Ecclesiastical and religious factors which preserved Christian and traditional forms of education for citizenship in English schools, 1934–1944

Abstract

Participants in the public discourse pertaining to religious education and education for citizenship in English schools between 1934 and 1944 included many ‘Christian educationists’. They advocated a conservative and elitist form of education for citizenship as taught through indirect training, Arnoldian public school traditions and ecumenical, liberal Protestantism. This contrasted with the conception of education for citizenship promoted by the founder members of the Association for Education in Citizenship. They wanted pupils to be educated into a liberal, democratic and secular version of English citizenship by means of ‘progressive’ pedagogies and direct instruction. This article identifies the ecclesiastical and religious factors which preserved the Christian and traditional form of education for citizenship in English schools between 1934 and 1944. These factors included the revival of the Christian foundations of British national identity and citizenship, the development and acceptance of non‐denominational forms of Christian education, the increasingly positive response which an evermore coherent and professionalised cohort of Christian educationists received from the Board of Education and the Consultative Committee, and the political power of the Anglican Church within the dual system combined with the religious settlement agreed in the 1944 Education Act.