Education, spirituality and the common school

Abstract

The claim that education (and more specifically schooling) should be concerned with ‘spirituality’ and with ‘spiritual development’ invites immediate attention to two related questions which are fundamental, pressing and inescapable. These questions are: (i) How are ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual development’ to be properly understood? and (ii) What constitutes justifiable educational influence in relation to the spiritual domain? Progress in relation to both (i) and (ii) involves, amongst other things, the making of important distinctions. In relation to (i) I have argued elsewhere in work with Hanan Alexander that a useful distinction for educational purposes can be drawn between ‘religiously tethered’ and ‘religiously untethered’ conceptions of spirituality (Alexander and McLaughlin 2003: 359-60). In relation to (ii) I have argued in that work that distinctions between education in spirituality ‘from the inside’ and ‘from the outside’ respectively and between differing schooling contexts and mandates for the exercise of educational influence (separate religious schools and common schools) are also of significance (Alexander and McLaughlin 2003:361-73).