EDUCATION COMMENT
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Should we take school chapel more seriously?
As hymn sheets are increasingly left at the school assembly door, Dr John Saxbee,
Bishop of Lincoln, asks are we throwing out the baby with the bath water?
M
y pocket-sized Songs of Praise remains
“Without a spiritual
character. It seems to me that daily assemblies, well
a prize possession. It accompanied me managed and carefully prepared, can communicate
to countless school chapels 50 years dimension, the a school’s positive ethos, affi rm corporate identity
ago, and it is adorned with cartoons
scope for
along with individual achievement, and open up
and caricatures of headteachers and teachers now new literary and artistic horizons to those who may
long gone. It evokes memories of hymns more or
assemblies to
not be exposed to such things in any other ways.
less murdered by a generation of grammar school
boys more interested in Lennon and McCartney
realise their
Of course, the extent to which openness to
religious faith in general, rather than concentrating
than Sankey and Moody. We aff ected a kind of
potential is limited”
on Christianity in particular, will vary from place
reverence during Bible readings and recited well- to place and time to time. But I remain convinced
known prayers by rote, whilst tittering at any hint of a double-entendre. that without a spiritual dimension, the scope for school assemblies to realise
All this as a prelude to the real reason we were there – the Notices! their full potential is extremely limited. And in this context I mean spiritual
Details of sporting fi xtures and after-school clubs were given out along in relation to specifi c faith traditions rather than that altogether shallow and
with the award of house points and regular readings of the riot act about insipid subjectivism which characterises much that passes for spirituality today.
our behaviour on the school bus which apparently brought the whole As a church leader it intrigues me that the New Testament word for
institution into disrepute. church is “ecclesia” which was originally the Greek word for “assembly” –
School chapels are easy to deride, and perhaps it is recollections of this typically an assembly of citizens called to discuss, deliberate and decide in
sort which have caused the requirement to have them to be honoured as relation to issues of common concern. So assemblies are church, but sadly
much in the breach as in the observance. few churches look at them in that way.
Yet I have fond memories as well. I recall how the demeanour of the I remember speaking to a parent after a school assembly and she told
headteacher communicated confi dence and a benign authority which made me that she attended on a weekly basis, “because my husband won’t let me
me feel safe. As an under-achiever academically, I recall how being called go to Church on Sundays – so this is my church”.
on to the platform to be praised for winning a cross-country running event Perhaps the time has come for us to take school assemblies more
inspired me to raise my game in the classroom as well. And the music seriously as fresh expressions of church. T_h at could help schools in their
teacher playing Schumann, Brahms and Beethoven as we entered and left the daily delivery of something meaningful and memorable – and it could help
hall opened my eyes and ears to classical music, a gift for which I will always Christians to realise that church on Sunday mornings is not the only place
be grateful. By no means least, as one of three former pupils of that school and time to worship God.
now serving as bishops, I must conclude that even that rather perfunctory Assemblies cannot be what they were, but that does not mean that they
approach to daily worship did none of us any harm. cannot become something even better. %
Perhaps that needs saying when it is generally assumed that assemblies
do the cause of Christianity no good, and the claims of secularism and Dr John Saxbee, Bishop of Lincoln, is Chair of the Church of England
multi-culturalism trump the criterion for assemblies to have a Christian Board of Education
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16 FIRST ELEVEN SPRING 2010 WWW.FIRSTELEVENMAGAZINE.CO.UK
pp16FE_SPR10School ChapelsSMsub2.indd 16 28/1/10 17:26:04
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