Extracts from reports of various commissions and conferences.

This book deals with the multiple problem of education in the public schools as it relates to moral and spiritual values. The author cuts a wide swath through the tangled underbrush of church and state, religion and education, sacred and secular, spiritual and materialistic, "body and soul," and lets in a lot of light. To these problems the author brings a lifetime of courageous reflection and experience. To them he also brings, as case studies, the actual experiences of actual children and teachers in actual classrooms in Kentucky, where an experimental program of education in moral and spiritual values has been in process for the past several years.

First published in 1999, this book, by a range of teachers and teacher trainers, explores specified values in the curriculum as well as whole curriculum issues, including religious education, drama, citizenship and vocational education, as well as the National Curriculum subjects. As a hugely controversial topic area, without general consensus on many key points, this book provides an introductory platform, consistently pointing to sources of further reading and suggesting signposts through the issues. Readers will get a wider insight into spiritual, moral, social and cultural issues, as well as the development of values in general, by reading the specialist chapters.