MYCEETYA) 1989, Common and Agreed National Goals for Schooling in
Australia (the Hobart Declaration).
Australian Education Council (& MYCEETYA) 1999, The Adelaide Declaration on national goals for schooling
in the twenty-first century (the Adelaide Declaration).
Curriculum Corporation 2003, Values education study: Final report (Prepared for the Australian Government
Department of Education, Science and Training), Curriculum Corporation, Melbourne.
Curriculum Corporation 2003, Draft National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools.
Department of Education, Science and Training 2005, National Framework for values education in Australian
schools.
NSW Government 1957, Report of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales
(the Wyndham Report).
NSW Government 1989, White Paper on curriculum reform in schools in NSW.
NSW Department of School Education 1991, The values we teach.
Qld Committee for the Review of the School Curriculum 1994, Report of the Review of the Queensland school
curriculum: Shaping the future, vol. 3.
SA Department of Education 1991, Common knowledge, 8–10.
Victorian Ministry of Education 1988, The Social education framework, P–10: Effective participation in
society.
WA Curriculum Branch, Education Department of Western Australia 1985, Social Studies K–10 Syllabus.
5 Some books from the 1980s that promoted the idea of a holistic education at that time: H & D Dufty 1989,
Thinking whole: The quest for a new educational paradigm; T Lovat & D Smith 1990, Curriculum: Action on
reflection, p. viii; H Beare 1989, The curriculum for the 1990s: A new package or a new spirit?; G Boomer 1982,
Negotiating the curriculum: A teacher–student partnership; E Eisner 1982, Cognition and curriculum: A basis for
deciding what to teach.
6 Australian Education Council (& MYCEETYA) 1989, p. 1; Curriculum Corporation 2003, Draft national
framework, p. 6.
7 B Nelson 2002, Schools must teach values (letter to The Age by the Commonwealth Minister for Education
announcing the National Values Education Project)�.
8 T Metherell 1990, Excellence and Equity: New South Wales curriculum reform.
9 Australian Education Council (& MYCEETYA) 1999, p. 1; Curriculum Corporation 2003, Draft national
framework, p. 6.
10 This distinction was highlighted in JM Halstead & MJ Taylor (eds) 1996, Values in education and education
in values.
11 BV Hill 1991, Values education in Australian schools, p. 3.
254 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
12 BV Hill 2004, Values Education in Schools: Issues and challenges. Keynote address at the National Values
Education Forum; BV Hill 2004, Core values in the balance. Keynote paper presented at the ACER national
conference on Student Well-being, Adelaide. See also the references in note 2.
13 WA Cross-Sectoral Consortium 1995, Agreed Minimum Values Framework.
14 See references in note 4.
15 Department of Education, Science and Training, 2005, National framework for values education in Australian
schools, p. 4.
16 www.interfaithstudies.org/ethics/valueseducation.html.
17 www.virtuesproject.com/virtues.html.
18 Curriculum Corporation 2003, Draft national framework, p. 6.
19 Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, 2001, Developmental Health and Well Being:
Australia’s Future, http://www.dest.gov.au/science/pmseic/documents/Child_health. Accessed 5/1/05.
20 B Nelson 2002, p. 13.
21 Curriculum Corporation 2003, Values education study: Final report, p. 18.
22 Halstead & Taylor 2000, Learning and teaching about values: A review of recent research.
23 Curriculum Corporation 2003, Values education study, p. 8.
12
Expectations of schools
for promoting the spiritual
and moral development
of young people
255
256 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
This chapter addresses the vexed question of the spiritual-moral role of schools. It looks first at
parental expectations. Of all groups in the community, it is usually the parents of students who
have the greatest hopes that education will bring about desirable personal change. The National
Values Education Study acknowledged that ‘[w]ithin the community at large there is a growing
debate and discussion about what values our children should learn, where our children should
learn their values and how they will acquire them’.2
Given the now well-established influence of economic and business interests on education,
expectations from this quarter also need to be considered. Finally, the chapter looks at
expectations for personal change implied in educational theory – in various educative themes
and learning theories, as well as in literature concerned with the future of schooling.
At the outset, it is important to differentiate between concerns about the personal influence
of the formal curriculum and that of the school as a community. Both aspects have potential
for affecting young people. While the special interest here is in the former, it is the latter that
probably has more personal influence.
This belief that schools can cure society’s ills simply by running specific courses about
them is regularly reinforced by the various media gurus who daily define our social
realities for us. The conclusion is reached that the only answer to the problems is better
Expectations of schools for promoting spiritual and moral development 257
education; schools must take more responsibility! This places teachers under enormous
pressure. They are being submerged under what can be appropriately called an ‘addition’
curriculum, now with more additives than a dry packed dinner.4
Educators should resist having unrealistic expectations for student personal change placed
on schooling. At the same time, their understandable irritation at such expectations should
not make them insensitive to the important educational issues that underlie the sentiments
in the letter. Does the average high school curriculum give so much attention to the main
success/employment-oriented subjects that students perceive that little if any value is
ascribed to studying what it means to become fully human? If the evident concern of the
school is to develop language, mathematical, scientific and other academic abilities, and if
there is no comparable study of personal, moral and spiritual growth, then the very absence
of academic attention to these areas can be saying to young people that there is no special
educational interest in how they develop as persons – this can take care of itself, or it will
happen incidentally while the ‘real’ education goes on. This may be affirming the images of
success that are dominant in society, which in turn are influencing the way students perceive
(or do not perceive) value in their education.
This relates to the problem of negative values education by default (noted in 11.2). On
this question, Hill considered that it puts ‘more value on subject matter than on the persons
being subjected to it. And this is a value in itself. Because it has been unfashionable to talk
about values in education, or at least to do anything explicit about them, unexamined values
which tend to dehumanise students have been a hidden curriculum in our schools.’5
Problems in society are inevitably reflected in schools in some way or other. They can be
mirrored in the values, or lack of particular values, within the school’s structures, curriculum
and social life (for example excessive individualism and competitiveness). While schools
cannot be expected to be utopias of virtue, they can be expected to take a values stance and a
view of how their curriculum and school life can contribute positively to students’ personal
development.
Sometimes the expectation that schools should address social problems takes the form
of a naive structuralism. That means adding a school structure that is intended to minimise
a problem while having tenuous ideas as to how the structure will actually affect students.
Also, loading a particular structure with the responsibility of bringing about social change
can inhibit efforts to see what might be done across the curriculum. A magazine cover story
on education in the 1990s illustrates the point:
A Principal – supported by parents who, in the wake of the recent government financial
fiasco, are disillusioned with businessmen and politicians alike – has introduced Ethics
into his school’s curriculum … [to help students recognise] the consequences of the
shortsightedness, selfishness and greed that seemed to come to a head in the 80s.
[Another Principal] It’s certainly becoming more evident recently that there is a need
for values teaching. We are looking to firming up on responsibilities and duty – duty to
the community is coming back in. There is an increasing disenchantment with money-
making in reaction to the government inquiry on corruption and the bankruptcy of the
‘high-flyer’ businessmen. Where we’ve always been considered a very secular school, 12
months ago we actually took a chaplain onto the staff. It went through without too much
258 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
opposition. His main role is as a social worker, but there is hope he will work more and
more in the values and ethics area.6
The schools’ role, as part of the wider community’s attempts to address social problems, is
related to what schools do best: helping students to be well informed and to learn how to
think about the issues.7 These methods can become part of their learning for life. Despite
efforts by schools to fulfil this modest but valuable role, people’s perception of the extent of
youth social problems still leads them to think that schools are failing. This compounds the
problematic gap that already exists between the personal aims for education and practice.
Addressing this gap is the concern of the next two chapters, but at this point it can be noted
that efforts to develop more realistic community expectations will be helpful.
Another problem with community expectations occurs in the very subjects that are
supposed to bring about personal change, such as Personal Development, Living Skills,
Religion. These can be dismissed by young people because they have no perceived relevance.
While some parents, perhaps many, will nominally endorse their importance, they too feel
that in practical terms these subjects have negligible personal impact, as well as doing
little to help careers. The students are then reflecting the attitudes of their parents. More
will be said about this problem in 14.3.1 under the heading ‘psychology of the learning
environment’.
Table 12.1 Analysis of the Minister for Education’s public letter on values education
Taking a positive values stance and avoiding value Education in values needs to take place in a context
neutrality with explicit values. It needs an appropriate code
of ethics for teaching, particularly in relation to any
[There is a] great risk in adopting a position of moral
reference to teachers’ own views and commitments.
neutrality with young people. To deliberately not take a
stand on life choices – drug use, exploitation of others, A stance of values neutrality is undesirable; it can
relationships with authority, or sexual activity – is to convey negative values by default.
send a powerful subliminal message that ‘anything
goes’.
Importance of a spiritual/moral dimension to education Attention to the spiritual and moral dimension of
education ensures that it is holistic and not just
Without a context of meaning rooted in values,
utilitarian.
education serves only a utilitarian purpose. It must also
be the basis of our faith in the next generation to build a
better future.
The comments in the second column highlight principles that need ongoing attention in
both educational theory and practice.
Table 12.2 Results from a survey on the role of schools in values education
Values should be taught as part of the curriculum/all subjects not just one
that many educators are, as Postman and Weingartner described, ‘simple, romantic people
who risk contributing to the mental-health problem by maintaining a [stubborn] belief in
the improvability of the human condition through education’.10 They hastened to add that
they were not so simple and romantic as to think that all social problems are susceptible to
solutions by any means, including education. But they suggested that education is one of the
best long-term investments for minimising some social problems – as well as a good starting
point for addressing them.
Today’s society has gradually changed the rules about what is expected of schooling.
From the 1960s it became more evident that schools were reflecting the profound changes
that were occurring in society. As noted earlier, various education programs were introduced
as part of the community’s response to immediate problems. Some argue that the demands
on the school have been too many and inappropriate, claiming that the primary role of
education has been, and should always be, the study of traditional subjects and that it should
not be influenced or undermined by calls to take up new interests or fads. There is some
justification for this criticism. Particular innovations have not always been judicious, often
serving the purposes of misguided enthusiasts or unscrupulous careerists.
Given that only important but realistic social demands should be made of schools,
educators should consider the direction that schooling might take to meet the current and
emerging needs of young people. But in doing this, they ought also take into account what
schools do best in relation to promoting personal change.
In a United Nations exhibition on the future of the planet in 1990, four main issues
were identified as being crucial to the survival of humankind and of the world in the 21st
century: The threat to life and dignity through hunger, health and education problems;
apartheid (especially between rich and poor); the refugee problem; the fragile balance of the
environment.11 Further, it was observed that for many of the young people leaving schools,
the skills and knowledge they acquired would not be as durable or as useful as was the case for
their parents, even though many of their parents have experienced this same problem. It will
not be unusual for current school graduates to change the focus of their jobs substantively
many times before they retire. This situation reminds educators that what young people
need at school is not simply knowledge and skills, but wisdom in the way they will use and
apply those skills; but even more, a wisdom to chart for themselves a fulfilling life that will
have benefits for themselves and for others in the face of the considerable weight of various
counter-influences.
While it might be expected that business interests will be lukewarm as regards this trend,
the evidence is surprising. Sectors of the business world have been revising ideas about the
personal dimension of the workplace where job performance and market success have long
dominated. One can now hear discussions about spirituality and ethics in business. This will
inevitably have consequences for public expectations of education.
An example of this development was evident as far back as 1991 when Fortune magazine
devoted two leading articles to the problems arising from the inhumane workplace. The cover
story read: ‘Can your career hurt your kids? Yes, say many experts. But smart parents – and
smart companies – won’t let it happen.’13 The articles detailed changes in the work practice
of some of the largest corporations in the United States to accommodate the personal and
family concerns of employees. The icon of ‘success at all cost and career before everything’
no longer remains unassailable, even though in real terms the changes being implemented
are small.
Enforcing business practices that keep people away from their families is being challenged.
It is not helpful either personally or commercially if staff are constantly having to choose
between work and family needs. Even top management are encouraged in some firms to
take flexi-time, paternal leave, maternal leave, to integrate their work within the context of
their whole lives. Where it has been tried, the results have been good: more efficient work
practices, less stressed employees, higher efficiency. The article quoted a senior vice-president
of a major firm, ‘Business used to feel that you ought to leave your personal problems at
home’, and it suggested that ‘We can no longer afford to take that view. The psychic welfare
of workers – and of their children – is increasingly a legitimate management concern, and
companies that ignore it risk their employees’ future as well as their own.’14 One might
wonder if recent industrial relations ‘reforms’ in Australia will provide a work environment
that furthers this thinking and practice, or inhibits them – certainly a question that warrants
community scrutiny.
In the following comment, a school principal reflected the common view of success at
an inner-city school; in some measure, this is probably applicable to most schools: ‘Parents
and teachers expect kids to learn the sort of things that help them to get jobs and be part of
a community. As long as society defines people’s worth in terms of paid work, we’ve got an
obligation in working-class schools to deliver that. I’m not in favour of knitting on the dole
queue.’15
The school’s image of success in terms of good marks is a straight reflection of what is
happening in the business world and the job market. As long as people are judged to be
successful in these visible signs and are applauded for this success, then alternative models
will get little credibility. Any damage done to one’s personal or family life is often seen by ‘the
world’ as necessary and mostly acceptable – the price one has to pay for success. It is an ethic
that should have been systematically challenged a long time ago. In the past, critics of this
system were readily dismissed as ‘star-gazing tree-huggers, out of touch with the real world
and clearly not capable of mixing it with the big boys’.
But now even in the hard world of big business the alarm bells are beginning to sound.
Increasingly it has become evident that a philosophy of total, uncompromising commitment
to work is damaging more than the ‘expendable’ immediate family. Mid-life crisis and all
it entails is having far-reaching effects in the community and, ‘more importantly’, on the
efficient running of business. As one New York researcher observed:
Expectations of schools for promoting spiritual and moral development 263
We can only guess at the damage being done to young children. From the perspective
of American business, that is very, very disturbing. As jobs get more and more complex,
the U.S. work force is less and less prepared to handle them … I’m seeing a lot more
emptiness, lack of ability to attach, no sense of real pleasure. I’m not sure a lot of these
kids are going to be effective adults. With more workaholic parents of both sexes, children
are increasingly left to fend for themselves … we are cannibalising children . . they are
dying in this system, never mind achieving optimum development.16
Sobering thoughts! Our discussion of the expectations of education show the vulnerability
of schooling to pressures from outside the institution. This can make teachers cynical about
the comprehensive aims for education. On the other hand, they need to understand that their
efforts to foster young people’s personal development must realistically take into account the
social pressures that are influencing the thinking of young people.
12.5.1 Issue-related educative themes: Education concerned with promoting personal change
in relation to: construction of knowledge and meaning; power, political meaning, ideology and
cultural hegemony; empowerment; critical consciousness; emancipation; praxis; personal and
social transformation; critical theory and critical pedagogy; cultural agency
12.5.2 Learning and pedagogical theories: Theories of learning and pedagogy such as:
constructivist learning; multiple intelligences; emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence;
brain-based learning; right brain/left brain learning; de Bono’s six thinking hats; DEEP
pedagogical framework
12.5.3 Future of schooling themes: Theory about the future of schooling and the needs of 21st-
century learners
In 1964, in his book Realms of meaning, Philip Phenix (an American philosopher of
education) highlighted the role of education in helping young people construct personal
meaning.17 From this time, the idea of the ‘construction of meaning’ figured in educational
aims for schools, even if these precise words were not used. The idea was implicit in the
notion of a liberal education as developed by the British philosophers Hirst and Peters and
in much education writing since the 1970s.18 In recent times, however, especially with the
importance of constructivism as a philosophical theme in education, and with the influence
of cultural postmodernity, the idea of construction of meaning has become much more
prominent as an aim and a pedagogical principle.19
Acquiring knowledge has never been missing as a basic aim for schooling; however,
questions about what counts as knowledge and who has the power to decide this raise a raft
of issues related to the role of schooling in a liberal democratic society, as well as to the role
of students themselves in ‘constructing’ knowledge. Hence epistemology and the sociology
of knowledge have become significant in considering how the ‘control’ of knowledge in
education has significant consequences for students’ personal development.
John Dewey was one of the first philosopher-educators early in the 20th century to
emphasise links between schooling, community, freedom and democracy. Pedagogical
implications flowing from his theory highlighted the need for broadening the horizons of
students’ experience, for inquiry and reflection, and for free interaction in the construction
of knowledge. A democratic society ‘must have a type of education which gives individuals
Expectations of schools for promoting spiritual and moral development 265
a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure
social changes’.20
One of Dewey’s aims for education was to enhance his ideal for human development:
the courage to be able to change one’s mind.21 Emancipation – bringing students to a greater
sense of personal freedom – was also prominent in Dewey’s educational thinking. From
this time, the notion of emancipation became associated with the aims for schools in liberal
democracies. It was concerned with promoting freedom by enlarging students’ capacities
for personal decision-making; it also intended to promote freedom as a prized value in
democracies. As noted below, the idea of education for emancipation took on a more specific
contextual meaning in situations where groups in society were perceived as marginalised
and disadvantaged. The idea of emancipation was central to critical theory and critical
pedagogy.
Other issues related to the construction and control of knowledge are considered below.
Also pertinent here are sections 2.10.8 and 2.10.14.
The philosophers Gramsci and Foucault, writing from a Marxist perspective, elaborated
a view of power and how this affected what was given status as knowledge by prevailing
authorities.22 What was considered to be ‘truth’ within a community is politically influenced.
Some of the literature on empowerment highlights its application to marginalised groups
and the constraints of social structures.23
While perhaps many of the political implications of this thinking are distant from the
classroom, they showed how schooling could reinforce particular ways of conceiving reality,
including social and cultural stereotypes. This thinking also raised questions about the
exercise of power by teachers, not only in the control of the agenda of learning and in the
extent to which they allowed for a student-centred pedagogy, but in the provision of student
access to information.
The typology of meaning in Chapter 2 described briefly the relationships between power,
political meaning, ideology and hegemony. In an education that is intended to alert students
to political meanings, there is scope for exploring each of these constructs, particularly in
the way they figure in contemporary culture. This ‘alerting’ function, encouraging students
to ‘pay attention’ to the sources of cultural and political influence (such as auditing the trails
of power) is an essential ingredient to what is known as political empowerment. It has to do
with expanding young people’s consciousness to take in cultural and political horizons to
which they were unaccustomed, or of which they were unaware. Helping overcome naivety
is a basic part of empowerment. Even though it applies more to adults than children and
adolescents, the idea of educational empowerment needs further consideration to work out
what level of critical engagement in the process is appropriate for students’ age and mental
capacities.
In a simpler sense, empowerment means increasing the capacity and scope for individuals
to make decisions that affect their own situation. In the classroom, it is fostered by increasing
student involvement in initiating and negotiating their learning. Empowerment is associated
with any educational process that gives students more control over their own learning (for
266 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
The essence of ideological statements is that, unless our political senses are developed, we
will fail to spot them. Ideology is released into society like a colourless, odourless gas. It is
embedded in newspapers, advertisements, television programmes and text-books – where
it makes light of its partial, perhaps illogical or unjust, take on the world; where it meekly
implies that it is simply stating age-old truths with which only a fool or a maniac would
disagree.24
While Paulo Freire’s special interest was the liberating influence of literacy on marginalised
groups of adults (Pedagogy of the oppressed, 1971), his ideas were not without an influence on
the expectations of schooling in general.25 His notion of developing a ‘critical consciousness’
of social and political dimensions to culture readily suggested that school education needed
to be strongly evaluative. He critiqued the traditional ‘banking’ concept of education along
with its authoritarian teacher–student relationship.
The notion of an ‘emancipatory’ education can be traced back to Dewey and Marxist
thinking.26 It is at the basis of education for personal and social transformation. 27 The intention
was to develop critical thinking that would affect beliefs and values, resulting in personal
change or transformation. In turn, the sequence from critical education to critical thinking
and personal change could provide the commitment and energy to bring about social change
– social transformation.
Also flowing from Freire’s thinking, as well as from a confluence of other sources
that included Aristotle, was the notion of education as praxis. It meant action arising
from critical reflection; it involved social analysis and it aimed at bringing about social
change. Freire emphasised the historical nature of knowledge, and the way in which it
was culturally conditioned. He tried to address the false duality between theory and
practice and he proposed a ‘problem posing’ pedagogy. He thought it essential for schools
to engage students in critical diagnosis of social problems. Even if there was little scope
for political action in schools, the students could still learn to identify injustice and to
take steps to sort out their own personal stance. Making adjustments in language, and
Expectations of schools for promoting spiritual and moral development 267
not using the words and constructs of oppressors, was regarded as a valuable step towards
emancipation.
Freire’s work provided a solid foundation for the initial development of what is known
as ‘critical pedagogy’.
In section 2.10.14, attention was given to the study of meaning from the perspective
of critical theory. Complementing this term is critical pedagogy, which basically can be
understood as the pedagogical implications of critical theory. It calls into question the role
of schools in ‘reproducing’ society – that is, in reinforcing the assumptions and values of the
dominant groups (especially in commerce) and of the ‘industry’ of cultural reproduction.
It considers how values and attitudes could constitute a ‘hidden curriculum’ in schools,
precisely because they are not identified and acknowledged. The Critical Pedagogy Reader,
published in 2003, gives a detailed account of the origins and history of critical pedagogy.28 In
this volume, McLaren describes it as ‘a way of thinking about, negotiating, and transforming
the relationship among classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the institutional
structures of the school, and the social and material relations of the wider community,
society and nation state’.29
Within critical pedagogy there is a range of concepts that owe much to a left-wing view
of education. It has much to do with the politics of education in liberal democracies. The
notion of critical pedagogy is directed towards informing educators and policy-makers about
an ‘emancipatory agenda’. If they are conscious of the issues and if they are committed to
bringing about change, this can lead not only to structural changes in educational provision
(greater educational equity and access), but also to changes in classroom pedagogy that give
students greater scope for negotiating their own learning, as well as opportunities for
exploring social issues. However, Freire was concerned that critical pedagogy might easily be
domesticated in the classroom and ‘reduced to student-directed learning approaches devoid
of social critique’.30
Examples of thinking from critical pedagogy have already been given in the two preceding
subsections. Another of its prominent themes is education for resistance. This view proposes
that a political-ideological education can sharpen critical consciousness about society, and
can help people resist attempts at cultural and political manipulation.31
Much of the material in this book is concerned with applying critical pedagogy to the
spiritual and moral dimensions of the school curriculum.
Cultural agency
Complementing and overlapping with the ideas above is the notion of cultural agency. It
postulates first, that culture should not be regarded as static because this tends to make it
appear taken for granted, as if it were beyond critique. As socially constructed, culture can
be identified and its meaning evaluated in relation to the context in which it was formed. In
turn, such critique enables people to act as cultural agents; they can bring about some social
change within their own limited sphere, as well as being resistant to culture that they believe
is harmful. This is similar to the notion of praxis.
268 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
In section 15.9, the idea of cultural agency as developed by the Welsh sociologist
Raymond Williams will be referred to as a way of helping young people investigate the
shaping moral influence of the media.
Summary
The above discussion highlights the sorts of personal change expectations of schooling that
come from various educative themes. Collectively, they have the following characteristics or
emphases:
What is significant for the developing argument in the following chapters is that the
psychological dynamics of personal change that underpin these educative themes are
primarily rational. When the words ‘personal transformation’ and ‘social transformation’ are
used in this context, they mean change as a result of critical thinking. While critical thinking
will never be separated from emotional and affective dimensions, a primacy of the rational
pathway to personal change is presumed.
The educative themes considered above provide a basic set of concepts that figure within
other themes such as social justice and feminism, which have their own expectations for pro
moting personal change. Similarly, values education (and moral education) and citizenship
education warrant consideration because they too generate expectations of the spiritual and
moral dimensions to schooling. While there is not space here for analysing these constructs,
we consider that, in general, they affirm the rational pathway for personal change described
above.
What remains a key question for school education is discernment in determining the
extent to which these educative themes can be applied to the classroom, taking into account
the abilities, relative maturity and needs of children and adolescents. It acknowledges the
natural but problematic tendency for educators (and the community generally) to project
educational principles that are evidently important for adults onto schools without always
moderating them to be more in tune with the limited capacities of children and adolescents
as responsible learners. The next chapter addresses the need for such moderation by exploring
the possibilities and limitations for personal learning in the school curriculum.
Given the concern registered earlier about the excessive expectations of parents and
community, one may well wonder: does not the extensive list of educative themes (and the
following learning theories) also create unrealistic expectations, and even more anxiety for
Expectations of schools for promoting spiritual and moral development 269
educators? The answer is yes – unless special care is taken to do the moderation and discern
ment tasks well. Otherwise, these educative themes will not be liberating, but punishing
for teachers by exacerbating the already problematic gap between purposes and practice.
Hence we see the conceptualisation tasks attempted in the next two chapters as crucial for
the viability and progress of the personal agenda for education. That means showing in a
realistic way how these educative themes are not a matter of ‘adding’ to expectations by
placing additional burdens on teachers, but rather of suggesting how they can be comfortably
‘integrated’ in a constructive but modest way within teachers’ ordinary practice.
In section 14.4 we will revisit these educative themes, making use of one – education for
wisdom – to show how they can be located and evaluated within a larger conceptualisation
of the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum.
From a brief examination of these theories we draw the following conclusions about their
relationship with the spiritual-moral purposes of education:
• The theories focus principally on the enhancement of generic learning processes (and not on
sociocultural issues for personal development, although theories like spiritual intelligence
and DEEP are more issue-related).
270 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
• They endeavour to enrich and diversify the scope of classroom learning activities, involving
cognition, emotion, intuition, sensory-motor, play, social interaction and aesthetics
to cater for different individual learning styles; they attempt to make learning more
multidimensional and holistic; they emphasise variety in teaching and learning methods,
with appropriate attention to experiential and creative processes.
• They do not minimise the importance of critical rationality as a personal change pathway;
but collectively, they tease out different subprocesses involved in rational inquiry, in a
sense expanding on what critical rationality means.
• They imply a critique of, and challenge to, learning that has been excessively or exclusively
rational.
• Some of the learning theories give attention to the construction of personal meaning.
We consider that these theories help enrich learning, highlighting its breadth and com
plexity. By enhancing generic learning, they can enhance critical rationality as well as having
positive effects on what in the next chapter we will call ‘personal learning skills’. While we
have no difficulty with the educational appropriateness of many of the suggested teaching
and learning strategies, we think they do not always tap into the psychological processes
of personal change as deeply as their proponents claim; in other words, their proposed or
implied links with emotional and personal maturity are somewhat tenuous or overstated.
In a few instances, we considered that the purpose of getting students to ‘have good and
pleasant feelings’ during a learning activity did not necessarily have much bearing on
personal change. The dimension of emotionality in learning is certainly important, and it
warrants more attention than it has been given to date, but there is much more to ‘emotional
learning’ than having good emotional experiences in the classroom. While not wishing to
appear arrogant, we did not find any significant new insight into links between education
and spiritual-moral development that have not been considered elsewhere in this book.
Also, we judged that there was nothing in these theories that would require a change in the
trajectory of the argument developed in Chapters 13 and 14 in interpreting the spiritual and
moral dimension to the school curriculum.
We offer the following caveats:
The constructivist learning theory/pedagogy is consistent with what has been considered
in earlier chapters about the personal construction of meaning, and education in meaning.
Problems can arise where excessive attention given to the construction of personal meaning
tends to minimise or exclude the consideration of community or cultural meanings (as well
as to institutions and traditions); this tendency can contribute to the isolation of young
people in the ‘prison’ of individualism, with too heavy a responsibility for the development
of their own comprehensive meaning system.
The pedagogical theory based on the constructs emotional intelligence and spiritual
intelligence does not appear to be very well developed, apart from ‘social and emotional
learning’ (SEL), which draws mainly on the former. SEL illustrates multifaceted pedagogy
that takes into account the social context of learners and purports to impact on wellbeing
and social aptitude, as well as affecting the emotions. While the skills and techniques it
recommends are excellent for learning, we do not have the same confidence that they will
almost automatically engage students at an emotional level and bring about personal change
– such change is more complex than seems to be implied in SEL. We will say more about the
Expectations of schools for promoting spiritual and moral development 271
problematic notion of ‘emotional learning’ in section 13.5. Similarly, the theory of multiple
intelligences provided a substantial basis for developing varied styles of teaching and learning,
informing wide-ranging pedagogical skills. But its links with personal change need further
clarification.
Creative teaching has long made successful use of a variety of pedagogical styles before
a neurological basis for them was proposed. Brain-based learning theory seemed to confirm
this view. However, the proposed neurological basis for left-brain/right-brain learning theory
was not convincing; it provided a helpful shorthand for contrasting styles of perception and
learning, but it seemed to exaggerate the significance of spatial cortical specialisation while not
acknowledging that such differentiation only works well when it is balanced by neural inte
gration and coordination. For some time it has been recognised that individuals vary widely
in modes of mental functioning such as linear or logical thinking, emotion, intuition, and
aesthetics, and this is important for educational planning. But we question whether the use of
hemispheric differentiation provides a comprehensive neurological basis for these differences.
The DEEP pedagogical framework is a good example of recent efforts to give the
construction of meaning a central place within the practice of religious education.
For the crucial question ‘Is there a distinctive, and effective classroom pedagogy for
bringing about personal change in students?’ the simple answer is ‘No’. A more complex
interpretation of links between education and personal change is required. However, there
is more mileage in an alternative question: ‘Is there a distinctive patterning of existing
pedagogies – and content – that is more likely to provide a context and orientation that
are favourable to personal change in the future?’ The answer here is a qualified ‘Yes’. This
discussion is about whether or not there is a distinctive ‘transformational pedagogy’ and
whether this can be linked to ‘social transformation’. Education writers who use these phrases
often do so uncritically and naively; we suggest that they be used with caution. Any good
pedagogy with relevant content can be a ‘precursor’ or catalyst for personal change, but no
particular pedagogy can of itself automatically bring this about.
1 Diagnosing current socio-cultural trends with a view to predicting the likely situation
over the next decade or so
2 Estimating the changing personal and social needs of young people and adults in the
future
3 Offering a critique of problems in recent educational theory and practice as regards their
inadequacy to meet future needs
4 Speculating about what is needed in curriculum content and pedagogy to best meet the
projected future needs of students.
272 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
While this literature examined a wide range of issues across these four areas, our interest is
with their relevance to the spiritual-moral purposes of education. Hence we will not refer to
their treatment of questions about such matters as technological competence, globalisation
and multiculturalism.
This literature has a strong emphasis on the spiritual and moral dimension to schooling.
While it is unlikely that the current dominance of economic purposes to education will
change much in the near future, there is increasing evidence of dissatisfaction with this
situation, making the ground more receptive to advancing a personalist agenda. For example,
the UNESCO International Commission for Education in the 21st Century recommended
a change of educational focus from ‘economic growth’ to ‘human development’ (DeLors
1996: ch. 3.). The Report proposed ‘Four pillars of education’ (ch. 4):
Beare, in Creating the future school (2001: 21–2), highlighted the spiritual-moral dimension
as follows:
A significant part of any curriculum is about intangibles about dealing with the depths
from which we generate our life purpose and aspirations. An important part of schooling
concerns the formation of constructive and systematic beliefs, the acceptance of social
responsibility for the intertwined and complex task that it is, and the development of
stories, which convey deep meanings about who we are. Schooling, then, deals with
personal formation, belief construction, developing a world view and with culture
transmission over and above the acquiring of useful knowledge and enabling skills.
Construction of meaning
De Ruyter (2002) emphasised the evaluative role of a meaningful education as one that
appraises different conceptions of personhood in culture. However, evaluative activity, while
needing to appraise the relevance of traditional sources of meaning, should remain balanced,
being careful not to fall into the postmodern trap of questioning the legitimacy of presenting
traditional meanings and meta-narratives – since this would compromise young people’s
freedom and autonomy. There is an important place in education for the communication
of traditional meanings. Young people’s initial needs for basic institutional meanings should
not be overlooked; neither should their level of maturity be overestimated in terms of their
gradually developing capacity for the critical evaluation of meaning.
In a colourful way, this critical, evaluative role for education was described many years
earlier by Postman and Weingartner (1969) as the responsibility educators have for refining
students’ inbuilt ‘crap detectors’: ‘the history of the human group has been a continual
struggle against the veneration of “crap”. Our intellectual history is a chronicle of the anguish
and suffering of people who tried to help their contemporaries see that some part of their
fondest beliefs were misconceptions, faulty assumptions, superstitions and even outright
lies.’34
While the listed literature featured the critical construction of meaning as a fundamental goal
for education, it did not give much attention to the construct identity. However, as noted
in Chapter 6, there was considerable European writing about links between education and
identity development. There was not much mention of spirituality, with the exception of
writers who took an interest in religious and values education (Conroy 2004; Hack 2004a;
Hill 2004; de Ruyter 2002; Wallace 2000), but there was a consistently high interest in a
values dimension to education, even though we considered that the links between education
and values development required further clarification.
The metaphors ‘transformation’ and ‘empowerment’ were prominent in the literature (for
example Ancess 2004; Beare 2001; Bottery 2000; Gardner 2002; Mockler 2004). This
echoed the various educative themes considered earlier. However, the psychological dynamics
of personal change presumed in the use of these metaphors were not clarified. The notion of
274 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
‘transformative teaching’ was occasionally implied; but again, personal change was presumed
to be the outcome while links with pedagogy were not explained.
The issues raised by critical pedagogy (12.4.1) were considered to be crucial for the
future of education (Bottery 2000; Mockler 2004).
This sample of literature on the future of schooling touches on various issues for young
people’s personal development that were noted in Part 2 of this book, and it referred to a
number of the principles for an education in meaning in Chapter 10. In all, this literature
confirmed our confidence that the constructs meaning, identity and spirituality had
considerable educational potential.
12.6 Conclusion
Notes
1 We are grateful to Mr Clark for his permission to include his poem.
2 Curriculum Corporation 2003b, Draft National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (prepared
for the Australian Government Department of Education Science and Training), p. 4.
3 Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald in July 1984.
4 B Dwyer 1985, A new course is not always the answer!
5 BV Hill 1991, Values education in Australian schools, p. 3.
6 C Boag 1991, Nice kids rule, OK! The getting of character: Education expectations in the 90s, pp. 78, 81.
7 Elsewhere, in two books on religious education, we have given pedagogical examples of how to investigate
social problems in the classroom: ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1985, Teaching religion in the secondary school,
Chapters 4 and 7; ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1988, Missionaries to a teenage culture: Religious education in
a time of rapid change, Chapters 4, 7, 17, 20.
8 B Nelson 2002, Schools must teach values (letter to The Age by the Commonwealth Minister for Education
announcing the National Values Education Project).
9 Curriculum Corporation 2003a, Values Education study: Final report (prepared for the Australian Government
Department of Education, Science and Training), pp. 222–3.
10 N Postman & C Weingartner 1969, Teaching as a subversive activity, p. 12.
11 United Nations Exhibition, New York Headquarters, 1990.
276 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
Martin Buber1
John Dewey2
The first statement on the large bulletin board outside Annandale public school in Sydney
read ‘Teaching values since 1886’. This was the school’s response to the public debate about
values in education, and to the charge that government schools took a values stance that was
too neutral. To the extent that there has always been a values basis to the work of public school
teachers, the statement is true. However, as noted earlier in the book, the verb ‘teach’ when
applied to values does not have the same meaning as it does when it refers to knowledge. The
development of personal values is much more complex than the acquisition of knowledge
and understanding. Hence the notion of ‘teaching values’ is intrinsically problematical and
needs further clarification. It also applies to other aspects of personal development (beliefs,
attitudes, emotions, behaviour).
The words ‘promoting learning’ and ‘learners’ have become new buzz words in education.
They figure prominently in school mission and vision statements and in educational discourse.
This is not a bad thing. But ‘what is being learnt’ is the crucial question. Just getting more infor
mation in an information-saturated world is hardly an important goal for education. In the
long term, it is the learning that leads to wisdom and personal change that is of consequence
– hence the significance of the notions ‘personal learning’ and ‘education for personal change’.
277
278 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
Often ‘change’ and ‘learning’ are equated, and this is valid enough. Sometimes one may
gain new information or react to a new situation, but it makes no ongoing difference to
the way one may respond in the future – as if the change had no lasting effect. Sometimes
‘experience’ is automatically regarded as ‘learning’, but this is not necessarily the case: people
often do not learn from their experience and make the same mistakes repeatedly. Young
people can share the same classroom experience; some will learn much from it, others will
not. Sometimes change in personal aspects is regarded as ‘personal development’, but the
direction of change is not always healthy for the individual, so it is hardly ‘development’ in
the sense of being positive or progress.
The chapter proposes a useful pathway for clarifying these questions. It looks at links between
education and personal change, first by noting a range of experiences and events that affect
personal change. Then it judges which of these are available and ethically appropriate for use
by the school. The purpose of the exercise is to foster more realism in expectations of the
spiritual-moral role of schools.
Then, attention is given to relationships between personal change and personal learning.
Experience, and even change, do not always become learning in a personal sense, and the
distinction has important consequences for classroom teaching. The chapter works towards a
suitable language for talking about the spiritual-moral role of the school that acknowledges the
complexities involved and does not overstate the school’s potential. It will argue the case that
the most realistic role for the classroom is to give young people the relevant knowledge and
understanding; it is the students themselves who will make any changes to their beliefs and
values. The notion of ‘personal teaching’ or ‘personal pedagogy’ will be critiqued. The concluding
section considers the professional ethics of teachers, particularly with respect to the potential
use of their own views and commitments in the teaching and learning process.
The discussion will not refer to the extensive literature on the personal development of children
and adolescents; rather it will list different dimensions to psychological development for the
purpose of exploring links with education.
usage creates misunderstandings of the nature of values and commitments. Since the genesis
of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the late 1950s and 1960s, educational
aims were often written in the form of cognitive and affective.3 While the division has been
useful for drawing attention to the non-cognitive dimensions, it has drawbacks as noted
below.
Affective educational aims were said to include aspects of human development that are
non-cognitive, such as emotions, the aesthetic sense, attitudes, values. While this arrangement
may be satisfactory for emotions and aesthetics, there is a danger that it equates emotions
with values, attitudes and beliefs. In turn, it may be implied that values and morals are just
matters of emotion. It discounts the dimensions of moral reasoning, volition (or willing) and
commitment that are key elements in the holding of moral values. The affective category,
in being too broad and non-specific, can simplistically lump together aspects of human
development that are complex in their genesis and their influence on behaviour.4
Another problem with the analytical division between cognitive and affective is the
tendency towards a dualism that does not reflect the complex relationships that exist between
the cognitive and the affective in the human person. There is a natural unity to cognitive
and affective learning.
Some educators talk about an association between ‘affective learning’ and ‘affective teaching
procedures’, giving the impression that the type of learning is determined by the teacher’s
intention and by the particular pedagogy employed – as if the teacher could intentionally
‘change gear’ and turn the learning into a process that influences students’ beliefs, emotions
and values. Such thinking is also evident in discussions of ‘personal learning’ and ‘spiritual
learning’, which makes unrealistic presumptions about personal change in students through
education. It may not always be clearly articulated, but it affects teacher expectations for
personal responses from the students. Such thinking is often implied in the public debate
about teaching values, and also in discussions of personal learning through pedagogies
informed by theories such as left brain/right brain learning, multiple intelligences, and
brain-based learning. The problem is not with the use of different pedagogies suited to
different styles of learning – this is not in question; rather, the problem is with unrealistic
expectations that particular pedagogies will bring about ‘personal learning’.
Before looking into personal learning in more detail, attention will be given to personal
change and how it might be affected by education.
knowledge,
understanding
and cognitive skills: the cognitive dimension.
emotions: fundamental visceral feelings such as joy, zest, fear, guilt, anger, sexual
feelings.
280 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
attitudes: abiding dispositions to think, feel and behave in particular ways with
reference to an issue, person or thing.
values: beliefs or principles which the individual holds as important and which can
have an orienting influence on motivation and behaviour.
virtues: habits of motivated thinking, valuing and behaviour that are regarded as
‘good’ for the individual and the community.
commitments: values or beliefs to which the individual adheres and to which he or she is
prepared to be accountable.
intuition: judgment made on ideas and feelings about situations where a clear
rational or evidence-based answer is not yet available.
1 Absorbing beliefs/ Both unconsciously and consciously people can absorb beliefs/attitudes/values from their
values/attitudes immediate human reference groups (often called socialisation). The values absorbed may
from human be implicit in the ways individuals are treated by parents and others. Human relationships
groups are a prime source of values. The ways individuals are treated by others may confirm
certain values or may promote other values through a negative reaction.
2 Emulation of Individuals can emulate the values displayed by others who serve as role models (both
others (role positive and negative).
models)
3 Satisfaction of Values can develop through the satisfaction of personal needs; patterns or regularities
personal needs emerge in the ways individuals behave in satisfying wants and needs (for example
altruism, kindness, selfishness).
4 Exhortation Beliefs and values can be accepted from exhortation; people are told what is good and
important for them and for the good of others (this will be influenced by the level of
respect for, and perceived authority of, the source).
5 Coercion Personal change can be brought about by coercion. Psychological pressure or threat can
be brought to bear on the individual. It might be motivated by anxiety, fear, shame.
6 Idealism Personal change may flow from idealism; the attraction of an ideal can facilitate the
development of particular values. This can include values developing out of admiration
for a role model or hero/heroine, values flowing from religious beliefs or values exhibited
by reference groups.
7 Events and Personal change can result from responses to events and experience; it includes long-term
experience experience or shorter, critical (sometimes traumatic) events which trigger an appraisal of
values. There may be a significant emotional component to the experience and the change. It
can include what people describe as a spiritual or transcendent experience.
8 Reflection Beliefs and values can change during and after reflection. The change may flow from
new knowledge and understandings. It includes values derived from education in the
broad sense (more than schooling). For example, from reading, travelling, watching film/
television, school education, leisure and work.
9 Imagination Through imaginative identification and imaginative rehearsal, individuals can test out
in advance what it might be like to change personally. Hence the imagination is often a
‘precursor’ to personal change. This mechanism may work in conjunction with many of
the other processes listed here.
10 Ethical Personal change can be part of a response to an ethical instruction process. Through
instructional information, analysis, evaluation and making preliminary judgments about worth,
process individuals are persuaded, without coercion, to consider the desirability or importance
of adopting particular values. Instruction can be one-to-one or in a group. Values can be
learned from content and instructional process even when this was not the intention.
Instruction does not always have to be ‘instructor centred’ – it can be ‘learner centred’
where the study initiative rests with the learner.
11 Indoctrination Personal change can result from indoctrination, that is, through a supposedly educational
process that is flawed in various ways as described in the concept of indoctrination. For
example, the persuasion is not fully open to rational evaluation; or there is some form of
deceit, even if it means that not all the relevant information is provided, or that some of it
is concealed or misrepresented.
12 Other processes Other types of experience and process that could occasion personal change.
282 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
hope that it will stimulate some personal reflection (8) and imagined possibilities for change
(9). This is the case even though the curriculum can include excursions and educational
visits beyond the school.
It would not be ethical to plan traumatic events for children in the classroom for any
purpose, let alone as an intended learning process. Great care needs to be exercised in
choosing activities that are likely to trigger emotional responses from students. It would be
unethical for teachers to use coercion, humiliation, guilt or fear.
Thus it is more appropriate and realistic to regard the classroom as not so directly
concerned with bringing about personal change; rather, its role is to inform students about
personal change – what they need to know to be able to better negotiate personal change when
the opportunity arises. As explained in more detail later, because learning in the classroom
has a natural cognitive or intellectual contextual emphasis, it makes process 10, instruction,
the normal channel or pathway towards personal change in that particular context.
The limited place for personal learning in the classroom is normal. It is not because of
any deficiency in that context or because of any deficiency in the pedagogy; the classroom is
a public place where a community of learners meets for educational purposes. This judgment
is the basis for working out both the real possibilities and limitations of the classroom
for promoting spiritual and moral change in students. In this sense, the classroom does
not actually effect spiritual and moral change in young people; rather, it provides ‘helpful
infrastructure’ for personal change; the appeal for personal change is through reason and
relevant information. The classroom can affect the personal change process in students,
primarily through input to the rational parts of the process. But whether or not, and when,
personal change might occur are matters that depend on the students and not on the teacher
or the pedagogy; and if change does occur, it will usually not be a dramatic event and it will
probably not be noticed by the teachers; it will not be a sudden and radical reconfiguration
of the young person’s values. A desire to observe or assess personal change in students is not
a legitimate concern of teachers, even though at times they may have the privilege of seeing
that education has contributed to healthy change in some of their students.
The sort of personal change occasioned in young people by their education is not usually
something sudden or immediate, but slow and drawn out across their schooling; it may not
become evident until after they leave school. Also, such change is usually driven by other
factors, so it is difficult to ascribe any particular change exclusively to schooling. A good
schooling gradually enhances young people’s capacity to learn personal lessons from life
experience; education can help them to consider personal change issues and to think about
implications; it can favourably dispose them towards the possibility of being open to the
lifelong enhancement of their personal lives through education.
This discussion conflicts with views that claim or imply a more significant role for
the school. It puts the educational intention of promoting students’ spiritual and moral
development into better perspective. It can show how both particular ‘personal’ subjects, as
well as across-the-curriculum studies, can make valuable contributions, even if limited.
In addition, the discussion points to the desirability of using less inflated language for
talking about education and personal change. As long as there are unrealistic assumptions
about what the school can do in ‘teaching values’, real progress in promoting what schools
can do best in this regard will be hampered. Clarifying what is meant by an ‘education in
values’ has more promise.
Links between education, personal change and personal learning 283
Emotional experience is not necessarily emotional learning. When one or more of these
developments takes place, the experience can be ‘converted’ or ‘enhanced’ to the status of
learning. In other words, it becomes emotional learning when it makes some contribution
to emotional maturity. Because of the complexity, it is unlikely that any lesson would be
likely to show that observable emotional learning has taken place. There may be evidence of
emotion, but that is not the complete picture.
Also, what emerges as significant from the discussion is the centrality of understanding
– the rational dimension – in emotional learning. This will have important consequences
when education is conceptually linked with personal change and personal learning.
What then of ‘emotional pedagogy’? Presumably, it is implied when educators advocate
‘affective teaching’. Does it suggest that it is justifiable for teachers to intentionally set out
to stimulate particular emotional responses in students? What range of emotions should
be targeted? What of sexual emotions? Is there a distinctive pedagogy that is effective in
promoting emotional learning?
Links between education, personal change and personal learning 285
We argue that it is both undesirable and unethical for teachers to set out with students’
emotions as their pedagogical targets. To do so is manipulative. Rather, the objectives always
need to be principally within the domain of open inquiry, knowledge and understanding.
If emotions are triggered as a by-product of such study, because of the sensitivity of the
subject matter, and if the emotion is expressed by students in a way that can be comfortably
accommodated in the classroom, it can be a natural and healthy part of the educational
process. But safeguards need to be in place. Teachers need to judge whether particular
expressions of emotion in the classroom are appropriate both for the individual and the class;
and if emotions are expressed, the teacher needs to address the situation in a way that tries
to bring balance. Students’ emotional vulnerability needs to be protected. Teachers need
to consider in advance the potential in particular content/resources/classroom experiences
for stimulating emotion, and if there is a danger that it cannot be handled comfortably,
then the plan should be changed. This is not to eliminate emotion from the classroom;
indeed, we consider that more controversial and emotional issues need to be considered
than is currently the case. We maintain that generation of emotion is not a desirable goal for
teaching though it can be a valuable component of holistic learning because it is a natural
concomitant of some investigations. Teachers and classes need to be respectful of individuals’
emotions when these are exposed in the classroom; and all in the class need to learn about
the appropriateness of particular emotional expressions in that public context, respecting
people’s sensitivities. What is also important is care about the questions asked of students;
there should never be psychological pressure to reveal their own feelings or personal views.
Is there then a distinctive emotional pedagogy? There may well be for voluntary therapy
groups, and for contexts like the Jerry Springer Show, but for the classroom we think not.
No classroom pedagogy will automatically stimulate emotion; similarly, all pedagogies are
capable of touching students’ emotions. Nevertheless, emotive topics are more likely to
arouse emotions and discussion formats are more likely to provide scope for the expression of
emotional responses. When teaching topics that have the potential for emotionality, teachers
need to be careful and sensitive in the planning and conduct of lessons. Referring back to
pedagogies that purport to work with emotions, for example social and emotional learning or
SEL (12.5.2), our view is that such pedagogies are excellent for multidimensional approaches
to learning in a generic sense. While they may well connect with students’ emotions, one
cannot presume that this will occur automatically, as if the pedagogy is guaranteed to bring
about emotional change. Also, such approaches do not seem to take into account the great
psychological complexity in what emotional learning means; they presume that emotional
learning is important and is not in question, but they give the impression that the meaning
of emotional learning is simple, which suggests that the links between such pedagogy and
emotional development are superficial.
Hence we see educational value in the notions of emotional change and emotional
learning. But we think that the terms ‘emotional teaching’ and ‘emotional pedagogy’ should
be avoided because of the problematic assumption that there is a pedagogical style that
is effective in generating emotions – and that the resultant emotions constitute learning.
There is also some concern that an interest in emotional pedagogy can lead to manipulative
practice. Rather, we consider that the phrase ‘education in the emotions’ is more appropriate;
it takes the focus off emotional experience as an objective for teaching, and handles emotion
respectfully when and where it enters naturally into student responses. It also focuses on
286 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
what classroom teaching and learning can do best for emotions, helping students understand
what emotions are and how they work, with the aim of learning to see how they might be
integrated within the personality in a healthy way.
What has just been said about emotion, emotional learning and emotional pedagogy can
be applied to beliefs and values, but with new complications because these have rational,
emotional and volitional dimensions. The ‘development’ of beliefs and values requires much
conceptual clarification (for example, does it mean ‘more’ beliefs? ‘deeper’ or ‘stronger’
values?). While there may be a legitimate hope that classroom teaching and learning will
contribute to students’ acquisition of desired beliefs and values, it is better to avoid phrases
like ‘teaching beliefs’ and ‘teaching values’ because of the unrealistic assumptions that can be
readily associated with such use of the verb ‘teach’.
The phrase ‘education in beliefs and values’ is a better and less misleading way of
expressing this hope; it can also give a more accurate picture of what is intended and what
is possible in the classroom. As noted earlier, we consider that the community experience in
the school, and the quality of its personal relationships, are much more likely to affect young
people’s beliefs and values than classroom teaching and learning. Also, beliefs and values
change slowly and imperceptibly. What classroom studies can do well is help young people
become better informed about beliefs and values and help them understand how beliefs and
values are developed and how they affect behaviour.
The discussion of learning in the areas of emotions, beliefs and values can be collectively
‘distilled’ to account for what is understood as personal learning – especially an extrapolation
of the ideas in the dot points about emotional learning. A classroom activity becomes
personal when it engages with these dimensions of the person; but it only becomes learning
when personal change is understood, and when this understanding furthers the integration
of personal aspects within the personality. Personal learning is a new understanding – a new
meaning, or disposition – that has ‘reverberations’ throughout the personality both at the
time and into the future. The relationship between personal learning and meaning can be
linked back to the extensive discussion of the development of meaning in Chapters 2–4.
The above discussion helps differentiate personal change and personal learning. From
here, our focus shifts to the classroom teaching/learning process.
The matter of perceived freedom on the part of students is central to the problem, hence
the special attention given to it here. In most learning areas, students have come to take
for granted the freedom to explore different viewpoints and various explanations; they are
accustomed to offering diverse theories to account for psychological and social data. But
when they sense that a study has a values agenda, their ‘antennae are up’. That is, if they
feel that the exercise is concerned with communicating particular values and beliefs, they
may immediately disengage and be on their guard; they know that the freedom they had
to think about and discuss interpretations in their literature studies is not evident here.
This subtlety about freedom of inquiry is often missed by teachers, and it is unfortunate,
because the question of student freedom can often be the single most important factor
in making the activity one of personal learning – or not! It has significant pedagogical
implications. The problem with perceived freedom is a natural one that a church school
has to negotiate in its religion program; the committed religious position of the school
can be perceived by students as a condition that precludes the possibility of ever having a
fully open, free, inquiring study. And the only way they can be convinced that this is not
the case is an educational experience of the contrary. The same problem looms for values
education programs in public education. Even the naming of topics as ‘desired values’ (as
noted in the previous paragraph) can give young people a scent of the problem. Sensitivity
to their freedom of inquiry is behind students’ wariness about the mandate of schools to
‘teach values’ (as noted in the previous chapter). Care is also needed to ensure that this
freedom is present in across-the-curriculum approaches to values; otherwise, students can
feel that the freedom they usually have in these learning areas is being eliminated by the
purpose of making the studies instrumental to values education. The problem will be taken
into account when a framework for the spiritual-moral dimension to education is proposed
in the next chapter. In addition, the issue is prominent in the following discussion where a
‘contextual emphasis’ on rational inquiry is proposed as a necessary condition for creating
and sustaining this freedom for students.
A more ‘issue-oriented’ approach to studying beliefs and values helps create a zone of
freedom in and around the student inquiry. It is not focused on their personal lives, but on
issues that are ‘out there’, but that often have personal implications. It is not perceived as
invasive, and it gives them the freedom needed to consider personal implications in their
own time and in their own terms. While anchored in rational inquiry, the activity allows
scope for students to reflect on issues, and to ‘feel in empathy’ or to ‘feel angry’; it can even
allow them to ‘try on’ particular views and values. But all the time there is an overarching
respect for their personal space and freedom. Much of the ‘personalising’ of the study is
done privately and students should feel no pressure to make this known to the class. Such an
information or research focus on values harmonises with the style of critical inquiry they are
accustomed to in the rest of the curriculum.
While we have emphasised the importance of a zone of freedom in classroom inquiry, this
does not mean a zone of escape. Respect for students’ freedom does not mean that anything
that is likely to challenge or confront their thinking and values should be avoided; that would
result in an ‘antiseptic’ curriculum, shielding them from any evaluation that might question
their own views. A healthy personal education needs the dimension of personal challenge,
but it needs to be respectful and not manipulative. It may well generate some internal
dissonance, and this may or may not lead towards healthy personal change; but students will
288 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
not be pressured to display any such dissonance. While their zone of freedom should always
be respected, it is not a good idea for teachers to keep referring to their freedom (especially
freedom of choice), because this can be misinterpreted as an ‘escape clause’ from adopting
any moral stance and from evaluating stances with integrity and honesty. Overemphasising
their freedom can also play into the hands of moral relativism – that morality is just a matter
of opinion and that ‘because this is my own opinion it is therefore valid’.
At the end of a unit of work that tapped into controversial issues, and that generated
vigorous discussion, a teacher may surmise that some students have retained, perhaps even
reinforced, their simplistic and bigoted views. The challenge to consider the implications
that common values would propose seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps the study
exacerbated negative student attitudes in some, rather than challenging them. However,
these indications have little to do with the ‘real’ success of the study. It may have been as
successful as it could be; rather than failing, the teacher did a good job, and needs reassurance
for so doing. The study challenged students’ thinking in a positive way. An accepting or
an antagonistic response is not a matter over which the teacher has control. Hence the
significance of being careful in determining what is to count as ‘effective’ teaching in a
situation like this.
A balanced, challenging approach can counter such relativism. Where issues are explored,
the various stances and interpretations, including potential effects on people, need to be
developed vividly so that it is but a short step for students to see how these views ‘out there’
might connect with their own, with possible consequences for their decisions. For example,
an investigation of the problem of bullying would explore, among other things, why some
people like having power over others, and to be able to humiliate and exclude them. It
could look at ways in which this might be done in various contexts like workplace, school
and home; those who bully others may feel some benefit or satisfaction even though others
are compromised, but eventually they themselves are likely to suffer as their bullying nature
becomes more widely acknowledged. People have choices regarding their behaviour, but
they are not free to choose the consequences that are often beyond their control. This is
an example of a ‘close to home’ issue for students. The topic is not ‘Are you a bully?’ But it
confronts students to ask themselves this question; at least it could make a bully feel somewhat
uncomfortable without having to acknowledge it publicly. So respecting students’ freedom
does not mean the elimination of challenge to their personal views. Other issues not so ‘close
to the bone’ will also challenge their thinking (for example the problem of unemployment
or casualisation of work), but not in the same way as topics with immediate relevance to
their everyday behaviour. A good education needs to include a judicious selection of both
types of issues.
Whenever sex education or values education is reported on television, almost invariably
it shows a student discussion. These images reinforce the stereotype that personal learning
occurs best in such interactions. It is easy to get the impression that ‘exchange of opinions’ is
the most important personal learning activity and that any critical appraisal of information
has a minor place, if any. In turn, this view can overrate the significance of discussions and
underrate student research and reflection. It would be more helpful to make discussions into
an ‘informed debate’ and not just an ‘exchange of opinions’; the former is a more accurate
description of the component of critical inquiry and it helps avoid the impression that
classroom discussion is just about swapping opinions.
Links between education, personal change and personal learning 289
This approach also helps show why meaning, identity and spirituality were selected
as key themes through which the spiritual and moral dimension of the curriculum could
be addressed: they provide considerable scope for student inquiry. In addition, it explains
the emphasis on personal and social issues that young people need to negotiate in their
personal development. Intentionally, the focus should counter student concerns that the
educational process is just an exhortation – telling them that ‘these are the values we want
you to adopt’.
A student-centred investigation of issues is the most realistic and effective way of studying
beliefs and values in the classroom context. Often, talk about ‘teaching to communicate
beliefs and values’ is unrealistic; it does not adequately take into account the complexities
of belief or value development, the significance of student freedom, the natural limitations
to educational processes for engendering beliefs or values, or the valuable contribution that
education can make to understanding beliefs or values.
Below, further attention is given to the type of learning that we consider most relevant
to the classroom because it is the key to articulating the spiritual and moral dimension to
the curriculum.
Our proposal no more compromises the affective or aesthetic dimensions than would any
good ‘study’ of poetry, literature and art.
We have underlined the fundamental importance of an overall rational orientation to
learning and personal change in the classroom because this contextual emphasis is the most
appropriate one for that formal, public setting. This view reflects the most realistic and
ethically justifiable appraisal of the potential for educationally sponsored personal change
in the classroom. Under these conditions, the rational, affective, aesthetic and volitional
dimensions of learning can flourish; these are the best classroom conditions for the healthy
operation of personal change dynamics in children and adolescents. Basically, the rational
contextual emphasis constructs and preserves the situational freedom they need for considering
personal change comfortably and favourably, as well as for being confronted in a challenging
way by new ideas and community values. And it is precisely because of this freedom that the
aesthetic and affective dimensions have more scope for enhancing personal change.
In practice, where educators have tried to replace the cognitive contextual emphasis
with excessive attention to the affective (for example emotional responses), we found that
their efforts were often counterproductive; the students were amused and cynical about a
pedagogy that seemed to achieve little beyond a temporary ‘feel-good’ experience that had
little substance; and it appeared to them to be concerned not with their learning but with
the emotional needs of the teacher – or it was perceived as manipulation.
To show how the affective can be integrated within rational inquiry in a healthy way,
we will expand on how the imagination figures in personal learning. (This builds on earlier
material on imagination and intuition as dimensions of meaning in section 2.9.7; and it
complements the discussion of imaginative learning in sections 15.4.10–15.4.12.)
and happy with the imagined change, individuals feel encouraged to take steps to achieve it.
In this sense, imagination is influential in human behaviour and personal development.
Imaginative identification is a natural and commonly used learning process through which
individuals empathise with the situations of others; it involves imaginatively ‘standing in
their shoes’, seeing things as they see them. It can lead to the acquisition of new attitudes and
values; one can learn vicariously by identifying with others. If the individuals with whom
one identifies are felt to be admirable, then there is more chance that they will be emulated;
characters who are repulsive are less likely to be perceived as good role models. People’s own
feelings in the imagined situation can help them understand the emotions and behaviour
of others. Imagination can help with learning empathy and sympathy – and hence respect
and tolerance.
Imaginative identification is a part of character development. It is used by children
and adults all the time; they can imaginatively test potential ‘new selves’, wearing the same
characteristics as those with whom they identify.
Role-playing is a technique that sets out to make imaginative identification into a
more formal learning process. Children and adolescents (as well as adults) can learn about
different behaviours, value positions and commitments by role-playing. Both imaginative
identification and role-playing can contribute to the clarification of emotions and values.7
This consideration is sufficient to illustrate the imaginative life that needs to be activated
as an integral part of classroom teaching and learning. And it suggests one basic psychological
mechanism through which personal learning might at some stage be translated into personal
change.
change is just short of impossible. In addition, applying outcomes measures to beliefs and
values makes unrealistic assumptions about the links between education and personal change.
So while there should be hopes for personal development, measurable outcomes for beliefs
and values should be kept to knowledge and skills, as is the case for the key learning areas. In
turn, assessment will be limited to these same knowledge and skills outcomes.
In some instances where curricula specify values outcomes, on closer inspection the items
are more about knowledge and awareness of values issues than about actual personal change.
Thus it would be better to designate these as knowledge outcomes.
The verb ‘appreciate’ is often used for stating attitudes and values outcomes. To appreciate
means to be aware of and to understand; and it includes acknowledgment of value and
respect, as well as some attachment. Hence to appreciate is to move in the direction of
changed values, and it is understandable that this is why it has been used for articulating
values outcomes – it is somewhere between knowledge and actual change in values.
13.11 The place for teachers’ own views and commitments in the
teaching and learning process
An essential component for education intended to promote the spiritual and moral
development of young people is a code of teaching ethics that highlights the respect needed
for the freedom and integrity of students; it should also cover pedagogy to ensure that
indoctrination and manipulation are always excluded.
294 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
While specification of a code of teaching ethics is beyond our scope here, attention will be
given to one particular aspect: the place that teachers’ own views, beliefs and commitments
might have in the classroom. It is important for five reasons outlined in the following
sections.
freedom that gives them confidence to conduct critical inquiries in the classroom and to
handle controversial issues appropriately. The procedure is all about enhancing the capacity
of students as critical interpreters of the culture and not about the teacher’s personal views;
it has nothing to do with teachers having to ‘wear their values on their sleeve’; and it is
professionally liberating. It overcomes one of the principal obstacles to teacher involvement
in trying to promote the personal development of students.
inquiries, but if all the safeguards are in place, then it can be acknowledged and accepted as
a natural and valuable part of school education.
When it comes to the point of teachers deciding whether or not to reveal their own
personal views on a particular issue, there is a need for diplomacy and wisdom. For example,
it could be expected that an ethical teacher who is an atheist should be able to help students
respectfully examine aspects of religion without demonstrating prejudice. Also, a religious
teacher should be able to teach the topic in the same respectful way without using the
situation as an opportunity for religious witness or evangelising in favour of religious belief.
It may well be diplomatic in such a situation for both of these teachers to invoke the ‘pass’
ethical rule if asked by students about their religious affiliation. The publicly stated reason
would be to avoid any possibility of prejudice or indoctrination.
What is important is that the inquiry is informative and challenging, where value
positions are well identified. Teachers who know their classes well will be in a better position
to make judgments about whether or not to make known their personal views; often, when
the value stance is not too controversial, it will not be an issue; and if asked, teachers can
explain their view without its coming across as the one students are being encouraged to
embrace. Where the issues being studied relate to the common agreed values accepted for
schooling (Chapter 11), there will be no difficulty for teachers showing how they are both
professionally and personally committed to that value stance; also, in these circumstances,
the students will be in no doubt about the teacher and school alignment with these values.
In a healthy student inquiry into values issues in across-the-curriculum studies, the teacher’s
personal value stance will not be a prominent feature. This approach makes for impartiality
in the teaching and learning process; but it is not taking a neutral values position; neither is
it proposing that all values stances are relative, and that ‘one opinion is as good as another’;
one of the key points to values inquiries is precisely to find out what is the best and most
humane view.
When it comes to the moral values of teachers, the profession should have no hesitation
in saying that it wants educators with the highest personal moral standards to carry the
responsibility of educating children and adolescents. The profession of teaching wants good
people. However, both in the job selection of teachers and in the school’s values charter and
code of teaching ethics, it is more appropriate not to contemplate any evaluation of teachers’
personal moral values; rather, the emphasis should be on spelling out clearly the professional
values and commitments that should be evident in the ways teachers deal with students and
carry out their professional responsibilities. To these professional values, all teachers should
be unconditionally committed. For example, as regards the role of teachers in promoting the
spiritual and moral development of students, it is more important to have the professional
commitment of teachers to an impartial student-centred study process than it would be to
engage in trying to determine how spiritual or religious the teachers were, as if this was the
criterion for judging whether or not they should have such an educative role.
To summarise: the professional commitment of the teacher is about being
Notes
1 M Buber 1965, Between man and man, p. 104.
2 TP Cross, www.college.columbia.edu/core/oasis/history6.php Accessed 5/5/05.
3 BS Bloom (ed.) 1956, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive domain; BS Bloom 1971, Handbook on
Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning; DR Krathwohl et al. 1971, Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives: Book II Affective domain.
4 This issue is analysed in BV Hill 1989, The taxonomy of educational objectives; 1990, A time to plant and a
time to uproot: Values education in the secondary school.
5 Our suggestions for handling the personal dimension to classroom interactions (as well as how to conduct
discussions and to treat controversial topics) are presented in ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1985, Teaching
Religion in the Secondary School: Theory and practice (Chapters 4, 6); 1988, Missionaries to a Teenage Culture:
Religious education in a time of rapid change (Chapters 4, 5, 6, 10, 19, 20).
6 J Dirkx 2001, The power of feelings: Emotion, imagination, and the construction of meaning in adult
learning.
7 A discussion of the use of these processes in classroom religious education is provided in Crawford & Rossiter
1985, Chapter 6.
8 This problem is discussed in BV Hill 1991, Values education in Australian schools.
9 Brian Hill’s ethical guidelines for teachers on how to make educational reference to their own views and
commitments appear in ‘Teacher commitment and the ethics of teaching for commitment’, Chapter 10 in
GM Rossiter 1981, Religious Education in Australian Schools. See also BV Hill 1982, The religious education
teacher’s commitment. In P Slattery (ed.) Curriculum development in religious education, vol. 2.
14
From theory to practice:
Conceptualising the spiritual
and moral dimension to the
school curriculum
In the United Kingdom, after the 1988 Education Reform Act, spiritual and moral purposes
for education were not only given more prominence in national curriculum documents.
Schools were also required to show how their curriculum promoted the ‘spiritual, moral,
social and cultural development’ of students (referred to as SMSC).2 Teachers had to give
specific attention to the area, and government inspectors were challenged to work out what
they would identify and evaluate as schools’ ‘provisions’ for fostering students’ spiritual and
moral development. The spiritual-moral role of schools was taken beyond the listing of
personal aims and common values into the domain of curriculum implementation – perhaps
the next desirable step for Australian education. Not only were the British schools affected,
but there was a considerable upturn in academic interest in the spiritual and moral dimension
to education, as evident in many books, articles, research projects and conferences.
However, despite the new momentum for spiritual-moral education that was generated,
the need for an adequate conceptualisation of the personal dimension still remained a
problem that hampered progress. There was still a significant gap between the spiritual-moral
aims and how these were to be implemented in a realistic and effective way in the classroom,
and this gap affected public expectations of schools as well as the intentions and pedagogy
of teachers. Inevitably, this dimension of education remained controversial. For example, a
national newspaper reported on the British situation in the early 1990s as follows:
299
300 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
An outgoing curriculum boss and hordes of overworked teachers in Britain are girding
themselves for battle in a new crusade for spirituality and moral values in the classroom.
Just how much influence a teacher can expect to have on a child entrusted to his or her
care is debatable … The chairman of the National Curriculum Council dared to suggest
that teachers should act as ‘moral agents’ … ‘This is an attempt by us to ensure that the
vital underpinnings of education are taken much more seriously.’ (Weekend Australian,
April 1993)3
Under the headline ‘Teachers told to be spiritual guardians’, the newspaper’s Education
Review looked at the role of teachers in the spiritual and moral development of children
in times when ‘family life is weak and standards of society diverse and bewildering’. (These
assumptions about the influence of family and social factors need appraisal in themselves,
but this is beyond our scope here.) Underpinning the arguments were two beliefs:
• In such difficult times, the ‘school is – for some children – the only stable environment in
which to develop a well-grounded sense of moral responsibility’.
• That if schools focus on trying to influence the values and behaviour of children, they can
‘make a difference’.
The ire of British teachers was provoked by both the new authoritative requirements
and public opinion. While they did not completely reject these two principles, they were
resentful that too great an expectation was being placed on them to solve social problems
and to account for young people’s personal growth. There was even a hint that so-called
ineffective teachers were being made scapegoats for burgeoning levels of crime and juvenile
delinquency.
Despite differences between the situations in Australia and the United Kingdom, this
episode is still relevant to education in this country. It showed that there was widespread
ambivalence about the real possibilities and limitations of schooling for promoting personal
change; and, even after many positive developments, this remains the case more than a
decade later.
The conceptualisation will also try to address problems associated with a relatively uneven
treatment of spiritual-moral questions across recognised key learning areas. For example, if
issues are treated in one fashion in English, but differently in say History or Health and Physical
Education, and perhaps omitted or ignored in other learning areas, then a lack of coordination
and vagueness of purpose might compromise the school’s efforts to treat the spiritual and moral
dimension in a coherent way.
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 301
[In addition to basic knowledge and skills, education seeks to promote development of
the following:] social, aesthetic, attitudinal, moral and spiritual development; abilities and
interests; imparting/inculcating values; family values; cultural values; student maturation;
individual needs; self identity; personal fulfilment; self confidence; sense of self worth and
self esteem; independence; critical thinking; moral autonomy; human relations; sexuality;
leisure; equity; awareness of one’s place in the world; respect and consideration for others;
access to cultural heritage and ethnic identity; cooperation with the educative role of
parents; informed confident citizens; social and civic values; rights and responsibilities;
communication skills; decision making skills for a democratic society; interpersonal
skills; conflict resolution; problem solving skills; organisational ability; practical living
skills; careers awareness; vocational skills; experience in the world of work; flexibility
and adaptability for the future; community relations; awareness of and resistance to
manipulation; awareness of pressure groups.5
Quite an imposing list! Most teachers are daunted and confused by such a wide-ranging,
idealistic set of aims revolving in their heads when trying to work out what might be done
about them in particular lessons. Trying to match content and methods directly with so
many aims is not a productive way to proceed.
The magnitude and complexity of the task of achieving these goals inclines teachers to
give up on trying to do much about them specifically, presuming that something positive
will happen ‘personal development-wise’ while they are attending to the knowledge and
skills outcomes they know they can achieve. As a result, personal aims tend to be regarded as
nominal and as educational rhetoric – no more than an attractive dream of the ideal citizen
that the education system is trying to produce. And the gap between personal aims and
practice is thus reinforced.
The other issue that adds to the gap is an unrealistic expectation of the level of
responsibility teachers have for the spiritual and moral development of their students. While
the prominence that normative curriculum documents give to the aim of promoting student
personal development is desirable, it has a down side. For example, reconsider the New
South Wales educational aims statement (noted in Chapters 1 and 11): ‘The moral, ethical
and spiritual development of students is a fundamental goal of education. It is clearly not
confined to one area of the curriculum. All teachers, across all areas of the curriculum have
302 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
a responsibility to inculcate in their students positive values and a capacity for moral and
ethical judgment.’6 While endorsing a spiritual-moral dimension to education, the statement
creates considerable problems for teachers. They are understandably concerned about the
following:
This aim will never be accepted by teachers, much less implemented, until it is conceptualised
in a realistic way that can win their professional support. It needs considerable qualification
and development before it becomes a statement that can animate the spiritual and moral
dimension to education appropriately and effectively.
The rest of this chapter sets out a conceptualisation that reinterprets the New South
Wales aims statement in a more constructive way. It will address the hiatus between personal
aims and practice in three ways.
1 Realistic expectations for personal change: Goals will be proposed that are realistic and
achievable – while nevertheless modest – acknowledging both the complexity of students’
personal development and the limited scope for schools to influence it. The first step in
trying to bridge the gap is acknowledgment that many of the aims in the list above
are really hopes for students’ personal development as a result of their overall schooling
experience across a number of years. It is therefore unrealistic to think that progress
towards these hopes can be readily observed; and it is not ethical to try to measure them
as if they had performance outcomes. In this instance, the gap is reduced by changing
inappropriate expectations.
2 Studying spiritual-moral content in the curriculum: Young people need opportunities to
explore spiritual-moral content in the classroom, both in particular subjects and more
generally in across-the-curriculum studies. Different curriculum structures and strategies
for promoting student spiritual-moral development will be identified.
3 Ordinary teaching and learning contributes to personal learning: The ways in which ordinary
teaching and learning activities are already contributing to young people’s personal
learning need to be identified. As proposed in the previous chapter, generic learning
activities have the capacity to ‘flow over’ into personal learning skills, and consequently
into personal learning – helping young people develop a better capacity to learn from
their life experience.
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 303
The first step was considered in Chapter 12, and the third was introduced in Chapter 13.
The remainder of this chapter will develop a conceptualisation for steps 2 and 3.
Before proceeding, it is helpful to recap from Chapters 11–13:
• At the heart of the problem is an educational naivety about how classroom teaching is
related to personal change in students.
• It is not difficult to devise personal aims for education. But there is a significant, natural
ambiguity about how they are to be put into practice.
• There is a natural uncertainty and unpredictability in causal links between classroom
teaching procedures and constructive personal change in students.
• Personal growth is complex and somewhat mysterious; it is influenced by many factors,
the most powerful of which have little to do with schooling.
• Personal learning in the classroom grows out of a substrate of rational inquiry, the
contextual emphasis to all learning in that context.
observers or receivers, but creative contributors, no matter how simple or naive their work
may be.
When it comes to experiences like meditation or personal reflection, there should be
scope for an experiential dimension in the classroom. However, the fragmented daily school
routine can make attempts to have ‘silent reflection’ for say twenty-five children at their
desks a difficult proposition. Use of special places or excursions that are more conducive
to reflection may make the experience more fruitful. Prayer experience is justified in a
religious school which sets out to give young people direct experience of the spirituality of
the tradition. In public schools, it would be more limited to a ‘participant observer’ role – for
example, during a visit to a church, synagogue or mosque.
Subjects such as English, Art and Music can lend themselves seamlessly to augmenting
the students’ sense of the numinous. Fostering empathy with a protagonist, seeing through
the eyes or mind of a writer, artist or composer can occasion special moments of insight,
discovery, or ‘eureka’. While significant, these moments for the child are not always identified
as transcendent. Rather, they are more likely to be affirmed by teachers as moments of
understanding, perception and clarity.
Identifying such learning as ‘transcendent’ would appear artificial to many teachers;
hence it may be wiser not to use that word to describe the experience. But what is important
is that teachers acknowledge that young people will occasionally recognise special moments
of learning that have personal impact. They gain new insights that can make a difference.
The following examples illustrate what can happen.
In ‘This lime tree bower, my prison’, Coleridge’s point of enlightened transcendence
comes when he ‘sees’ the glory of nature in the beauty of a leaf, through which the sun shines
and the delicate veins can be seen. Earlier in the poem, and in many of his other poems,
he spoke of ‘Nature writ large’ – the glories of nature. But through contemplation and
meditation, the numinous can be seen in a single leaf – ‘to see the universe in a grain of sand’.
For one Year 12 student, thinking about the poem, this was like a ‘revelation’. Reflecting on
her own experience of the last two years of her life, she realised that in moments of stress she
would go to the window of her bedroom, gaze onto a secluded park and just look at the trees
and eventually this would help her feel calm. The Coleridge poem helped her put words
to that experience; and it heightened the experience. The study of the poem was certainly
‘meaningful’ for this student, pointing her in the direction of transcendence. For another
student in the same class who was a competitive surfer, reading Coleridge helped her to
articulate the complex feelings she has always had about surfing; it had to do with feeling at
one with beauty.
With the cautions noted in the above discussion, we consider that the experiential
dimension to the spiritual can be comfortably accommodated within the conceptualisation
that follows.
processes across the curriculum can contribute towards the development of personal learning
skills.
Strategy 1: Explicit approach: Here, spiritual and moral questions are the explicit, formal content
of study. The aim is to help students become well informed, critical thinkers about spiritual-
moral areas. The approach takes two forms:
1A Whole subjects: Particular spiritual-moral subjects where most of the content is in one
or more of the areas of philosophy, ethics, spirituality, religion, personal development, social
justice, contemporary spiritual-moral issues.
1B Parts of study units: Particular parts of subjects or units of work where spiritual or moral or
justice issues are specified as content for exploration, for example ethical issues for science;
values issues in economics; issues related to the environment, globalisation and quality of life
in various subjects.
Strategy 2: Contextual approach: This can be used within any Key Learning Area (KLA) where
spiritual and moral issues arise naturally in relationship with the substantive content of a
unit of work (the spiritual-moral issues are not the formal unit content). Here, issues can be
addressed briefly in a way that acknowledges their importance and is informative, while not
compromising the integrity of the principal subject matter. For example, personal development
issues may arise in the study of literature (as illustrated in chapter 1); questions about the ethics
of business practice, political and ideological issues, and ecological sustainability may emerge
in various subjects. In addition, students may ask questions spontaneously about contemporary
spiritual and moral issues.
Strategy 3: General skills and consciousness-raising: The regular teaching and learning
processes in all KLAs can contribute in some way to the ‘personal’ learning of students.
Educationally enhanced cognitive skills have a carryover into personal learning skills that can
be applied to life, for example skills in self-directed study, research, problem-posing, data
collection and analysis, interpretation, evaluation, appraisal of arguments, historical perspective
and ecological perspective. Personal learning skills or life skills are a basic part of a lifelong
education; they may contribute to young people’s becoming more critically aware of spiritual
and moral dimensions; in turn, they may dispose them towards responsible, committed action.
1A Whole-subject mode: The need for a school subject for direct study
of spiritual-moral questions
The following is proposed as an ideal. Inevitably, the real situation in schools may well
preclude the introduction of such a subject. But it is still useful to articulate the ideal
because some of its proposed content and process may be implemented within alternative
structures.
If the school curriculum is to take seriously a responsibility for educating young people
in the spiritual and moral dimension to life, then it needs to include a credible subject in
which such questions can be studied directly as its principal content. This would provide an
appropriate forum for studying such matters and its existence would express the value position
that ‘what it means to be human’ merits serious subject attention in the curriculum. Ideally,
it should be a combination of religion, ethics and philosophy, plus personal development
studies. It should not be labelled as ‘social problems’, because such a name is too narrow
and negative, even though it should have scope for giving systematic attention to problems.
It should include exploration of philosophy of life and of the answers to questions about
meaning and identity that religion, philosophers and psychologists have offered. It should
be organised, taught and assessed with the same academic rigour expected of other subjects.
Ideally, a subject like this should be part of the curriculum core up to Year 10, and an option
in the final years of schooling. It should not be conflated with pastoral care arrangements
like peer support that have their own justification and purposes.
It cannot be presumed that questions of value and meaning will be adequately explored
within the general curriculum, unless it includes such a spiritual-moral subject. As mentioned
before, students in government schools will be disadvantaged if it is not available. While it
will always be important to address moral and spiritual issues in all subjects, this is not a
desirable alternative to a subject where these issues are the main focus of study. Education
needs both strategies.
In addition, a values-centred subject provides a place where the purpose and value of
students’ education itself can be examined and debated; it is in a pivotal position in the
curriculum where students can try to get some perspective on their diverse school experiences
and learnings.
The idea of a subject like this is not new. Some are already in place in schools: Personal
Development, Religion, and less frequently, Philosophy, Ethics, and Living Skills.
However, no matter how prominent and important such explicitly spiritual-moral
subjects may appear in a school’s prospectus or mission statement (even in church-related
and religious schools where such subjects are compulsory), they are often more like ‘fringe
dwellers’ than central subjects in the curriculum. And they are stressful for some teachers,
who may even perceive them as ‘health hazards’. Questions may be raised about their
effectiveness and their poor image in the eyes of students, parents and school staff.
It is puzzling! We have pointed out the philosophical importance of subjects like this and
have explained the valuable contribution they can make to students’ personal development.
How is it that they can be poorly regarded by students, parents and teachers? The reason,
one that needs to be well understood, has to do with the way the educational potential of
personal subjects can be subverted by school structures and by what we call the ‘psychology
of the learning environment’.
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 307
Certain subjects are seen by students as having high status and importance. Even if they do
not like studying them, most students pay at least some attention to what is being taught,
and in general try to understand the basics because success in these subjects can affect their
future studies and employment.
Also, when subjects are fully accredited (and examinable either by continuous or
summative assessment) at Year 11–12 level, and when they count towards university
entrance, students are more inclined to perceive them as important and are more ready to
work at them. Students’ attitude to subjects becomes problematic where they do not have
such credibility and mark status. This point is well illustrated by the history of subjects
like non-elective Art and Music, Personal Development and Religion. This problem in the
‘psychology of the learning environment’ has also been one of the hurdles to be overcome
in developing more equitable curricula in the post-compulsory years where the bias has
traditionally been in favour of university-oriented students.
To a great extent, student attitudes towards the study of personal or spiritual or moral
subjects mirror society’s attitudes. For example, the study of religion in church-related schools
is not always regarded by many students as a necessary or valuable pursuit, certainly not one
that could make a difference when getting a job. Neither is it seen by many as making a
major contribution to their quality of life, though interestingly, most of the same students
will say that religion as such is important – perhaps the sort of nominal religion that is better
to have than not to have, just in case! The attitude of many youth to religion is markedly
different from what was traditional. They tend to see religion as an option, rather than a part
of life that is taken on more or less unquestioningly, as was the case for earlier generations.
Any teaching of religion – and values for that matter – that does not take this contemporary
situation into account runs the risk of being dismissed without a proper hearing.
Also, while Religion has a pre-eminent place in the mission of the church school and a
prominent place in its core curriculum, there may be a discrepancy when it comes to staffing,
resourcing and timetabling. If staff see it as a nominal requirement, then the negative views of
students will be reinforced. How a subject is presented in the curriculum and how it is taught
will affect its perceived status. Where it appears to be taught with a ‘low-grade’ pedagogy
compared with that used in the ‘important’ subjects, the message is not lost on the students.
For example, in British schools, Personal and Social Education classes were included with
the admirable purpose of promoting students’ personal development. However, too great a
reliance on group discussion, without the strong sense of content, study and assessment that
were taken for granted in other subjects, undermined their credibility in the eyes of students.
Just having supposedly ‘relevant’ personal content is not enough; the personal purposes of
the subject were subverted by its poor image. Departmental Inspection reports showed that
the same problem also occurred in Religious Education (a compulsory subject in British
schools)��������������������������������������������������������������
. For example, the Report on Religious Education (1994) noted:
At Key Stage 4 and in sixth forms, basic Religious Education, where it was provided, was
usually confined to listening and talking rather than reading and writing. Content was
usually appropriate and of interest to pupils, although on occasion it depended almost
308 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
entirely on video recordings. Only in a few schools was learning in Religious Education at
these stages linked with certification, such as Records of Achievement or general studies.
Learning in examination classes was usually sound.7
School structures and community opinion that are not supportive of the personal/spiritual/
moral subjects will subvert their perceived value. Therefore, to make the study of religion,
ethics, philosophy and personal development a valuable and effective exercise in the school,
it needs to have well-defined and highly visible support structures that show its value to
students. It also needs the support of the whole school staff.
If spiritual-moral subject matter is to be taken seriously by students, it must be studied
with the same rigour as in the ‘status subjects’; the critical study of these subjects needs to be
endorsed in the school’s philosophy, together with some community validation. An example
of this validation appeared in a publication in the United Kingdom which showed why the
study of religion in public education was useful for jobs in tourism, medicine, nursing, law,
education, police work and public service.8
The status problem with spiritual-moral school subjects has parallels in other contexts.
Low status and ‘non-subject’ ranking also applies to similar subjects at university. For example,
at one stage in a Law school in an Australian university, Legal Ethics was compulsory but
non-examinable. As the lecturer noted, ‘This is the subject when the paper planes come
out’. Another lecturer in a medical faculty faced a similar problem in her course on medical
ethics. While the purpose of these courses was admirable, they were compromised by the
psychology of the learning environment. The students tended to think that they could
handle ethical issues without any need for help, and that the courses on ethics were of little
importance compared with those that ‘counted’.
The accreditation of spiritual-moral school subjects giving them parity with regular
subjects can help with their perceived status. This does not mean that they will only be
acceptable when and if they are fully accredited, and neither will accreditation solve their
status problems. Any attempt to implement such studies needs to acknowledge the prevailing
psychology of the classroom learning environment; something can be done to address the
problem, though it is unlikely that it will ever be eliminated.
This is not a statement of unquestioned support for the system of examination or assessment-
geared learning. It is an acknowledgment of the realities within schools and community that
have the potential to undermine any program that is not alert to the problem and does not
attempt to address it. If the development of any spiritual-moral subject does not take the
problem into account, it will be quickly marginalised – along with the other fringe-dwelling
subjects in the curriculum. The background to this problem is an educational environment and
parental expectations that are apparently preoccupied with performance outcomes in the high-
status subjects – hence not likely to be fertile ground for subjects that are primarily concerned
with students’ spiritual and moral development. It may well be that the same educational
environment inhibits young people from considering a trade career because it too does not
appear attractive or valuable in the light of the prevailing expectations of schooling.
A number of these issues were illustrated in a study of student perceptions in a church
school system conducted by Middleton in 2000.9 In one part of the survey, a large sample of
both primary and secondary students were asked the following questions:
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 309
For both primary and secondary students, Maths and English did not score well as favourite
subjects; however, they were clearly regarded as the most relevant to students’ future lives and
the subjects that adults thought were most important for them to learn. Art (and Industrial
Arts) and Physical Education were the top favourite subjects for both groups of students,
but they were at the bottom (or near bottom) of the list of subjects felt to be relevant to their
future lives, and similarly they were at the bottom of the list of subjects considered to make
them think the most. However, they were at or near the top again as subjects that made
the students feel proudest (related to achievement). Maths particularly, as well as Science,
English and LOTE (Languages Other Than English), were the subjects that were regarded
as the ones that required students to think the most.
What was difficult not to miss was the place of Christian Studies (or Religious Education)
– near the bottom on all five lists. Also evident was a decrease in scores for Christian Studies
from primary to secondary (with the changes for questions 1 and 5 being marginal.)
It is unlikely that the students’ perceptions were determined solely by the quality of the
teaching in the different subjects. What the results suggested is that cultural and family
views of what subjects are important are certainly picked up by students. The subjects
that brought students most enjoyment and engagement have low status in the subject
hierarchy.
While we have given special attention to the diagnosis of problems, we do not want
to give the impression that all is doom and gloom as far as the spiritual-moral subjects are
concerned. We are aware of the other side of the story where these subjects, in the students’
estimation, have made a valuable contribution to their education.
It goes without saying that efforts are needed to address other factors that influence
student expectations such as a comprehensive sequential program; appropriate content;
enlightened, relevant student texts; and well-trained, competent, professionally committed
teachers. In addition, subjects that purport to be about life and spiritual-moral issues have to
be true to their name – in other words, they need to have perceived relevance. While there
is no automatic recipe for relevant content and teaching procedures (see Chapter 17), efforts
are required to address this need for different age groups of students.
All this notwithstanding, it is our contention that school curricula, no matter how
successful in achieving new target levels of equity, retention and measurable employment-
related competencies, will remain flawed if they fail to give a prominent place to studies
concerned with human meaning and values.
While the above discussion claims a central place for a spiritual-moral subject in the
curriculum, it would be unwise and inappropriate to try to channel all reference to value
issues into such a subject – as if it could adequately carry the school’s responsibility for
spiritual/moral education. The whole-subject strategy therefore needs to be complemented
with others as described in the following sections.
310 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
For many reasons, historical ones among them, government schools in Australia are unlikely
to implement the sort of spiritual-moral subject considered above. Religion Studies programs
are approved in the various states, but few government schools are able to offer the courses;
church-related schools make up practically all of the candidature in Years 11–12. However,
the systematic exploration of spiritual-moral issues envisaged for such a subject can be taken
up in a more limited way as segments within units of study elsewhere in the curriculum.
Spiritual and moral questions should be written into units as an appropriate part of their
content; how extensively will depend on the topic. Good examples were documented in
the National Values Education Study.10 They included two commercially produced values
education programs: Living Values and The Virtues Project. However, as Hill pointed out,
an element missing from both programs was identification of the underlying belief systems
that influenced values, and in particular, the religious perspectives that informed these
programs.11
In addition to the topics listed earlier for this strategy, other potential areas of investigation
could include: ethical issues related to bio-technology (such as in vitro fertilisation, surrogate
motherhood, genetic engineering); ethical issues in business practice; the moral implications
in globalisation policies; young people’s search for meaning; identity issues for youth; the
religious dimension to multiculturalism; conflicts between religion and science; issues
concerning work and quality of life. It would be a matter of seeing where it was appropriate
to add specific values-related content that fitted within particular units of work.
As with all attempts at integration in the curriculum, this strategy will work well only if it
is properly organised and if there is good cooperation between teachers working in different
key learning areas. A number of practical questions have to be resolved. What issues should
be covered? In which subjects and at what year levels and in what detail? What methods need
to be specified for handling issues, especially controversial ones? Are there useful resources for
particular topics? How can spiritual-moral issues be explored while maintaining the integrity
of the primary subject matter in the host subject? Some of these questions, particularly the
last, are also relevant to the contextual strategy.
relevant information and resources as well as through discussion, while not compromising
the integrity of the principal subject matter. At times, the attention may take the form of
probing teacher questions that show students something of the complexity of the problem,
suggesting directions for further clarifying thought and study.
There are some similarities with explicit strategy 1B, the difference being that in the
contextual approach, the spiritual-moral dimension is not formally identified as content,
even though it can be an integral part of the study.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the strategy is to register the spiritual and moral
issues that are often there in topics being studied, but just beneath the surface. Not too much
should be expected, however; the strategy should not carry principal responsibility for the
spiritual-moral dimension to the curriculum. While unplanned and informal discussion of
these issues can be valuable educationally, this is not an adequate substitute for a systematic,
well-resourced study as envisaged in strategies 1A and 1B.
2 Information orientation: The prime purpose of the study is to help young people become
better informed about personal, spiritual and moral issues.
3 Open inquiring study: The teaching should be an open, inquiring, student-centred, study; the
provision of up-to-date information extends students’ horizons, challenging them to identify,
analyse and evaluate evidence and arguments. Use of appropriate resource materials gives
students access to the same information used by the teacher, and it helps with objectivity.
‘Teacher talk’ is not the primary or exclusive means of presenting information; students
can be encouraged to learn how to find and sift information for themselves, encouraging
individual research.
5 Respect for freedom and privacy: The privacy and freedom of students should be respected
by focusing on rational inquiry, without expecting personal responses. Shared personal views
are valued if students wish to contribute at this level, but it should never be a requirement.
The approach does not preclude studies that challenge students to review their own thinking
and values.
312 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
6 Different views on controversial issues: Students need to be alerted to the controversial and
contested aspects of issues. Both authoritative (normative) views as well as some conflicting
views need to be considered when dealing with controversial issues; students need to
understand why the issue is controversial. The teacher should be able to model responsible
evaluation.
8 Agreed common values: Where agreed common values for education are pertinent to an
issue being studied, its value position can be appropriately stated. But the naming of the
value stance is not an imposition, even though it is acknowledged as a desirable goal.
9 Identification of values and beliefs: A principal concern of the study is to identify explicit and
implied values and beliefs, and ideologies In turn, it can lead into analysis and interpretation
of the values dimension to an issue. It may also include evaluation of the issue in the light of
community values.
10 Code of teaching ethics: Teachers need to adhere to the established code of teaching ethics
for the school. In particular, the stance of committed impartiality (Chapter 13) should regulate
the ways in which they can make educational reference to their own views in the teaching
and learning process.
11 Variety of methods: A variety of teaching methods can be used for the student exploration
of issues. Basically, critical methods that are already established in the KLAs will be used.
Also available are some recognised approaches to values/moral education: exploration of
moral biographies and of situations where moral decisions have to be made; appraising
information and arguments about contemporary issues (including, for example, the potential
influence of the media on the development of moral values in the individual); analysis of
moral codes (for example from world religions); values analysis; values clarification; moral
dilemmas; conflict resolution exercises; role plays; and simulation games.
A critical appraisal of these diverse methods is needed before they can be used appropriately;
teachers can then be more aware of the possibilities and limitations in various approaches,
and critical selectivity and effectiveness can be enhanced. This will also help ensure
that approaches are suitable for students at particular stages of maturity and intellectual
development. It will also help avoid potential emotional manipulation through misuse of
methods.12
focus of this third strategy is different. It interprets the ways in which ordinary teaching and
learning activities in all key learning areas make some contribution to students’ personal
development. It is not as tangible as the explicit and contextual strategies. Some may think
this is just putting a nice ‘spin’ on ordinary teaching by saying it has personal relevance; to
some extent it is a ‘spin’, but if there are real links to personal learning skills, no matter how
slender, then this needs to be acknowledged for the positive contribution it can make. The
interpretation is about the overall impact of twelve years of school curriculum on the life
capacities of young people.
The general skills strategy is also a good starting point for conceptualising the spiritual
and moral dimension of across-the-curriculum studies. It is the basis on which the first
two strategies rest. If this is what teachers have been doing in best practice, it needs to be
articulated to give them a better understanding of what is their appropriate role in young
people’s spiritual and moral education. It can bring a sense of realism and perspective to the
iconic aims statement quoted earlier about the responsibility of ‘all teachers across all areas
of the curriculum’ for the spiritual and moral development of students.
While this role for teaching is an important one, it is inappropriate to label it as ‘values
education’, because such a label would create a false impression about what processes are
involved. It is about the net effect of schooling on young people’s ability to make sense of
life. It is not possible to partition its impact out into subject-specific contributions. But it is
important to show how all subjects are oriented in this direction.
It is presumed that all subjects in the curriculum were included because they were
considered to make a distinctive contribution to young people’s education. Particular subjects
represent traditional academic disciplines; they impart specific knowledge and skills and help
develop employment-related competencies. But this is not enough. In addition, student-
centred curriculum theory and the prominence of personal aims for education require that
all key learning areas show how they can contribute to the overall personal development and
wellbeing of students in both distinctive and general ways.
This spiritual-moral role can be interpreted as the ordinary teaching and learning activities
not only achieving their intended subject outcomes, but also contributing a flow-on effect in
the personal domain, enhancing personal learning skills. Each learning area should be able
to show how it is valuable for young people in the larger context of their lives; it should try
to alert them to the meaning of their learning and not be content with outward proofs of
learning as shown in the assessment of measurable outcomes.
The general spiritual-moral contribution of a subject: Each subject fosters general skills for
personal development. For example, there is some contribution to personal skilling in each
of the various learning activities used in the classroom. The list that follows is of activities
that make some contribution to personal learning skills.
• Developing basic skills in numeracy and literacy needed for life in contemporary society
• Experiencing art, literature and music, thereby widening the students’ cultural horizons
• Imaginative identification with characters in literature, and with the perspective and
feelings of authors and artists
• Identifying cultural diversity and becoming more aware of the potentiality and problems
in multicultural democratic societies
• Identifying moral, political and environmental issues
• Differentiating facts from beliefs
• Differentiating emotional and reasoned responses to an issue
• Identifying both the explicit and implied values in a situation and making tentative
judgments in the light of community values
• Identifying and evaluating cultural meanings, stereotypes and identity resources
• Identifying and evaluating ideologies
• Identifying conflict and its sources with reflection on possibilities for non-violent conflict
resolution
• Speculating on short-term and long-term human consequences of particular actions
• Speculating on the influence of culture on individuals, and on lifestyle and quality of life
• Reflecting on implications for wellbeing, quality of life and respect for the environment
• Developing historical perspective
• Seeing how events in the past can help illuminate and interpret what is happening at
present.
To the extent that all subjects achieve student learning in one or more of these activities there
is some possibility of carryover into personal learning skills.
In addition to their general input to personal learning skills, each subject is distinctive in
the way it contributes to students’ understanding of, and participation in, life. It demonstrates
a spiritual (meaningful or personal) dimension by adding to the range of an individual’s
access to physical and cultural inheritance, as well as to their capacity to participate in
community life. For example, English studies can open students to a lifelong interest in
literature; Mathematics can provide basic skills and computer literacy that are essential for
participation in commerce; learning a foreign language enhances the capacity to enter into
another culture and literature; Health Education can be a precursor to a lifelong sensitivity
to health issues; a study of geology, geography and biology can enhance the capacity to
‘read’ the ecology of the environment; Religious Studies can contribute an understanding of
the ways religious beliefs influence behaviour and how religions interpret the dilemmas of
human existence such as life, joy, pain and death.
Every now and again teachers should attempt to alert students to the long-term meaning
and value in their current learnings, even if it seems to fall on uninterested ears. Whether or not
they agree with it at this stage, it is important for students to know that educators have reasons
for thinking particular studies ultimately valuable for their personal development; they are not
just about achieving miscellaneous outcomes. Not to do this would disadvantage students by
failing to highlight the spiritual and moral dimension of the subject; to do it too often would
be counterproductive because it would be interpreted by the students as ‘preaching’.
Figure 14.1 provides a summary of the discussion so far.
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 315
Figure 14.1 Diagrammatic representation of the conceptualisation of the spiritual and moral dimension
to the school curriculum.
The interpretive scheme can give some overall perspective to the ways in which ordinary
classroom teaching and learning affects students’ personal learning – with the hope that it can
eventually translate into personal growth. It is a matter of seeing how teaching and learning
activities (aspects of pedagogy) can ‘point’ students in the direction of personal development.
While the direct study of spiritual-moral questions is fundamentally important,
the conceptualisation shows how diverse teaching activities can be interpreted as having
coherence in the way they contribute to students’ acquisition of personal learning skills. In
turn, it can help give a sense of direction, integration and cooperation for teachers working
in different learning areas who share common aims for students’ personal development.
The scheme is an interpretation of what was intended in normative curriculum documents
when they specified the personal aim for students: ‘to achieve maximum personal benefit from
their educational experience … as a basis for understanding themselves and their world.’13
316 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
An initial reaction to this list of themes and perspectives may be ‘Yet more expectations! Yet
more complexities!’ as if they were ‘additions’ to an already overloaded conceptual scheme.
Rather, they should be considered as themes that are already embedded within both aims
and teaching methods and that can be located ‘within’ the framework, depending on their
particular points of focus and emphasis. In this way, educators can get some perspective on
these educative themes and some practical control over them – they are like different lenses
for analysing the educational process. Below we show how they can be identified within the
conceptual scheme; and we will take only one example, ‘educating for wisdom’, to show how
the identification can be applied to all of the themes.
The themes can be interposed between the two poles of aims/hopes and teaching/
learning activities; they have two-way connections with these poles as shown in Figure 14.2
because they can be conceptually linked with both points of reference. The insertion of
intermediate themes between aims and practice actually makes the conceptualisation more
coherent and workable. For example, earlier we noted the natural ambivalence of teachers
when confronted with the multiplicity of personal educational aims. Many of these aims
should never be contemplated as particular lesson outcomes, but as long-term hopes for
personal change and for the development of spiritual-moral learning skills that are acquired
slowly and almost imperceptibly across many years of schooling.
Rather than try to draw linear connections between particular personal aims and
particular teaching or learning activities, the personal development learning process is more
comprehensible if it has some intermediate goals as ‘bridges’ between personal aims and
practice. All of the abovementioned themes could be used in this bridging role. We will use
the notion of ‘educating in wisdom’ as an example. When interposed between the multiple,
‘atomistic’ personal aims and practice, such themes can help orient and integrate the diverse
efforts to achieve these aims.
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 317
Figure 14.2 Interposing personal development themes as intermediate goals between personal aims
and teaching/learning activities
The idea of educating young people in wisdom can be broken down into a list of principles
(characteristics of wisdom) and these can be used as intermediate goals to show how patterns
of teaching and learning activities can translate eventually into the realisation of personal
aims. Ambivalence about the multiplicity of personal aims can be resolved to some extent
by clustering the aims around the particular characteristics of wisdom to which they are
related. In turn, these same wisdom characteristics can serve to cluster different aspects of
pedagogy – showing pathways between aims and pedagogy – as illustrated in Table 14.1 and
Figure 14.3. Wisdom as an intermediate goal serves like a ‘filter’ or ‘clustering principle’ for
the multiple personal aims, grouping them in a logical way according to the characteristics
of wisdom; and it serves as a ‘selector’ of different aspects of pedagogy that appear related
to the development of those same components of wisdom; it highlights plausible pathways
between aims and practice.
Aims related to acquiring information can be clustered around the wisdom characteristic of
‘being well informed’; and at the same time, this characteristic serves as a reference point for
a cluster of teaching and learning activities like data collection, analysis, student research,
display of results, all of which contribute towards ‘informing’ students. Similarly, the wisdom
characteristic of evaluating and judging links evaluative purposes with evaluative classroom
activities – and so on for the various characteristics of wisdom.
Thus the theme ‘educating young people towards wisdom’, has a double clustering capacity
for aims and pedagogy. The scheme shows how operationalising the wisdom theme not
only contributes to information and evaluative skills, but how diverse teaching activities
contribute to the development of personal learning skills.
There will not automatically be a perfect fit between aims, pedagogy and the intermediate
goals in the wisdom characteristics – for example, the idea of acknowledging mistakes and
learning from them. When this occurs, both the list of personal aims and the aspects of
pedagogy have to be expanded to include items that relate to this idea. Hence the whole
scheme grows and is refined as different personal development themes are interposed
between aims and practice, and as all three are linked interactively.
Figure 14.3 shows how the three areas are related for the theme educating in wisdom. The
clustering of aims and practices around wisdom characteristics is suggested and not clearly
marked. The next step in spelling out such clustering in detail would engage educators in
the conceptual task of bridging the gap between aims and purposes in a constructive and
productive way. It is proposed that the same sequence can be used for interpreting the
contribution of the various personal development themes noted above (and described briefly
in Chapter 12).
Our overall conceptualisation for the spiritual and moral dimension to the school
curriculum can thus accommodate various educative themes (as exemplified in ‘wisdom’) as
‘lenses’ for looking at the educational process from aims through to practice and hoped for
outcomes; that is, to show how students’ personal development can be promoted through
across-the-curriculum studies. These themes thus have an integrative function, filling in the
middle ground between basic aims and practical methods. The conceptualisation validates
the personal development significance of the general curriculum.
One of the advantages of this conceptualisation is its focus on linking aims and practice,
which help to address directly the major problem of the hiatus between aims and practice.
It is precisely in trying to make more sense of connections between classroom teaching
and students’ personal development that the problem is minimised. In turn, the listing of
classroom activities helps keep the theory down to earth by underlining the real possibilities
and limitations of the classroom. The scheme epitomises the traditional notion of praxis.
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 319
Figure 14.3 Linking personal aims with classroom practice by making use of an intermediate personal
development theme like ‘educating in wisdom’
14.5 Conclusion
The conceptualisation of the spiritual-moral dimension to the school curriculum that we
have developed does not introduce new elements to the already long list of personal aims
for education. Rather, it is a way of interpreting the complicated process that may give more
320 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
perspective and confidence to teachers in their role of promoting the spiritual and moral
development of students. It can help them see more clearly points of contact between the
high ideals of education, the many personal development themes in educational discourse,
and what actually happens in their classroom teaching; it can give more coherence and
integration to their educational intentions and pedagogy. In addition, it can be linked
effectively with the three key personal development constructs elaborated in Part 2 (meaning,
identity and spirituality), which provide content and issues for study, as well as an informed
background for interactions with students.
The approach helps keep in mind the natural ambiguity and uncertainty in using
education to promote the spiritual and moral development of young people; it can serve as a
useful moderation of any unrealistic expectations on the part of teachers, administrators and
parents. While hopefully promoting the notion of holistic education, the conceptualisation
can provide a reality check on educational rhetoric that shows little appreciation of the
complexity and mystery in young people’s personal development.
The clarification of the spiritual and moral dimension to the curriculum envisaged here
needs to be reflected in the language used to talk about education and students’ personal
development. Educational discourse should acknowledge the complexity of personal
development as well as the tenuous links between teaching-learning processes and actual
personal change in young people. It should deal more with ‘hopes’ for personal change than
talk about them as if they were measurable performance outcomes.
To illustrate the changes in perspective and language that should flow from this
conceptualisation, we offer a rewrite of the earlier aims statement to which we have given so
much attention. The reinterpretation proposes a more realistic view that can win the professional
support of teachers as well as one that can be implemented with more confidence.
Original spiritual/moral aims A reinterpretation in the light of the discussion in Chapters 11–14
statement for schools:
Values and Education: NSW
Ministry of Education, 1989
The moral, ethical and spiritual The moral, ethical and spiritual development of students is a fundamental
development of students is a hope of education. In subjects like personal development, religion and
fundamental goal of education. It is ethics/philosophy, spiritual and moral questions are the principal subject
clearly not confined to one area of matter for student study and exploration. However, the concern to promote
the curriculum. students’ personal development is clearly not confined to one area of the
curriculum. Other strategies need to be employed for educating students
All teachers, across all areas of the
in spiritual and moral questions across the curriculum.
curriculum have a responsibility to
inculcate in their students positive In addition to the above, as a natural part of their teaching activities,
values and a capacity for moral all teachers, across all areas of the curriculum, have a limited role in
and ethical judgment. educating young people in personal development skills. All subjects
can thus help students to appreciate the greater meaning and wise
integration of their learnings at school. While it is acknowledged that
education cannot automatically inculcate values, it is hoped that educating
students in relation to the dimensions of meaning and value throughout
the curriculum will foster their personal development. Hopefully this will
enhance their values and their capacity for moral and ethical judgment.
Conceptualising the spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum 321
The purpose underlying all of the considerations in the last four chapters is not to introduce
or inject a spiritual or moral dimension into school education. Rather, it presumes that
this dimension is already there and is being addressed to some extent. The overview and
interpretation may help enhance and integrate teaching aimed at the personal side of young
people’s education. It may also help with current moves to reorient educational thinking to
highlight more clearly the dimensions of value, purpose and meaning. In turn, this thinking
may lead to practice that helps students look on their experience of education with a greater
sense of its value; and thus help them develop as individuals who are proud of, and happy
with, the knowledge and skills they have acquired and better able to see how their school
learning can be integrated into their lives.
Notes
1 This information was supplied by Dr G Rummery (2005) from research on the schools of the De La Salle
order in France in the 18th century. In his letter to Voltaire, Le Chatelet was referring to the impact on the
rural poor of the education given in De La Salle schools. In his reply, Voltaire noted that the De La Salle
Brothers ‘must be the successors of the Jesuits!’ He asked Le Chatelet if some brothers could be sent to him in
Switzerland to ‘pull his ploughs and cultivate his fields’.
2 GM Rossiter 1996, The spiritual and moral dimension to education: Some reflections on the British
experience.
3��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
L Oswald 1993, Teachers told to be moral guardians: Juvenile crime levels prompt push for moral values.
4 This problem was considered in an earlier publication: ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1993, The future of
holistic education: The recession we had to have? In this article, the personal development thrust to schooling
was considered under the label of ‘holistic education’. Today, the problem remains much as it was a decade
earlier although there has been progress in the articulation of personal aims and values for education.
5 This list was compiled from one document on school aims: ���������������������������������������
NSW Board of Secondary Education 1989, Aims
for Schools.
6 T Metherell 1990, Excellence and Equity: New South Wales curriculum reform, p. 65.
7��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
Evidence of status problems with Religious Education and Personal and Social Education is noted in the
inspection reports of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education): Ofsted 1994, Religious Education and
Collective Worship 1992–1993 (Report), pp. 5–6, 13–16, 20; National Curriculum Council 1993, Analysis of
SACRE Reports 1993, pp. 4–7.
8 H Smith (ed.) 1987, The career value of religious education/theology: what can I do with a religious studies
qualification?; Professional Council for Religious Education 1989, What is religious education?and what use
is it?
9 M Middleton 2001, Lutheran schools at millennium’s turn: A snapshot 1999–2000 from slab hut to cyberspace,
pp. 4–6.
10 Curriculum Corporation 2004, Values Education in Action: Case studies from 12 values education schools- for
the National Values Education Forum (prepared for the Australian Government Department of Education,
Science and Training); see also Living values, www.interfaithstudies.org/ethics/valueseducation.html; Virtues
project, www.virtuesproject.com/virtues.html.
11 BV Hill 2004, Values Education in Schools: Issues and challenges. Keynote address given at the Forum of the
National Values Education Study, p. 8.
12 An insightful and practical account of dealing with controversial issues in the classroom that complements the
summary here is available in Appendix 3 of Hill 2004, Exploring religion in school, pp. 198–210.
13 NSW Board of Secondary Education 1989, p. 3.
15
The shaping influence of film
and television on young people’s
spiritual and moral development:
An educational exploration
This chapter suggests an area in which the theory in the previous four chapters can be put
into practice. It can be addressed through either explicit or contextual approaches or both; it
is a social issue with implications for young people’s personal development, and it has links
with meaning, identity and spirituality. It warrants the attention of professionals involved in the
education and care of youth, while it also has relevance to the wider community.
The title of the chapter shows how an issue can be turned into a topic for student investigation –
a problem-posing approach. Helping students articulate the problem, investigate it, and theorise
about it embodies a pedagogy. But this is not just a teacher’s pedagogy, it is a students’ pedagogy
in which they do the teaching, that is, they teach themselves how to become enquiring, critical
evaluators of culture. It is the student research process that is educative – and empowering.
The enquiry may not result in clear-cut conclusions, but it is through the enquiring process itself
322
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 323
that students can become better informed, more discerning and less naive about the shaping
influence of film and television on culture, as well as on people’s values and behaviour. And
hopefully, this same pedagogy can become a habit.
screen violence and violent crime (as well as expected concern about gun control). When it
comes to addressing problems like this, parents and educators try to identify the negative
and harmful influences so that remedial action can be taken. This usually focuses on two
things: identifying causal links between the media and harm to young people; and exercising
censorship.
However, this approach has problems. It is more politically than educationally oriented;
it is like trying to eliminate moral problems by making them illegal. Also, concentrating
on the negative influences is likely to be counterproductive for young people who get
much pleasure from films and television. In addition, there are difficulties in making an
evaluation of film and television too dependent on identified causal links between watching
the media and particular behaviour. For example: the debate about screen violence tends
to presume that as long as there is no identifiable, direct, causal link, then violent films are
appropriate for public consumption; and that if there is an identified link, then the material
in question should be banned. Not surprisingly, considerable research along these lines has
failed to demonstrate unambiguous causal links. Such research tends to neglect the more
subtle influence on thinking and feelings, and on what people regard as culturally acceptable
– effects that would be difficult to identify and measure in any case.
An example of ambivalence about the personal influence of television was the decision to
ban cigarette advertising. The ban presumed that the exposure of children to such advertising
increases the probability of introducing them to smoking, which is bad for their health. The
facts show that this is true. When the Joe Camel cigarette ads were introduced in the United
States in the 1970s, they presented Joe as a fun, cool character who naturally appealed to
older children. The Camel cigarette market share rose significantly and their sales to older
children and young adults were proportionally much higher.
What is interesting, however, is the argument proposed by the cigarette companies: if
the censorship on cigarette advertising is based on the premise that exposure of children to
such advertising is harmful because it influences their behaviour, then it is hypocritical to
allow so much uncensored violence on television. If the smoking ads are harmful, how can
the authorities be sure that screen violence is not?
In contrast to such an empirical approach to the problem, what is proposed here is an
educational exploration of the functions of the media, particularly under the genre of story. This
is not concerned with trying to identify empirically the actual level of negative influence, but
with educating teachers and other adults, and in turn, children and adolescents, to speculate
about the possible ways in which film and television serve as influential cultural reference
points that affect the ways people perceive, understand and value the world. This locates the
exploration within a ‘critical’ education that seeks to increase awareness of the elements of
culture that can have a shaping influence on people’s lives. Another description of this role
is helping individuals ‘interrogate their cultural conditioning’.7
The overall educational aim, then, is to help people give more thought to the way that
cultural elements in films and television enter into their life structure. This alerts them to
the issues and can provide information to assist with the analysis of potential problems. We
hope this can help educate people towards watching films and television with a more critical,
discriminating eye – with the capacity for entertainment undiminished; it may help with the
development of ‘taste’ in viewing habits.
326 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
1 The study of film and television must be positive and give due attention to the valuable
contribution that the media can make to culture, education, entertainment and personal
development. Looking only at problems is too negative, and this will inevitably alienate
young people, especially if they see it as an attack on their viewing and entertainment habits.
A negative approach also plays to the stereotype of parents and teachers who seem to have
a schizoid attitude to the media: they love it themselves, but fear it is having negative but
undefinable effects on children (apart from its considerable child-minding capacity!).
• Propaganda film, where the aim is specifically and unashamedly concerned with changing
people by determining how they will think and act;
• Documentary film� where the aim is to bring about change in thinking and action through an
informed educational process; attention to the dynamics of propaganda and documentary
films is a prerequisite for study of the more complex and subtle patterns of potential
influence in feature films, television and in commercial advertising;
• Television advertising, which is concerned with promoting the image associations, thinking
and behaviour that will sustain markets.
(Note that the third and fourth of these items will be treated together. Apart from advertising,
the programs on television can be broadly categorised as ‘film’ and include drama, sitcoms,
comedy, current affairs, news, documentaries, cartoons, and so-called ‘reality’ programs.)
3 The centrality of the genre story (or narrative). Film and television have continuity with
the role of storytelling (both verbal and literary) as an influence on spiritual and moral
development; they have also enhanced and extended storytelling in major ways with instant
accessibility in the homes of people in most countries; the value-embedded narratives from
film and television can be used by children and adolescents as raw material for the building
of meaning, identity and spirituality.
What is most noticeable by its absence in the sequence above is religious film or television.
This includes three types. First, there are programs that are developed by religious groups
as part of their mission: to nurture the faith of believing communities and to evangelise
with the purpose of inviting people to faith and congregational membership. The second
type includes programs on religion in culture that are not produced by the religious groups
themselves and therefore do not have the same religious purposes; rather they have an
educational or documentary focus. The third type is where religion enters into feature films,
like other aspects of culture.8
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 327
Because our interest here is with the spiritual and moral dimensions of ordinary film and
television, we have chosen not to consider specifically religious programs of the first type. To
address that area adequately would go beyond the scope of this already extensive chapter. For
example, the potential spiritual influence of this type of religious film or television depends
on the belief position of viewers – whether they formally identify with the religious group or
not. Nevertheless, our analysis of the psychological dynamics of film and television should
be helpful in any further analysis of religious content.
The research sequence outlined above has the potential to be extended into a number of
other studies. For example:
• How contemporary film and television change what is understood as history and how
history is recorded.
• Film and literature studies.
• Film and television and the exploration of particular social issues.
• Relationships with the interpretation of scripture: the modern familiarity with science
and film tends to default towards a ‘documentary’ interpretation of the gospels. Such a
mentality was foreign to the gospel authors and absent from their texts; applying it to the
gospels yields incorrect literal interpretations and inhibits an interpretation that more
accurately captures the symbolic and theological meanings.
• The quest for the ‘cinematic Jesus’. The Jesus films, dating from the late 19th century, are
like gospels, seeking to communicate an interpretation of what Jesus was like and what
he meant to Christians. How do they compare with the gospels themselves and with the
findings of contemporary scholarship on the historical Jesus?
those early films stand within a contemporary analysis of what makes a film propagandist.
The documentary Jesus Christ Moviestar (1994) shows footage of some of the earliest Bible
and Jesus films.
Popular thinking about propaganda film depends a lot on the propaganda from the early
Soviet period in Russia and from Nazi Germany. Tracing its history shows that the format
became more refined and subtle; it is not entirely lacking in some contemporary films – as
Joseph Goebbels said, the best propaganda was where people were not aware that the film
was propagandist.
From the time of the Bolshevik revolution, Lenin came to regard film as one of the
most important vehicles for promoting popular revolutionary ideology. He thought of film
as the art-form of the masses. In 1917, a special Cinema Commission was organised in St
Petersburg by the People’s Commissariat of Education; within two years the industry was
nationalised under state control. Thence the cinema of the socialist state functioned as a
medium of ideology, propaganda, enlightenment, and education.
From that time (until fairly recently) no Soviet leader or film-maker ever pretended that
film might serve any other purpose. It was national in form and socialist in content, and it
was used by the state as a tool for social control and discipline. In his speech at the XIIIth
Congress of the Party, Stalin said that ‘the cinema is the greatest means of mass agitation.
The task is to take it into our hands’. Elsewhere he noted that ‘the cinema in the hands of …
power represents a great and priceless force’. 9
Other leaders like Hitler, Mao Zedong and Winston Churchill also believed in the
power of film to shape people’s thinking and behaviour. For them, film was an indispensable
means of propaganda, a way to inculcate ideas and morality and to ensure social uniformity.
Especially during times of war or economic hardship, it was essential that films conveyed
the right kind of message. Goebbels considered that the view of the world that was first
communicated to children would be the most influential and the most difficult to eradicate
or change; his thoughts on the role of film in education flowed from this principle.
The study of propaganda film should explore the possible psychological processes through
which it works on people’s perceptions, imagination and feelings; it should try to identify
the ways in which people are affected by what they watch. Viewing segments from some
vintage 1930s–40s Nazi propaganda films, from American war films from the 1940s and
1950s, from Leninist and other Soviet films, and from Chinese films of the Maoist period
readily exemplifies the intention to use film as a means of social control.
However, the intention to use such films as a potent shaping influence is a long way
from a film like the Wizard of Oz. Commercial feature films usually share none of the
propagandist aims; they are made for entertainment and commercial gain and they are
harmless. But not all agree with that judgment. For fundamentalist Muslims, especially in
Iran, films and television produced in the United States are at the forefront of ‘the enormous
appeal of Western culture [which] erodes Islamic customs and laws … [threatening] the very
survival of Islam … America’s popular music, video games, comics, textbooks, literature and
art reach throughout the Muslim world.’10 In Baghdad during the Gulf War air raids, people
were still watching Disney cartoons on television. While from this perspective feature films
are propagandist and subversive, this view is not shared in Western countries. But perhaps
even in the West, the influence of entertainment films, and their omnipresent offspring
television, which reaches the masses in the informality of their own sitting rooms (and
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 329
kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms, hospital wards, hotels and workplace), is to some extent
propagandist in the cause of global consumerism, though this is much more subtle and
complex than traditional propaganda.
So even at this first stage of the study, dealing with the characteristics of propaganda film,
it is important to note that the boundaries between different film genres can be blurred in
people’s perceptions. What is entertainment for one may be perceived as subtle propaganda
by another. What was effective propaganda at one period of history in one particular
community might be dismissed at a later stage as false and misleading – and perhaps even
amusing. Today’s young people may feel immune to the sort of propaganda films produced
during World War II – they can readily see the distortion of the truth; however, they may
not have been so discerning had they been there at the time, and they may not be all that
discerning of the propaganda in some of today’s entertainment films and television.
15.5.3 Documentaries, feature films and mythology: General Custer – the legend
versus the truth
Within a few days of the death of US General George Armstrong Custer in 1876 at the
Little Big Horn, the Chicago Tribune newspaper was stirring up public opinion about the
need for uncompromising government military action ‘to teach the savages a lesson’ and
force them onto reservations. The Lakota Sioux and some other Native American bands
had evidently ‘failed to comply’ with federal policy, even though it was the United States
that had broken the treaties negotiated earlier. Something had to be done because ‘white
men had been massacred’. The press drew on, and reinforced negative stereotypes about
the Native Americans – they were the ‘last barrier to the development of the West’. Custer
was hailed as a hero with bravery of the highest order; he was regarded as a ‘martyr for
civilisation’.
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 331
Within a year, William Cody (aka Buffalo Bill) was packing audiences into his Wild West
Show in New York where the star attraction and climax of the afternoon was a staged re-
enactment of what was called ‘Custer’s last stand’. In 1885, he was able to get Chief Sitting
Bull himself – the Native American chief who was supposedly the architect of Custer’s death
– to appear briefly in the show for a fee of $50. By the turn of the century, Custer’s last stand
made its way into the cinema, eventually featuring in about a dozen films. They developed
and reinforced the legend, and sustained the underlying worldview that went with it; and the
legend became ‘reality’ (cf. Errol Flynn as Custer in He died with his boots on). Ironically, it
was Mrs Custer, and not her late husband, who became rich and famous, widely patronised,
living on Park Avenue, New York – as Custer had hoped for when writing his diaries.
Then, about 120 years after the event, some documentaries were produced that presented
a different view of what happened at the Little Big Horn. Letters, official cavalry records and
interviews with Native Americans whose grandparents were involved showed a side of the
general that was not flattering. Custer was reckless, harsh and ambitious, impetuous and
unpopular with his men, and he did not always follow orders in his quest for personal glory
as a famous ‘Indian fighter’. The documentaries also showed the story from the perspective
of the Native Americans.12 Their statutory rights to the Black Hills of Dakota had been
abrogated; some, particularly Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse’s band, were convinced that
reservation life would mean ‘spiritual and cultural death’. They had avoided the soldiers for as
long as they could; then they discovered that an armed ambush of their campsite (sheltering
families and children) was about to take place. Custer’s plan was similar to the one he used
in the 1868 ambush and massacre of Black Kettle’s band on the Washita River. Inevitably,
and justifiably from their point of view, the Native Americans defended themselves and
their families. Because these documentaries presented a more extensive and truthful account
of what happened, they undermined the traditional Custer legend. They also highlighted
the long prevailing negative attitude to Native Americans that had sustained the Custer
myth. Their brave defence of family and home, while being repeatedly deceived as regards
government treaties, made the indigenous attempts to defend their homeland and freedom
more understandable and honourable.
This example raises a series of interesting questions about relationships between history,
myth, legend, worldview, prejudice and documentary film. These questions, pertinent to the
Custer legend, have generic analogues relevant to other issues:
• Is it likely that these critical, historical documentaries could have been made say in the
1930s or the 1950s?
• If they were made during that period, would they have been ‘believed’ by many of the
viewing public?
• To what extent do historical documentaries like this help change public understanding,
historical interpretations and attitudes?
• To what extent does the acceptability and potential educational influence of a documentary
depend on some change in public opinion having already occurred – in this instance,
more public readiness to look at the indigenous point of view?
• How do the messages in these documentaries relate to feature films about Native
Americans? Have the feature films been influential in changing public attitudes towards
them? Do they prepare the ground for, and work in harmony with, documentary films?
332 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
For example, films like Little Big Man (1971) and Dances with Wolves (1990) showed the
situation more sympathetically from the perspective of the Native Americans.
• Has the educational power of documentaries gradually increased? Is their influence
dependent on increased levels of general education, including a better public understanding
of the informing role of film and television?
• What proportion of the community are receptive to new information in documentaries
that might change their attitudes?
• What are the aspects of documentaries that have potential for bringing about change? Are
the informational aspects or the emotional ones more important?
• Has it been the growth of television that enabled the documentary industry? Would
there be as many educational or political or social documentaries if they appeared only in
cinemas on the ‘big screen’ in competition with feature films?
15.5.4 The ‘voice of God’ documentary: The ‘truth’ from the perspective of hindsight
Documentaries like the Custer example attempt to reconstruct the truth from the perspective
of hindsight. Historical research is usually prominent in their development; they try to recreate
events as they happened by bringing to light what was ‘caught on film’ or reconstructed in
the light of historical evidence. In addition, they try to highlight the original decision-
making and motives, which may not have been clear at the time, or which were not publicly
available or open to scrutiny; and they set out to interpret events within the sociocultural
context of their time.
The commentary, or voice-over, is like the ‘voice of God’ providing the wise, authoritative
interpretation of ‘what really happened’. Often this documentary process does uncover what
was not widely appreciated during the original events. But it is important to acknowledge
that this is a later interpretation made with the aid of hindsight and incorporated into the
commentary. The field of hermeneutics (noted in 2.10.14) is pertinent here. ‘Voice of God’
documentaries represent the considered views of experts and historians.
Three significant educational implications are:
1 There is educational value in helping young people develop their own skills in historical
or documentary interpretation; they can learn from analysing the documentary processes
used in film, and this can flow over into critical interpretation of events in their own
social sphere, as well as in their own personal history. This relates to the discussion of
‘narrative’ identity structure in section 6.3.2.
2 There is a need to recognise that while the interpretations from hindsight are valuable,
they remain interpretations and as such may not show all of the truth; they can be
revised and refined but never absolutised (for example, we now know who ‘Deep Throat’
was, but what happened on the grassy knoll in November 1963 may always remain a
mystery). More scholarly interpretations can help show the bigger picture to past events,
but they do not replace the idiosyncratic, personal interpretations of those ‘who were
there’ – interpretations that show the personal meanings and emotions of participants.
These two sorts of complementary interpretations are evident in documentaries of World
War II (and others) that provide both ‘big picture’ interpretation and the recollections of
those who experienced the events first-hand.
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 333
3 Documentaries are important for educating young people in history and in helping them
appreciate the development of historical perspective.
five years respectively (these documentary interpretations were different from the daily news
reports which were shown during the actual wars and which did not give a complete picture
of what was happening). In 1996, however, the documentary The death of Yugoslavia was
reporting and interpreting the political background to very recent events, from some years to
a few months before the film was released. This seems to suggest that both the art of making
documentaries and the critical receptivity of the viewing public have developed over the
years. In the 2003 US–British invasion of Iraq, journalists were ‘embedded’ in the military
forces. Was this the ultimate – presenting documentaries in ‘real time’? Or were there also
political reasons for this arrangement?
Whatever the answers to these questions, one thing is clear: an education in media needs
to give attention to the nature, purpose and educational influence of documentary films.
Good, critical use should be made of documentary material at school, ranging from films on
nature and the environment through to documentaries with a critical perspective on history,
culture and politics like those discussed above. The characteristics of documentaries will be
summarised later to highlight their educational value.
There are other related questions about documentaries:
General purpose Seeks to present material with the Claims to present factual and historical materials
of the film-maker intention of promoting a particular from a critical perspective to promote a more
ideology. The content is not informed public.
necessarily factual and historical.
Relationship with Tries to promote belief in, and Through trying to promote the idea of being well
ideology commitment to, a particular cause or informed about issues, it may attempt to expose
ideology. ideologies and evaluate them from a particular value
stance or perspective.
Relationship with Proposes particular values and Identifies what people believe about particular
what viewers principles to believe in. issues; increases the range of what viewers might
might believe believe, but does not usually prompt them to believe.
Relationship with Tries to avoid critical dialogue, but will Tries to open issues up for debate and critical
critical dialogue give arguments for its own ideology dialogue.
as well as criticism of opponents.
Relationship with Is usually produced by authorities Often (but not always) produced not by the
authority to reinforce their power and social authorities in the field; may call authorities into
control; film is an agent of cultural question or towards accountability. Usually open and
hegemony; strongly supports the non-authoritarian in tone.
authority base; may be authoritarian
and self-righteous in tone.
Level of Not objective or impartial, but may try Tries to be objective and impartial but may reflect
objectivity and to give the impression that it is. a particular value stance or bias that is often
impartiality acknowledged; may acknowledge its intention in
advocacy of a cause.
Concern for Intends to promote both unanimity Usually more concerned with a plurality of views;
unanimity and and uniformity may seek to promote more consensus; may seek
uniformity the best and most accurate interpretation available.
Level of advocacy Strongly advocates a particular view. May advocate a particular view; this is usually
acknowledged (e.g. care for the environment).
Concern Tries to be very persuasive but may Concerned with rational persuasion; may aim at pro
for rational not bother with rational argument or moting change in thinking and attitudes based on an
persuasion logic. appeal to evidence, reason and common values.
Appeal to the Strong appeal to the emotions. Usually more concerned with rational persuasion but
emotions may highlight emotive issues; may seek emotional
identification from the viewers in support of people
treated unjustly, and/or in support of the values
being advocated.
Proposing of Proposes a group identity over and Often tries to acknowledge and explore different
identity against that of other groups, often identities and related conflicts but is not concerned
with a feeling of superiority and self- with promoting any particular identity; tends to
righteousness; clearly identifies other presume that any sense of identity needs to be well
groups to be feared and watched; informed with some capacity for critical thinking.
may prompt suspicion of, and action
against, other groups.
336 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
Appeal to Often appeals strongly to nationalism Usually no appeal to nationalism or ethnic identity;
nationalism, and tries to reinforce it; similarly, may seek to expose the influence of nationalism,
ethnic identity, appeals to ethnic identity and fear racism, ethnic elitism, fear of particular groups
fear of other (and even dislike or hatred) of rival etc; usually appeals to the values in cultural
groups. groups. or ethnic plurality, equality and intercultural
communication.
The pleasure and appeal of documentary film lies in its ability to make us see timely issues
in need of attention, literally. We see views of the world, and what they put before us are
social issues and cultural values, current problems and possible solutions, actual situations
and specific ways of representing them. The linkage between documentary and the
historical world is the most distinctive feature of this tradition … [It] contributes to the
formation of popular memory. It proposes perspectives on and interpretations of historical
issues, processes and events … Documentaries show us situations and events that are
recognisably part of a realm of shared experience; [they] provoke or encourage response,
shape attitudes and assumptions … [They] have a powerful, pervasive impact.13
This does not sound all that different from moral education. Hence the importance of
film study for educators. Also, if film and television remain a central part of young people’s
alternative, informal, experiential education, then their school’s formal education should
give it special attention. In this way school education can help them learn how to derive
more sense and value from this significant part of their informal education.14
Both propaganda and documentary films are intentionally concerned with personal
change. However, this intention is usually disclaimed in commercial feature films and
most television, even though they often have implied moral and political messages and, in
television, a wealth of commercial ones. Hence the analytical categories built up in sections
15.4 and 15.5 for interpreting potential spiritual and moral influence may have limited
applicability to this genre, and will not be enough to account for its effects on viewers.
The personal influence of commercial film may be more of an unintended consequence.
Any particular film may have little or no effect on people, apart from its entertainment
function. But over many years, the combination of film and television may have subtle but
significant effects. It is more likely to be the culture or atmosphere of entertainment films
and television that is influential; it can insinuate attitudes and values, and it creates the
most potent image of what constitutes the ‘good life’. And this influence is mediated mainly
through its storying role.
Television is more complex than feature film because while films are prominent in its
content, television gives special attention to public information, news, sport, current affairs,
education and advertising, as well as to its own varied entertainment formats. But, in the
light of comments made about the primal storytelling role of film and television, it will be
possible to bracket the two together for most of the following analysis; hence ‘film’ will be
used generically to stand for both feature films and television. Then, at the end of the chapter,
special attention will be given to television because of its omnipresence in the culture and its
strong links with commercial advertising.
Also relevant to this discussion is the educative function of film and television. While
specifically educational programs are akin to the documentary genre considered earlier,
entertainment-oriented film and television make an enormous contribution to people’s
education. They occasion much new knowledge; they provide people with a vicarious
experience of different cultures, ethnic groups and countries that would otherwise not be
within their horizons; they show various perspectives on contemporary issues; and they help
to develop historical perspective.
15.7.2 The storytelling role of films and television: Emotional engagement of the
viewer
Storytelling, in the view of many film-makers, is the basic fabric of films. It is central to
their audience appeal and entertainment value. Storytelling was taken to a new level when
television was introduced to the majority of homes in industrialised nations; limited but
significant access to television also came to the so-called undeveloped countries. In addition,
television advertising has a strong story component, and often depends on this for success.
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 339
What is known as the classic ‘Hollywood style’ of film-making, which has left a lasting
impression on films made in the English-speaking world and beyond, has its principal
emphasis on story. The structure, techniques and appeal of such films are built on the
presumption that ‘everybody loves stories’. Understanding how films are crafted to make the
narrative more effective for the audience is one track into speculation about their personal
influence. Also, the appeal of films made in the United States, an appeal that cuts across
many cultural and national boundaries, suggests that they have an international influence.
Some commentators regard film and television as the principal means, along with popular
music, by which there has been an ‘Americanisation’ of world culture. In this sense, the
United States has conquered the world through its films and music. This influence is also
evident in clothing fashions, consumer goods, language, and aspects of lifestyle. As noted
earlier, some are conscious of this influence washing over their world, with its potential to
erode traditional beliefs and practices.
Constructing a story through film is a highly skilled art-form. Everything is done to
make the film involve the viewer in the narrative. But the techniques for achieving this
are intended to be invisible, except to the skilled eye. The aim is to get the audience so
thoroughly involved with the story, so identified with the characters, that they do not notice
the set design, the camera angles or the editing – the perfect style is invisible.16 Part of
learning how to ‘read’ what is happening in films requires the development of skills in
identifying the ‘artwork’ in the film’s construction and reflecting on its function.
The American film director Martin Scorsese interpreted film storytelling as follows:
Everything is at the surface of the story. Every decision is based on how to most efficiently
and expressively drive the story forward for an audience. It is not what it seems – the
actors’ expressions are designed to sweep an audience into the central drama of the story.
It is the director on the set who orchestrates each craft’s contribution to the storytelling
process: scripting, costume and production design, lighting, camera work, editing, acting
– all supported by an army of experts and technicians working together to achieve the
most emotionally compelling result.17
The soundtrack, especially the evocative music and the contrasting silences, contribute to
this effect. The soundtrack is probably more potent when the audience is not specifically
conscious of it, because the ‘emotion’ in the music matches the drama in the film; the music
magnifies the emotions of the viewers caught up in the action of the film.
The audience enters the world of the story; more precisely, the film draws them into the
‘worldview’ of the characters – seeing how they experience what is happening, feeling what
they feel, identifying at some level with their beliefs and values. Special attention is given
to the emotional point of view of the main characters; it is mainly through their eyes and
feelings that viewers experience the story.
15.7.3 Identifying and evaluating the spiritual dimension to life as portrayed in film
and television
It has been suggested above that film and television provide resource material for people’s
construction of meaning, identity and spirituality, even though this is not the intention of
340 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
the film-makers or the media industry. But it is a potential unintended consequence that
needs to be taken into account by educators and the wider community, and it warrants
investigation by students at school.
Some critics claim that much of what happens in film and television, in the drama and
sitcoms as well as in advertising, gives the impression that life goes on without a spiritual
dimension. The social reality they project often shows people giving little time to moral
reflection. Also, the treatment of religion is often so stereotypical as to be negative.
On the other hand, it can be argued that film and television are rich in portrayals of
meaning, identity and spirituality, even though the moral content and implied values are
not always positive. The spiritual and moral dimensions are certainly there, but they are
embedded in the characterisation, just as they are in novels, and are not written in so explicitly
that the narratives become homiletic or moral exhortations; to do that would render them
inauthentic and unpopular as entertainment – as well as making any evangelising purpose
counterproductive.
Evaluation of the spiritual and moral dimension to film and television requires two
levels of interpretation. First, there is interpretation of the film or program itself. It is not
an instrument of moral education and does not have an inherent responsibility to project
particular values or follow any intended moral pedagogy. As an artistic construction with its
own integrity, whether or not it is a ‘good’ film should not be judged by the moral content
of its story; many criteria would be involved in such a judgment, and many of these criteria
would be subjective. For example, one could not expect a film about Hitler or Stalin to get
a high ‘moral score’ on the basis of the morality of the principal characters.
A second level of interpretation and evaluation is concerned with the moral and spiritual
issues raised in the film. This evaluation is not concerned with the film per se, apart from
reference to it as a vehicle for demonstrating moral stances that are judged positive or negative.
Also, this interpretive activity is made with reference to some accepted set of values. For
example, the values demonstrated by Hitler and Stalin in a film could be judged harshly.
One could expect that most people are capable of seeing the difference between these two
levels of interpretation and evaluation.
Values and morals are as essential to the coherence of a film as they are to people’s ordinary
lives; if not, the story would hardly be credible. If there were not minimal awareness of
implied values in the film’s characters, it would be unlikely that a viewer could comprehend
the story or empathise with the characters. What is important, then, for any ‘education in
film’ is to enhance this ‘value sensitivity’ and make it more articulate through film analysis
that develops skills in identifying implied spiritual and moral issues. This analytical work
could be extended to include the identification of ideology, power, hegemony, cultural
stereotypes and so on as considered in section 2.10.8.18
The potential for affecting people’s meanings, identity and spirituality usually cannot
be related to one-off learning events; hence there is little point trying to judge whether one
film could do this. It is more likely that the culture of film, to which people are exposed
over a long period, has a more subtle influence than could be predicted from identifying
spiritual-moral issues and value stances in particular films. It may not be the social reality of
a particular film, but a more comprehensive social reality projected by the culture of film,
television and advertising that affects people personally; this subtle, ‘global’, ‘atmospheric’
influence may be a source of meaning for some that is ultimately frustrating and damaging,
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 341
contributing along with other cultural factors to anomie and distress; for others, they may
have drawn on this culture in a healthy way, while for yet others their meaning may never be
influenced by the social reality of film.
The potential spiritual-moral influence of film operates through a number of different
psychological pathways, some of which are considered in the sections below.
(or lack of positive values) to some extent. They can get the impression that most other
people share that same view; it looks attractive, fun-filled and not harmful; and this seems
to give a popular justification of casual sex that can in turn affect their behaviour. When
they are in a situation where a decision about this is required, they may lean towards the
film-reinforced view that ‘this is OK’. Thus the value systems from the film world can form
individuals’ values by default.
Sometimes the values matrix in film may not so much be the source of values for a
particular viewer but a reinforcement of values he or she already has. For example, one 5-
year-old girl, whose personality was considerably more aggressive and boisterous than that
of her siblings, said that when she grows up she wanted to become a gladiator like those
in the television program. It could be that the Gladiators program was more of a cultural
reinforcement and validation of her aggressive orientation than its cause. Screen violence
could affect people in the same way. If screen violence has a cultural acceptability as public
entertainment, then for some it could serve as a cultural validation of their inclination to
violent behaviour (15.7.16).
An educational response to the presumed worldviews in film would include efforts to help
children and adolescents learn first how to identify the implied values in films and television
programs and to see how the behaviour of the characters is meaningful and consistent with
those values; then they can call into question how realistically that view represents reality;
finally, the values can be appraised in the light of other standards – for example, the rights of
people in democratic countries, human values and religious values, and the values espoused
by the school.
For study of film portrayals of casual sexual relationships, the following sorts of questions
can be proposed:
• Do all casual sexual relationships in the real world run as smoothly and without
embarrassment or hurt to either party as they seem to in films?
• Are one or both of the parties in casual sexual relationships personally compromised in
some ways that are not shown in films?
• What if one partner becomes more emotionally attached and committed than the other?
• Is it realistic that questions about contraception are rarely raised before casual sex portrayed
in films?
• Does casual sex in films overrate the significance of sex in the personal communication
and bonding between people?
15.7.5 The ‘social reality’ of film and television and ‘reality television’
Another way of putting the above argument is to suggest that film and television have a
spiritual and moral influence through their communication of social reality – what people
think real life is about (15.7.3). The film and television images and stories can build
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 343
expectations about lifestyle. For some, the social reality within their own home and school
calls into question what is projected by the media. Those who do not have this support are
more susceptible to the social reality they perceive on the screen.
The emergence of so-called ‘reality television’ as a popular category raises further
questions about the social reality projected by television. The following suggests one way of
analysing the spiritual-moral dimension to this phenomenon.19
At first sight, a spiritual-moral dimension to reality television seems unlikely and hardly
worth pursuing. Much reality television appeals to the ‘winners over losers’ mentality; viewers
have a sense of participative power in voting the outcomes; there is criticism and humiliation
in the sequential ousting of competitors; the raw emotion of participants is on show for all to
see; even for a day, ordinary people can become celebrities; and celebrities can display their
ordinariness as gardeners. The potential for spiritual-moral content seems limited, and what
is there seems not worth recommending, especially when the driving commercial purpose of
doing anything to achieve viewer ratings is taken into account.
On closer inspection, however, reality television demonstrates a spiritual-moral dimension
both in the onscreen participants and viewers, even if this is not particularly influential or
novel. Nevertheless, part of an education that advances young people’s critical interpretation
of television culture is learning how to discern the psychological and spiritual dynamics in
what is consumed as public entertainment. There is a spiritual-moral dimension to ordinary
life, even where this is filmed for broadcast television; tapping into this dimension is a part
of what attracts viewers’ interest, even if superficially. There are both positive and negative
spiritual aspects of reality television; both need identification and evaluation. It has been
around long enough now to have subcategories.
There is an ever increasing number of popular ‘how to’ programs that focus on lifestyle,
whether it be in gardening, renovation, house buying, cooking, travel and makeovers. This
is the ‘softer’ side of reality television. Beneath the surface is the presumption that lifestyle,
environment and personal fulfilment are linked. Having a specifically designed garden
promotes a more ‘organic’ and ‘holistic’ lifestyle – in other words, making a living space
more spiritual or bringing the spirituality of nature into the living space; the green and
freshness of nature have a calming influence; time needs to be put aside for the relaxed
enjoyment of an attractive ambience. The renovators are striving to make the most of their
homes; they may want to create some tranquillity and symmetry that can impact on their
lifestyle. Cooking an attractive and healthy meal is an art, with respect for the ingredients,
and needs to be more than just functional; the eating thereof is a communal celebration.
Travel is proposed to be more about enjoyment of other cultures and nature than about
material pleasure. The makeovers show how good looks and designer clothes are important
for success. While these ‘messages’ may end up trapping people to some degree in a slavery
to externals, they do highlight people’s basic need for affirmation and acceptance.
344 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
Many of the programs start with a bad situation that is to be made good. There is the
dishevelled garden; the dreary, untidy room; the poorly dressed person; and the face and hair
in need of a makeover. The wrong is to be made right, the ugly made attractive; assets are to
be enhanced. Running through all of this is a common theme: ‘becoming a better person’
– like a spirituality of desirable change. It is ironic that the most common participants’
exclamation when they first behold the change is ‘O my God!’
All of these programs presume that enhancement of quality of life in all its dimensions is
desirable. Their focus is not exclusively commercial, and their appreciation by viewers is not
exclusively hedonistic. They highlight people’s spiritual and moral needs, even if the quality
of what seems to satisfy these needs is sometimes questionable. In an age and culture that are
materialistic and secularised, it is an important step to be able to identify a spiritual-moral
dimension in action, since this can be a valuable starting point for enhancing this dimension
in one’s own life. For people who are religious, it identifies the spiritual points where their
beliefs can affect their behaviour.
Big Brother, Survivor, Temptation Island, Bachelor, Bachelorette, Idol, Wife Swap, The Fat Club,
Hothouse, My Restaurant Rules, My big fat obnoxious fiancée, Amish in the city, Boy meets
boy, Dancing with the stars, Australia’s next top model, Extreme makeover, What not to wear
and the like offer a voyeuristic window on the behaviour of ordinary people put into an
artificial ‘reality’ competition, or of celebrities put into an artificially competitive situation.
These programs represent the ‘harsher’ side of reality television; they are what most people
understand as ‘proper’ reality television. There are many variants: for example, The Weakest
Link was a game show incorporating ideas from reality television.
The participants are easy enough to identify with. They are not reading prepared scripts,
but they inevitably display the motives and moral codes they operate out of (or the codes
they would like to put on show). Watching a program develop over some weeks engages
viewers in processes of identification and moral evaluation. In identifying more with one
participant than another, or in hoping that one will succeed while others are eliminated,
viewers are judging the appropriateness of behaviour and morals. Feeling an identification
with a particular participant is like a gauge of who you are and what are your priorities.
The longer their favourite survives, the more viewers’ personal valuation of the participants
is validated. Expressing judgments and voting support for favourites is like a confessional
statement. Viewers are articulating a moral point of view; they can enjoy kicking out the
transgressors and they can delight that the ‘solid citizen’ wins.
For this type of program, the very name ‘reality television’ creates spiritual and values
problems. For example, twenty-five women engage in ‘behaviours’ that increase their chances
of being chosen by the ‘bachelor’ – and this before cameras for public consumption. Or
teams on an island are required to perform bizarre endurance tasks. This is contrivance and
artificiality masquerading as reality, hardly a window on reality. And it is a values problem for
viewers who think the ‘reality behaviour’ will give them some clues for their own experience.
Also, this format takes what would normally be trivial matters in relationships and portrays
them as if they were matters of life and death; in contrast, what are normally weighty matters
in the formation of a relationship can be trivialised and devalued. In an episode of Bachelor,
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 345
one woman is totally devastated at being eliminated; she says she has ‘nothing left’ identity-
wise because she had invested ‘her all’ in being successful in the competition. These programs
display strange twists in values precisely because they make the valuation process into a sham
for the pursuit of ratings.
Implied meanings, identities and values are plentiful in these programs and they can be
readily teased out. For example, many of the contestants themselves have used the phrase
‘survival of the fittest’ to justify the choices they make in eviction or elimination. This implies
that hurt and humiliation are a natural concomitant to the advancement of some individuals
at the expense of others – not all can be ‘winners’. This is also indicative of ‘economic
rationalism’ where the painful discarding of some is just the natural cost-cutting needed
for the economic advance of others. The ‘casualties’ are merely the unfortunate ‘collateral
damage’ incurred while the ‘just cause’ of the successful and powerful is furthered.
One of the dominant themes in these reality programs is criticism and humiliation. In
programs like the Weakest Link and Shafted, the humiliation is ritualised in game show format.
It is puzzling why viewers enjoy the constant experience of participant humiliation and its
associated emotions. Perhaps it feels good to see others, and not themselves, being humiliated.
Why people can be interested in, and take pleasure from, the pains of others, whether real
or fictional characters, remains problematic, and hence a good question to ask in relation to
analysis of the media. Perhaps the reactions triggered are so basic and visceral that it is difficult
to classify them – like asking why people enjoy food or sex. The German language has a word
that identifies this emotion: schadenfreude meaning ‘taking joy in the misfortunes of others’.
Another aspect of the viewer appeal of these programs is the presumption that any
ordinary individual could become a celebrity given the opportunity to participate. Perhaps
this appeals to the secret desires of many who dream of becoming stars. In this way bored
people can feel some sort of affirmation of their ordinariness when watching the evidently
bored and boring Big Brother contestants on show in primetime television – with enough
sexual titillation to keep up the ratings. Here you have ordinary people, not trained as actors
or journalists, but who are prepared to give up privacy and expose a lot of their inner selves,
becoming temporary television personalities whose lives in the ‘big house’ are discussed by
viewers all around the country.
The talkback television programs span a range of taste and quality. They include Dr Phil,
Judge Judy, the various talk show hosts like Oprah, through to Ricki Lake, Jerry Springer
and Cheaters. They are all about moral behaviour and relationships. Dr Phil engages in a
type of public moral counselling. With Socratic questioning and a gentle confrontational
style, Dr Phil seeks to get participants to review their behaviour and motivation; better self-
knowledge, acknowledging rather than obscuring behavioural consequences, and accepting
responsibility for one’s behaviour are proposed as keys to personal growth. Viewers can
test their own intuitions, interpretations and moral judgments with those they see on the
program; they are engaged in the diagnosis of personal and social problems – a diagnosis that
inevitably impacts on their own outlook.
The Jerry Springer Show also evaluates behaviour, usually the more bizarre types; the
displays of emotion, the aggressive confrontations between participants, accompanied by
346 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
chanting from the studio audience, are hallmarks of its entertainment appeal. There is an
interesting similarity between Springer and the imperial role at the ancient Colosseum;
Springer deftly asks questions and makes comments that seem to guide the chanting
judgments of the studio audience to either a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ evaluation of
participants. Perhaps it is not surprising that the title of Springer’s biography is Ringmaster!
At the end of each program, Jerry sums up and delivers a short secular homily that includes
personal advice on the problems displayed earlier in the show. An interpretation of the Jerry
Springer Show is provided elsewhere.20
As will be noted in more detail later, exercises in public moral evaluation in medieval
Europe were carried out in church homilies and morality plays. Now similar moral discourse
has become part of public television entertainment, subject to the usual constraints of its
ratings performance.
This form of reality television is related to the cinéma vérité genre of documentary, where
real life is filmed and presented without much commentary or explicit interpretation. In this
stable are programs like Real TV, Cops, World’s wildest police chases, Police, camera, action,
Worst drivers, Real sex in the city, Trauma: Life and death in the ER, as well as shows on
disasters and other miscellaneous topics like ‘brides’ (perhaps Funniest home videos also fits
this category). For example, Bridezillas traces people’s quest for the perfect wedding, even
where this costs up to $300 000 or more. This taps into the need for affirmation noted
earlier – the brides need to feel special and unique, even if just for a day.
For programs like these, it is difficult to see what aspects of spirituality, if any, are involved.
For their viewer appeal, they seem to rely on basic human curiosity about what is different,
strange, and traumatic – as long as it is graphic and eye-catching. Perhaps this draws on the
same curiosity and emotions like shock, sadness, sympathy and so forth that people feel
when they witness some local traumatic event like a house fire or a car crash, or when they
see disasters or crime reported in television news. Perhaps too, if television is always on the
lookout for the new and the bizarre that might catch some viewer attention, it does not have
to rely exclusively on fiction – there is more than enough bizarre reality that can be recorded
and played back on the airwaves.
drama on the planet; it has English, French, Spanish and German versions, with subtitled
formats in other languages.
which seem to trade on the emotion generated from past hurts; here the participants tell
their stories with much scope for confrontation or possible reconciliation. From the point
of view of television spectacle, some of these programs, like the long-running Jerry Springer
show, highlight confrontation and in-your-face comments from the interviewees and the
audience; vigorous expression of emotion is common. By contrast, the Dr Phil show seems
to have successfully mastered the televising of individual and family counselling. Then there
are the popular host shows (Rove Live etc.) and the late-night hosts like Letterman, Leno
and O’Brien where the diet is a mixture of interviews, humour, music and variety.
The talk shows are good examples of what William Kuhns described as television
apparently taking on functions that formerly were the province of religions and the churches.22
The talk show hosts are like contemporary high priests presiding over the moral discernment
process. The Judge Judy program is like the old Catholic confessional. The penitent confesses
sins – sometimes there is conflict in determining truth and justice – and the judge gives the
penance; there may not be absolution but there is a sense of resolution.
Ongoing soap operas and sitcoms can also be interpreted as contemporary morality plays.
The characters personify various moral (or immoral) approaches to life. It is not improbable
that to some extent they can serve as influential moral exemplars for individuals who are
gradually working out their moral identity.
This phenomenon also illustrates Postman’s theory that television is trivialising human
discourse.23 An entertainment focus is now becoming important for perceiving and
interpreting the proceedings of the law courts. The OJ Simpson televised trial, the video
taped evidence of President Clinton before the Starr Grand Jury, and more recently the
reconstruction of the Michael Jackson courtroom ‘drama’ are examples of television taking
over human discourse for entertainment purposes. It is not surprising then that election
campaigns have also become ongoing television drama (or sitcoms, soap opera – depending
on how they are perceived).
Since the 1930s or so, with the development of radio, film, and television, graphic
depictions of ‘how things are’ have become both increasingly accessible to all and
increasingly vivid. These developments change not only the means by which reality could
be imagined; they make the imagination of reality more tangible and vivid. The way an
imagination of life is communicated has shifted dramatically – and I use this adverb in
its literal sense.24
When a book is read, a lot of active mental work and discipline are needed to convert the
print into an emotionally engaging story. Film and television have a more direct, experiential
way of doing this: viewers can become involved with much less effort, in a relatively passive
fashion. This is why for most people it is easier to be captivated or distracted by film or
television than by a book. All one needs to do is open one’s eyes and listen, and be drawn
into a story.
this out in advance before they make any decisions about personal change. This can influence
their idealism by helping them explore the best possible world. Imagination can show the
way ahead for personal change – facilitated by favourable imaginations and inhibited by
unfavourable ones. Active imagination is a continuing experiment in self-understanding and
self-expression; hence it is an important part of identity development.
While imagination is an intrapersonal function, its content is not completely determined
by internal drives or emotions. Warren argued:
This thinking has consequences for psychological theory about human behaviour and
development, as well as for media studies. It complements the theories that ascribe power to
genetically driven developmental tasks such as those proposed by Freud and Erikson, and to
theories that stress personal interaction such as Rogerian theory or Transactional Analysis. The
impetus for change in behaviour and personal development can be energised from within the
individual, but it can also be subtly conditioned by external cultural elements like film and
television, which are not always acknowledged as socially constructed agents of change.
Imaginations of the self that originate from outside the person are important for identity
development. Warren stressed the need for educators to look critically at the imaginations of
life generated by film and television. He drew attention to the power wielded by those who
construct these imaginations.
The stories [from film and television] tend to have a taken-for-granted quality to them;
people see them but are in general unable to think about how they see them. During the
teenage years, young people try on various imaginations of themselves in an effort to find
one that fits. These imaginations are part of a broader project in young people’s lives: they
are trying to imagine the kind of person they wish to be, what their future life will be like,
and the kind of person they wish to share it with. If the process of establishing an identity
is in part a process of imagining for oneself possible forms of behaviour, possible attitudes
and values, possible goals, and ultimately a possible future, then those who propose these
imagined possibilities wield special influence.26
An educational response to this problem seeks to help students learn how to identify and
evaluate not just the imaginations of life presented on television, but the ways in which these
are developed and marketed.
imperceptibly. A prominent example is the gender stereotyping that affects the people’s
relationships. Attitudes towards homosexuality, premarital sex, marriage, divorce and one-
parent families can be influenced just by the ways these are presented and ‘accepted’ on the
screen – film reflecting ‘reality’ rather than a particular, constructed ‘social reality’? It is more
common now to have divorced, single-parent and gay or lesbian characters in television
programs than was the case in the 1960s. The interesting question remains: Is this just a
reflection of what society is like? Or does it somehow contribute to the development of a
more general acceptance of these differences as normal?
Another example is the stereotyping of minority groups (see the discussion of Native
Americans in 15.5.3). Over the last century, films have contributed to the development
and maintenance of negative stereotypes, and they have also influenced the breakdown of
negative stereotypes.
The role of the educator here is to help young people identify the processes of myth-
making and cultural stereotyping in film and television, as well as the ways in which these
processes support particular ideologies. If these functions remain unnamed, their existence
is hidden and their potential influence is greater because their implicit, relatively invisible
messages cannot be evaluated. The myths and stereotypes need to be brought out into the
open where their so-called ‘reality’ can be appraised and their values scrutinised.
This sort of critical analysis is also important for evaluating the marketing strategies
behind television commercials (see 15.10 and the discussion of ‘branding’ in 7.2.4).
effects of these processes. It seems essential then that educators have a basic understanding
of these processes as part of the interpretive background they bring to teaching and learning.
They also need to be aware of both positive and negative role modelling – depending on the
moral value of what is being emulated. It is always difficult to address the situation where
young people tend to identify with the film ‘bad guys’.
While film and television provide children with ready access to a wide range of potential
role models, this also probably helps them to become more discriminating about whom they
see as worth emulating. A 1996 pilot survey by the British curriculum authority on values in
education and in the community yielded data on the perceptions of different groups as role
models for young people.27 Children from primary and junior secondary classes commented
on the results of a survey of public opinion given below. In all likelihood, their perceptions
were influenced by what they saw on television.
Table 15.2 Survey of the community and of schoolchildren about role modelling
Question: ‘How far do the following people set a good example for young people?’
Results from a survey of the general public (%)
Athletes 73 17 8 2
Politicians 17 26 55 2
Pop singers 15 25 57 2
Religious leaders 48 25 23 4
Teachers 78 13 8 2
The written material by pupils was instructive: 337 students agreed with the results while 167
disagreed. They gave reasons for their opinions: 55 students thought that pop singers were
better role models than the adult survey suggested, while 18 considered that religious leaders
received a higher rating in the poll than they deserved.
The 500 pupils who wrote comments about ‘setting a good example’ covered issues such as
knowing right from wrong, and doing the right thing in life (150); responsible attitudes and good
behaviour (122); influencing young people and acting as role models (104); being law-abiding
and not taking drugs (80).
The children regarded pop singers and politicians as setting bad examples for different reasons.
From 644 comments: For pop singers: association with drink and drugs (150); bad reputations,
living wild abnormal lives (136). For politicians: boring, greedy, untrustworthy and getting
involved in scandals (122); arguing and fighting (75); liars (45).
Thirty-four considered that both groups had a bad ‘media image’ which was not entirely of
their own making; 389 noted that their information about politicians came from the media; 12
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 353
said it came directly from political parties; 193 thought the information they got was likely to
be inaccurate.
15.7.16 Action films: ‘Cinematic adrenalin’ and the potential relationship between
film violence and violent behaviour
In the past twenty years the genre action film has been become increasingly prominent in
films made in the United States. Great sums of money are spent in their creation – often on
sets that are exploded, crashed, burnt and destroyed in ever more spectacular ways. These are
the ‘cinematic adrenalin’ films that appeal through the enjoyment of the vicarious experience
354 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
of thrills, danger, excitement and violence – where viewers remain secure in the knowledge
that they can walk away from the experience without physical harm. Such films draw on the
same psychological mechanisms that operate when people ride a roller coaster or ghost train,
watch spectacular movie simulations, or witness a car smash, a fire or some other disaster.29
One commentator (the producer-director Joel Silver) claimed that the structure of action
films was stereotyped – a sequence of recurring ‘whammos’ and ‘zingers’. The whammo is the
spectacular action (fights, car chases with multiple crashes, explosions, killings, eruptions,
and monster appearances) that needs to come regularly and consistently during the film to
keep the viewers involved and their adrenalin appetite on edge. In between whammos are
the zingers – usually bursts of smart dialogue that make the viewer feel good or amused and
help sustain the story line.
The prominence of action films is a useful starting point for considering possible
links between film violence and violent behaviour in real life. The ‘V Chip’ approach to
the problem needs to be appraised (access to inappropriate programs is controlled by a
programmable microchip in the television). This debate also includes issues related to film
classification and censorship. As suggested in the introduction to this chapter, a different
approach based on enquiry and theorising is considered to be more helpful in an educational
context. In any case, it is likely that children would be better able to program the chip to
their advantage than would many parents.
In theorising about this problem, there is a need to investigate some fundamental
questions:
• Has the increased prominence of on-screen brutality come mainly from the initiative of
the film-makers? Or are the film-makers merely reflecting and responding to the interests
of the public?
• Why is violence an acceptable and popular component of film and television?
• Why can aggression and violence be inherently satisfying, both in reality and on the screen?
• Does screen violence stimulate aggressive behaviour in young people? Or does it reinforce
and give a sense of validation to a tendency that is already there in some?
• Does the quantity and vividness of violence portrayed on screen dull people’s sensitivity to
its presence in real life?
• Does the prominence of screen violence breed a low level of public anxiety and fear for
one’s own safety?
• Does the constant screening of explosive damage decrease people’s care for property,
vehicles and the environment? Does it stimulate people to take pleasure in seeing things
smashed and destroyed?
• Are action films relatively harmless, exciting experiences that can entertain people without
any negative effects on them?
Exploring questions like these can occasion wide-ranging reflection on aggression and
hostility at personal, family, community, environmental and international levels. It is not
likely that students will come up with convincing answers and consensus on all of the
questions. However, their engagement in such theorising can help them become sensitive to
the problems and more positive about potential solutions.
What is said here is particularly pertinent to video gaming, which allows for a more
‘interactive’ engagement with screen violence (9.2.15).
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 355
Jake and Beth is a useful one for film study of identity issues. The approach to interpretation
illustrated here can be applied to other films.
The French sociologist Bourdieu wrote about ‘life structure’ as a way of looking at people’s
lived-out identity. Observation of behaviour gives insight into people’s self understanding
– there is congruence between the two. This principle is useful in the interpretation of film
narratives. Characters’ identities are inferred from their behaviour and dialogue.
Other identity principles are prominent in this film (cf. Chapter 6):
• Individuals draw on various cultural elements (external identity resources) to shape and
sustain their sense of identity.
• Other identity resources are more internal and personal (values and commitments).
• Healthy identity is firmly grounded in personal, internal resources.
• Identity problems can occur when individuals are too dependent on external identity
resources. This is particularly the case where the identity resources to which the individual
turns are physically and psychologically damaging both to themselves and others.
In Once were warriors, identity can be used as a lens for exploring the thinking and behaviour
of the main characters. From this perspective, Beth and Jake, and their three eldest children
Nig, Grace and Boogie, are all searching for personal identity in different ways, drawing on
different resources as they do so.
Jake the ‘Mus’: For Jake his self-understanding and self-expression seemed embedded
mainly in interactions with his drinking mates. He liked to see himself reflected in the fear
that other men showed when confronted by his aggression and awesome capacity to fight,
and as the affable centre of attention when he hosted his hotel friends to after hours parties
and sing-alongs in his home. The fearsome temper that was aroused when his macho image
was questioned by his wife, Beth, suggested that no matter how much he might protest the
opposite, he was not really happy or secure in the way he had become defined as ‘Jake the
Mus’. When drunk and antagonised, he brutalised his wife, but he seemed to avoid any
acknowledgment that ‘wife beater’ was a component of his identity – this he could choose
to ignore when he thought of himself as a genuine family man.
Beth: Beth appeared to love Jake and was happy when things were going well. But her
experience of his brutality and his apparently greater commitment to his drinking mates
than to his own children made her wonder whether she needed to break away from him and
seek support elsewhere – perhaps within a traditional Maori community.
Nig: Jake’s oldest son, Nig, found the social situation of the home revolting – particularly
his father’s behaviour. He left to seek some self-definition away from the family. But he
found it hard to break away from the image of being ‘the son of Jake the Mus’. He did find
an alternative identity of a type, but it was with a tough fringe group called the Brown Fists,
with their studded leather vests and highly tattooed bodies and faces; its identity was heavily
invested in distinctive clothing, personal appearance and ritualised behaviour. His initiation
ceremony involved a beating at the hands of the group and getting a ‘patch’ – a tattoo across
his face. Jake is of course unimpressed with the tattoo.
Grace: Jake’s 13-year-old daughter, Grace, came across as perhaps the most attractive
personality in the family. She was gentle and friendly. She was traumatised by the brutality
in the family but seemed to remain optimistic about life.
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 357
Boogie: Jake’s younger son, Mark (known as Boogie), was removed from the family into
the custody of welfare – fallout from his seeking identity with youth involved in petty crime,
stealing car radios. The failure of his badly beaten up mother to make a court appearance
was the factor that influenced the juvenile court decision that nothing could be done to
rehabilitate Boogie if he remained in the family home. Despite periodic fractious behaviour,
Boogie learned something valuable from the supervisor of the remand home, who became a
mentor for his troublesome young brood. He showed them that the future of the deprived
‘once were warriors’ Maoris lay in cultivating an internal warriorship of the spirit. He
encouraged the boys to ritualise their interior strength and courage in fearsome hakas – war
dances as impressive as any by the legendary All Blacks. But he insisted that their energy
had to be channelled into ‘inner resources’, otherwise it would be wasted and misused in the
spiralling violence that was already devastating the Maori community.
This philosophy, drawing on the Maori heritage, gave Boogie some sense of worthwhile
identity and something to believe in. It helped him interpret the frustration in which his
own family was tragically caught. It helped him cope with trauma when Grace committed
suicide. She had been sexually abused by her uncle, one of Jake’s regular drinking mates,
during the all-night parties. Overwhelmed, she hanged herself from the tree behind the
house before her mother returned from an unsuccessful search to find her.
Heartbroken, Beth regretted not following earlier her intuition to leave Jake and take the
family (including Poly, Abe and the baby Huata) to a Maori traditional community in the
country where she felt there were the spiritual resources that would give them more dignity
and purpose in life. Later, both Beth and Jake discovered the abuse of Grace, with inevitable
recriminations.
Beth then left Jake and with the remainder of the family set off for the Maori community.
Jake remained unchanged in his established identity as ‘the Mus’. Mark identified with the
emerging spiritual strength in his mother. When Nig suggested to him that he too should
have his face tattooed, Mark replied with self-assurance in words which were like an icon for
identity and the key principle, or climax statement, in the film: ‘I wear mine on the inside’.
Inner strength was the belief or mantra that could give direction and meaning to his life.
The film portrayed the struggle of individuals for a satisfying self-understanding, self-
expression and sense of self-worth in a subculture of brutality and oppression. The character
Mark articulated one of the messages coming through the film: confronting moral degradation
needs inner strength and values; like spiritual principles, they help with interpretation of the
problem as well as providing the courage and motivation needed to take action to change
the situation.
literary core of culture. This meant complementing and compensating for television, which
had become the de facto primary source of education – the ‘first curriculum’ as he called it
– as well as evaluating it critically.
In an earlier section (15.5), reference was made to Postman’s book Amusing ourselves
to death. There he argued that television, as with earlier major changes in communication
media like writing and the printing press, changed the ways people experienced and described
the world, and consequently how they derived meaning and values. He proposed that the
fundamental entertainment focus of television has trivialised human discourse; many areas of
life are now perceived and interpreted mainly from the perspective of a television entertainment
culture. ‘Whether we are experiencing the world through the lens of speech or the printed
word or the television camera, our media metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it,
frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, colour it, argue a case for what the world is like.’30
In a later book, Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology, Postman proposed, along
with other arguments, that there was a clash between the literary culture, which in the main
still operates in school education, and the television culture in which children and adolescents
are immersed. The former culture represents the world of the printed word with an emphasis
on ‘logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment, and discipline’, while
the latter emphasises ‘imagery, narrative, present-ness, simultaneity, intimacy, immediate
gratification, and quick emotional response’.31 He went on to explain:
Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the world of television.
There, they encounter the world of the printed word. A sort of psychic battle takes place,
and there are many casualties – children who can’t learn to read or who won’t, children
who cannot organise their thought into a logical structure even in a simple paragraph,
children who cannot attend to lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes
at the time. They are failures, but not because they are stupid. They are failures because
there is a media war going on, and they are on the wrong side – at least for the moment.
Not all would agree with the epic proportions of Postman’s picture, but the point he makes is
valid and the relationship between the two cultures should be given more explicit attention
by educators.
Postman’s interpretation is also useful for the distinctions it makes between teaching
or learning styles: ‘Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social
responsibility. Print stresses individualised learning, competition and personal autonomy.
With computers the emphasis is on private learning and individual problem-solving.’32
He wondered what the extrapolation of these styles would lead to, hinting that computer-
based learning might raise egocentrism to the status of a virtue. He considered that in
addition to economic implications, film and television influenced the ways in which people
perceived reality, and that these were central to understanding diverse forms of social and
mental life. He also stressed the effects of new media on the overall ecology of the learning
environment – that technological changes in education were neither additive nor subtractive,
but ecological: one significant change generates total change.
institutions are threatened, a culture finds itself in crisis. The crucial thing then is how
new technology alters the nature of learning …
New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They
alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of
community: the arena in which thoughts develop …
In conjunction with television, the computer is undermining the old idea of the
school … [also] what is meant by religion, by church, even by God.33
New technology alters the structure of interests: what is thought about. It alters the character
of symbols: the things we think with. And it alters the nature of community: the arena in
which thoughts develop. ‘In conjunction with television’, Postman says, ‘the computer is
undermining the old idea of the school’; we would add: what is meant by religion, church
and even God.
Postman’s hypotheses are stark. But they are helpful for confronting educators and the
wider community with the changing circumstances of school students, and they can stimulate
creative responses to the problems. Teachers who are more conscious of their students
coming from a learning environment dominated by film and television will better address
the different ways they perceive life, judge things to be important and seek entertainment.
This has inevitable consequences for learning and teaching at school. Teachers cannot
presume that all children and adolescents will fit comfortably into the school culture of
literacy. But they should not sell the literary culture short because it is still regarded by many
as the part of cultural heritage for which the school is particularly responsible – a valuable
complement to the media culture and also a valuable position for critiquing the dominant
media culture. So the school would not only represent, and help to hand on, some of the
literary aspects of tradition – the intellectual culture – but it should provide the context
and impetus for students to become cultural critics of other major sources of input to their
meanings, identity and spirituality.
way to support their market purposes. However, he noted that ‘the specific imaginations are
planned, produced and communicated, but the precise way they come together to create an
overall sense of reality may not have been planned by any single person or group.’34
For educational purposes, students can be encouraged to track the ways by which media
executives orchestrate contributions to the fund of imaginations projected in film and
television. Judgments can be made about the meaning and value of the marketed imaginings.
The process critiqued here is not the same as the propaganda considered earlier; however,
the idea of a subtle ‘advertising propaganda’ is not all that inappropriate when one considers
the purpose of swaying young people in the direction of purchasing particular brand items
to meet needs and interests. As noted earlier in section 15.7.11 on imagination, Warren
called for educators, and their students, to pay more attention to this process and to evaluate
the media imaginations that are being offered for consumption. This also acknowledges that
‘needs and interests’ themselves can be subtly conditioned by the media (cf. Chapter 7 on
youth identity development as affected by consumerism and advertising).
Warren’s proposals imply that the personal influence of film and television on children
and adolescents is neither inevitable nor inexplicable. ‘Whatever their complexities, they
are social products whose production can be studied. From this angle, influences operating
through media such as film, radio, television, advertising, music and fashion become visible
and able to be analysed.’35
people, particularly their ‘retail’ habits. Such habits relate to values and identity – as Karl
Marx wrote, ‘As individuals express their life, so they are’.37
One useful discussion of the topic is given by Warren.38 While the example is now
quite old, it is still pertinent to consider here, particularly from the viewpoint of what a
contemporary study of the same issues might reveal. Warren analysed the 1970s work of
the Stanford Research Institute in California, where market-research analysts studied the
purchasing habits of households to guide product development and advertising. Using what
they called the ‘VALS’ typology (short for Values and Lifestyles Program), they divided the
population into four main groups, which included nine lifestyles based on people’s self-
image, aspirations, and the products they bought and used.
The surveys set out to document what people thought of themselves in society and the
distinctive patterns of buying that helped reinforce that image. With this knowledge they
could ‘anticipate’ consumer needs and wants. They had already recognised that many in the
community – the market target – had negative attitudes towards ostentatious consumerism
and money as a measure of a person’s life, even though such materialism was by no means
dead; they were dealing with an increasingly environmentally conscious and politically
correct marketplace. Because people’s values affected their spending habits, market research
needed to know these values and how to appeal to them. In this light, they articulated the
new ‘central problem in advertising’ as follows:
The central problem in advertising will be how to sell to values increasingly geared to
processes, not things. Sales appeals directed toward the values of individualism, experi
mentalism, person‑centredness, direct experience, and some forms of pleasure and escape
will need to tap intangibles – human relationships, feelings, dreams, and hopes – rather
than tangible things or explicit actions.39
1 The Need-driven
This incorporates the nation’s marginal classes into two hand-to-mouth lifestyle groups com
prising 11% of the population:
1A The Survivors: Those able to get by in life marginally and still maintain a certain
dignity.
1B The Sustainers: An assortment of ethnically mixed gamblers and misfits living on the
edge of society.
2 The Outer-directed
A category comprising the largest proportion of the population (68%):
2A The Belongers: Those strongly traditional and conformist, who make up the largest
single subgroup in the VALS typology (38%). They get a job and tend to stay with
it; they find a product they like and tend to stay with that.
2B The Emulators: They yearn to be achievers but they basically do not know how to
make this happen; they tend to spend money on the assumption that one day things
will work out happily for them (10%).
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 363
2C The Achievers: This financially secure group is self-assured and able to exhibit
gracious but savvy behaviour in varied situations. They appear to know their own
place in the social order and their own motivations and ‘drivenness’. Marketing
appeals must attend to their self-assured character (20%).
3 The Inner-directed
The Inner Directed, fall into three lifestyle groups comprising 19 per cent of the
population:
3A The I-am-Me group: This includes the somewhat angry, rebellious and maladjusted
members of the community. They are bent on ‘doing their own thing’, even if it
might mean they could be misjudged in the process.
3B The Experientials: A wholesome group of inner-directeds seeking ‘highs’ from
jogging and other fitness activities like backpacking; they are inclined towards
holistic medicine and yoga. (3A and 3B together make up 8% of the population).
3C The Socially Conscious: These are aware of social issues and involve themselves in
politics. Concerned about the environment, justice, and about the misuse of power
for self-interest; their inner-directed energy, while coming from self-awareness, is
focused outwardly. Self-centred marketing does not appeal to them (11%).
4 The Integrated
This group makes up but 2 per cent of the population. It represents the VALS ideal: at the
same time creative and prosperous. Examples offered were writers and artists who also run
lucrative retail businesses.
Although somewhat dated, the VALS typology is a good example of the sophistication
of market research and advertising psychology. Interestingly, it did not use the words
‘poor’ or ‘poverty’. It highlighted the link between lifestyles or attitudes and consumer
spending. Related research was able to predict, on the basis of US postcode, an individual’s
likely attitudes, probable household inventory, leisure-time activities, media habits, and
consumption patterns for over 700 categories. It is unlikely that such research and market
psychology are now less sophisticated than they were in the late 1970s.
card is touted as a key to a free and creative lifestyle – ‘with power to do what you want, and
to be who you want to be’. In buying perfume a woman may be buying ‘hope’. In buying a
deodorant a man may be buying ‘a powerful lure for women’.
For the culture of television advertising, self-expression is all about consumerism; indi
viduality is about particular brands; freedom is about a wealth of options in consumer choice;
and power is about the capacity to buy. Shopping is even proposed as ‘retail therapy’.
sold to advertisers. Their viewing patronage, measured by regular ratings research, is the
commodity of exchange. So while the perspective of the viewer is often ‘putting up with the
commercials to get the program’, the perspective of the commercial television channel is ‘the
programming is the mere overhead cost to secure commercial ratings.’
The responses of viewers thus have a significant place in the economics of television
advertising. Viewer correspondence therefore has some power to bring about change.
The following example illustrates how viewer complaints were taken into account by a
television network through its ‘ethics committee’.
In 1996, the head of the Viewer Services division of the CBS television network in Los
Angeles explained to visiting educators the work of his section. It served as a watchdog
over commercials and program content so that no inappropriate material was broadcast for
public consumption. Members of the section were chosen to reflect different backgrounds
(a teacher, a health professional, a parent). They were required to separate their own
personal views and commitments from their professional role. The boundaries to what was
considered acceptable on television were constantly changing. The section also took into
account comments from the viewing public. Letters to the network about their advertising
and programs numbered many thousands annually. A different section had oversight of
news and public affairs programs.
One apparent difficulty with the work of the section was the absence of any systematic
set of values to guide their judgment. So in effect, the standards were set by what the
viewing community seemed to be able to tolerate without making too many complaints. A
frivolous comment was made that screen violence would be acceptable as long as it ‘did not
make people sick or give them nightmares’. So the viewer services were not really an ethics
committee for the protection of public standards, but more of a lookout group to protect the
network from mistakes that might cost them ratings and hence advertising revenue. They
would counsel against content that might hurt ratings or that might upset the advertisers
who were paying for their ratings slots.
Some examples of ‘ethical action’: The group reviewed content in an episode of Walker
Texas Ranger in which the criminal shot two policemen in the police station before shooting
an informer being detained in a cell. It was suggested that this involved too much gratuitous
violence. The result: the edited version had one of the preliminary shootings cut. The
violence was justified by the idea that the ‘bad guys’ had to be made look very bad so that,
by contrast, the ‘good guys’ would look really good.
Another example involved scenes from the soap opera The young and the restless. In one
scene a woman said to another, ‘If sex were like fast food, then there would be golden arches
in front of your bed.’ The script was checked with McDonald’s (an important advertising
client) to see whether they would be offended. McDonald’s executives were not troubled by
it – in fact they were pleased to think that the McDonald’s arches had achieved the status of
national icons. However, in another scene, one actor threatened another with the words ‘If
you do that again I’ll kick you in the McNuggets!’ This quip was judged too offensive and
was deleted without any need to consult with McDonald’s.
If these examples are typical of television generally, then the ethical effectiveness of self-
regulation might well be questioned. It would then be up to public opinion in the form of
letters to the company to set the moral tone. How ethical television advertising becomes will
depend on the ethical sensitivity of its viewers and their preparedness to take action.
366 Reasons for Living Part 3: Spiritual and moral dimension to the school curriculum
15.11 Conclusion
The desired outcome for both adults and young people’s investigation of the potential
spiritual and moral influence of film and television is that they learn how to bring a more
informed, critical background to their thinking about the media. This is not trying to
protect them from the effects of the media, but helping them develop their own educated
responses. While often superficially critical, many children and adolescents are relatively
naive as regards both the overt and subtle capacities of film and television to affect their
thinking, imagination and feelings, their liking for fashion and particular leisure pursuits,
their potential spending targets, and ultimately their values and beliefs.
This chapter resources theorising about the spiritual and moral influence of film and
television. The first step towards a critical school education in media is to engage educators
in this theorising as a prelude to various efforts on their part to help young people acquire
more knowledge and skills for critical interpretation.
Notes
1 R Eckersley et al. 2006, Flashpoints and signposts: Pathways to success and wellbeing for Australia’s young people,
p. 32.
2 The phrase ‘sharing our story’ has become a prominent theme in Christian denominational religious education,
especially in the Catholic sector. This phrase, or a synonym, frequently appears in the titles of curricula, courses
and books. See TH Groome 1980, Christian religious education: Sharing our story and vision; Catholic Diocese
of Parramatta 1991, Sharing our story: Religious education curriculum (Guidelines for Religious Education in
Secondary Schools).
3 ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1993, The spirituality of today’s young people: Implications for religious
education in church-related schools; ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1996b, The secular spirituality of youth:
Implications for religious education.
4 G Gerbner 1992, The challenge of television, quoted in M Warren 1992, Communications and cultural
analysis: A religious view.
5 Eckersley et al. 2006, ������
p. 35.
6 This chapter was developed from three articles published by Rossiter in the journals International Journal of
Children’s Spirituality (UK) Part 1: 1996, 1(1): 52–67; Part 2: 1996, 1(2): 21–35; Part 3: 1999, 4(2): 207–24;
Word in Life/Journal of Religious Education (Australia) Part 1: 1996, 44(3): 3–9; Part 2: 1996, 44(4): 6–16;
Part 3: 2000, 48(3): 2–16. Reprinted in the Religious Education Journal of Australia (Australia) Part 1: 1998,
14(1): 3–17; Part 2: 1998, 14(2): 14–23.
7 BV Hill 1993, Is value(s) added education in the national interest? (a discussion of the future of values education
in the light of new employment oriented competencies movement in Australian education).
8 Usually, film-makers dealing with religious topics would want to disavow the purposes in the first two
types, though this was not the case in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. But a blurring of the
boundaries, especially between types 2 and 3, can increase the level of controversy surrounding a film, and
if well orchestrated, this can increase its success at the box office. It is not unlikely that the makers of the Da
Vinci Code took this into account in their marketing strategies.
9 We are indebted to Dr Rebecca Huntley for the information considered here.
10 D Pipes 1986, Fundamentalist Muslims between America and Russia.
11 N Postman 1985, Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business.
12 A number of documentaries on George Armstrong Custer and the Little Big Horn, and on Chief Sitting
Bull of the Lakota Sioux nation were produced in the 1990s. The most readily available example is a segment
within the series The West, 1996, available on DVD.
13 B Nichols 1991, Representing reality: Issues and concepts in documentary.
14 Some examples of relevant writings in the area of film studies are: E Barnouw 1993, Documentary: A history
of the non-fiction film (2nd edn); T Bennett (ed.) 1981, Popular television and film: A reader; J Corner 1986,
The shaping influence of film and television on young people’s spiritual and moral development 367
Documentary and the mass media: D Cuthbert 1989, Film and propaganda in America: A documentary history; J
Monaco 1981, How to read a film: The art, technology, language, history and theory of film and media (rev. edn);
B Nichols 1981, Ideology and the image: Social representations in the cinema; B Nichols 1991, Representing
reality: Issues and concepts in documentary.
15 ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1988, Missionaries to a teenage culture: Religious education in a time of rapid
change, Chapter 15.
16 These ideas were drawn from the documentary American Cinema, screened in 1995.
17 M Scorsese, comments made in the American Cinema documentary.
18 In a school education that attempts to develop students’ evaluative skills, the activity described here may be
as far into a moral evaluation in film study as the classroom education process needs to go, because the school
itself already has a formal commitment to community values. This commitment carries through naturally
with an implied judgment about the appropriateness or undesirability of any values identified in a film study,
or any other study – as would be the case where values were identified in a novel or play. For example, there is
no need for an exhortation to reinforce for students that the values of Hitler or Stalin were in strong conflict
with the values upheld by the school and community. However, they would in all likelihood make value
judgments about the issues, usually in their own thinking, but this could readily become part of an exchange
of views in a discussion. In some individual cases, the study of a film, like that of a particular novel or play,
could result in a significant personal learning experience for some students; but as noted in Chapter 13, this
usually has to do with the particular disposition and situation of students, and it is not the sort of experience
that teachers can and should plan for.
19 This material is drawn from ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 2004, Spirituality and reality television: More
than meets the eye.
20 GM Rossiter 2001, The Jerry Springer Show and religious education.
21 ML Crawford 1991, A history of Christianity: From St Paul to the Middle Ages, vol. 5 on medieval morality
plays.
22 W Kuhns 1969, The electronic gospel: Religion and the media.
23 Postman 1985.
24 M Warren 1992, Communications and cultural analysis: A religious view, p. 2.
25 ibid., p. 3.
26 ibid., p. 2.
27 School Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 1996, Pilot survey on values returned by 569 school pupils
from primary and junior secondary classes, SCAA, London.
28 Pope John Paul II 1979, Children and the Media, p. 46.
29 This is considered elsewhere in Crawford & Rossiter 1988, Chapter 15.
30 Postman 1985, p. 10. See also N Postman & C Weingartner 1969, Teaching as a subversive activity; N Postman
1979, Teaching as a conserving activity.
31 N Postman 1993 Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology, p. 16.
32 ibid., p. 17.
33 ibid., pp. 17–18, 19, 20.
34 Warren 1992, p. 3.
35 ibid., p. 3.
36 Some Australian television commercials show products are used for a variety of purposes other than that for
which they are manufactured, e.g. sanitary napkins used for drying up blue ink, and blood after a shooting;
toilet paper as a toy for dogs. For many cosmetics and deodorants the focus is on style and not function.
37 Marx, The German Ideology, quoted in Postman 1993, p. 21.
38 M Warren 1994, Life structure or the material conditions of living.
39 J Atlas 1984, Beyond demographics, p. 51, quoted in Warren 1994.
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4
PART
This chapter interprets the recent history of religious education in Australian Catholic schools,
highlighting issues in contemporary theory and practice.1 It will provide the basis for identifying
links with the questions raised in Parts 1, 2 and 3, as well as for comparisons with the practice
in other types of religious schools.
371
372 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
The point of this analogy is that a critical interpretation of rapid new developments
within Australian Catholic Religious Education in the 1960s and 1970s required a maturity
of vision that was not available at the time. More experience and historical perspective were
needed before an interpretation emerged that better explained what happened – that is,
an appraisal that acknowledged all the influences at work and that resisted the temptation
to oversimplify; one that did not collapse the tensions, accepting the failures along with
the successes, and acknowledging both strengths and weaknesses. We are now better able
to put the development of Catholic religious education into perspective, interpreting the
history in terms of a network of causal factors that makes sense of what happened and
enables us to make wiser decisions about the future. Not all in the Catholic sector will agree
with the interpretation that follows; there remain different estimates of what is the most
appropriate content and method for religious education. But at least the discussion may
raise issues on which a particular stance needs to be taken. It will presume that a common
commitment to the advancement of religious education is greater than the differences, and
that an opportunity to evaluate theory and practice is always important for advancing the
profession.
Theology
Impact of the emerging theology of the Second Vatican Council.
Influence from particular movements in theology: Christological, ministry, social justice,
liberationist, feminist.
Scripture scholarship influenced understandings of biblical authorship with considerable impact
on the interpretation of the gospels.
Increasing theological sophistication of the adult Catholic community.
Impact of Thomas Groome’s Shared Christian Praxis approach, which was adopted by a number
of Catholic dioceses.4
Pursuit of religious literacy as a goal; the notion of ‘critical’ religious literacy.5
Change in curriculum format to stress outcomes.6
Education
The new prominence of ‘experiential’ education (for example Jerome Bruner); the emphasis on
‘process’ rather than content.
The rise of ‘critical’ education: emphasis on analysis, evaluation and interpretation rather than
on learning facts.
1990s emphasis on outcomes and employment-oriented competencies.
Increasing interest in the personal and social dimensions of education.
The new emphasis in the 2000s on education for spiritual and moral development, and for the
acquisition of values.
Social science
Humanistic psychology from the 1960s onwards. Great interest in how human relationships
foster personal development.
The rise of ‘psychological spirituality’ where insights from psychology have been blended with
theology and traditional spirituality to give a language for spirituality that sought to articulate
the religious tradition with more relevance and meaning for contemporary life (see 8.2).
Crisis of meaning arising from inability of people to find relevant and sustaining meaning and
purpose in life (increase in suicide rates, depression, drug use, violence, boredom).
Diocesan structures
The rise of Catholic Education Offices after funding was secured for Catholic school systems;
consultants in religious education.
Student texts
The new national Catholic school catechisms of the 1960s for primary and junior/middle secondary.
The booklet series Come Alive for Year 12 in 1970, and conflict over its appropriateness.
Aims, content and teaching strategies influenced by student texts; the use of American, British
and Australian student texts and series of booklets in the 1970s and 1980s.
The New Zealand religious education series Understanding Faith late 1980s and 1990s (cf.
production and marketing of the Australian edition).
The publication of the To know, worship and love series of texts for Kindergarten to Year 10 for
use in Catholic schools; adopted by a number of Catholic dioceses from 2001 onwards.
There are a number of historical accounts of the evolution of Catholic religious education
that trace the emergence of different approaches.7 They show that there has been a perennial
quest to be ‘relevant’ and ‘effective’, involving trial and error and professional conflict.
Also evident are the different estimates of what classroom religious education should be
about. Given that this evolution has already been well documented, our interpretation will
concentrate on what the developments mean for the future; it revolves around the interplay
between six themes:
to contemporary life (8.2). This development reinforced and magnified the changes in
Catholicism that are often ascribed to the Second Vatican Council. While this gave useful
insights into personal development, where it was overused and not kept in balance with other
interests, it tended to result in a religious education that looked excessively individualistic.
There was a danger that it could promote and reinforce self-centredness, aggravating
problems of narcissism that might already be there in some individuals.
Being able to relate sensitively in one-to-one relationships became a more prominent part
of people’s religious spirituality. The counselling relationship assumed a wider significance
beyond the therapeutic; it became like an ideal for religious ministry, and the often used words
‘being sensitive to people’ were iconic. This new interest in personalism not only affected
the lives of educators, but changed their understanding of religious education. Efforts were
intensified to make it an activity that overtly engaged students at a personal level; intimacy
in discussions became a much desired goal. In senior secondary classes, ‘relationships’ and
‘personal development’ figured prominently as content, displacing more formally religious
topics. This development made religion teaching easier for those who had little knowledge
of theology or scripture – at a time when theological and scriptural understandings were
changing quickly in any case. The spectacular success of the new style of community retreats
which began in the 1970s reinforced this thinking, and teachers unsuccessfully tried to use
retreat activities to transform their ordinary lessons into lively personal discussions.
The research on Catholic schools conducted by Flynn (1975), following up that of
Leavey (1972), stressed the importance of community and school climate. It was interpreted
as a research justification of the quest for personalism. Religious education was thought
of more as a community-building, ‘personal sharing’ activity than as a ‘study’ of religion.
Teachers tried to ‘de-school’ religious education, making it into a more informal discussion
activity (see Chapter 19).
So, in the Catholic education sector, as the language of psychological spirituality came
to dominate thinking about personal and spiritual development, the small-group discussion
came to be regarded as the central process of religious education. Distinctions between
religious education and personal development education were blurred. Informality in context
and method, personal sharing, group dynamics, and process rather than content became
prominent in teachers’ understanding of religious education, especially in the secondary
school. Having students make personal revelations became the measure of effective religious
education. Words like ‘students really giving of themselves’ were used by teachers to describe
what they regarded as successful lessons. Even though much has changed in Catholic religious
education since the heyday of the experiential approach, there remains lingering attachment
to this personalist view of the process. A thorough, realistic interpretation of the place for
personalism in Catholic religious education is still needed today.
From the vantage point of hindsight it can be seen that the personal formula which
appeared to have so much promise was inappropriate and unsuccessful. No doubt it
made helpful contributions to young people’s personal and spiritual development, but as
a comprehensive approach to the classroom study of religion it was too narrow in both
content and method.
However, it was not the quest for relevance and personalism in itself that was the problem
– this is still important. The problem was in the unrealistic expectations for personalism, and
inappropriate methods for pursuing personal interactions in the classroom; an inappropriate
informality was not the key to personalism in that context. The same problem affected the
Historical perspective on religious education in Catholic schools 377
personalist movement initiated in British state school Religion Studies by Harold Loukes
in the late 1960s (21.4.3).8 ‘Artificial’ informality did not engage the students; the activity
was felt to be of little educational or personal consequence, even though many said that
they enjoyed it. The intention of structuring informality into religious education led to
practice that actually subverted both the desired personalism and the relevance; the students
perceived religious education as unimportant (14.3.1).
Reflection on implications
The problem was essentially about the place of a personal dimension to classroom teaching
and learning. We consider that the conceptualisation in Chapters 13 and 14, and in other
publications,9 offers the best solution. No new pedagogy needs to be invented; rather, what
is needed is a wise perspective on historical developments that can affirm best theory and
practice.
Some Catholic educators look back on the experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s
and judge the quest for personalism as a complete failure. Not so: the intentions were valid
in the main, but the efforts were misdirected. Relevance and personalism remain the most
important issues for Catholic religious education in the new millennium, more so now than
was the case formerly (see Chapter 17). The particular content and pedagogy arrangement
employed to achieve this goal was generally inappropriate and naive. It was successful in
retreats, and especially in voluntary religious groups, and this remains the case, because there
was congruence between the personalist formula and the voluntary retreat contexts. Such
congruence was missing in formal classroom religious education.
What was required for a natural and authentic personalism was a different content and
pedagogy that were more at home in the classroom and were consistent with expectations
and practice in other subjects. What happened pedagogically in other subjects was not static;
it changed and evolved. The point being made here is that religious education needed to have
substantial congruence with the teaching and learning processes experienced by students in
other subjects, otherwise its perceived value as a subject would be fatally marginalised.
More than most other subjects in the curriculum, religious education has been the arena
where the quest for relevance and personalism has been explored and tested, with much
experimentation, successes and failures over the years. An educational wisdom has emerged
from this experience, with valuable implications for general education; for example, the
substance of the proposals for the spiritual-moral dimension to public education in Chapters
11–14 was distilled from religious education.
Much has been done within Catholic religious education to make it personal and relevant
for students. But, as considered below and in the next chapter, problems remain, and continuing
efforts are required to maintain and enhance these qualities. Progress has been made as regards
challenging teaching and learning processes, including the subtle place of personal freedom.
What often remains the principal difficulty is the need for more relevant content.
Promoting the spiritual development of young people has always been a central aim
of Catholic schools. Not surprisingly, the term ‘faith development’ has come to dominate
the language of Catholic religious education since the late 1970s, but there remains some
ambiguity about its meaning and implications for the classroom.
The significant issue here is the way that faith development came to be associated with
the personal processes considered in section 16.2.1 above. It was like baptising the quest
for personalism, identifying personal interchanges as instances of faith development. In
turn, this sort of naive thinking about the nature and development of religious faith led
to a false dichotomy: the apparently more personal activities like retreats, shared prayer,
discussions and counselling were labelled as faith development; by contrast, the study of
religion was regarded as something less than that (and hence less important), probably
because its cognitive emphasis was thought to be less faith-intensive. This thinking
became embedded in diocesan guidelines, in the writings of religious education theorists
and in school programs, and no doubt it affected the thinking and practice of religion
teachers.
Reflection on implications
What Catholic religious educators have often talked about as faith development would be
more appropriately described as an emotional or personal component of religious education.
Vagueness in popular usage of the term faith development implies a questionable view of the
nature of religious faith; it presumes too narrow a dependence on psychological processes
(and more specifically, on emotional activity) as the core pathway for the development of
students’ religious faith. Such thinking tends to devalue classroom religious education as if
it were somehow less faith-intensive than intimate group processes; and it tends to obscure
the complexity in links between religious education and students’ spiritual development.
Examples of such problematic thinking are still evident in contemporary Catholic religious
education.
What is needed in Catholic religious education is a more discriminating use of the
concept faith development – in particular, a use that does three things:
The ways in which diocesan documents have affected classroom practice in religious
education have changed since the 1970s. Originally, they functioned as guides, with extensive
school-based curriculum development being the norm; the school program was the focal point.
While there has been little systematic research on the effectiveness of diocesan guidelines as a
strategy for improving the quality of religious education, there were indications that in those
early years they received little attention from teachers, the exception being those responsible
for the school programming and resourcing of religious education.11
In some instances, the choice of student resources was more influential in shaping the
curriculum than the diocesan documents. For example, in the 1990s, student materials
originally developed for Catholic religious education in New Zealand (Understanding faith)
were used extensively in Australian Catholic schools. An Australian edition was produced
and marketed successfully. Where these materials were used, it would be difficult from
classroom observation alone to determine which particular diocesan guidelines the teachers
were working from. The student materials themselves had a significant influence on lesson-
planning and classroom teaching. This raised questions about whether or not diocesan
curriculum documents resulted in different and distinctive teaching styles and content
selection for Catholic religious education around the country.
However, as the 1990s progressed, and as school curricula generally became more cen
tralised around authoritative documents that spelled out specific outcomes, the principal
focus of attention shifted from the school religion program towards the diocesan guidelines.
School-based curriculum development in religious education declined in the 1990s,
even though the number of qualified religion teachers increased considerably. The more
prescriptive and extensive diocesan religion documents included background theology
and support material such as units of work, lists of teaching resources and directions for
pedagogy. Internal and external evaluations of diocesan guidelines affirmed their role in
support of religion teachers.
Since their first publication in the 1960s, generations of diocesan documents reflected
changes in thinking about the nature, purposes and methods of religious education. Both
the quest for personalism and relevance and the centrality of faith development (16.2.1,
16.2.2) were evident; two aspects only will be considered here: values and faith outcomes;
and the ‘relevance’ of content.
Relevant content
It is ultimately the Catholic bishop in each diocese who approves the diocesan guidelines.
The purpose of ‘handing on the religious tradition’ will therefore always be prominent and
will affect scope and content. While this emphasis does not in itself make the material less
student-centred, it contributes to the overall impression that the documents are primarily
concerned with ‘conserving’ the tradition. This is not undesirable per se – giving young
people access to their religious heritage. But considered from the perspective of developing
curricula that are personally relevant, most diocesan guidelines are too tame. More issue-
oriented content is needed.
Reflection on implications
Relevant content
While more attention will be given to what constitutes ‘personal relevance’ in the next chap
ter, at this point it is sufficient to note that it means content that is perceived to be important
for the students’ lives: it has implications for life and is not just theoretical. While theological
and scriptural content may well be taught in ways that highlight such implications, one
could expect that personal and social issues would have more natural relevance. If this is the
case, then it would be desirable to include an appropriate amount of issue-related content in
the religion curriculum, giving it a prominent place alongside traditional religious topics.
Given the origins and purposes of Catholic diocesan religious education documents,
it is unlikely that their ecclesiastical and theological emphasis will change – even more
the case in a time of religious conservatism. While many of the documents include social
justice and morality, the bulk of their content would be perceived as traditionally religious
because at heart the curricula are tradition-conserving. Such an emphasis leaves little place
for personal and social issues.14 However, even a marginal increase in the proportion of issue-
oriented content would be helpful. Such a change could increase the perceived relevance of
the religion curriculum without compromising the attention given to traditional religious
content. Relevance could also be enhanced through pedagogy that taught religious content
in a problem-posing way.
not invest significantly in producing student materials; their interest was in guidelines that
supported school-based curriculum development.
Hence the writers and publishers who produced student resources had a de facto influence
on the curriculum. This was evident as early as the 1960s when series of student texts and
program booklets developed in the United States were used extensively in Australian Catholic
schools; these gradually displaced the official ‘green’ and ‘red’ Australian catechisms used in
primary and secondary schools. While there were some texts and series produced in Australia
(for example the Move out program by Dove Communications and other programs at primary
school level) materials from the United States were more prominent (together with some from
the British Isles).15 The publication of the Year 12 program of booklets Come alive sponsored
by the Australian Catholic bishops in 1970 met with mixed success. While the books became
icons of the new experiential approach, they also prompted controversy because they were
perceived by opponents as too non-traditional.16 This would be the last major set of student
resources produced by Australian Catholic authorities for thirty years (with the exception of
the Australian edition of the New Zealand texts, Understanding faith).
Gradually more Australian texts were developed by individual educators and local
publishers, a trend that continued into the 2000s.17
In 2000, at the initiative of Archbishop Pell in Melbourne, a series of religion texts (To
Know, Worship and Love) was produced for K–10 students. After the Archbishop moved to
Sydney, the texts were revised and introduced in that archdiocese; the new edition was also
adopted in Melbourne and in a number of other Catholic dioceses. These texts represented
a major development in Australian Catholic religious education. Also prominent during the
1990s and early 2000s were various commercial texts produced to support the new Religion
Studies programs that were popular at Years 11–12 level in Catholic schools.18 More recently,
texts have been developed in support of Catholic Studies programs in the senior school.19
Interesting questions now arise as to the status of authoritative diocesan student texts.
Do they become the curriculum? How will they relate to diocesan guidelines? Will they be
the exclusive resources to be used in the classroom? In addition, the texts have implications
for pedagogy: How can set texts be used creatively? For inexperienced teachers, and for those
with an inadequate background in the subject, the texts provided support for the students,
giving them basic resources on the syllabus. A key purpose in providing texts was to take
Catholic teachings directly into homes.
Reflection on implications
Every student resource makes an implied statement about the nature and purposes of
religious education – hence their ongoing development needs to acknowledge and address
conflicting views of what is appropriate content for religious education, and what constitutes
good pedagogy.20 Further research is needed to inform dialogue about content and method;
if a wide consensus is not achievable on this question, then at least there should be a tolerant
pluralism. The same question about content and pedagogy is equally important for the next
area to be considered: state-based Religion Studies courses.
16.2.5 New state Religion Studies courses and the quest for academic credibility
One of the major problems faced by Catholic school religious education for many years has
been its academic credibility, and its poor status in the eyes of students. Catholic schools
have long claimed that a subject like religion, which deals with ultimate meaning, beliefs
and values, should have a philosophically central place in any school curriculum. However,
the very subjects concerned specifically with the personal and spiritual dimensions to life can
have their credibility subverted by the ‘psychology of the learning environment’ (14.3.1).
A number of factors have influenced the poor level of involvement of many students in
religious education, even when they enjoyed it.21 Of particular interest here was its academic
credibility – or what students called its ‘mark status’.
Earlier, when the approach to Catholic religious education was experiential, informal and
community-oriented, some attempts were made to increase its academic rigour at secondary
level. This was a difficult task, not only because of student perceptions, but because it went
against the grain of teacher thinking at the time; the ‘academic’ and ‘personal’ approaches
were felt to be incompatible, and it was the latter that was in favour. By 1972, some Catholic
school Year 11–12 religion programs had gained partial accreditation as ‘Other approved
studies’ in New South Wales; religious education was included on the graduating students’
final certificate as a school-developed unit, but it did not count towards university entrance
scores.
Even though Tasmania had a fully accredited state Religion Studies course in the 1970s,
it was not until the 1990s that these programs were introduced in the other states, with the
exception of the Northern Territory (see Part 5).
Catholic schools embraced the new state courses enthusiastically. Catholic religious
educators from Education Offices, schools and the Australian Catholic University were key
players in the development of the courses and in the production of student materials. The
majority of the candidature of the Religion Studies (or studies of religion) courses came from
Catholic schools.
The courses were taken up for a number of reasons:
• Their academic credibility helped religion to become more accepted as a regular, exam
inable subject in the Catholic school curriculum.
• The subject made a contribution to university matriculation requirements and entrance
scores.
• Religion was presumed to be compulsory in the senior classes in Catholic schools; with
Religion Studies, there could be some academic recognition for their work.
• The purposes of Religion Studies courses were considered appropriate enough to be
accommodated within the purposes of Catholic religious education.
Historical perspective on religious education in Catholic schools 383
• The Religion Studies syllabuses tended to bypass ongoing debate about content and
method in Catholic religious education by providing clear content with examinable
outcomes; there is nothing like an examinable course to galvanise teachers’ efforts.
• The educational purposes of Religion Studies seemed to some extent to avoid problems
associated with the excessive attention that had been given to long-term religious goals like
faith development and to ecclesial constructs like evangelisation and catechesis.
The arrival of Religion Studies courses on the Australian educational scene, and the way
in which they were embraced by Catholic schools, have made an invaluable contribution
to Catholic religious education; they became the de facto religion curriculum for Years
11–12, along with religious activities like liturgy, prayer and retreats. They enhanced the
academic credibility of religious education, and this had repercussions back through the
junior secondary school. More importantly, they provided a context within which students
could experience the study of religion with academic rigour.
So in effect, Religion Studies added a crucial element to the formula for Catholic religious
education: academic study and research, which had been difficult to achieve earlier because
of the non-accredited status of diocesan programs.
While currently Catholic school students make up the large majority of the candidature
in state Religion Studies courses in Australia, some Catholic educators have doubts about
their suitability – they would prefer more overt Catholic content and are not comfortable
with so much attention given to world religions. In New South Wales, a diocesan program
for Years 11–12 – like a Catholic studies course – is endorsed as an approved program
by the state Board of Studies, without university entrance status. Some schools offer this
and Studies of Religion as alternatives. It remains to be seen if there will be a significant
movement away from Religion Studies programs towards Catholic studies.22
In schools that have both options it is evident that the selection of Catholic studies
is often made by students who wish to do the minimum. This is not necessarily an anti-
religious gesture; it may be a way of balancing the competitive pressures in the final year
of schooling. But for whatever the reasons, students in these classes have a recognisably
different and noticeably poorer attitude to engagement in studying religion. It poses an
interesting conundrum: the content in a school-based course may be more relevant than that
in a state Religion Studies course; but the students may get less personal benefit from the
former because they study it with ‘half a brain’; whereas the latter, with less relevant content,
may be more beneficial because they study it with a ‘whole brain’.
Reflection on implications
If Catholic and other religious schools are to implement state-based Religion Studies courses
with confidence, there is a need for a good rationale to show how they contribute to the
school’s traditional religious purposes. Catholic schools have embraced these programs with
a general acceptance of their value both educationally and with respect to their students’
spiritual development. But in the long term, particularly when some oppose the adoption
of such programs as compromising the school’s Catholicity, a more comprehensive and
robust case justifying their adoption is required. As yet, this question has not been given
the attention it warrants (cf. Chapters 21–22); at this point it is pertinent to note some of
the issues.
384 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
First, there is the question of harmonising the purposes of state courses with the school’s
aims for denominational religious education – in other words, showing how Religion
Studies are congruent with the school’s religious purposes. An analysis is required that
acknowledges theological and educational issues, as well as political ones, and commonalities
and differences between denominational religious education and Religion Studies courses
need to be articulated. For example, the following early statement referring to the Victorian
course gave the false impression that the two were incompatible:
A phenomenological approach to the study of religious traditions has been adopted in the
(Victorian) Religion and Society Study Design. This is intended to encourage open, critical
and dispassionate study of religions throughout each unit in the Study Design. The
approach taken to Religion should not be confused with religious education or Religious
Instruction. These are two quite different methodologies, both requiring a confessional
approach to the study of one religion only.23
From within their life-world, many young people do not have a traditional view of
religion, and this affects the way they will approach its study. They start from the position
that religion may well be of interest and even important for them – but not with the same
sort of compelling importance that seemed to be the case for past generations. Many youth
just do not have the time and mental space for serious attention to religion at this stage of
their lives. While at times the search for meaning, identity and spirituality will be prominent
and engaging for youth, for much of their time there is little need for it. And they can
oscillate between these two states.
Reflection on implications
the role and psychological functions of religion is also pertinent, while educational endeavours
in this direction should not aim at just a psychological reduction of religion.
While it is unrealistic to think that every topic in religious education should be perceived
by students as personal and relevant, there is good reason for trying to get a significant amount
of the content into this category. Research on religious education in Europe shows why.
In his 1998 study, the Belgian scholar Herman Lombaerts described the situation in
Europe: ‘There are ever increasing efforts to have better, more relevant and more effective
religious education, but increasingly, young people are choosing not to be part of a practising
community of faith.’25 Formal religion itself is no longer regarded by many young people
as a principal and relevant source for their spirituality and identity. It does have much to
offer in this regard, but this is not acknowledged or appreciated by the majority of the
young. The situation of youth in Australia is not all that different. Hence they are not at a
spiritual starting point where the study of traditional religious content, in the traditionally
accepted way, is going to engage them. Rather, they need to be educated in relation to issues
in meaning, identity and spirituality that bring them to the beginning point of seeing that
religion does have something valuable to contribute, and that it warrants study. Possible
engagement in systematic study of theology is further down the track as an option; getting
to the spiritual starting point is the task of the compulsory school religion curriculum.
Empirical research on German youth by Nipkow in the 1990s found that if the teaching
of religion did not focus in some way on what young people perceived to be the main spiritual
and moral issues of the day, then they tended to regard descriptive content as religious
paraphernalia, more concerned with institutional maintenance than with people’s search for
meaning and values.26 Similar findings were returned in an extensive survey of students in
Catholic schools in Italy in 1991.27 Teachers and scholars in the United Kingdom, Ireland
and other European countries have verbally reported the same interpretation. It is likely
that research would yield similar findings in Australia. Nipkow considered that religious
education should follow a principle he called ‘elementarisation’; that is, it should focus on
‘elementary’ or fundamental spiritual issues that youth see as relevant to their life and world,
so that whatever their formal religious affiliation or lack of it, the study of religion will be
valuable for their spiritual life.
been given to the development of personal identity and meaning as a principal operation
of religious education. In Australia, phrases like ‘helping young people in their search for
meaning’ have been reasonably common in writing about religious education; but little
has been done to expand on what this means in any detail – with even less written about
what is involved in personal identity development. Hence, the agenda on meaning and
identity taken up in Part 2 of this volume is pertinent. The final part of Chapter 6 examined
British and European research and writings concerned with the role of education or religious
education in promoting young people’s identity development. The references are listed in
note 32 in that chapter.
16.3.4 Other trends in religious education in the United Kingdom and continental
Europe
Other aspects of British and European religious education that have potential implications
in Australia include ideas about constructivist theory, cultural and religious plurality and
contextuality, and ‘critical’ religious literacy (21.4.8).29
16.4 Conclusion
This interpretation of the history of Catholic school religious education through the lens of
six themes does not cover every historical detail. But it shows a spectrum of the intentions and
practice that have developed over the years. Religion teachers can be located on this spectrum
depending on the positions they take on each thematic. Thinking about religious education
has changed principally in response to cultural changes in which people, and youth in
particular, no longer look to established religious traditions as central reference points in their
construction of meaning. Some significant adjustments in purposes and practice are needed if
religious education is to be relevant – as considered further in the following chapters.
Many of the authorities in Catholic education would not be positioned at the leading
edge of this thinking; they retain more traditional assumptions about the role of the Church
as an institution. Hence there remains a tension in expectations between educators who are
trying to address the problems related to cultural modernity and those who do not see the
current situation in the same light. What the former see as much needed changes in content
and pedagogy to address problems will be regarded by the latter as unnecessary, because they
do not diagnose the social situation in the same way, or at least not to the same extent. In the
extreme, some of the former will be focusing on young people’s ‘quest for meaning’, while
some of the latter will be more concerned with a ‘quest for orthodoxy’. In this instance they
are not talking the same language of religious education. Nevertheless, debate and dialogue
are needed between people at different points on the spectrum of intentions to see what can
be done to make religious education within Catholic schools relevant to the spiritual-moral
development of students.
Part of the difficulty is that the great success of Catholic schools in the well-rounded educa
tion they provide and in their popularity with students, parents and teachers can be misread
as an indication that religious education must also be in ‘good shape’. It is not that Catholic
religious education is in ‘bad shape’, but there is always room for ongoing refinement to make
it more personally relevant for its students. There is some dissonance between prevailing
understandings of religious education and a diagnosis of the cultural and psychological situ
ation of many youth. This dissonance could be reduced, and the personal relevance of religious
education enhanced by even a small shift towards a more issues-oriented approach. This is not
a new trend that needs to be pushed to the limit; there already are content and pedagogy that
satisfy the criteria. But what is needed is a greater proportion than there is at present.
It may seem ironic that we regard ‘personalism’ and ‘relevance’ as key issues for Catholic
religious education today; they were sought after vigorously in the 1970s and 1980s, but
the structural and pedagogical formula then was too informal and artificially personal.
Today the question is being asked again. But this time, with a wiser perspective on historical
developments, it should be possible to make a more substantial and lasting improvement.
While the chapter has argued the case for change, it is acknowledged that what is
meant by ‘relevance’ ‘personalism’ and ‘issue-oriented’ content and pedagogy need further
clarification; these questions will be taken up in the next chapter.
Historical perspective on religious education in Catholic schools 389
Notes
1 The material on which this chapter was based was published earlier as GM Rossiter 1999, Historical perspective
on the development of Catholic religious education in Australia: Some implications for the future.
2 J Pelikan 1984, The vindication of tradition, p. 65.
3 The following give accounts of the historical development of approaches to religious education in Catholic
schools: Buchanan 2003, Survey of current writing on trends in religious education; ML Crawford & GM
Rossiter 1985, Teaching religion in the secondary school: Theory and practice; ML Crawford & GM Rossiter
1988 Missionaries to a teenage culture: Religious education in a time of rapid change; MF Flynn 1979, Catholic
schools and the communication of faith; BV Hill 2004, Exploring religion in school: A national priority; T Lovat
1989, What is this thing called religious education? (2nd edn); J McGrath 2005, Expanded frameworks for
religious education and learning; GM Rossiter 1981, Religious education in Australian schools, Chapter 5; RM
Rummery 1975, Catechesis and religious education in a pluralist society; M Ryan 1997, Foundations of religious
education in Catholic schools: An Australian perspective; 2001, My way to God: The birth and early demise
of the Kerygmatic renewal in Australian religious education; 2006, Religious education in Catholic schools: An
introduction for Australian students.
4 Groome’s Shared Praxis: M Bezzina et al. 1997, Shared Christian praxis as a basis for religious education
curriculum: The Parramatta experience; GM Rossiter 1997, The contribution of Thomas Groome’s Shared
Christian Praxis to Catholic school religious education: Reflections by practitioners; M Ryan 1997, Shared
Christian praxis: A response to the Parramatta experience.
5 G Barry 1997, Religious education: A key learning area in Catholic schools; P Goldburg 2005, Teaching
world religions: Developing critical religious literacy.
6 See the references in note 12.
7 See note 3.
8 H Loukes 1961, Teenage religion; H Loukes 1965, New ground in Christian education; H Loukes 1973,
Teenage morality.
9 The place of personalism in the classroom teaching/learning process is considered in the following titles: ML
Crawford & GM Rossiter 1985, Teaching religion in the secondary school: Theory and practice; ML Crawford &
GM Rossiter 1988, Missionaries to a teenage culture: Religious education in a time of rapid change; GM Rossiter
1986, The place of faith in classroom religious education; GM Rossiter 1987, The place of knowledge and
faith in religious education since the Second Vatican Council; GM Rossiter 1988, A cognitive basis for
affective learning in classroom religious education; GM Rossiter 1994, Religious education and the spiritual
development of young people: A reply to Gideon Goosen; GM Rossiter 1998, The centrality of the concept
faith development in Catholic school religious education.
10 R Keane & D Riley 1997, Quality Catholic schools: Challenges for leadership as Catholic education approaches
the third millennium.
11 PM Malone 1990, Teacher approaches to the planning of religious education (unpublished PhD thesis,
Macquarie University, Sydney). This study, though limited to a small sample, suggested that guidelines did
not have a significant impact on the planning and teaching of religion in the school and it was usually only
the religion coordinator who read them.
12 The following publications considered the impact of the outcomes movement on Catholic school religious
education: G Barry 1996, Meditating on the decades: Guidelines for religious education; G Barry 1997,
Religious education: A key learning area in Catholic schools; L Crotty et al. 1995, Reflections on an emerging
religious education curriculum; L Crotty & S O’Grady 1999, Can outcomes transform the religious education
curriculum?; M Ryan 1997, Foundations of religious education in Catholic schools: An Australian perspective; M
Ryan 1998, An evaluation of outcomes based approaches in religious education curriculum guidelines.
13 This question is taken up in Chapter 18 in the discussion of faith development.
14 Of the various Catholic curricula in the Australasian region, it is the New Zealand Catholic curriculum
(Understanding faith) that gives most attention to issues.
15 For example, the program of booklets Hi time, and series of texts from US publishers such as Sadlier, Bengizer,
Paulist Press, Winston, WC Brown, Silver Burdett and St Mary’s Press; also used were some Irish and British
programs from the publishers Veritas and Chapman. See GM Rossiter 1981, Religious Education in Catholic
schools, in Religious education in Australian schools.
16 See Rossiter 1981.
390 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
17 The following are a selection from a wide range of Australian student texts on religion: ML Crawford 1991,
A history of Christianity: From St Paul to the Middle Ages; R Crotty 1993, The Jew called Jesus; B Dwyer & G
English 1988, Catholics in Australia: Our story; M Ryan 1998, The Catholic Church in Australia; Also a number
of series of student texts by Ryan published by Social Science Press. See also K Engebretson et al. 2003, To
know, worship and love (a series of texts from Primary to Year 10, for particular use in the Archdioceses of
Sydney and Melbourne, 2nd edn).
18 M Beck et al. 1997, Exploring religion; M Crotty et al. 2003, Finding a way: The religious worlds of today (2nd
edn); K Engebretson & R Elliott 2001, Chaos or clarity: Encountering ethics (3rd edn); T Lovat & J McGrath
1999, New studies in religion; T Lovat et al. 2006, Studies of religion (3rd edn); P Mudge et al. 1993, Living
religion: Studies of religion for senior students; P Rule & K Engebretson 1990, My story, our stories: Religion and
identity in Australia; M Ryan & P Goldburg 2001, Recognising religion: A study of religion for senior secondary
students.
19 K Engebretson 2004, Catholic ethical thinking for senior secondary students; PJ Elliott et al. 2006, Catholic
studies for senior secondary students (To Know, Worship and Love series).
20 The 2000 second issue of the Journal of Religious Education devoted special attention to the production and
role of student text books in religious education. For example: M & R Crotty 2000, Assessing the role of
the RE textbook; B Dwyer 2000, Wanted: Textbooks with ‘hilaritas’; K Engebretson 2000, The Melbourne
Archdiocesan textbook project: An innovation in Australian religious education; G English 2000, Looking
back on writing an RE text; T Lovat 2000, The support text and the public syllabus: A case for integrity;
GM Rossiter 2000, The qualities of an excellent student text in religious education; M Ryan 2000, Religious
educator as curriculum resource maker. See also G English 2005, Highways, byways and dead ends: School
textbooks in Australian Catholic religious education.
21 ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1991, Teaching wisdom: Religious education and the spiritual and moral
development of young people. In B McManus (ed.) Education and the care of youth into the 21st century:
Proceedings; ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1996, School education and the spiritual development of
adolescents: An Australian perspective.
22 See, for example, the text for Years 11–12 Catholic Studies produced by the Archdioceses of Melbourne and
Sydney: PJ Elliott et al. 2006, Catholic studies for senior secondary students (To Know, Worship and Love series);
K Engebretson 2004, Catholic ethical thinking for senior secondary students.
23 Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board 1990, Religion and society: Course development support material,
p. 1.
24 See Chapter 21. N Smart 1968, Secular education and the logic of religion; BS Moore & N Habel 1981, When
religion goes to school: Typology of religion for the classroom; BS Moore 1991, Religion education: Issues and
methods in curriculum design (Texts in Humanities).
25 H Lombaerts 1998, The management and leadership of Christian schools: A Lasallian systemic viewpoint; H
Lombaerts & D Pollefeyt 2004, Hermeneutics and religious education; R Roebben 1997, Shaping a playground
for transcendence: Postmodern youth ministry as a radical challenge.
26 KE Nipkow 1991, Pre-conditions for ecumenical and interreligious learning: Observations and reflections from a
German perspective, p. 3.
27 G Malizia & Z Trenti 1991, Una disciplina in cammino: Rapporto sull’Insegnamento della religione cattolica
nell’Italia degli anni 1990 (An evolving enterprise: Report on the teaching of religion in Catholic schools in
Italy in 1990).
28 On hermeneutics and education see S Gallagher 1992, Hermeneutics and Education, p. 21. On the implications
for hermeneutics in Australian Catholic religious education see G English 1998, Participants in an unfinished
church: Intercultural communication as a basis for religious education (unpublished EdD thesis, University
of Sydney).
29 For notes on these trends see the final sections of Chapter 21. On critical religious literacy see also P Goldburg
2005, Teaching world religions: Developing critical religious literacy.
17
The quest for
personalism and
relevance in religious
education
The quest for ‘relevance’ and ‘personalism’ has been an influential motif in Catholic religious
education since the 1960s. In the past, efforts to engage students at a personal level and
to be relevant to their lives were not widely successful because of unrealistic expectations,
and inappropriate content and pedagogy. This chapter will argue that both personalism and
relevance remain important goals, perhaps even more important now than they were forty
years ago; and it proposes a different content/process formula. It begins with a clarification of
the meaning of personalism and relevance as educational goals. In proposing how they can be
accommodated within religious education, we draw parallels with principles elaborated in Part
3 concerned with the spiritual-moral dimension of the curriculum, and with ideas in Chapter 10
about education in meaning, identity and spirituality.
391
392 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
establish what it means to have a healthy, natural personal dimension to religious education,
together with content and process that can be perceived by students as being useful in some
way to their lives – and not just an academic exercise that appears to have little or no
significance beyond the classroom.
A ‘personal’ dimension to religious education can be identified both in content and
process.
any manipulation within the zone of freedom created around academic investigation; whether
or not participants make significant self-revelations is then their option. Thus the best way of
fostering personalism in the classroom is not to focus on it directly; rather, the focus should be
on informative learning. The most significant personal learnings are then usually worked out
in private reflection. Sometimes in favourable circumstances personal views may be shared
in class; and they may even become commonplace, helping students learn from the personal
contributions of others and learn how to develop and express their own insights.
• determination of the scope for spiritual-moral issues that is appropriate for different age
groups
• selection of particular issues for study
• clarification of issues-oriented pedagogies.
A more critically evaluative approach would be appropriate for middle to senior secon
dary students. It would need simplification for use in primary and junior secondary classes;
but even at these levels, children need to learn skills in the identification, interpretation and
appraisal of issues.
In the previous chapter, it was considered that both Catholic diocesan programs and
state Religion Studies, for different reasons, did not give enough attention to contemporary
spiritual and moral issues. In other words, they did not adequately mesh with the spirituality
of young people – the points where they experience a spiritual-moral dimension to life. The
syllabuses are too ‘domesticated’. They need to be more adventurous in allowing for a study
of questions about meaning and purpose. It is not that they should be exclusively issue-
oriented, but the proportion needs to increase. Such a change could help make the study of
Personalism and relevance in religious education 395
religion more relevant to young people, especially those who are relatively indifferent, but
not antagonistic, to religious education. The approach is also considered to be the best way
of representing to young people the case for participation in the Church.
While there remains a difference in professional opinion about where the balance
should lie, it is unlikely that Catholic diocesan curricula will move significantly in an issues-
oriented direction (16.2.3). If an increased emphasis on issues is to be included, then it
will need to happen at the local level of school programming, as regards both content and
pedagogy.
Some educators may argue that the inclusion of contemporary issues for study in religious
education compromises its nature and purposes by adding topics that might stimulate the
interest of students, even though the content is not specifically religious. It would be like
repeating the problematic formula followed by some in 1970s religious education where
topics on ‘sex, alcohol and drugs’ (‘SAD’ religious education!) were included; it was claimed
that this move was personal development education, but not religious education. We consider
that religion has always been concerned with contemporary issues and that some attention
to issues within religious education does not therefore compromise either the nature of
religion or religious education (16.2.6).
Increasingly, general education – particularly in English, history, social science and
personal development – is focusing on values, questions of meaning and social issues. By
contrast, Catholic religious education seems to be giving less attention to issues than was
the case formerly; the change stems from the descriptive content in Religion Studies courses
that have been adopted in Years 11–12, and it may also be affected by moves to increase
the amount of overtly Catholic content. It is disappointing if the most exciting and creative
studies of contemporary spiritual and moral issues are to be found not in religion but in
subjects like English and social science.
Theological issues
Critical interpretation of scripture increasingly approximates to the intended meaning of the
authors, which needs to be understood within the cultural framework of its time.
The contemporary research on the historical Jesus: implications for the beliefs of Christians.
The evolution of doctrines such as original sin, redemption and atonement.
396 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
Current debates about the role of women in religion: the problem of patriarchy and gender bias
in the Christian church.
Psychological spirituality
The development of identity – secular, ethnic, and religious – and its influence on human
behaviour.
The possible links between identity (including religious identity) and problems like racism,
violence and ethnic cleansing.
The role of religion in providing answers to fundamental questions about meaning, purpose and
transcendence in life.
World religions
Judaism: Understanding the meaning of the Holocaust for contemporary Judaism; Jewish con
troversy over the religious and secular significance of the state of Israel; Controversy in Jewish
views of out-marriage and homosexuality.
Islam: Islamic teachings and terrorism; The interpretation of Jihad or holy war; Islamic
fundamentalism.
Sects and cults: Why do people join them? Are cult members attracted because of their
psychological needs or because of their personality type? How harmful is membership for their
psychological and spiritual health?
This proposal remains controversial and it needs further consideration and debate.
One might be inclined to think that scripture and theology could be taught much as they
were before. However, scripture and theology are problematic in contemporary Western
culture; it would therefore be inappropriate not to acknowledge theological issues in religious
education, especially with senior secondary students.
Clearly there needs to be balance in content selection. However, the overall credibility in
the representation of the Catholic tradition may be jeopardised if Catholic school religious
education is perceived by students as too concerned with maintenance of the institution, and
not sufficiently interested in addressing the spiritual and moral issues of the day. Religious
education should both resource and enhance young people’s spirituality, whether or not this
eventually involves participation in a parish community.
Issue-oriented religious education requires theologically well-educated teachers who are
able to identify and explore questions at an appropriate level for students of different ages. The
example topics above would not be suitable content for primary and junior secondary classes
where acquiring a basic knowledge and understanding of religion is one of the main goals;
but some evaluative study of issues is still important at this level. Also, teachers’ knowledge of
the complexity of doctrinal development will affect the way theological concepts are taught to
younger students – avoiding the need to ‘unteach’ some naive interpretations at a later stage.
Personalism and relevance in religious education 397
the Church for people today, including both adults and young people, is a multifaceted
question. We draw attention to one aspect, the relevance of religious language.
In an address late in 1998, author Morris West identified the problem as follows:
Our primal interest is to survive. It is only later that we count the cost of survival and
the damage our decisions may have caused to ourselves and others. It is for this reason,
I believe, that many good Christian folk find themselves alienated from the Church,
which almost inevitably in today’s world has evolved into a highly centralised, imperial
institution … whose language has become more and more juridical and less intelligible to
the ears and understanding of ordinary men and women.2
The language of the Church in its doctrinal expressions do not mesh sufficiently with
most people’s experiences of the main issues in life. They are not likely to listen when the
Church apparently has nothing to say.
The Church is in the meaning-making business; it has enormous resources in
spirituality – 2000 years worth. But if this is not directed to the points where people are
struggling to find meaning in their lives, then these resources will remain museum pieces
of interest only to the initiated few.3
These comments suggest that one critical factor in the perceived relevance of the Church
is whether or not its language seems to correspond with ‘real life’ as people experience it.
If not, then they will have no time for official religion, believing that they can get by well
enough without it.
This was not always the case in Catholicism. Before the 1960s there was a relatively
strong cohesiveness. How and why things have changed need consideration.
The following are words from a hymn that was prominent in Australian Catholic piety
at that time.
Most churchgoing Catholics today would have little difficulty seeing the lack of congruence
between this religious language and contemporary experience or spirituality, so they would
regard this type of hymn as inappropriate and irrelevant. They could think: ‘Fortunately we
do not have that problem now.’ But they are wrong. While the current language of Catholic
theology used in parish churches is nowhere near as sentimental as was the case in ‘Soul of
my Saviour’, its perceived lack of relevance to the experience of many young people remains
a fundamental problem. In church circles there does not appear to be enough awareness of
the radical extent to which a lack of relevance in religious language remains a problem for
Personalism and relevance in religious education 399
youth and adults. And what compounds the problem is that this perceived lack of relevance
is not a concern to them – they do not expect religion to be helpful.
While this problem has no easy, quick answer, it would certainly be beneficial to find
and use more relevant religious language. Change in religious and theological language and
concepts in tune with social and cultural development have always been evident in the
history of Christianity (and in other religious traditions). But this has become much more
of a problem in recent times because rapid social change has outstripped the capacity for
evolving relevance in religious language.
In the 1960s, teachers reported some angry student reactions against religion. This is no
longer evident; but what is more prominent now is a distinct lack of interest. A cool response
is more difficult for teachers to deal with. For example, comments about particular beliefs
like the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth of Jesus – ‘You mean, some people
still believe that!’ – show a type of detached, clinical anthropological interest in religion. It
is there, people believe it, and it may have some interesting aspects – but it appears to be
an outmoded belief structure of older generations, and of little consequence for life today.
Hence many youth have little expectation that religion should be meaningful. Theology
faces a considerable challenge in addressing this problem.
Religious and theological language can become more relevant if it makes greater use
of the constructs meaning, identity and spirituality. These seem to be more attuned to the
contemporary social situation; they can function like a new religious language in secularised
culture. Making use of a language of meaning would articulate messages for human development
within a framework of reasons for living. For a long period of its history, Catholic theology
was expressed mainly in Thomistic and Aristotelian language (we do not want to debate
here its relevance for any of that period). But what is needed now is expression in language
and concepts that have more purchase on the problems in modern life. This proposal does
not mean abandoning traditional theological constructs in favour of vague secularised ones
that have more popular appeal, but it suggests that the faith tradition will increasingly lose
its potential for inspiring people’s lives if it does not try to express its religious messages
within interpretations that are more evidently connected with the spiritual-moral issues
people experience today. This is not just trying to be trendy, but seriously engaged with the
content and processes through which people draw on cultural elements in their search for a
meaningful human life.
A good example of healthy movement in this direction of ‘re-languaging’ Catholic theo
logy was considered in sections 8.2 and 16.2.1 – psychological spirituality. It is concerned
with the interplay between people’s personal development, religion and the complex social
environment. While focused on self-development, at its best, it fostered a healthy spirituality
while avoiding potential excesses in individuality by emphasising community and social jus
tice. It provided intellectual tools for learning how to hold in creative tension the challenges
in religious faith, expectations of freedom and individuality, and the security and respon
sibilities derived from group identification. It also provided input into the critical evaluation
of culture from a religious perspective (taken up later in the chapter). Psychological
spirituality was one of the most important developments in Catholicism since the Second
Vatican Council.
The quest for relevance in spirituality is even more crucial now than it was earlier,
because at present many young people (and adults) seem to be questioning the basic
400 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
there will be problems in student perceptions because they sense that the more or less
exclusive emphasis in their teachers’ purposes is: ‘How can we more effectively communicate
the Catholic tradition?’ This framework is too institutional; it needs to be more strongly
referenced to students’ personal development. A framework more in tune with their spiritual
starting points is: ‘How can we better help young people explore the spiritual and moral
dimensions of life?’ Within the latter, the case for Catholicism can be better presented; and
it can enhance the scope and pedagogy for studying religious traditions. It can help them see
how the Church and its theology have tried to respond to the perennial search for ultimate
meaning in life.
This orientation is consistent with the aim of religious education to enhance religious
literacy, especially a critical literacy.4 It helps young people develop a relevant religious
language in which they can not only frame their own questions of meaning and purpose, but
also achieve better access to Catholic theology, as well as to the wisdom of other traditions.
Many remained puzzled by the ongoing dissonance between their life experience and
traditional religious meanings, sometimes with harmful consequences. Still others got on
with their busy lives with little or no attention given to spiritual or religious meanings, and
with a feeling that this aspect did not need much attention anyway. In this cultural climate,
experience and relevance became even more important as touchstones of authenticity for
personal meaning; meanings became more private and individualistic, often with tenuous
links to traditional community meanings. Questions about meaning and purpose became
more prominent in public discourse, while at the same time secularisation diminished the
prominence of religions. Meanwhile, ‘commercial spirituality’ and psychology contributed
to the ‘meaning market’ along with religions. Because contemporary questioning seemed to
know no limits, it led to cynicism about the chance of finding any worthwhile meaning in life.
What was thought to be the ‘truth’ seemed less absolute and more a question of contextual
interpretation. There has been a cultural shift from ‘false certainties’ to ‘true uncertainties’,6
and this signalled a move from absolute truth to interpretations that increasingly approximate
to the truth. Questioning is no longer just about relevance (How can we improve life and
make it more enjoyable?); increasingly there is concern about fundamental meaning (Is there
any worthwhile meaning at all? What are the reasons for living?).
In these conditions, it was not surprising that the role of education generally, and
of religious education in particular, was now more explicit about helping young people
identify and evaluate meanings. There was a sequential change in emphasis from religious
knowledge (1950s), to experience and relevance (1970s) to meanings and interpretations (1990s
and 2000s). Both the content and pedagogy of religious education need to address the
new situation; if not, there is a risk that for many young people their sense that religious
education is not relevant to meaning in life will be further reinforced.
Therefore it is proposed that the construction of meaning and identity should become
more prominent focal points for Catholic school religious education, together with
acknowledgment that religious education is essentially a hermeneutic activity – where
dealing with questions of interpretation is central to the process.7
The school as an educational agency can help, but its input is naturally limited. Schools,
and particularly religious education, may well seek to be more influential because of the decline
in the relevance of other agencies which traditionally give support for meaning and purpose
in life. But schools cannot solve the problem – they are not a substitute for the community
and its various agencies. What school religious education can do is give young people access
to the wisdom of their own religious tradition (and other traditions) as well as skills in the
identification and evaluation of meanings. It can thus make a valuable contribution to what
was described in Chapter 10 as an education in meaning, identity and spirituality.
Thus Catholic school religious education has two principal responsibilities to its students:
provision of access to their religious traditions – to which they have a right; and help in
learning how to explore spiritual-moral issues that are prominent in the culture and that
have a bearing on their personal development. Young people are comfortable with the idea
of being given access to their traditions, which may be of value to them at some future stage.
This appeals to their sense of freedom and lessens the likelihood of a negative reaction to any
perceived pressure to conform. This interpretation has significant pedagogical implications.
Respect for students’ freedom is also freeing for teachers; they can concentrate energies in
devising rich studies of traditions without being locked into a mentality that is too timid
about serious study of traditions because of a fear that this will not interest the students or
Personalism and relevance in religious education 403
will not be perceived as relevant. While committed to the ideals of achieving personalism
and relevance, religion teachers should not be handicapped by unrealistic expectations.
A good balance is needed in the way these two dimensions are reflected in content and
classroom practice: tradition – attention to religious traditions; and meaning – questions
more directly related to young people’s meaning and identity. The two dimensions are not
exclusive – meaning can be pursued both in and through the religious tradition. But if the
former is over-emphasised, a negative student reaction is likely (see 16.2.6 on Nipkow’s
interpretation of religious education perceived as ‘institutional maintenance’). If the latter is
over-emphasised, the process becomes excessively individualistic, fostering students’ personal
meanings while disconnecting them from community meanings. It is inappropriate to expect
individuals to forge a complete meaning system by themselves; they need some reference to a
community of shared beliefs and meaning as a baseline. While young people should learn that
individuality and personal autonomy are valued, it is also important for them to understand
that divisiveness and alienation can flow from individualism which is not tempered by
community, responsibility and a sense of the transcendent. It is not that Church maintenance
and communicating Catholicism are undesirable hopes for religious education, but that these
concerns need to be balanced with more evident attention to students’ personal development.
An imbalance between these two responsibilities occurs (at the levels of syllabus, resources
and teaching) when there is a presumption of active, committed Church membership on the
part of students, and where insufficient attention is paid to their relatively secular spirituality.
On the other hand, when there is acknowledgment of pluralist, secular, consumer-oriented
influences on youth spirituality, the approach is more likely to be relevant – and that means
more likelihood that it will promote young people’s spiritual development.
Thus classroom religious education in the church-related school should be able to help
confirm and challenge the faith of the youth who are actively involved in the Church, and at
the same time help foster the spiritual development of those who are ambivalent about Church
membership. We have long maintained a special interest in the role of religious education
for this latter group, because it can make a valuable and at times crucial contribution to
their lives by helping them learn to deal with the spiritual and moral aspects of life in an
increasingly complex society. Our experience suggests that if this is done well, then at the
same time it provides the most relevant religious education for inviting them to consider the
option of active participation in the life and worship of the Church.
From the Church’s perspective, this approach to religious education can have an evan
gelising dimension for secularised youth because it may be one of their few points of
formal contact with Catholicism. Also, an approach aimed specifically at those who are not
interested in drawing much spiritually from their religious traditions will not necessarily be
irrelevant for the youth who are religious, because they too need a spirituality that is relevant
to the times.
Much contemporary writing on youth spirituality seems to presume a starting point from
within the Church and a spiritual practice that is Church-oriented and theological.8 While
this may be appropriate for committed adults and youth involved in parish life, it may not
help much in understanding and fostering the spirituality of those who may never enter a
zone of voluntary catechesis; Catholic school religious education retains a commitment to
this group.
This discussion highlights the bridge-building role that religious education has in trying
to link the culture of youth with the culture and spirituality of the Church. A plurality
404 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
of belief styles needs to figure in the process because what nourishes the spirituality of
various groups is different; the key role of religious education is to resource the spiritual
development of students. Educational efforts to communicate particular religious meanings
and identity do not need to be ‘unilateral’ in tone, as if trying to impose a package deal that
precludes individuals’ growing involvement in a more autonomous, reflective process of
spiritual development. There can be the hope that young people might later affirm, embrace
and enhance their religious identity; but they will decide what happens.
From this discussion there arise many implications for both content and pedagogy. It
justifies further the need for a study of spiritual-moral issues in an open-ended, research-
oriented way as noted earlier. Just as the teaching of history has changed significantly from
the older emphasis on facts and dates to interpretation of primary and secondary sources,
so religious education needs to become more concerned with appraisal of theories and
interpretations of the meaning of life. This approach enables the study of religion under
themes that appear more relevant in the secularised mood of contemporary Western cultures,
and more in tune with young people’s spiritual starting points. Not all Catholic religious
educators feel comfortable with this proposal because it appears to question the presumptions
out of which some of them work; they may feel, mistakenly, that the teaching of religion
is being secularised, compromising the comfort they took in what was felt to be a strong
presentation of the Church. On the contrary, we consider that this is the more appropriate
and effective route for giving the large group of secularised young people satisfying access to
the spiritual traditions of the Church. And it does not hold back the students who are more
strongly identified with a parish.
Religious educators need an understanding of spirituality and identity issues that will
serve as an interpretive background to their educational work and personal interactions with
youth. They need to be more aware of contemporary youth spirituality and of the complex
life-world within which young people seek meaning and identity. This can provide insight
into what is happening in the lives of individuals and groups, and it can inform comments
made in class, as well as a range of transactions from silent, knowing empathy to personal
advice. They need to show through their language that they are sensitively aware of the
questions and issues that young people are dealing with. They should also be role models as
the wise, adult ‘searcher for meaning’ and ‘critical interpreter of culture’.
culture; and in turn, this is proposed as a task to which public education can contribute. Hill
described this role as the ‘interrogation of one’s cultural conditioning’.10
Critical evaluation of culture addresses the following:
to develop your culture with wisdom and prudence, retaining the freedom to criticise
what may be called the ‘cultural industry’ remaining all the while deeply concerned with
truth … faith will ask culture what values it promotes, what destiny it offers to life, what
place it makes for the poor and the disinherited with whom the Son of Man is identified,
how it conceives of sharing, forgiveness and love.14
Many of these same concerns are woven through the religious education theory of prominent
European Catholic religious educators. Lombaerts and his colleagues, for example, stressed
the hermeneutic role of religious education because cultural postmodernity has changed
radically the way people regard religious traditions as potential sources of meaning and
values.15 Pajer emphasised the development of individual identity as influenced by cultural
identities in a pluralist secularised society.16
Because of the close relationship between meaning and religion, below we look at
implications for the evaluation of cultural meanings.
feel that they can get by well enough without them – when you are already busy and stressed
with life, why burden yourself with beliefs that do not help? Or, it may be that the beliefs
do have relevance, but they are expressed in language and concepts that have no substantial
meanings for particular people. If they have no meaningful access to those beliefs, they will
be less likely to look to them for life guidance. Or, if they have little respect for their religion,
or if they are disaffected or alienated, they will hardly look to religious teachings for life
interpretations and inspiration.
If religious traditions are going to be beneficial to these people, they will need to give
special attention to communication at these personal and social levels.
These principles have much significance for religious education in the church-related
school. It should pay attention to personal and social meanings at two levels:
First, access to church theology and teachings will be more helpful to youth if they use a
relevant language of psychological and social meanings; study of explicitly religious material
needs to make use of ideas that mesh with their understandings and experience. Second, a
study of meanings is important for young people in its own right, and not just as a vehicle
for trying to make theology more interesting.
Religious education should investigate social meanings, their generation, history and
psychological functions. As well as making the subject more relevant, this approach has
wider significance in helping make young people’s whole education more meaningful.
Students can take their exploration to another level – not necessarily then and there in
the classroom – enhancing their own interpretation of life. However, their aspiration to
become critical interpreters of culture is not likely to be fostered by teachers who are unsure
about the importance of this dimension to education. Educators do not need to have perfect
answers for all the students’ questions, but they too should evidently be engaged in that
same searching and questioning activity as the students. In practice, many teachers model
these characteristics, helping students learn how to enquire for themselves and how to think
critically. What we are suggesting is that this role be more clearly articulated as a fundamental
dimension to education with specific content and pedagogy, and not just left as a desirable
but vague part of the process.
For their part, teachers need to hone their hermeneutic and evaluative skills, and to acquire
a better understanding of the topography of culture that affects young people’s meaning
and identity. Greater familiarity with the pertinent issues, language and concepts will filter
through into their interactions with students both inside and outside the classroom.
17.10 Conclusion
This chapter has revisited the 1970s quest for personalism and relevance in Catholic school
religious education, suggesting that these goals remain valid and important today. But it
has proposed a reinterpretation of what this means in terms of issue-related content and
evaluative pedagogy. While the discussion has been concerned mainly with the relevance
of religious education as such, in the Catholic school context this inevitably has some links
with the question of the relevance of the Church.
The perceived relevance of Catholic theology and religious education in these times
remains in crisis as far as many youth and adults are concerned. They will quietly ignore
the Catholic faith tradition – and its religious education – unless they sense that something
serious is being said about issues in contemporary personal, social, and political life. This
408 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
also applies to practising members of local faith communities; increasingly, Catholics will be
less inclined to remain active members of a parish out of cultural inertia. If the presentation
of theology and spirituality does not engage sufficiently in the real spiritual and moral issues
that people experience, then they will get used to the expectation that their faith tradition
remains only marginally relevant to their lives. While religious education cannot be expected
to resolve the problem, it can endeavour to make the study of religion a more life-enhancing
experience for students. And this requires an approach – in content, language and pedagogy
– that is in tune with young people’s spirituality; in short, a religious education that is
concerned with reasons for living.
The next chapters deal with the place of religious faith which has long been central to
Catholic thinking about religious education, but which has also been a source of problems
both in expectations and practice.
Notes
1 A discussion of pedagogical strategies that draw students’ attention to meaning appears in D White et al.
2003, Into the deep; K O’Brien & D White 2004, The thinking platform; D White 2005, Discerning religious
meaning; D White 2006, DEEP thinking.
2 M West Dr Newman’s Toast, Lecture at Australian Catholic University, Strathfield NSW, 15 November 1998.
3 Comments by two Masters course students, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, 1998.
4 P Goldburg 2005, Teaching world religions: Developing critical religious literacy.
5 The climate of cultural postmodernity is illustrated in the following: A Year 1 student answered her teacher’s
statement that ‘Mary is the Mother of God’ with the question ‘But how do you know?’ While perhaps
not conscious of the epistemological and hermeneutical implications of her question, this young child
was participating in the popular cultural meaning of these times, which calls most things into question.
There is widespread suspicion of all institutions and groups, including the Church and politicians. With
substantial secularisation, people know they can live satisfying lives without much contact with organised
religion. Increasing numbers of Catholics maintain few formal links with the Church, becoming what has
been described as: ‘Four wheeler Catholics’: pram for christening, taxi for marriage, hearse for burial. Or
the ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ role of the Church. As noted in some adolescents’ comments: ‘You get your
values from your parents, and that gets you through life. You don’t need organised religion.’ ‘I have my own
religious beliefs that I don’t think anyone else shares. I don’t believe that any organisation speaks for God and
I live my life in a totally free and unreligious way. I am extremely spiritual’ (second quotation from a Religious
Education symposium paper, by K Engebretson, Sydney, 19/04/01).
6 The problem of meaning in cultural postmodernity is considered in more detail in section 4.2.1.
7 H Lombaerts & D Pollefeyt (eds) 2004, Hermeneutics and religious education.
8 M Strommen & R Hardel 2000, Passing on the faith: A radical new model for youth and family ministry.
9 Pope Paul VI 1976, Evangelii nuntiandi.
10 BV Hill 1990, A time to plant and a time to uproot: Values education in the secondary school.
11 M Warren 1983, Source book for modern catechetics.
12 TH Groome 1980, Christian religious education: Sharing our story and vision; TH Groome 1991, Sharing faith:
A comprehensive approach to religious education and pastoral ministry; TH Groome 1998, Educating for life: A
spiritual vision for every teacher and parent.
13 M Warren 1992, Communications and cultural analysis: A religious view.
14 Pope John Paul II 1984, Homily, University of Laval Stadium Quebec City.
15 Lombaerts & Pollefeyt 2004; H Lombaerts 1998, The management and leadership of Christian schools: A
Lasallian systemic viewpoint; R Roebben 1997, Shaping a playground for transcendence: Postmodern youth
ministry as a radical challenge.
16 F Pajer 2003, School‑based education and religious culture: A European approach to the problem of teaching
religion in school.
18
The centrality of the
concept ‘faith development’
in Catholic school religious
education
The development of students’ religious faith within the context of the Catholic faith tradition
has long been, and rightly remains, a fundamental aim of Catholic school religious education.
However, interpretations of what this means in practice have been problematic, especially with
reference to use of the construct ‘faith development’. After a brief introduction to show how the
construct entered into Catholic religious education, the chapter will consider how it enhanced
religious education while at the same time creating difficulties for theory and practice.
409
410
Table 18.1 Fowler’s theory of faith development compared with other developmental theories
Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
AGE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT COGNITIVE MORAL DEVELOPMENT FAITH DEVELOPMENT
(Erikson) DEVELOPMENT (Kohlberg) (Fowler)
(Piaget)
Pre-Conventional
3 Genital locomotive Initiative vs Guilt (Purpose) and wanted
Dependent
Morality
faith
Pre Adolescence 4 Latency Industry vs Inferiority (Competence) Concrete 1 Punishment and obedience 2 Affiliative
7–11 operations orientation: follows rules to faith
avoid trouble
Adolescence 2 Personal usefulness orientation: 3 Conventional
12–15 5 Puberty and Identity vs (Fidelity) Formal conforms to obtain rewards faith
Adolescence Role Confusion operations 3 Approval seeking orientation;
Young Adulthood interpersonal concordance or
Conventional
Independent
Morality
15–18 ‘good boy–nice girl’ orientation; (Searching
faith
avoids disapproval faith)
4 Law and Order orientation; respect
for authority and social order 4 Personal
faith
5 Social Contract,
Autonomous
Morality
19–30 5 Community
Middle Age 7 Adulthood Generativity vs Stagnation (Care) faith
6 Universal ethical
30– principle orientation 6 Universal
Aged 8 Maturity Ego-integrity vs Despair (Wisdom) faith
60–
The centrality of the concept ‘faith development’ in Catholic school religious education 411
awareness and behaviour, through interpersonal and then community- and institution-
centredness, and finally towards a more universalist orientation. Along with other theories,
it provided a model for personal and spiritual development.
Some would argue that Fowler’s theory was principally concerned with adult development,
even though the early stages were characteristic of children and adolescents (for example
mythic literal or imitative faith and conventional faith, and its transition through a searching
faith to the next stage). While the theory showed how different faith ‘competencies’
developed, there still remains a question of whether a ‘higher’ stage of faith development
necessarily means being closer to God and a better, more sensitive human being.
The next chapter will consider how the theory was applied to research on the spiritual
development of adolescents together with implications for the ‘sponsoring’ of young people’s
faith.
The chapter considers that there is a need to revise the way that faith development language
is used in Catholic religious education. It argues that religious knowledge and understanding,
together with evaluative skills, are the aspects of faith development that are most naturally
and effectively promoted by school religious education. There are parallels with issues
considered in 13.5 about education for personal learning. While looking at relationships
between pedagogy and faith, this chapter will not include a comprehensive review of the
nature of religious faith.
412 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
less exclusively in terms of faith development, which involves high order, personal change
that is not open to scrutiny by observers, then teachers will be planning lessons on a day-to-
day basis while their objectives are ‘over the horizon’, and not able to give immediate practical
guidance. Elsewhere in the curriculum, the equivalent would be writing the outcomes for
English or History in terms of ‘committed citizenship’. Faith development is too distant
from classroom activities to serve as a useful, immediate, functional goal; and because it is
so strongly influenced by personal and social factors, teachers would be unrealistic if they
thought that their lessons were the principal means of fostering it. Teachers caught up in
such thinking can neglect the sorts of purposes and learning opportunities that are most
appropriate for the classroom.
Hence it would be better to regard faith development more as a hope than an aim. Hope
that the classroom experience will, over time, enhance the development of students’ faith
complements the more immediate aims and objectives. It is important to have such hopes
because they give a valuable orientation to the process, but a preoccupation with these hopes
can confuse teachers’ purposes and create unrealistic expectations.
One way of addressing the problem is to identify the aspects of faith development that
are most pertinent to the classroom. This steers teachers away from vague purposes like ‘more
faith’, ‘deeper faith’, ‘more ready to believe’, ‘committed faith’ while directing attention to
the cognitive dimension. Students need good knowledge and understanding of their reli
gious tradition, as well as an understanding of what faith is in all its aspects. Teachers should
be concerned with the aspects that are ‘educatable’; in other words, the purpose of religious
education is to help young people acquire an educated personal faith.
If reference is made to the more personal dimensions of faith, then the meaning should
be made clear enough to avoid ambiguity. For example, the idea of promoting a ‘deeper’ faith
means the hope that young people will develop a stronger sense of personal and emotional
attachment to God, paralleling the way one would talk about enhancing a personal relationship
– with it becoming more personal, more exclusive, more faithful and more communicative.
The idea of faith development as becoming ‘more committed’ needs further consideration.
Commitment is a key dimension to religious faith, and so is committed social action.
However, the scope for the school, and especially its religion curriculum, to bring about
change in commitment is limited. Such change is a long-term process affected by many
factors and is unlikely to be caused exclusively by classroom teaching. Also, it would be
difficult, as well as unethical, to try to measure changes in faith commitment as a result of such
teaching. How would one know if an individual was more committed or not? How would
one get an indication or a measure of commitment? Perhaps by observation of behaviour
both inside and outside school over a period? Individuals who are more committed would
go to greater lengths to honour their commitments. The further one ventures into this
thinking the more it becomes obvious that trying to measure or assess its development is
inappropriate. Nevertheless, it remains important for the school to try to model committed
social action, and to use community engagement and social service activities to give young
people practical experience in these areas. The school’s own value commitments need to be
evident in its organisational and social life – hopefully with impact on the students.
These sections suggest that if religious educators are to use the term ‘faith development’,
they need to think through the metaphors that will make the concept more realistic and
useful both for themselves and their students.
414 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
more faith-intensive. Another way of putting it is that faith might be given a more emotional
and personal expression during a retreat. In ‘peak’ or ‘mountain top’ experiences (as used by
Maslow),9 the emotional aspect of faith could be intensified, and felt more palpably. But the
idea that emotionality itself should be regarded as constituting faith development needs to
be questioned.
In addition, this problematic thinking led to the misunderstandings associated with use
of the descriptive terms ‘education in faith’ and ‘education in religion’.10
From the 1970s onwards, the problems described above were evident in diocesan
documents, school programs and in the language teachers used to describe religious
education, as well as in journal articles and texts for teachers. The following is a typical
example. In the Guidelines for Religious Education in the Archdiocese of Brisbane, the
educational aim of promoting religious literacy was emphasised as the principal concern of
the formal religion curriculum, while other contexts and activities (retreats, school life, parish
groups, and so on) were said to have a ‘faith development focus’.11 In another example, some
books on religious education used the words ‘faith-forming’ or ‘enfaithing’ to distinguish
denominational approaches from others like the phenomenological – which were presumed
to be non faith-forming or non-enfaithing.12 Such problematical language inevitably leads
to equally problematical pedagogy. It gives the impression that by intention teachers can
change gears during lessons, moving at will from non faith-forming instruction to active
faith-forming activities. As well as implying a simplistic view of religious faith, this thinking
seems to presume supernatural powers on the part of teachers; the links between education
and changes in young people’s faith are much more complex than it admits.
Distinctions between different types of teaching and learning activity, as well as the
differentiation of contexts, are important in religious education. But the terminology used
here implies an artificial division between religious education and faith development. It is
too narrow in its dependence on psychological processes as the core of faith development
and it neglects the significance that formal classroom religious education has for faith
development. The contrast is also inappropriate because the two nouns are of a different
logical order. Religious education is an intentional educational activity; Faith development is a
change in the believing activity of the individual.
Faith development is a personal process of great complexity, most of which is not open
to scrutiny by others; it is influenced by a variety of factors, only one of which is religious
education. Hence it is an inappropriate criterion for differentiating types of educational
activities – as if one sort does not affect faith while another does. Classifying activities
according to the presence or absence of faith gives the impression that religion teachers
would need an inbuilt faith meter!
It is more realistic and less presumptuous to acknowledge that all types of activities
in religious education, as well as the religious and social life of the school, have potential
to contribute to the development of students’ religious faith. Some of these activities are
more formal and instructional. Others may be more informal, more personal, emotional,
silent, and reflective. This description is a more appropriate and precise way of talking
about different activities than presuming that one can know which type is more effective in
producing faith development.
There is also another reason for questioning the use of faith development language to
differentiate processes. The Christian interpretation of faith presumes that the Holy Spirit
416 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
is involved in any invitation to a response in personal faith. If the image of teachers needing
faith meters highlights the problem of presumption, then the incongruous image of teachers
requiring Holy Spirit detectors should make the inappropriateness of such language even
more obvious.
a number of diocesan religion curricula.14 The use of knowledge and skills outcomes should
be beneficial by drawing attention to achievable goals which may have been neglected. But
reference to values and faith outcomes remains ambiguous, especially where they are couched
in the same language as for knowledge and skills.
Paralleling what was said earlier, it is proposed that a language of hopes (or hoped-for
long-term outcomes) be used rather than outcomes written in faith development language.
This has implications for assessment and reporting.15
In his book What is this thing called religious education?,17 Lovat used the descriptor
‘faith-forming approaches’ (involving what he called ‘enfaithing’ processes) to differentiate
denominational religious education from the phenomenological, multi-faith versions.
It helped him articulate an ‘educational identity’ for Religion Studies (in both state and
religious schools) according to ‘intentions’ – where the aim of promoting personal faith in
a particular religious tradition was said to be inappropriate. But by claiming that religion
studies were not faith-forming, Lovat still participated in the problem described above where
it was presumed that there were distinct faith-forming and non-faith-forming approaches,
and that these could be chosen by teachers and implemented with consequences for
the religious faith of students. Similar to Lovat, Moore (also an influential figure in the
development of Religion Studies courses in Australia) in his classification of denominational
religious education, used the descriptor ‘faith development approaches’.18 The issue will be
revisited in section 22.2 when discussing relationships between denominational religious
education and Religion Studies. While in the Catholic sector there is a tendency to overrate
the influence of religious education on personal faith, in state-based Religion Studies, the
tendency has been to underrate the potential for personal influence.19 As explained in Part
5, this has to do with the political need to differentiate state courses from denominational
religious education. But the fact that the schools in Australia that offer Religion Studies are
almost exclusively religious schools creates an interesting twist to the argument.
The problem with using faith development language for differentiating purpose revolves
around a number of issues, one of which is the relationship between educational intentions,
processes and outcomes. At the level of intentions there are grounds for distinguishing between
purposes, especially with respect to long-term hopes. Catholic religious education hopes
to enhance faith development; state Religion Studies does not. But the distinction at the
intentional level breaks down or becomes blurred at the level of practice. When students are
engaged in learning activities, the potential consequences for personal faith are so distant
(and shrouded in mystery) that it is not possible for the teacher to know whether or not the
activity will affect them – either there and then or in the long term; in both denominational
and Religion Studies contexts, there is the potential to affect students’ faith – or not. As
noted in Chapter 13, there is an inherent uncertainty about personal outcomes that is natural
because of the very complexity of personal development. The Religion Studies teacher (in
state or religious schools) may not have faith development intentions, but this does not
stop the educational process from having unintended consequences over the long term.
Teachers in both camps need to acknowledge the potential for catalysing personal change
through their teaching, even if modest; they are making an educational contribution towards
personal change. They need to acknowledge that as regards promoting spiritual and moral
development in students, there is not the same order of causality in relationships between
intentions, processes and outcomes as there are for educating in knowledge and skills. This
applies to any education intended to bring about personal change. For example: the chain
of causality between processes that teach children mathematics and the outcomes of such
teaching can be mapped with logical precision and this can be demonstrated with empirical
measures. But personal and spiritual change are of a different order, and potential causal
links with educational treatments will be overshadowed by a network of other factors, not
the least of which is the freedom of individuals to determine to some extent their own beliefs
The centrality of the concept ‘faith development’ in Catholic school religious education 419
and values. The empirical and ethical problems in trying to measure faith development
outcomes were noted in 16.2.3.
The interpretation above was confirmed in an interesting, and eventually humorous
discussion by young student teachers. They were quick to bristle at the terminology because
they were conscious that the purpose of faith development meant trying to change people
personally. They sensed the agenda – it was not just about education, but about ‘getting
the “right stuff ”’, ‘becoming devout Catholics’; they felt that an institutional intention was
predominant. One complained: ‘They should be more honest, and call it “faith conformity”
rather than “faith development”.’ Another who disliked the word ‘enfaithing’ preferred
to call it ‘enforcing’. From here the group proposed the phrase ‘faith enforcement’ as an
indication of the problem. Finally, emphasising concerns about potential manipulation, the
group wit suggested that there should be a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie to be called
‘The Enfaithinator: Being on the right side at Judgment Day’.
• that teachers can achieve a recognisable degree of religious conversion in students in the
classroom;
• that a very personal atmosphere can readily be created in the classroom;
• that eliciting student testimonies of personal faith and values is a principal activity in
religious education;
• that mentoring or counselling-like activities are appropriate in classroom religious
education (see Chapter 19).
The problem with schemes like this, and with talk about transformative education generally,
is the impression it reinforces in teachers that they have, or are expected to have, the power
to change at will the level of student personal or spiritual engagement in a lesson. It seems to
presume that it is primarily the teacher’s intentions that change the nature of the classroom
interactions, and that there are simple pathways between pedagogy and personal change
in students. It suggests also that personal change will then flow into the transformation of
society (contrast this with the conceptualisation of education for personal change in Part 3).
Freire proposed a praxis way of knowing. This theme was taken up by Groome in his writings
about shared Christian praxis.23
Boys (in Educating in Faith)24 also considered an ‘enlarged’ interpretation of knowledge
and understanding. She referred to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences as a way of
expanding the notion of knowing; it enriched the variety of teaching strategies to meet the
diverse needs of learners. Boys also argued the case for a feminist way of knowing. It is,
however, interesting to note that both Groome and Boys, as evident in titles and chapter
headings in their books, gave a priority to faith development language.
Another key dimension to knowing that needs further exploration is the aesthetic. It
includes a prominent role for the imagination in personal learning.25
18.3 Summary
This chapter considered that the quest for a religious education that is ‘faith-effective’ is
problematic, particularly since the notion of ‘faith development’ has become something of a
Holy Grail in Catholic education circles. Excessive and non-discriminating use of the term
has led to ambiguities in both expectations and practice, especially as regards its relationship
with emotionality. The problems can be addressed by giving more attention to the aspects of
faith that can be most appropriately enhanced in the classroom, and they are mainly in the
cognitive domain. Writers and curriculum developers in Catholic religious education need
to provide leadership in the ongoing endeavour to clarify purposes; a review of its language
should begin in theory and in diocesan guidelines, and thence move into school programs
and teaching. Perhaps a more balanced use of faith development language will come when
complementary attention is given to ‘hope development’, ‘love development’ and ‘justice
development’.
Because the handing on of the faith tradition and the development of personal faith
remain such central purposes in Catholic education, the next chapter will explore these
purposes further.
Notes
1 JH Westerhoff 1976, Will our children have faith?
2 JE Fowler. 1980, Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning; 1986,
Becoming adult, becoming Christian; 1986, Faith and the structure of meaning. in C Dykstra & S Parks (eds)
Faith development and Fowler; JE Fowler et al. 1993, Stages of Faith and Religious Development: Implications for
church education and society.
3 The references in note 2 give Fowler’s own account of his theory. Useful summaries are available in the following.
Hill’s recent summary is succinct, also illustrating other developmental views of personal development. BV
Hill 2004, Exploring religion in school: A national priority; GM Rossiter 1981, The beliefs of young people. In
Religious education in Australian schools; MF Flynn 1979, Catholic schools and the communication of faith.
4 G Moran 1980, Religious education development; see also G Moran 1990, No ladder to the sky.
5 D Goleman 1996, Emotional intelligence; D Zohar & I Marshall 2000, SQ: Spiritual intelligence, the ultimate
intelligence.
6 See for example the detailed summary of thinking about faith in A Dulles 1994, The assurance of things hoped
for, especially the chapter on the Development of Faith.
7 One prominent example is in Carl Rogers’ book, which also proposed educational implications: CR Rogers
1969, Freedom to Learn: What education might become.
8 GM Rossiter 1986, The place of faith in classroom religious education.
422 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
This chapter looks further into the relationships between classroom religious education and
young people’s spiritual development.
In 1992, the Catholic Institute for Religious Studies published Sponsoring faith in adolescence.1
It reported research on the spiritual development of Year 11 students in Catholic girls’ high
schools, using Fowler’s scheme of faith development for its conceptualisation (the principal
researcher was Carmel Leavey). The high-quality research compiled an interesting picture
of the faith competencies of young women, consistent with a number of the conclusions
drawn about youth spirituality in Chapter 9. The study, which reinforced the already strong
position of Fowler’s faith development theory in Catholic circles, was well received. Its
principal recommendation was to promote ‘sponsoring of faith’ (or ‘faith mentoring’) in
adolescents; it emphasised the relationships between adults and young people.
While the process of faith sponsorship or mentoring was evidently relevant to spiritual
development, there was difficulty in determining its implications for religious education.
The Leavey research reactivated the same issues that arose in 1976 when the Australian
Catholic education community first learned of Fowler’s theory through the publication of
Westerhoff ’s book Will our children have faith? (see the introduction to Chapter 18).2 To
revisit the response at that time is instructive for understanding the relationships between
religious education and young people’s faith development.
Westerhoff questioned the relevance of what he called a ‘schooling/instructional paradigm’
for Protestant church Sunday schools in the United States. He considered that it was the local
Christian community in its celebrative ritual which was principally responsible for developing
the personal faith of children. He believed that in this context, community experience, especially
liturgy, was much more influential than formal instruction. He thought that religious socialisation
rather than religious instruction or religious education was the most relevant process.
In response, Catholic religious educators in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s sought to
apply Westerhoff ’s ideas to compulsory religious education in day schools – even though the
423
424 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
context and purposes were different from those of voluntary Sunday schools. The paradigm
of ‘community/inculturation’ was thought to be more relevant than ‘schooling/instruction’,
and it motivated experimentation to make religion lessons more informal and personal, and
more discussion-oriented. This view was also consistent with the community orientation of
retreats and with research findings on the importance of social climate in Catholic schools.
As a result, there was a tendency to focus on community and interpersonal relationships rather
than on knowledge and skills (see the relevant sections in Chapters 16 and 18).
Westerhoff considered that improvement of the Sunday school required a deschooling of its
structures. Following this lead, Catholic religion teachers thought that deschooling of classroom
religious education would also be productive – moving away from formal, academic study
towards something more low-key (not that what they were moving away from was all that
academic). It took a long time for Catholic religious educators to understand this confusion
of contexts, purposes and processes; and it is still not yet adequately resolved in the minds
of all religion teachers and administrators. This thinking was partly responsible for the long
opposition to a more academic study of religion in Catholic schools. Teachers were unlikely to
move in a direction that appeared contrary to the dominant motif of faith development, thus
sustaining an artificial dichotomy between the academic and the personal.3
The response of Catholic religious educators in the 1970s and 1980s, as far as the school
implications in Westerhoff ’s ideas were concerned, was not as discriminating as it should
have been. Westerhoff ’s proposals were appropriate for his context: he was dealing with a
voluntary church activity. But the compulsory school context was different, where other
factors came into play. So the efforts to make religion classrooms less ‘school-like’ and less
‘education-like’ did not in the long term prove relevant or successful.
The problematic reaction to Westerhoff ’s book, as well as to faith development theory
generally, was lack of an adequate differentiation between religious socialisation and religious
education; and consequently, between community/personal and classroom contexts. As
a result, there was ambiguity about the ways in which education, counselling, personal
interaction and group processes might contribute to the development of faith. A relatively
simple ‘either/or’ solution predominated at the time, without sufficient understanding of the
relationships between socialising and educational processes.
By 1992, progress had been made towards resolving the Westerhoff-related problems.
State Religion Studies courses had been newly adopted and the acceptability of a more
academic religious education had improved, although there was still ambivalence about the
place for a personal dimension. It was likely that the problems related to the 1970s confusion
of contexts would not be repeated. Nevertheless, reviews of the Leavey publication Sponsoring
faith in adolescence showed that there was still a lingering remnant of the earlier problematic
thinking about the role of religious education in fostering faith development.4
Before looking at possible school implications for faith sponsoring or mentoring, the
differences between socialisation and education will be considered.
can be interpreted as learning from culture by osmosis. While the family is the prime location
for socialisation, and while peer groups are always important, increasingly, television is
subsuming this role; for some children, families become modifiers of the primary socialisation
mediated through film and television. For adolescents, their peers, especially their own circle
of friends, may become the dominant reference group that governs their lives. It can even
serve as a ‘multiplier’ of influences from the consumerist/advertising/entertainment bloc;
where the popular opinion of the group endorses a consumerist lifestyle and determines
what is ‘cool’, young people are conditioned to go to considerable expense to conform. This
is why marketing experts are so keen to implant the mythology of consumerism within the
thinking of the ‘texting community’ – and to exploit it commercially (9.2.6).
By contrast, education in schools is a formal instructional process. It is concerned
primarily with helping young people learn how to think critically; and to become familiar
with the intellectual culture; and to acquire certain academic, technical and interpersonal
skills that will be valuable for their future lives and employment.
Degree of formality Low. Can occur at any time; High. Usually in a formal school
especially in family, peer groups and classroom setting; expectations
through the media. related to the aims for schooling.
Personal nature of the learning Usually personal and interactive. A public, structured learning
environment environment. Personalism is limited
but not inappropriate.
Intentional learning process (set Usually No. Mainly informal, personal Yes. Standard educational aims.
aims and objectives) learning; not formally directed.
Learning of attitudes, values and Yes. The main process of personal Minimal. Main emphasis is on
beliefs by example and imitation learning. cognitive learning, although
personal learning may be a hope.
Learning of knowledge; develop- Yes, but the emphasis is usually on Yes. The main emphasis in
ment of understanding and skills personal learning. education at school.
Scope for critical evaluation and Yes, but in an informal way; not Yes. Special attempt made to
appraisal of arguments usually systematic or involving study. develop skills for critical analysis
and evaluation.
Despite the differences, education and socialisation overlap; for healthy personal development,
complementarity between the processes is desirable. A young person’s school religious
education makes some contribution to his or her overall religious socialisation. Similarly,
426 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
aspects of religious socialisation can make a contribution to their religious education. The
differences in emphasis need to be acknowledged, otherwise the responsible adults may be
trying to achieve the wrong things in a particular context. The classroom cannot produce the
sort of socialisation that can be delivered by family, peer groups or local faith community.
Similarly, classroom study of religion can make contributions to young people’s overall
education that are not possible within a family or parish.
One of the reasons efforts to improve the effectiveness of religious education have not
been successful has been the blurring of distinctions between religious socialisation and
education, and blurring of the boundaries between different contexts. Ministry and religious
education require different configurations of processes to be relevant and effective. Each
has a distinctive ‘channel’ or style of contribution to the development of faith. For religious
education, too great a store had been placed on the faith-developing potential of personal
interactions, and not enough on educational activities.
availability but where one or more young persons in the family respond favourably while
another – given the same, and often more, opportunities and consideration – responds
not at all. Alternatively, the response can be uneven – for example, the young person may
develop a sensitive social conscience, but this can coexist with selfishness and intolerance in
the way that individual treats other members of the family. Personal development does not
always fit neatly within the structural stages of various developmental theories, even though
these theories provide helpful interpretations of the process.
religious education. Whether or not they are particularly interested in religion personally,
to become educated, young people need to have access to the basic theological meanings of
their religious tradition. The educational goal is to be pursued through an enquiring study,
without the presumption that all in the class will consciously incorporate these meanings into
their faith development. This interpretation was evident in a statement on religious education
made by the German Catholic bishops in the 1990s. It proposed that religious education met
different needs for different students: for those who were already actively involved in a parish,
it would consolidate and enhance their faith; for those who were not practising Catholics,
it would give them a basic understanding of their religious heritage; for those who were
antagonistic or uninterested, at least it would give them some knowledge of what they were
rejecting, as well as some experience in thinking about spiritual-moral issues.
The notion of access takes account of young people’s right to a religious heritage, while
acknowledging their sensitivity to having a religious identity ‘imposed’ on them (17.7);
it also respects students’ freedom while at the same time freeing the teacher to provide a
systematic exploration of religious traditions without the unwanted pressure of feeling that
the process is about effectively producing practising Catholics.
Educational access to religious traditions refers mainly to theological meanings. However,
a crucial factor in identification is the feeling of belonging, and no amount of theology can
mediate this. Young people are not always made to feel ‘at home’ in the Church. Some who
identify as church members are angry that little scope is given to them to have a say in the
conduct of church life; they feel it is the one organisation in their lives that does not seem
to treat them with a sense of valued participation. Some young people feel a comfortable
identification with their Catholic school, but this does not always extend to identification
with a parish.
Religious education can acquaint young people with the theological meanings needed for
religious identity. All students, whether religious or not, have a right to such an education.
While they may not at the moment be interested in becoming active church members, they
should still be given enough information, history and experience of their tradition to acquire
a minimal sense that there is a religious dimension to their cultural heritage. In addition,
the school can provide influential experiences of community; this is often done well, with
students acknowledging a strong sense of belonging and an experience of being cared for
individually. But in the long term, the development and maintenance of a religious identity
will depend a lot on the quality of the religious life of local communities of faith.
Thus Catholic school religious education can assist the development of a recognisably
traditional religious identity in some students. Also, it can affect identity development
in others who do not participate in the Church, but this identity enhancement will not
be so evident. Helpful meanings and spirituality may be absorbed into individuals’ self-
understanding and self-expression, though this may not be as identifiably Catholic as might
have been the case formerly.
• Studying identity development in a larger context that emphasises a place for transcendence
and responsibilities, as well as rights and freedom, a commitment to social justice, and a
need for critical interpretation of cultural influences on human development.
• Stressing the importance of internal identity resources does not have to imply self-
centredness. Individuality does not have to exclude altruism; autonomy does not have to
exclude interdependence.
430 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
• Christian spirituality has much to offer in its emphasis on fidelity to others. It states
parabolically that individuals may find ‘themselves’ best in the very process of giving
themselves away for others.
• Social justice is central to Christian spirituality, and service is central to Christian ministry.
• Modern society’s preoccupation with individuality and also its materialism can be called
to account.
• The ‘languaging’ of identity is essentially spiritual; it can draw on ‘psychological spirituality’
(see Chapters 8, 16 and 17), highlighting core gospel values of love, inner truth, fidelity to
commitments, social justice and identification with the marginalised.
What is crucial for enhancing identity development is the perceived relevance of cultural ele
ments (including narratives) for making sense of life. There has been a deterioration in the
significance of religious identity, because the language in which religion has been traditionally
expressed seems to have little relevance for people today (17.5) — they do not see it coming to
grips with the issues and questions about life that are of most immediate concern. When prin
ciples and stories help people make sense of their current experience and of the world they live
in, then they will ascribe relevance to these elements. For youth (and adults) the credibility of
both religion and education is now dependent on their perceived relevance to today’s issues.
As well as an obvious interest in religious identity, religious education is also concerned with
fostering a healthy moral identity in young people. Either consciously and/or as illustrated in
their behaviour, they will have a moral profile of values, beliefs and commitments that gives
direction to their lives and colours their interaction with others; the conscious moral identity
may not always coincide with the lived, operative or implied moral identity. These and other
questions suggested in note 7 are the sorts of topics students could explore.7
But many do not seem to have much time or space for a distinctively religious component
to identity; or it may be a different type of religious identity from the traditional.
These findings raised questions about the pursuit of ecumenical and interfaith learning
as goals for religious education. Nipkow considered that this could be wishful thinking,
because it did not take into account the radically changed world situation and young people’s
response to it. The aims for such dialogue are not in question for adults who have a sense of
denominational identity and who are disposed to learning from other religious traditions.
This may well be a long-term goal for school students as well, but it is unrealistic to set high
standards for what might be achieved. Developing knowledge and understanding of other
religious traditions is a valued aim for religious education, but outcomes more appropriate
for committed adults should not be expected.
This interpretation is helpful for many educators because they know religious education
has been beneficial for their students even if they do not become regular church attenders.
Others may not accept it because they feel it waters down the objectives of religious education:
‘if it does not result in churchgoing habits then something must be wrong’. For them, it
appears to be giving in to secularisation and accepting a vague religionless spirituality as a
satisfactory outcome.
The ideal implied in religious education aims is a committed personal faith that draws
extensively on Catholic theology and scripture. It is expressed in a spirituality that is in touch
with the wisdom and prayer traditions of the Church; and it is a faith that takes justice
responsibilities seriously. It is actively involved in the local community of faith. Faith cannot
be measured. But the last-mentioned note – parish participation – is often regarded as not
only an indicator of religiosity but as a sign of faith, even if it cannot give an accurate or
comprehensive account of it.
There are Catholic youth who are socialised into what might be called a ‘conventional’
religious faith, particularly where there is a strong climate of Catholicism in the home with
parish affiliation. But this group is a minority.
While the religious education aims of the Catholic Church are not equivocal about
wanting to promote young people’s personal faith, their type of faith is often different in many
ways from what has been regarded as conventional – especially in scope and expression. This
is part of the privatisation of religion that is now common in Western countries. Whether or
not this is a desirable trend needs to be considered, but not at this point. For many young
people, their faith is evolving in a secularised direction. They are still spiritual and are still
believers, and they retain a Catholic identification, but religion itself has a different function
for them. They derive values and beliefs from various cultural sources, including their own
tradition, to form an idiosyncratic interpretation of life. Religions and denominations are
seen as relative, as if they were similar in nature with a common psychic origin. They are
aware of the psychological functions that religions serve in giving meaning and purpose.
Consequently, the exclusive truth claims of particular religions, and doctrines that seem more
esoteric, are not taken so seriously. Differences and doctrinal conflict between traditions are
much less significant for them, unless the differences are abused as a basis for violence.
When they do take special interest in the teachings of their own religion, it tends to be those
concerned with spiritual and moral issues, and with the ultimate dilemmas of life, such as
death and what lies beyond.
Comparable with the notion of conventional religious faith is the idea of a conventional
Catholic religious identity. This too is an ideal implied in the aims of Catholic religious
education. It begins with the individual’s formal self-identification as a Catholic. Because
of the overlap between spirituality and identity, the above description of a conventional
Catholic faith also describes identity – it utilises Catholic liturgy and piety in self-expression,
and Catholic theology, culture and history in self-understanding. Identification with the
local church is an essential element and a key indicator of an authentic Catholic identity.
The idea of change in religious identity is usually accommodated more easily than change
in faith. Faith is regarded as a more fundamental process, ultimately concerned with one’s
relationship with God, whereas identity has more to do with personal and institutional
expression of the self.
Religious education and sponsoring faith in adolescents 433
What was said above about changing expressions of faith could just as easily be used
as an account of change in religious identity – the same dynamics viewed from a different
perspective. Depending on the interpretation, the change in young people’s religious identity
might be regarded as a decline, or, alternatively, as the emergence of a different form of
religious identity.
Just as for questions about young people’s faith and spirituality, there is angst among
educators about changing religious identity. It is difficult to analyse and it can be painful
for some because it seems to indicate that their cherished aims and best efforts as religious
educators have been unsuccessful. We do not judge the new situation so negatively. What
constitutes success in trying to hand on a religious tradition and foster personal faith is
complex; it cannot be understood just in traditional terms. Some insight into this complexity
suggests that educators have been doing a good job, but the situation of contemporary youth
is so different that spelling out what is entailed in a relevant religious education will remain
a challenging task. A perfectly relevant approach is an impossible dream; at the same time
it is possible to discern directions that will be more beneficial for youth and more satisfying
for teachers.
The interpretation offered here remains controversial, but there is no doubt that it taps
into issues that are fundamentally important for Catholic school religious education.
Notes
1 C Leavey et al. 1992, Sponsoring Faith in Adolescence: Perspectives on young Catholic women. See also C Leavey
& M Hetherton (eds) 1988, Catholic beliefs and practices.
2 JH Westerhoff III 1976, Will our children have faith?
3 Examples of this problematic thinking are considered in GM Rossiter 1986, The place of faith in classroom
religious education; GM Rossiter 1994, Religious education and the spiritual development of young people:
A reply to Gideon Goosen.
4 See for example the extended review of the research in CEO Religious Education Newsletter, Sydney Catholic
Education Office, August 1992, pp. 5–11.
5 ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1988 Missionaries to a teenage culture: Religious education in a time of rapid
change, Chapter 3.
6 The religious education theme of ‘access’ to traditions is strongly developed in the writing of Mary Boys in
the United States: Boys 1989, Educating in Faith.
7 Examples of other questions about identity development that might be studied were noted in Chapters 8
and 9. The following is a summary list: how theories of identity development can be used to explore human
potentiality; the strengths and weaknesses of religious identities; the ‘erosion’ of religious identity in secularised
society; possible links between religious identity and violence; possible dangers to humanness in the quest for
authentic identity; the potential for ‘identity seduction’: how an identity can be subtly constructed and ‘imaged’
as a marketable package by power, economic, advertising or media groups in society; ‘retail identity’: how
marketing preys on people’s identity vulnerabilities; film and television as the most prominent contemporary
source of identity building resources; ‘stars and heroes’: possibilities and problems in identification with, and
hero-worship of the stars (e.g. in film, television, music and sport). Normative principles and value judgments
would be involved in studying these topics, especially with respect to what ‘authentic identity’ might mean.
While educators themselves may take different value positions on these questions, the differences do not
excuse them from undertaking the task – articulation of value assumptions is an essential part of a critical
evaluation.
8 KE Nipkow 1991, Pre-conditions for ecumenical and interreligious learning: Observations and reflections from a
German perspective.
9 Cf. the considerations of identity in Chapter 5 and on youth identity in Chapter 7.
20
Developing staff spirituality:
A key component of the
identity of religious schools
434
Developing staff spirituality: A key component of the identity of religious schools 435
It therefore remains an important task to continually clarify the identity and mission of
the Catholic school in a pluralist community. It needs to be done in a way that is realistic,
that has the professional support of teachers, and the acceptance of students and parents. As
a publicly funded school, there is also a responsibility to the Australian community to have a
rationale that is appropriate, honouring both its religious and its public commitments.
often has to do with a perception that the school is trying to change them personally, rather
than involving them professionally in building up the school’s spiritual resources. Engagement
at the professional level is the appropriate strategy because all staff have a responsibility to
contribute positively to the social and spiritual environment of the school just as much as
for other aspects of school life such as pastoral care and discipline. First, this means public
endorsement of the school’s corporate religious practice. Take for example the sacrament of
Reconciliation, about which there is much uncertainty in the wider Catholic community.
No matter what a teacher’s own stance is on this question, he or she has a responsibility to
support the school’s efforts to give its students encouraging access to this sacrament. What
long-term place any element of Catholic religious practice will have in a young person’s
spirituality cannot be determined by teachers or the school. However, the school needs to
give their students an adequate introduction to the basic practices of the tradition – and
in particular, a positive experience of liturgy, sacraments and prayer. Generally, Catholic
schools do an excellent job in the celebration of Eucharist and Reconciliation. The decline
of overall Catholic religious practice needs explanation in terms of other factors – the schools
are not the problem.
If the school is an authentic learning community, then its corporate spirituality should
not only be geared to help the students but also to enhance the personal spirituality of
teachers. This means the construction of activities that are intended specifically for the
benefit of staff.
• The term ‘spirituality’ is not common in the vocabulary of lay teachers (though this is
changing).
• Spirituality is rooted in reality.
• Spirituality is exhibited in the quality of relationships between people.
• Spirituality is exhibited in the service of others, particularly in work, school or family
settings.
• Spirituality is difficult to define for lay people who do not engage in significant discussion
of the term.
These show a pragmatic approach to spirituality and a realistic grasp of the difficulties
in implementing programs and structures in a setting that does not readily adapt to a
contemplative lifestyle; the sort of withdrawal that one tends to associate with spirituality is
not attuned to the routine, bells and movement of bodies typical of any school.
So what is needed first is a redefinition of spirituality as it applies to those teaching in
schools. Attempts to promote a corporate spirituality suitable for teachers needs to give
attention to developing among the staff a climate that helps foster a sense of spiritual identity.
This can be assisted by the following:
Developing staff spirituality: A key component of the identity of religious schools 437
20.5 Empathy with and professional support for the stated aims
of the school
The ideal of having good corporate staff spirituality is implicit in the aims and purposes of
Catholic schools. However, the significant changes in the school’s role over the last thirty
years have naturally influenced expectations of staff spirituality. Before the Second Vatican
Council, the role of the Catholic school was clearly defined and it seemed to be understood
unambiguously – even though there were some exceptions. There were striking cultural
differences; for example, it was unlikely that Italian Catholics in Australia would have made
much sense of the Australian Catholic experience as seen through Irish eyes.
At that time, the main purpose of Catholic schools was the handing on of the Catholic
faith. What was offered was a tightly defined spiritual and educational package. While its
religious purposes have remained the same, social change and the differences in Catholicism
since the Council have necessitated revisions of the purposes and rationale for Catholic
schooling and religious education (8.2 and Chapter 16).
Mission or vision statements and similar documents have been written by schools and
diocesan authorities to articulate the evolving aims of Catholic schools. These statements
identify the philosophy and aspirations of those involved in the school community and
as such are valuable. However, one aspect that is important, but usually absent, is an
acknowledgment of the difficulties that achieving such aims will entail. This does not imply
cynicism, but states the obvious and acknowledges the failures that accompany all human
endeavours. It is refreshing to see that writers of mission statements also have their feet
on the ground. A good example of this is evident in one Jesuit mission statement which
noted that ‘obstacles are numerous, well-documented and uniformly discouraging’. But it
remained important for the mission statement to embody the ideal.
Despite the difficulties in developing a good mission statement, a school staff can
realistically strive to achieve what all can agree is a common and laudable task. When the
role of the Catholic school is no longer so easily defined as it once was, the philosophy that
underpins the school’s existence needs to be periodically revised and articulated anew.
438 Reasons for Living Part 4: Implications for religious education in independent schools
While the line of argument that ‘we are different from public schools’ needs to be handled
carefully and with restraint to avoid self-righteous rhetoric, the real differences, particularly
in relation to the role of religion in the life and curriculum of the school, need to be spelled
out clearly and realistically. If not, then the school runs into ambiguity over its raison d’être.
Often the experience of staff prayer has been of the rubber stamp variety, lacking in
authenticity – something that should be seen to be done because ‘we are a Catholic school’.
Either that or a painful striving for deep relevance with a clutter of candles and symbols
punctuated with ‘deep and meaningful’ pauses; most of these experiences reveal more about
the specific personal needs of the presenter than any consideration of the sensitivities of
Developing staff spirituality: A key component of the identity of religious schools 439
others. Staff prayer should not be dominated by any particular person (Religious Education
Coordinator, the ‘last’ member of a religious order on staff, or someone who thinks he or
she has a monopoly on spirituality). There is a danger that as the number of personnel
from religious orders in Catholic schools dwindles, some of the remaining religious feel a
need to prove that they still have a ‘special charism’ (read ‘superiority’) in spiritual matters.
Another problem is ‘honeymoon spirituality’ where presenters are so attached to their own
idiosyncratic spiritual experience that they naively believe everyone else should share it and
they try to make others endure the same experience, with the expectation that they emote
on cue. Presenters always need to be respectful of the emotional or prayerful responses of
participants and should avoid any potential manipulation, leaving people as free as possible
while retaining the sense of corporate prayer.
When there are a number of people together whose personal spiritualities and prayer
lives are varied, it is better to present a service that is simple and matter-of-fact, leaving
participants free to have their own private reflection together with simple public responses,
rather than one that is too specific in its objectives – for example avoiding exercises in ‘emo
tional engineering’ where participants are encouraged to feel joyous or grateful. In suggesting
simplicity and respect, this is not advocating institutionalised boredom or suffocation of the
imagination. What is advocated is prayerful relevance and sanity.
Anyone who says ‘I love God’ and hates other people, is a liar, since a person who does
not love the others they can see, cannot love God, who is invisible … anyone who loves
God must also love others. (John 4:20–1)
These words also appropriately identify the most fundamental element in a healthy staff
spirituality. More than anything else, there must exist a commitment to care for each other’s
wellbeing. However, life experience tells individuals that it is easier to care for some than
it is to care for others. No statements like the above, inviolate as they are, can turn dislike
into like – besides, is it part of the teacher’s brief to like all other staff? What is required is
liking with the head and not necessarily with the heart. School staff who genuinely respect
the dignity of others do not circulate gossip, backstab or sit in judgment of others. There is
a distinction between constructive analysis or critique of teaching styles and comments that
reflect negatively about a person’s character and professional behaviour. It is within the context
of a group of committed people working together, aware of tensions and disagreements, that
the basis of respect and support needs to be established.
Teachers need to acknowledge that they have not chosen this or that particular person
to work with, and that they may dislike particular staff members more or less strongly.
Developing a sense of professional, educational Christian community does not mean that
they have to like these people. But it does mean that they should be accorded respect and
gracious cooperation so that together the school staff can discharge its corporate responsi
bility to maintain an environment that is truly educational and personally affirming for
students in particular, but also for staff. This sort of thinking is also relevant to the aim of
developing a corporate spirituality. ‘The effective teaching community embraces diversity:
in opinions, in cultures, in ages, in viewpoints, in experiences, in beliefs, in expressions.’3
Notes
1 An earlier version of the material in this chapter was published as ML Crawford & GM Rossiter 1993,
Developing staff spirituality, a key component in the identity of Catholic schools.
2 AJ Pistone 1990, The administrator as spiritual leader (quoting the research findings of RM Hoatson).
3 C Glynn 1990, Not by manuals alone.
5
PART
State government reviews of education in the 1970s paved the way for
the development of accredited Religion Studies courses that were in
place in most States by the mid-1990s. While in their origins, nature and
purposes these courses were different from denominational religious
education in independent schools, they were taken up almost exclusively
by the religious schools, especially Catholic schools. Part 5 explores the
relationships between these two forms of religious education. It includes
a historical review of developments in the United Kingdom, because this
is needed to provide a framework within which Australian programs can
be located and evaluated.
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21
Pedagogical background
to the development of
Religion Studies courses
in Australia
The purpose of the chapter is to provide historical perspective on the approaches followed
in state-based Religion Studies courses in Australian schools. This background is needed
for evaluating the content selection and pedagogical principles in these courses, and for
proposing how they might best contribute to young people’s education in meaning, identity and
spirituality.
While practically all religion studies in Australia are taught in religious schools, it is important to
understand that the origins, nature and purposes of the programs are essentially based within
public education.
443
444 Reasons for Living Part 5: Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses
that studying religion makes to the general educational process, and not on the intention to
hand on a particular religious faith tradition or to develop young people’s religious faith.
According to purposes and context, these arrangements create two distinct forms of
religious education. While it is important to acknowledge the differences in purpose, the
adequacy and usefulness of the distinctions break down when it comes to the level of classroom
teaching and learning. An analysis of the greater complexity in practice is needed so that both
the real differences and relationships become more evident. For example, denominational
religious education makes a useful contribution to students’ general education, and Religion
Studies contributes to their knowledge of their own religious tradition. Historically, those
involved in the different contexts have tended to give more weight to the differences than
to the commonalities. However, a significant opportunity for exploring the overlap between
the two occurred when fully accredited senior school Religion Studies programs were
introduced in most States in the early 1990s, and the majority of students who took these
subjects were from religious schools, especially Catholic schools; state school enrolments
were so few as to be insignificant. The implication: for religious schools, the purposes and
practices in Religion Studies seemed to contribute to, or be consistent with, denominational
aims for religious education. While there is a substantial Australian literature on school
Religion Studies, not a lot of attention has been given specifically to relationships with
denominational religious education.3
For the purposes of comparison, we will stay with the term ‘Religion Studies’ to contrast
this format with denominational religious education, even though the usage is cumbersome.4
We are not proposing that the terminology be used universally, because there is no inter
national agreement about such use – for example, in British county schools the standard
term is ‘religious education’. Words are needed to differentiate contexts and formats; but
at the same time, questions can be raised about this terminology because it tends to make
presumptions about differences in nature and purposes that can be contested.
While there were few further developments in the 1980s, real progress was made in the
early 1990s with the introduction of Religion Studies syllabuses at senior school level (Years
11–12); they became available in all states but not the territories.6 There was a strong uptake
by religious schools. They usually committed substantial resources to the teaching of religion
and the adoption of the new courses meant that religion became a fully accredited subject
for the Year 12 final certification, as well as for university entrance scores.
As noted above, the substantive, formative literature for Australian Religion Studies
was written in the 1970s, complemented by syllabus development in the 1990s and early
2000s. In our opinion, the bulk of the theory underpinning contemporary Australian
courses – principally in normative state documents and to a lesser extent in the writing of
theorists – remains 1970s vintage, focused mainly on a phenomenological approach and
descriptive content from world religions (very British-looking courses with some distinctive
Australian content). Following the lead from the extensive UK resource bank was valuable,
but it also included making the same mistakes as the British, usually a decade or so later.
The Australian literature has provided a solid theoretical basis for Religion Studies, but it
has not yet taken into account the significant theoretical and practical developments that
have emerged in the United Kingdom (and in continental Europe) over the last twenty-five
years.7 Three exceptions to the trend are evident in the work of theorists Lovat and Hill
and the Queensland Religious Education Curriculum Project (RECP; see note 3). Lovat
proposed that a critical, evaluative dimension be added to the dominant phenomenological
approach; Hill proposed a broader evaluative pedagogy, a content less oriented to the world
religions and with special attention given to the ethics of teaching. The Queensland Project
proposed a more integrative student-centred approach drawing significantly on the work of
Michael Grimmitt and the British Westhill Project (see 21.4.6).
In Australian religious education, most of the theory has been concerned with the deno
minational context, which is evident in the extensive supporting literature.8 Much less has
been written specifically about state-based Religion Studies by comparison with the volume
of writings in the United Kingdom where there is a large religion teaching force in public
schools, and where there are extensive supporting resources: teacher education programs,
many university academics concerned with school Religion Studies, a number of substantial
research and development projects, teacher associations, conferences and periodicals. The
most prominent recent Australian writings on Religion Studies have been a range of student
texts supporting the Years 11–12 programs.9
In what follows we will trace the historical development of the theory for school Religion
Studies as it evolved in the United Kingdom. We will highlight issues that need to be taken
into account in reviewing the purposes, content selection and pedagogy in the Australian
courses. While not an exhaustive analysis, it will provide some panoramic perspective, an
indication of the geography of British Religion Studies. Some links with Australian dev
elopments will also be noted, together with reference to issues raised earlier in Part 5.
overtly Christian orientation in 1944 when the Education Act made religion a compulsory
subject, through to the present. The quest for an educational identity is a useful theme for
interpreting developments because it has been the driving force of change – to establish
Religion Studies as an integral part of general education and to divest it of a denominational
identity. It affected both content and pedagogy. In the process of differentiation, what
Religion Studies is not often appeared to be as important as what it is, and this tended to create
problems by defining Religion Studies over and against denominational religious education.
The dichotomy it created limited the exchanges between professional educators in the two
interest groups. And it meant that attention to relationships between the two would be
minimal. (It is not unlike a similar division that existed between university Religion Studies
and more traditional Christian Theology and Scripture.) Most European countries have not
followed the same path as the British, but there are interesting contrasts and similarities.11
In the United Kingdom, the responsibility for Religion Studies in the state schools lies
with the Local Education Authorities and regular departmental teachers – and not with
church representatives. Religion is an integral part of the curriculum, even if it does not
enjoy the same status as the subjects that form the National Curriculum. The teacher’s role
is not to develop students’ personal faith, but to give them a general religious education
about the role of religion in society. Once the exclusive preserve of the churches, religious
education (Religion Studies) acquired an independent educational identity and rationale. In
tracing the process, we draw attention to three key issues:
1 how political and educational factors shaped a new identity for Religion Studies;
2 how relationships with denominational religious education have been obscured;
3 how phenomenology became a principal method for content selection and pedagogy,
and how the over-emphasis on a descriptive approach limited the scope and educational
value of the study – in particular, by not paying enough attention to young people’s
spiritual-moral development.
The days of strict Bible teaching have gone in all but a few denominational schools,
to be replaced by the study of ‘life-stances’ (Marxism etc.) and snippets of comparative
Religions. In the sixties they invented ‘life-themes’ for primary schools and ‘problem-
centred discussion’ for secondaries. We heard a believable spoof of a primary class project
on sheep … ‘We’re doing sheep, children, because they are mentioned in the Bible. No,
Alistair, we are not going to do a project on boils.’
They didn’t need a secondary school spoof. Instead they had a young RE teacher,
gloomily teaching a syllabus that started with astrology and werewolves (‘Things in their
own experience’) and probably ended with those lessons described by one pupil as being
‘discussions of drugs, sex, violence and world poverty’. The Bible has been replaced by
a 4,000-book resource centre and teachers are so anxious about offending anyone, or
imposing anything, that the pupils are learning less and less about more and more.15
While making its point in a colourful way, and while showing that any approach will appear
ridiculous if exaggerated, this comment does not do justice to the issue-oriented approach as
proposed by Loukes. Choosing bizarre content is not an appropriate way of making Religion
Studies relevant. Issues that are considered to be personally and socially relevant need to be
studied seriously and informatively, with a student research orientation; also, as noted in
Chapter 16, this is the most appropriate classroom climate for healthy personal interactions
about social issues.
1 Rationale: A non-religious rationale was needed so that Religion Studies would not have
denominational, faith-oriented aims. It came to be justified on educational grounds.
2 Method: Phenomenology (an objective, impartial, descriptive study of religions that was
prominent in universities) became the principal method. It involved classifying reli
gious phenomena and it was non-evaluative. Phenomenology was regarded as a more
appropriate (less denominational) ‘parent discipline’ for school Religion Studies than the
traditional Christian disciplines.
Pedagogical background to the development of Australian Religion Studies courses 449
3 Content: Content was drawn from world religions rather than from traditional denomi
national sources (the Bible and Christian practice) or life-themes.
1 Rationale
The philosophy of Paul Hirst helped provide an educational rationale for the place of
religion in the curriculum.16 The idea of a liberal education was central to the thinking of
Hirst and co-author Richard Peters; it stressed initiation into the academic disciplines and
concept formation. Hirst proposed that religion was one of the forms of knowledge and
experience into which education should help initiate students. Consequently, an education
that neglected this dimension was to that extent defective.
In addition, questions were raised about the role of the state school in Religion Studies.
It seemed inappropriate that state schools might formally promote the Christian faith; but
it was argued that schools should provide a general education in religion. It would help
students learn about the various religions represented in the culture. Also, recognition of
the multicultural, multi-faith nature of British society made it seem incongruent for school
Religion Studies to be concerned just with Christianity.
2 Method: Phenomenology
The phenomenological method recommended for Religion Studies drew heavily on the
work of Ninian Smart, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster and
author of several popular books on world religions. Smart proposed that to get an integral
picture of a religion the study would need to cover all of six basic aspects or dimensions.
Underpinning this approach was a basic principle of phenomenology that students would
temporarily put aside their own commitments and study the content impartially, trying
to see how believers thought and felt about their religion. They could then move from the
description of phenomena to comparisons and contrasts of common features in religions,
and further to a conceptual grasp of the analytical categories.17
A big advantage in phenomenology was that it seemed to be a ‘neutral’ and relatively
non-controversial method. And it could easily be applied to world religions.
In a later book,18 Smart expanded his categories to seven dimensions: practical and ritual;
experiential and emotional; narrative or mythic; doctrinal and philosophical; ethical and
legal; social and institutional; and material. The seventh dimension was added to include
buildings, works of art and other creations such as icons. Natural phenomena such as the
Ganges and Uluru (sacred sites) would be included in this category.
While Smart’s dimensional scheme for analysing religions emphasised an integral study
of a religion as a living entity, its application to school Religion Studies tended towards
compartmentalism. At times, studying the analytical dimensions became more prominent
than using the dimensions to get insight into a religion as a whole. Teaching the ‘dimensions
of religion’ rather than teaching ‘religion’ as such was a politically correct way of showing
that Religion Studies was not biased in favour of religion. 19 The need to be different from
denominational religious education affected content selection and pedagogy. An impression
was given that content from two or more religions was needed before the study became
‘educational’ – and in student resources, that a roughly equal number of pages was required
450 Reasons for Living Part 5: Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses
for each religion. Studying one tradition was regarded as ‘un-educational’ or ‘biased’ (despite
the long tradition of academic study of theology). While the value of drawing on material
from different religions is not in question, having a range greater than one does not of itself
make the approach educational; neither does the study of one tradition necessarily make the
pedagogy biased or confessional.
The phrase ‘teaching about religion’ was used as a shorthand for this descriptive approach.
The phrase also implied a relatively neutral role, not concerned with teaching students how
to be religious, which was seen as a denominational activity. Being ‘objective’, ‘impartial’ and
‘impersonal’ seemed to dispel any suggestion that Religion Studies might be evangelising.
While concentrating on the analytical dimensions of religion is appropriate for Religion
Studies at university, where students can appreciate the intellectual subtlety and abstraction
in such an analysis, questions can be raised about how appropriate it is to organise the school
religion curriculum exclusively around such a system. On the other hand, the dimensions
could serve as a useful checklist that content covers key aspects of religions. What is needed is
balance. Excessive attention to the classification of religious phenomena could compromise
the nature and the integrity of the religions being studied; in addition, it could provide a
successful recipe for student boredom.
The phenomenological approach needed to be tempered with student-centredness in both
content and pedagogy. Grimmitt concluded that ‘the level of understanding of which pupils
may be capable means that the study of religion may rarely move beyond the descriptive level;
this raises a query about the value of choosing and structuring content solely by reference to
phenomenological principles.’20 Other scholars pointed out that a phenomenological religion
curriculum compromised the ‘meaning construction’ and ‘relationship’ aspects of student
learning. ‘The predominantly descriptive character of phenomenological inquiry, when
translated into the context of religious education, has tended to accentuate the importance
of knowing the subject of study rather than the reflexive character of engagement.’21
In turn, Australian Religion Studies would reflect the same problem. For example, the
purposes of the new Victorian (1990) course stated:
A phenomenological approach to the study of religious traditions has been adopted in the
[Victorian] Religion and Society Study Design. This is intended to encourage open, critical
and dispassionate study of religions throughout each unit in the Study Design. The
approach taken to Religion should not be confused with religious education or Religious
Instruction. These are two quite different methodologies, both requiring a confessional
approach to the study of one religion only.22
Lovat has given an account of how phenomenology might be used in Australian school
Religion Studies.23 Moore and Habel, in their book When religion goes to school: Typology
of religion for the classroom (1982),24 developed typology as an extension of the pheno
menological method for Australian Religion Studies; it focused on ‘types’ or groups of
similar religious phenomena across world religions, with a more extensive list of types than
Smart’s seven dimensions (for example sacred spaces, sacred objects, sacred persons, writings,
rituals, sacrifices). The attention they gave to religious types within the ‘home tradition’ of
students helped make the approach more attractive to denominational religious education.
Typology was concerned with classification of religious phenomena and it leaned towards
a dualistic sacred/secular perspective on religions; it was like a taxonomy of religions. Lovat
acknowledged the excessive descriptive/non-evaluative characteristics of phenomenology
and typology and he sought to develop a more critical, evaluative dimension by borrowing
from Groome’s Shared Praxis model. However, while phenomenology and typology came to
dominate Australian Religion Studies curricula, Lovat’s proposal was not taken up.
Given the rationale and method described above, it was natural for world religions to become
the content for the new Religion Studies in the United Kingdom. This was evident in the
iconic Birmingham Agreed Syllabus of 1975.25 From the 1970s onwards, world religions
became the most prominent content (and in Australian Religion Studies courses, the same
pattern was followed).
promote awareness and understanding of the nature and purpose of the religious or
spiritual quest within different religions, and promote reflection, on the part of the pupil,
on the implications that the adoption of a religious view of life would have for his/her
own understanding of self and for consequent development as a person … permitting the
possibility of the pupil’s discerning a religious or spiritual dimension within his/her own
experience of self.30
21.4.7 The new Education Act, 1988: Reasserting the place of Christian heritage;
and the influence of the outcomes/competencies movement
The year 1988 proved to be a significant one in the history of British school Religion Studies.
From about this time four developments began to have a strong influence.
3 Special attention given to the spiritual-moral dimensions of the whole school curriculum
4 A series of influential research and development projects in British school Religion
Studies.
considered that the application of outcomes and competencies to Religion Studies caused
‘the traditional language of learning and teaching [to be] absorbed and lost’;37 it resulted in
a ‘domestication’ or ‘captivity’ of Religion Studies because it changed the emphasis even
more towards content rather than process. Concern for the syllabus integrity of religious
traditions seemed to take precedence over the educative function of studying religion to
resource young people’s spirituality. Not surprisingly, the same pattern is evident in the
Australian programs.
Thus, through its legislation, the Model Syllabuses and the outcomes format, government
initiatives increased centralisation and uniformity in Religion Studies and reinforced the
emphasis on descriptive content; this occurred even though the notion of learning from
religion was one of the proposed outcomes of the Model Syllabuses. Grimmitt considered
that the trend would also have limited the extent to which teachers would draw on different
pedagogies such as those considered below.
21.4.8 Pedagogies that emerged from research and development projects from
the late 1980s
What marks another significant difference between school Religion Studies in the United
Kingdom and Australia is the high level of research and academic infrastructure in the
former. Complementing normative documents and extensive teacher professional dev
elopment programs, there have been a number of substantial research and development
projects working at the level of both theory and resources for teachers and students. In
Australia, good student texts were commercially produced to cater for the senior school
Religion Studies market, but these were not as extensive in scope, theory or methodology as
the outputs from the research based projects in the UK. These projects offered practitioners
a range of rationales, approaches and resources for their work in implementing local area
syllabuses. For our summary purposes, the most helpful introductory access to these projects
is provided by Grimmitt’s Pedagogies of Religious Education: Case studies in the research and
development of good pedagogic practice in RE (2000). With the construct pedagogy as the
theme, the leaders of nine projects explained how their approaches fostered student learning
through the study of religion. While it is difficult to estimate how influential the projects
have been, they contribute significantly to the educational discourse of British Religion
Studies by providing a considerable range of pedagogical options that attempt to address key
issues in cultural context, curriculum orientation, content selection, young people’s spiritual-
moral development and student learning. In turn, the wide spectrum of approaches provides
a comprehensive perspective from which to review the present situation and possible future
developments in Australia.
In his book, Grimmitt proposed eight distinct contemporary approaches to Religion
Studies in the United Kingdom, and the nine research and development projects are
located within seven of these categories. Grimmitt’s analysis is illustrated in Table 21.1.
In addition we have added two categories at the bottom of the table that pick up on
other approaches and issues that are more prominent in continental Europe; there is
some overlap with the British categories, but these additions make the spectrum more
comprehensive.
Pedagogical background to the development of Australian Religion Studies courses 455
Table 21.1 Summary of major contemporary approaches to school Religion Studies in the UK (Grimmitt
2000), and current emphases in continental Europe
Major contemporary approaches to Particular examples of the major approaches, including the nine
school Religion Studies in the UK ongoing research and development projects
(The nine projects described in Grimmitt’s book are listed in italics;
other examples already noted above are designated by section
number.)
4 Human development, instrumental, 21.4.6: Grimmitt, personal development orientation and learning
learning about and learning from from religion.
models The Westhill Project, 1977 – personal development and learning
from religion.
Religion in the service of the child project, 1991– .
8 Constructivist models of learning and The Children and Worldviews Project, 1994– .
teaching The Constructivist Pedagogies of RE Project, 2000– .
Additional approaches more prominent Key characteristics of these approaches and relationships with the
in school Religion Studies in continental eight categories proposed by Grimmitt describing contemporary
Europe approaches in the UK
Below we will comment briefly on approaches not already covered in the earlier listing
from 21.4.1 to 21.4.7, highlighting key principles in the projects, each of which has its own
distinctive and usually extensive literature. The analysis will help identify pedagogical issues
raised by the projects, while not attempting any systematic evaluation.
456 Reasons for Living Part 5: Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses
and feelings than with religious truth and reality – and it implied a type of relativistic
theology that all religions were much the same apart from varied cultural expressions. His
proposed study of religions gave special attention to religious truth claims and the building
up of ‘religious literacy’ – that is, a competent knowledge and understanding of religions that
included awareness of distinctiveness and conflicting claims. Spirituality was a key construct
for Wright. He considered that it needed to be more than inner experience and subjectivity,
defining it as ‘the developing relationship of the individual within community and tradition,
to that which is – or is perceived to be – of ultimate concern, ultimate value and ultimate
truth’.42 His theory looked at ways in which students’ spirituality might be addressed across
the whole curriculum and in school structures and organisation; the subject Religion Studies
was a key element in this wider strategy.43
Wright’s view of Religion Studies regarded it more as a rational, philosophical enquiry
than was evident in other approaches that were experiential and expressive in orientation.
Opposing the postmodern, constructivist view of knowledge emphasised in other approaches
as too relativistic and subjective, his case was based on a critical realist epistemology. This
implied a critical pedagogy, but the extent to which he would identify with the range of
principles in critical pedagogy listed in Chapter 12 is not clear. There remain subjective diffi
culties in Wright’s notion of ‘realistic religious truth’, although he does note that it means
‘a model of language in which words function in a critically realistic manner to engage with
external reality’. 44
to avoid excessive descriptive material, it may have gone too far in apparently dismissing the
value of some study of religious traditions in their own right – and not just as instrumental
sources of raw material for young people’s personal construction of meaning.
While there is variety in the theory underpinning these projects, and while there is debate
and even some conflict about their appropriateness, some generalisations may give a per
spective on evaluation of school Religion Studies in Australia. The projects exhibit a range
of innovations and developments that could usefully be taken into account in planning a
future for Australian Religion Studies.
Relevance
All of the projects were concerned in some way or another with making the study of religion
more relevant for students. Methodologically, this involved helping students find and explore
links or bridges between their experience and the content. The Children and Worldviews
project also pursued relevance through content selection, proposing topics directly related to
children’s needs and interests. The quest for relevance in Religion Studies can be related back
to the discussion in Chapter 17. It is an area where denominational and state-based courses
share common concerns.
While the progression of students’ meaning and identity remains an important objective,
we consider that in some cases a process that was too adult-oriented was being projected onto
children – as if they were being expected to take on the role of constructing a comprehensive
personal meaning system at too young an age. This projection may be justified by arguments
about student-centredness and ideas about the emergence (or even the ‘liberation’) of
young people’s spirituality; but it still seems not down to earth enough for children. They
need simple, basic information about community meanings as an initial baseline for the
personal spirituality they will eventually form; and these meanings need to mesh with the
questions about life that the children are asking. But too much descriptive material would be
counterproductive. A balance is needed between basic information and an introduction to
critical evaluation suited to their capacities that can set them on the track towards becoming
more autonomous in managing their own spirituality.
The personal meaning-making functions that educators themselves have learned to value
as adults, and which have changed their relationships with religion, should not automatically
be transferred to children as if they were equally responsible, sharing the same adult per
spective on the construction of meaning. Giving students educational access to traditional
religious meanings is a basic step in resourcing their spirituality.
The notion of developing personal identity is common in the projects. However, just
what personal identity means remains somewhat vague (cf. our concern to clarify the
relationship between personal and cultural identities in Chapters 5–7).
The latter part of Chapter 6 examined British and European research and writings
concerned with the role of education and religious education in promoting young people’s
identity development. For the references see note 32 in that chapter.
Interpretation/hermeneutics
All of the projects stressed that interpretation of the meaning of religion was more important
than descriptive knowledge; thus skill development in interpretation was a prominent aim.
The projects that leaned more strongly towards a constructivist epistemology not only saw
the hermeneutic process as central to Religion Studies, but sought to engage students in
questions about the nature and reliability of religious knowledge as it related to personal
meaning and identity.
Religious literacy
Wright considered that ‘only when pupils learn to engage in informed conversation about
their beliefs, and the beliefs of others, can authentic religious literacy emerge’.46 While this
definition stressed interreligious dialogue, it shared with other notions of religious literacy
a basic understanding of the key ideas and themes in religions together with competence in
religious language. Such thinking reasserted the importance of studying religious traditions
in their own right, and not just as a source of raw material for students’ idiosyncratic meaning
systems. Hence the idea is likely to appeal to denominational religious education authorities,
who are usually concerned about the integrity of tradition in religious content. The notion
of ‘critical’ religious literacy also has potential links with critical pedagogy.47
Critical pedagogy
Some of the projects set out to help students become more critically aware of ideologies and
the exercise of power in the community, and of how this occurs in religions. There were
parallels with the concerns of critical pedagogy (12.4.1).
The term ‘contextual religious education’ has in recent years been used loosely to describe
the work of a collection of mainly European (and some British) educators who set out
to formulate an approach to religious education that addressed the situation of cultural
postmodernity.48 The key underlying assumptions of the approach were:
Religion in culture
Human development
1 Presuming a holistic view of human development that includes religious competence: the
capacity to construct one’s own personal meaning and identity, drawing on spiritual and
religious traditions;
2 A focus on students’ life-worlds as a local, personal context for the individual; this may
compensate for problems created by relativism and globalism;
3 The notion of spiritual/religious/cultural identity presumes a relational understanding of
the development of the self; it involves personal reflection (and personal narrative) in
an ongoing relationship with others (community, the natural world, and acceptance or
rejection of some form of transcendent reality); and it may compensate for problems
arising from excessive attention to individualism, self-centredness and subjectivity.
Changes in emphasis compared with earlier approaches to religion and religious education
1 A move away from the descriptive emphasis of the earlier phenomenological approach,
as well as from the strong focus on one tradition within denominational religious
education.
2 The intention to be ‘transformative’ in order to promote personal change in students and
not just to be concerned with transmission of knowledge; the encouragement of holistic
and transactional reflection on everyday life;
3 Working with problematic notions of personal knowledge as evident in cultural
postmodernity.
1 Religious/spiritual contextuality:
• Exploring religious and spiritual practice rather than belief systems as such;
• Exploring the religious and the spiritual in its plurality within local contexts (rather
than studying whole belief systems like world religions);
• Exploring life-worlds (religious, spiritual, non-religious) of people to help enhance the
students’ life-worlds; interested in students’ experience as a reference point;
• Studying the interface between the diversity of religions and culture at the local level;
may enhance intercultural and interreligious dialogue.
2 Spiritual and religious competence:
• Enhancing the individuals’ religious literacy (familiarity with cultural expressions of
religion and spirituality) and their capacity to negotiate their own personal meanings
interactively.
462 Reasons for Living Part 5: Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses
3 Spiritual/religious/cultural identity:
• Enhancing the development of a personal identity that may include spiritual, religious
and cultural components;
• Presuming that teachers take account of students’ personal responsibility for processes
in their own spiritual development; for example, students should be able to deal with
their own spirituality and religiosity, their life-world and life-history in a responsible
way, while learning to appreciate the spiritual or religious views of others.
Some questions about contextual religious education that need further consideration
• As with all approaches to religious education that have a strong psychological and
sociological focus, as well as being student-centred, a balance is needed with respect to the
treatment of religious traditions. The extremes to be avoided would be focusing too much
on either religious traditions or students’ experience and interests.
• We have already noted above a concern about potential difficulties arising from too high
an expectation that children and young people can easily construct their own personal
meaning system.
• The psychological/sociological and ethnographic emphases may tend to eclipse the value
in historical, theological, scriptural and philosophical pedagogies.
• The focus on students’ life-world is a short step from ‘lifestyle’. All approaches to religious
education need to acknowledge the problematic nature of the construct spirituality, which
includes personal, communal and cultural dimensions as well as the transcendent and
the religious; without a critical evaluative approach to spirituality, there is a danger that
the concerns will be only about feel-good and consumerist aspects (Chapter 8). Religious
education needs to do more than help students reconsider their lifestyle in the light of
other options.
• There is a need for more attention to contemporary issues (Chapter 16).
In 2004, the European educators Lombaerts and Pollefeyt published the handbook-like
volume Hermeneutics and religious education, which gave a comprehensive picture of
relationships between the two. They considered that hermeneutics, ‘[t]he art of interpreting
the traces of communication is a specifically human quality. It is the alphabet of the human
search for understanding the self, the interaction among people, the meaning of life and
for establishing the truth’49 (see the brief summary in section 2.10.14 highlighting the
relationship between hermeneutics and meaning).
Initially, hermeneutics was concerned with the interpretation of biblical texts within
a framework that assumed that the true and ultimate meaning of life was embedded in
Christianity. But the social and intellectual context changed so much during the passage
through the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, modernity and on to postmodernity
that hermeneutics became detached from this normative theological basis and diversified; it
even addressed the situation where the notion of universally valid statements about human
meaning was rejected and religious meta-narratives were no longer accepted as comprehensive
belief systems, thereby raising fundamental questions about truth as an interpretation, as
subjective, contextual and contingent. It was as if the signposts for direction in human life
Pedagogical background to the development of Australian Religion Studies courses 463
were set adrift; whereas initially religious interpretation focused on seeking contemporary
relevance from an unchanging, revelatory deposit of truth, more recently it has also been
concerned with finding quanta of meaning that can be applied existentially to a particular
context. It meant that the contributions of religion to both community identity and personal
identity were changing significantly.
Lombaerts and Pollefeyt referred to this change as follows:
[W]ith the adoption of what is sometimes mistakenly and misleadingly called ‘an objective
approach’ to the study of religion, religious education has become content-centred.
The heavy concentration of Biblical content characteristic of Agreed Syllabuses in pre-
Goldman times have often been replaced by equally heavy concentrations of content
drawn from the world’s religions.51
paraphernalia.52 That argument is equally pertinent to Religion Studies. The lead taken
by the Tasmanian programs could well be applied in other States. For example, it seems
more appropriate for the clientele of Religion Studies to engage in a study of issues like
‘relationships between psychology and religion’ and ‘problems related to scriptural/historical
studies insights into the historical Jesus and to political, religious and artistic portrayals’.
Such topics in the Tasmanian courses could well replace less relevant ones (for Australian
students) in other state programs (such as Shinto, Taoism).
At this point we take leave of the review of Australian Religion Studies programs as a
research task that remains to be undertaken, and instead, we will in the next chapter address
the question of relationships between these courses and denominational religious education.
This task will try to clarify the links between the two and show how the discussions in Parts
4 and 5 of the book are related.
Notes
1 The meaning of basic terms remains a problem in religious education, especially when contrasting
denominational and secular contexts. Educators will use terms like ‘religious studies’, ‘religion studies’ or
‘religion education’ as opposed to ‘religious education’, to make distinctions. While we have chosen to use
the phrases ‘religion studies’ and ‘denominational religious education’ for convenience, we draw attention
to the inevitable difficulties associated with the use of contrasting terms because presumed distinctions and
differences may not always be accurate or may not operate at the level of practice.
2 Although dating from 1981, this publication still gives one of the best available accounts of denominational
religious education in public schools: GM Rossiter 1981, Religious Education in Australian Schools, Chapters
2 and 5.
3 The relationships between denominational religious education and state-based Religion Studies courses were
addressed briefly in Rossiter 1981, Chapters 1–4. Examples of books and articles concerned with Australian
Religion Studies in schools are listed in the Bibliography. Most of these publications were also concerned with
enhancing denominational religious education. But little was included that addressed relationships between
the two at any depth; a significant relationship was usually presumed but seldom articulated.
4 We wish to call into question the divisions and to explore the relationships between church and state school
religious education. But, at least initially, we have gone along with the different terms ‘religion studies’ and
‘denominational religious education’ as one available format to enable us to talk about the two without
confusion. We do not want to engage in debate about which terms are the most appropriate; we consider it
valuable to retain terms like religious education which can apply to any context, because of its currency as a
general umbrella term, and because of its usage for state school religious education in the United Kingdom.
5 An account of these Religion Studies curriculum development projects is given in Rossiter 1981, Chapters 1,
2 and 5.
6 Below is a list of contemporary syllabuses at Years 11–12 level.
New South Wales: Board of Studies NSW 2004, Studies of Religion, Stage 6.
Queensland: Queensland Board of Secondary School Studies 2001, Study of Religion Senior Syllabus.
South Australia: Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia (SSABSA) South Australia, 2004,
Studies of Religion Curriculum Statement.
Tasmania: Tasmanian Qualifications Authority 2004, Religion and Philosophy 2, 3 4, Senior Secondary
(Tasmanian Certificate of Education; Tasmanian Qualifications Authority 2004, Religion and Philosophy
2, 3 4, Senior Secondary, Syllabus Supplement (Tasmanian Certificate of Education; Tasmanian
Qualifications Authority 2005, Religion and Philosophy 5C, Senior Secondary (Tasmanian Certificate
of Education; Tasmanian Qualifications Authority 2005, Religion and Philosophy 5C, Senior Secondary,
Syllabus Supplement (Tasmanian Certificate of Education.
Victoria: Board of Studies Victoria 1999 (2005), Religion and Society Study Design; Board of Studies Victoria
1999 (2005), Texts and traditions Study Design Y 11-12.
466 Reasons for Living Part 5: Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses
Western Australia: Curriculum Council of Western Australian 2004, Beliefs and Values Year 11, 2004–2005
D689; Curriculum Council of Western Australian, 2004, Beliefs and Values Year 12, 2004–2005 E689.
Churches Commission on Education Western Australia, 1986, Beliefs and Values Manual, Churches
Commission on Education, Perth.
7 Religious education in Australian schools (Rossiter 1981) gave a detailed account of the documents resulting
from the state government reviews of religious education in public schools in the 1970s. Complementing
these normative documents was a core of writing by Australian theorists about school religion studies since
that time; these are listed in the Bibliography under Religion Studies.
8 An extensive literature concerned with denominational religious education in Australia is evident in the
journals Journal of Religious Education, Religious Education Journal of Australia, Journal of Christian Education,
as well as in teachers’ books, professional development programs and student texts.
9 M Beck et al. 1997, Exploring religion; M & R Crotty et al. 2003, Finding a way: The religious worlds of today
(2nd edn); K Engebretson & R Elliott 2001, Chaos or clarity: Encountering ethics (3rd edn); T Lovat et al.
2006, Studies of religion; T Lovat & J McGrath 1999, New studies in religion; P Mudge et al. 1993, Living
religion: Studies of religion for senior students; P Rule & K Engebretson 1990, My story, our stories: Religion and
identity in Australia; M Ryan & P Goldburg 2001, Recognising religion: A study of religion for senior secondary
students.
10 We have found the accounts given by Grimmitt to be the most helpful interpretations of the history of religion
studies in British schools. His most recent work (2000) used the construct ‘pedagogy’ for contrasting a number
of research and development projects. See MH Grimmitt 1983, Religious education and humanisation: A
consideration of the contribution of religious education to personal development and its implications for curriculum
decision-making; MH Grimmitt 1986, Contemporary issues in religious education in England; MH
Grimmitt 1987, Religious education and human development: The relationship between studying religions and
personal social and moral education; MH Grimmitt (ed.) 2000, Pedagogies of religious education: Case studies
in the research and development of good pedagogic practice in RE. See also LP Barnes 2003, World religions in
British religious education: Critical reflections and positive conclusions; D Bates 1994, Christianity, culture
and other religions: The origins of the study of world religions in the English tradition.
11 While religious education in European countries has not been unconcerned about an educational rationale
and identity, it is of interest to speculate why a pattern similar to the British one did not emerge. The
political and educational contexts were different – often with denominational religious education in the
public schools.
12 RJ Goldman 1965, Readiness for religion. For an evaluation, see MH Grimmitt 1983, World religions and
personal development. In GM Castles and GM Rossiter (eds) Curriculum theory and religious education.
13 See Rossiter 1981, Chapter 6; and Chapter 16 of this book.
14 H Loukes 1961, Teenage Religion; 1965, New ground in Christian education; 1973, Teenage morality.
15 From a 1979 radio broadcast by Val Arnol-Foster, quoted in J Sealey 1985, Religious education: Philosophical
perspectives, p. 57 – quoted in S Eversden 1994, Integrating systemic and school-based priorities into a
curriculum model for secondary religious studies, Unpublished PhD thesis, Murdoch University, Murdoch
WA. In her account of the historical development of religious education in British schools, Eversden gave
special attention to the contribution of Harold Loukes. He proposed an issue/problems-based religion studies
that related to the perceived needs of youth in the construction of their spirituality.
16 PH Hirst & RS Peters 1970, The logic of education; PH Hirst 1974, Knowledge and the curriculum.
17 Phenomenological typology – the study of types of religious phenomena – is another analytic system that has
been used. See for example, B Moore & N Habel 1980, When religion goes to school: Typology of religion for the
classroom.
18 N Smart, 1989, The world’s religions: Old traditions and modern transformations.
19 This problem was evident in the rationale and student materials developed in the South Australian Religious
Education Project in the late 1970s. The idea of teaching the ‘dimensions of religion’ rather than ‘religion’ was
proposed as a way of disclaiming possible denominational bias. Cf. Rossiter 1981, Chapter 2.
20 Grimmitt 1983, World religions, p. 22.
21 C & J Erricker 2000, The children and worldviews project: A narrative pedagogy of religious education. In
Grimmitt 2000, p. 192.
22 Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board 1990, Religion and society: Course development support material,
p. 1.
Pedagogical background to the development of Australian Religion Studies courses 467
The previous chapter provided perspective on the development and scope of state-based Religion
Studies courses in Australia, not by detailing their history in this country but by sketching the
developments in the United Kingdom that have always been the principal source of Australian
theory. The result was a spectrum of approaches and issues within which current Australian
programs can be located and evaluated. While it was beyond our scope to undertake such an
evaluation, we did make some preliminary judgments about issues that need to be addressed
in future revisions.
This chapter will explore relationships between state Religion Studies courses and denominational
religious education. The two diverged as an educational identity for Religion Studies developed in
the United Kingdom; and the separation flowed over into Australian developments, especially in
the formative years during the 1970s. The division remains embedded in the theory underpinning
Australian programs in the 2000s, even though, ironically, Religion Studies courses have been taken
up almost exclusively by religious schools. While the courses met the need for a fully accredited
religion subject in the senior school, there is still a gap in the thinking about relationships with
denominational religious education. Addressing this gap is in the best interests of religious
education in both state and denominational contexts. It involves articulating the assumptions and
purposes that are usually unstated by church schools that have adopted Religion Studies. It should
contribute to the background needed for the evaluation of Religion Studies programs. It will also
be helpful in clarifying issues debated by denominational educators who consider that Religion
Studies are inappropriate in church schools. In addition, it will help show what is involved in the
transition that church schools make to state religion syllabuses in the final years of schooling; often
there is no substantial or robust account of why the change is considered beneficial for students
or consistent with the schools’ purposes. Finally, it will contribute to debate about relationships
between the two forms of religious education currently available in Australian public schools.
We begin with further reflection on the origins of the divisions between the two, because many
of the problematic relationships are rooted in faulty theory at that stage.
468
Relationships between state-based Religion Studies courses and denominational religious education 469
Table 22.1 What is religious education? (From the South Australian state schools Religious Education
Project, 1978)
The school may sponsor the study of religion, but should not sponsor the practice of religion.
The school may expose students to all religious views, but may not impose any particular view.
470 Reasons for Living Part 5: Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses
The function of the school is to educate about all religions, not to convert to any one religion.
The school should study what all people believe, but should not teach a student what he [sic ] should
believe.
The school should strive for student awareness of all but should not press for student acceptance of any
religions, one religion.
The school should seek to inform the students about but should not seek to make them conform to any
various beliefs, one belief.
The school can provide opportunity for a discussion but should not impose religious answers.
of religious questions
The school’s approach to religion must open up the issue, not close down the discussion.
Statements like the above tried to articulate an appropriate approach for Religion Studies in a
pluralist and secular setting. However, the definition seemed to imply that in the state school
the process was educational while in the church school it tended towards indoctrination – as
if a genuine education in religion was not possible in a committed context.
There seemed to be political reasons for maintaining the separation. Some educators on
both sides were perhaps so invested in maintaining the divisions that they did not want to
bridge the gap. Perhaps the differentiation and ‘counter-definition’ were needed initially to
establish an educational basis for studying religion within Australian public education; it
applied specifically to the teaching of religion by departmental teachers. Once the educational
legitimacy of Religion Studies was established in the government reports of the 1970s, and
after courses were more widely introduced in the early 1990s, it was ironic that the only
substantial and enduring implementation occurred when the church-related schools adopted
them at Years 11–12 levels – a less controversial development than religion taught by state
departmental teachers. In the formative 1970s, there was little interest in bridging the gap.
But in the 1990s, when church-related schools (especially Catholic schools) implemented
Religion Studies, one could readily get the impression from those who adopted Religion
Studies that there never were any gaps between the two. While this is still the case, looking
more carefully at relationships remains important, particularly as regards a critical evaluation
of the appropriateness of content and method in Religion Studies.
Where some Religion Studies courses were developed for the primary and/or junior
secondary school, there was negligible uptake in both state and religious schools. For the
church schools, Religion Studies at these lower levels were either presumed to be inappropriate
or thought to have no structural advantage. Nothing was ever said publicly about why they
were not implemented.
Relationships between state-based Religion Studies courses and denominational religious education 471
and denominational religious education may be based on political interests and stereotypes,
obfuscating rather than clarifying the nature of the activity.
thinking reinforced the selection of descriptive content, especially in the early days of
development both in the UK and Australia, because it was felt to be safe, and not life-
changing. The discussion in the previous chapter shows how British Religion Studies has
moved beyond the impasse, explaining how it can promote personal spirituality while not
espousing denominational purposes (cf. use of the phrase ‘learning from religion’).7 But the
notion of promoting spirituality still remains problematic – even more evident in Australian
than in British programs. It would be more realistic to acknowledge the possibility that
Religion Studies, in enhancing young people’s spiritual-moral development generally, may
affect their religious faith. Certainly this is a basic assumption of those who teach Religion
Studies in denominational schools.
Table 22.2 Comparison of purposes: State Religion Studies and denominational religious education
(compiled from the relevant literatures)
List of generalised aims for state-based Religion Studies List of generalised aims for
denominational religious education in
religious (church-related) schools
8 To understand how religious beliefs can have a shaping 8 To develop a religious spirituality.
influence on the life and values of individuals.
9 To be relevant to the needs and
9* To foster personal development through exploration of the interests of students; links with their
ways in which religions model what it means to be human, experience and personal development
and by exploring links between the study of religions and processes.
individuals’ personal experience.
Religious experience and practice
10* To help young people construct their own personal
10 To experience and to learn how to
meaning.
participate in religious practices like
11* To understand how religions help give individuals a sense liturgy and communal prayer.
of religious identity and to promote the development of
11 To participate in a religious retreat
personal identity.
– a special opportunity for personal
12* To develop the individual’s own personal spirituality. reflection/prayer, liturgy, discussion and
community activities.
Tolerance and interreligious dialogue
Religious ethos
13 To promote religious tolerance within the limits of the law
12 The school’s religious ethos through
14* To promote interreligious dialogue.
demonstrating gospel values (in
Morality structures and organisational life)
tries to enhance the spiritual-moral
15 To understand how religions can serve as a source of and
development of students.
reinforcement for moral values.
Moral development
16 To become aware of and to develop skills in the processes
of making moral decisions – becoming better able to 13 To develop a code of religious moral
identify moral issues, more widely informed about the values that inform a moral life.
issues, aware of religious influences on thinking about
Social justice and critical evaluation of
moral issues, aware of alternative views; rehearsing the
culture
implications of possible moral decisions that might be
taken. 14 To develop an informed awareness of
social justice issues and a capacity
Critical evaluation
to judge issues in terms of gospel
17 To develop skills in the evaluation of religious claims values and a propensity to undertake
– identification of truth claims and of conflicting claims. social action. Includes ‘critical
consciousness’.
18 To become aware of religious conflict and of ways in
which religions may be judged to have a negative effect on 15 To become critical evaluators of the
people’s lives. culture.
19* To evaluate religion in personal terms – that is, as regards Tolerance; ecumenical and interreligious
its relevance to students’ life experience and needs. dialogue
16 To promote awareness of, respect
for and communication with Christian
denominations.
17 To promote awareness of and respect
for other religions.
Note: Items marked with an asterisk, while evident in the UK, are not yet prominent in Australian courses. Items with a
double asterisk do not yet feature in current course documentation in both countries.
The aims in the left-hand column are educationally based since it would be inappropriate
in the state school context to presume denominational purposes. Because the purposes of
religious education in the church-related school are also educational, there is in principle
no contradiction in all of the educational aims in the left-hand column being applicable
Relationships between state-based Religion Studies courses and denominational religious education 475
that something is missing, that perhaps religion cannot sustain critical enquiry; and it can
even reinforce the view that religion is not worth studying.
In reading and project work (including interviews) young people can learn to become
more tolerant of, and open to, views and experiences different from their own. By asking
questions about the internal consistency of the beliefs and values, and through questions
about possible personal and social implications, they can learn how to critique religion in
a responsible way. They can become more aware of their own prejudices, stereotypes and
ignorance as they become more informed. Reason is not being opposed to belief, as if the
latter were irrational; but it can help young people identify and judge irrational aspects in the
beliefs and practices of religion. Students should be able to see that in some circumstances
religions do not foster human development: they can inhibit it and distort it; they can
support neurosis, prejudice and fanaticism.
Teachers need to be explicit about content and approach because not all educators
and parents will be happy about what is involved in a critical evaluative study. Genuine
accountability is required as for any controversial content in the curriculum, for example in
sex education. The other key factor in accountability is the code of ethics that should guide
teachers’ presentations and conduct of discussion. Presentations require a range of viewpoints,
impartiality and objectivity in teaching, and responsible, diplomatic reference to teachers’
own personal views when judged to make a valuable educational contribution to lessons (see
the approach of committed impartiality proposed by Hill, as explained in 13.11).
What was written in earlier chapters about the critical evaluation of culture is pertinent
here.
This issue is the more important where Religion Studies courses allow flexibility for
students to study particular religions in detail – presumably the religions with which
they most readily identify, even if only nominally. In most of the Australian courses, the
requirement that two or more religions be studied prevents students from studying just their
own tradition.
How many religions should be studied will remain contentious, because the majority
of students come from church-related schools, and it would seem inappropriate for the
syllabuses not to take this clientele into account. It would be educationally more sound to
allow students to include options that are more relevant to their cultural religious backgrounds,
satisfying the concern of religious schools to cover their tradition in a substantial way,
while not precluding the need for the state to provide for a balanced study of religions and
contemporary religious issues. In some courses, it appears that requiring students to study
additional religions rather than religious issues or topics within their own tradition runs the
risk of appearing irrelevant. Religion Studies should be more than just gaining descriptive
knowledge about more religions – as if such content were the only educationally appropriate
type, or a strategy to prevent them from spending too much time on their own tradition.
In concluding Part 5 we refer back to earlier discussions about the complex relationships
between education and identity (10.3, 19.4). For many of today’s secularised youth who
forge meaning and identity in different ways from those of older generations, and who see
little role for organised religion, the opportunity to study the construct identity and how
it is influenced by culture is an important educational opportunity within both formats
for religious education (see Chapter 6, note 32, which lists European and British writings
concerned with education in identity).
A Religion Studies that is issue-oriented and evaluative is more appropriate in the current
educational context than those that remain dominated by phenomenological and typological
content. Units that are almost exclusively about beliefs and practices of world religions
need to be replaced by more issue-related topics (as has happened to some extent in the
Tasmanian courses). However, increasing the scope for evaluative study may not in itself be
enough to sway the decision of a Catholic school to choose state Religion Studies rather than
Relationships between state-based Religion Studies courses and denominational religious education 479
an accredited Catholic studies option, even though the former would have more academic
status. While the aim of having a relevant religious education has long been claimed, there
may be such a strong tendency to want to reinforce Catholic identity with ‘more recognisably
Catholic content’ that Catholic studies seems preferable.8 Or, Religion Studies would be
more acceptable if it allowed for a larger proportion of Catholic content. As noted in Chapter
16, Catholic diocesan religion syllabuses are traditionally oriented – issue-oriented content
is not their strong suit.
Hence the relationships between Religion Studies and Catholic religious education
remain uncertain, depending on the direction that each takes over the next decade.
22.9 Conclusion
It is probably inevitable, and not undesirable, that achievement of the proposed educational
aims for Religion Studies will contribute positively to the spiritual development of some
students, and it may affect their religious practice. Any potential personal influence does not
compromise the impartial, objective nature of the course itself. Hence there is no need to be
concerned about the possibility that Religion Studies may enhance young people’s spirituality
and may contribute to their familiarity with their own religion. This concern, which had
480 Reasons for Living Part 5: Implications for state-based Religion Studies courses
its roots in the debates in the 1970s, is more an issue in state schools. For religious schools,
the possibility of promoting students’ spiritual and moral development is essential to the
justification of their decision to implement Religion Studies – they endorse the educational
aims with the additional hopes that they will contribute to young people’s religious development
and to their response to the option of being part of a community of faith.
Notes
1 This is described in detail in GM Rossiter 1981, Religious education in Australian schools.
2 See for example B Moore 1991, Religion education: Issues and methods in curriculum design, Texts in Humanities,
University of South Australia, Adelaide.
3 South Australian Education Department, 1978, Religious Education syllabus, R–12, p. 11. This statement was
a modified version of that originally prepared by JV Panoch for the US Public Education Religion Studies
Centre at the University of Dayton, Ohio. Ironically, there were no significant developments in US public
schools. See also N Piediscalzi & WE Collie (eds) 1977, Teaching about religion in public schools.
4 IG Mavor and others, 1977, Religious education: Its nature and aims, Queensland Department of Education,
Brisbane. IG Mavor et al. 1982, The RECP model for religious education.
5 Lovat proposed an approach that could be followed in both state and denominational contexts, but he did not
match the RECP claim that the nature of religious education was independent of the context. Lovat’s approach
(a modified typological method with an evaluative dimension) was proposed as suitable in public education,
hence also applicable to independent schools. T Lovat 2002, What is this thing called RE: A decade on?
6 Attention is drawn to two earlier attempts to explore relationships between state Religion Studies and
denominational religious education (Rossiter 1981 and 1983). Rossiter devised a scheme made use of two
related constructs Education in faith and Education in religion to highlight commonalities. However, a
popular misreading of the scheme resulted in its being used more frequently for differentiating the two.
This classification was unsuccessful and has caused problems with the interpretation of the aims for religious
education. The following describes what happened. In 1981, in Religious Education in Australian Schools
(developed further in a doctoral research study in 1983), Rossiter sought to promote more harmony and mutual
exchange between church school religious education and the new Religion Studies courses. He proposed that
school religious education needed to be interpreted from a combination of two different perspectives, a faith-
oriented one and an educational one, to show that both dimensions were important. However, the terms used
(‘Education in Faith’ and ‘Education in Religion’) were widely misinterpreted as ‘actual approaches’ for classifying
different sorts of religious education, rather than as perspectives that were closely related. Unfortunately, this
reinforced divisions rather than prompting greater understanding of how the two dimensions were interwoven.
It would have been better to use less ambiguous terms such as ‘faith-oriented perspective’ and ‘educational
perspective’ and avoid the problems created when educators described some approaches as ‘education in faith’,
and presumably others that did not educate faith; such usage showed a misunderstanding of the complex
nature of faith that cannot be added or subtracted from religious education by efforts of the teacher. Later,
some educators used the problematic term ‘faith-forming approaches’ as if by intention and method they could
change gear from ‘non-faith-forming’ methods to ‘faith-forming’ ones (Chapter 18). Rossiter only used this
construct of two perspectives when looking at relationships between religious education in church and state
school contexts, and not when looking at Religious Education in Catholic schools.
Despite the problems with the scheme, Rossiter proposed how Religion Studies and denominational religious
education might be more closely related. This task was extended in a doctoral research project that analysed
similarities and differences between the two in theory and in normative curriculum documents (cf. GM
Rossiter 1983, An interpretation of normative theory for religious education in Australian schools). See also
Chapter 18, note 10.
7 The difference between spirituality and religiosity (Chapter 8) has been helpful for Religion Studies because
the notion of promoting students’ spirituality does not necessarily mean promoting their religious faith in the
context of a particular religious tradition.
8 Two examples of student texts produced in support of Catholic Studies in the senior secondary school are:
PJ Elliott et al. 2006, Catholic Studies for senior secondary students (To Know, Worship and Love series); K
Engebretson 2004, Catholic ethical thinking for senior secondary students.
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Index
512
Index 513
contextual approach, spiritual/moral pedagogy 310 Eckersley, R 3, 41, 43, 61, 106, 114, 129, 146, 202,
Contextual Religious Education 460 213, 221, 228, 322
controversial issues, teaching of 297 ecumenical identity 430
cool, identity 137, 155–66 education
and violence 166 and socialisation 293
defensive identity function 158 for resistance 267
meaning 45 holistic 16, 244
projective identity function 156 ideological 266
Cooley, C 114 in identity 233
Cooling, T 455, 456 in meaning 54, 232
Cooper, A 172 in spirituality 236
Coopersmith, S 119 in meaning, identity and spirituality 16, 18,
coping, and meaning 42 228–39
core values for schooling 247 public 243–321
Cox, H 212 Education Reform Act UK 299, 452
Creation Science 74 emancipation 266
credentialling 246 emotion 279
crisis of meaning 233 and meaning 41
critical consciousness 266 and spirituality 193
critical interpretation of culture 230, 238, 404 emotional intelligence 269, 412
critical pedagogy 266, 460 emotional learning 284
critical theory 55, 266 emotionality, and faith development 414
and identity 114 employment, casualisation of 102
Frankfurt School 55 empowerment 265
cultural agency 267, 359, 405 enfaithing 415
cultural change 53 Engedal, L 129
cultural inheritance 54 English studies 18
culture, and traditions 229 epistemology 30, 76
critical interpretation of 230, 238, 404 Erikson, E 27, 89, 107, 409
curriculum, spiritual and moral dimension of Erricker, E & Erricker, J 457
4, 241–51, 299–321 ethnicity 123
Custer, George Armstrong 330 evaluative study of religion 475
evangelisation 403
Danesi, M 156 evangelising, role of film directors 355
Darwin, Theory of Evolution 26 evolution, theory of 26
De Bono, thinking hats 269, 271 exhortation 281
de Botton, A 52, 95, 266 experience, and spirituality 181
De Lors, J 272 spiritual 205, 303
de Ruyter, D 272 experiential, in religious education 372, 447
DEEP pedagogical framework 267, 271 explicit approach, spiritual/moral pedagogy 305
Delaney, B 142
Dembski, W 75 fable, film and television as 347
denominational religious education 369–440 faith development 377, 409–21, 423
aims 473 sponsoring of 423–33
deschooling 423 faith, formation 417
developmental theories 234 mentoring 426
Dewey, J 264, 266, 277 nature of 414
dimensions of religion, (N Smart) 449 film 322–68
diocesan guidelines for religious education documentary 329–36
374, 378 feature 336–60
discussion 311 propaganda 327–29
Dobzhansky, T 26 religious 326
documentary film 329–36 film and television, embedded values 341
advocacy 330 social reality 342
‘voice of God’ 332 spiritual dimension of 339
Do-it-yourself (DIY) generation 215 spiritual/moral influence of 323
514 Reasons for Living