Faith and Experience in Education

"This book is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about the current direction of schooling. It rightly challenges us to ask how education can authentically nurture care, love, trust, equality, justice and spirituality. I have learned much in the past from Quaker thinkers such as Parker Palmer, and the contributors to this scholarly book have now challenged me further to think how we can make the educational system more humane and develop the spiritual qualities that will bring peace to our world."

Dr. Neil Hawkes, Founder, Values-based Education

"Education is a profoundly moral business. Every classroom is saturated with value judgements. For many people in education these days, this is an inconvenient truth. They like to present it as a merely technical matter of getting better grades and promoting national economies. Not, thankfully, for the authors of this timely collection. If we are truly to create a 21st-century education, it will have a heart as well as a mind. And these brave, unfashionable souls will be in the vanguard of that creation."

Guy Claxton, Visiting Professor of Education, King’s College London

"At a time when the school system is creaking under the weight of targets, audits, and performance indicators, this book provides a different and refreshing vision of education, inspired by the distinctive beliefs of the Quakers and by their long-established but seldom-acknowledged tradition of schooling."

Richard Pring, Professor Emeritus, Department of Education, University of Oxford

1. Introduction to Quakers, Quaker involvement in education, and this book by Don Rowe and Anne Watson
2. Whose values? Which values? by Don Rowe
3. Relational and restorative practice in educational settings: A values-based, needs-led approach by Belinda Hopkins
4. Building, maintaining and repairing a peaceful culture in school by Anna Gregory
5. Learning for emancipation by Tim Small
6. Equality, truth and love in subject teaching: Cognitive care in the case of mathematics by Anne Watson
7. The role and value of the arts in education by Janet Sturge
8. Early years education and Quaker concerns by Wendy Scott
9. Equality and the scramble for school places by Janet Nicholls
10. Reflecting on values emerging from practice and the value of reflecting on practice by John Mason
11. When school won’t do by Keir Mitchell
12. Natality and Quaker education by Giles Barrow
13. Friends’ education: A reflective commentary by Kathy Bickmore
Index

Anne Watson

Anne Watson is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Oxford.

Don Rowe

Don Rowe is a teacher, writer and co-founder of the Citizenship Foundation.