Government Education Body Declares

Government Education Body Declares:
"No consensus on the value of marriage"

©1997 The Christian Institute

Contents

Introduction

Forum For Values

A Hidden Agenda And A Manipulated Process

A Moral Mish-Mash

A Moral Lead

A Media Flurry

The Moral Majority

Marriage? Or A "Family" Free-For-All?

The end?

Notes

Introduction

What would you think if someone suggested that schools be encouraged to promote morality? Most of us would be pleased. In fact, the 1988 Education Reform Act requires schools to promote the "spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils at school".

Of course, this is a very general statement. So what would you think if it was suggested that this was tightened up by getting schools to use an agreed set of values that they would be obliged by law to teach? Again, you might think this was a good thing - redressing the imbalance at last.

Forum For Values

In January 1996 the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA), the statutory body charged with maintaining standards in education, announced that they were convening a forum of 150 people to agree a framework of values that would reflect the views of society in general. The declared intention was that this framework would assist schools in promoting spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. SCAA called this assembly the "National Forum for Values in Education and the Community".

At this point, you might still be drawing encouragement from all this apparent enthusiasm for promoting values in schools. As Christians or as people concerned with repairing the moral fabric of society, we know that much of the moral malaise we see around us is the result of failing to declare and uphold higher moral standards. So a Forum concerned with establishing a moral code for pupils and society to aspire to sounds like a response to the failure. Well, disappointment looms!

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A Hidden Agenda And A Manipulated Process

In arranging the composition of the 150 member Forum, SCAA officials went to ridiculous lengths to get representation from every distant corner of society. Alongside representatives of the principal religions and educationalists sat members of the RSPB, the British Humanist Society and the Kite Club - all charged which reaching a consensus on the moral values which schools should promote!

This collection of disparate individuals was divided into discussion groups which never met in joint session at any time during the drafting of the values document. The cynical might say that this avoided the risk of the agenda being driven by anyone other than SCAA themselves (the "divide and conquer" technique). Furthermore, a SCAA official conducted the distillation process and so had complete control of what went into the final consultation paper.

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A Moral Mish-Mash

From the outset the prospect was of a document which would sound "nice" and "moral" but would offend nobody - an example of "lowest common-denominator morality". True to expectation, the document which SCAA released for public consultation on Wednesday 30th October was confectionery for the soul: superficially pleasing but lacking substance.

A casual reader could look at its generalised, positive-sounding language and feel good about it. It commences, "We value truth, human rights, the law, justice, collective endeavour for the common good" etcetera. It all sounds very nice. But a more rigourous examination of the document uncovers a profoundly humanist world-view coupled with an almost total lack of real content. What sort of "truth" does it mean exactly; and are all things that people consider "rights" to be valued? What about the "right" to propagate racial hatred, or the "right" to buy and sell pornography?

Perhaps most telling is the weak directive given under the heading "The Self" which says, "try to live up to a shared moral code". What moral code? Does anyone know? Surely that was what the document itself was meant to be!

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A Moral Lead

One of the most disturbing (and headline-grabbing) defects of the document is the total absence of the term "marriage". The code states "..we value families as sources of love and support for all their members". For a start, inclusion of the word "families" was a concession. Originally there was to be no mention of the family at all. But what is the definition of the word "family"? Do they mean "any configuration of adults and children living together", (an approximation of the United Nations' preferred Politically Correct definition), broad enough to embrace, for example, a same-sex couple with children?

Guy Hordern, a parent's representative, along with four other members of the Forum, saw from the outset the direction in which the Forum was being drawn. They drew up a statement on marriage and put it forward for inclusion in the code. SCAA refused to incorporate it. The official report for the day on which that statement was put forward referred to the views of the five as "extreme". In The Guardian an official was quoted referring to them as "a group of Christian fundamentalists" in order to rubbish their views. This presumably came as something of a surprise to one of the five who is a practising Muslim. In fact, it was inaccurate to refer to them as a religious grouping at all since the five attended as individuals and did so to represent the views of parents.

Guy Hordern decided to speak out publicly. He launched a campaign to have marriage included in the document before it was sent out to schools for consultation. He failed, but his campaign alerted Gillian Shepherd, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. On the 27th of October she too spoke out against the absence of marriage in this purported "moral values" document. She stated clearly that in her view marriage and the family should be included.

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A Media Flurry

This rebuke to SCAA gave rise to a flurry of media coverage over the following week. Guy Hordern was interviewed, quoted, cited and, perhaps surprisingly, was not once criticised. His clear yet compassionate stance in favour of marriage, of fidelity within it and chastity without, struck a chord. So frequently the Church has fudged it when confronted with clear, basic moral choices. And few non-religious bodies pursue a solid pro-family agenda. For this issue, a welcome mat was spread out for a man taking a moral lead where others had, in an excess of caution for minority views, bottled out.

Those who hold to the common-sense view that marriage is clearly a good thing have lost confidence in what they know to be right because there has been so little public pronouncement in favour of it. Vociferous and high profile campaigning by libertarians has encouraged a sense that the traditional family is archaic, a dying institution, and a bit of an embarrassment. However, the press appeared to warm to a man who knew how to take a firm line in favour of the family. His own story of single-handedly bringing up a family of four children after the sad and untimely death of his wife, gave an added authority to what he said.

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The Moral Majority

The media furore climaxed on Sunday 3rd November when two national newspapers published opinion polls confirming that, overwhelmingly, the British public want marriage to be positively promoted in schools. The Sunday Telegraph's Gallup poll showed that 75% of those questioned believe that schools should teach children that marriage is a good thing. An Audience Selection poll in the People said 73% believe that moral teaching in schools should focus on marriage and the traditional family (1).

Remember that SCAA did not even countenance including marriage in the values document, let alone suggesting that it should be positively promoted. And even after Gillian Shepherd's intervention, Chief Exectutive of SCAA, Nick Tate, continued to defend the omission. By failing to include marriage the Nation's statutory education watchdog had failed to do what most people think is entirely reasonable. Yet they would not admit it.

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Marriage? Or A "Family" Free-For-All?

There are some key facts on family life which need to be borne in mind. Not only do the majority hold an opinion in favour of marriage, but the statistics show that this is what is done by the majority in practice. 71% of the UK's children live with their married mother and father. This means that nearly three-quarters of all children are part of a traditional nuclear family. At any one time only 3% of children live with a cohabiting mother and father. (This figure is so small because almost all cohabiting couples get married once they have a child.)

17% live in a lone mother household. 7% live with their mother and step-father (4% married and 3% cohabiting). A further 2% live in lone father or other kinds of household (2).

Obviously these types of household do exist. But they have not come anywhere near replacing the traditional model. Of course it is understood that some families are missing a parent because of bereavement, and that some parents are left to bring up children on their own against their wishes. Contrary to the arguments raised by people like Nick Tate and David Blunkett it is not the case that extolling the virtues of the traditional family inherently condemns children from other types of household. But the question is: what type of family do we want to promote? What is the ideal which we should strive for, for the good of society and the individual? What is the goal which we want children to set for themselves?

On the figures, the essential distinction, (going by the two largest groupings), is between children who live with married parents (71%) and those children living with lone mothers (17%). Which kind of household do we want schools to encourage? The Government body charged with answering this question has, by default, chosen against marriage. The hopes raised by talk of a Forum for Values have been dashed on the cold, hard dogma of political correctness. Morality turns to amorality which turns to immorality.

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The end?

So what now? Is all hope lost? Are we stuck with a code which will only serve to compound the confusion over values? Only if that moral majority disclosed by the opinion polls stays silent. We at the Christian Institute are certainly not sitting back. We want schools to have a statutory duty placed on them to promote marriage and have already had discussions with MPs and Peers to this effect. Watch this space!

In the meantime, SCAA's consultation process provides that any and all interested parties may have a copy of the draft document. A questionnaire is also being sent out to a sample of schools, parents, national organisations and the general public. MORI will compile the results. (The press talked of a public consultation but it seems that SCAA has limited its scope). However, even if you are not part of this sample group, you still have opportunity to comment on the code. Contact SCAA yourself and ask them for a copy. Then let them know what you think of it. Be a part of improving the code. The address and phone number is as follows:

SCAA Publications,
PO Box 235, Hayes, Middlesex, UB3 1HF. Tel: 0181 561 4499

You can also write to:

Gillian Shepherd MP, House of Commons, London,
SW1A 0AA

If the moral majority do get involved and speak out, whether in a reply to SCAA, a letter to the editor of a newspaper, or through an MP on the floor of the House, perhaps then, common sense, common decency and, in this case, common values, will be upheld.

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Notes

(1) See also, The Mail On Sunday's MORI poll of 1,002 adults, of which two thirds were parents. 45% blamed decline in moral values on the demise of the family. 87% said there should be more emphasis at schools on teaching the difference between right and wrong.
(2)All figures taken from "Children in Britain" Family Policy Studies Centre, 1995. Based on calculations for 1991.

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