It comes as a disappointment, though not really a surprise, to read reports that our Secretary of State for Education thinks that the idea of education for its own sake is ìa bit dodgyî and that the State should certainly not be expected to pay for people to indulge in things like classics or medieval history. This utilitarian view of education is inevitable and to some extent even laudable in politicians whoís job it is to ensure that the state is getting value for money in the services it provides. That is the whole agenda behind the introduction of Citizenship Programmes into schools, as was made clear in the discussions at the LACE Conference in October 2002 reported in our last issue. The Resource section of the present issue contains a useful contribution from Paul Ross in the form of an outline Syllabus Unit for teaching Citizenship and Parliament. This is an approach that most Catholic schools would go along with. On the other hand, the Memorandum on Education by Himmler is a reminder of the extreme forms that state intervention in education can take.

Before condemning the approach of the politicians, however, we should perhaps stop to ask whether sometimes the Churchís own approach to education is not in danger of being just as utilitarian, in so far as it sees the school as a means of turning out ìgood Catholicsî. An extreme form of this says that Catholics schools exist to ensure that the hierarchy can carry out the teaching function which is its prerogative. In both cases the pupils are reduced to the level of material to be worked on in the interests of an overarching body into which they must be integrated and of which the teachers are merely servants and functionaries.

Should we not start from the base line that schools exist for the sake of young people? Is not this the first principle of Lasallian educational thinking? The current issue of LACE seeks to explore those soul-searching questions through material provided by the LACE Conference of May 2003 and the European Congress of Lasallian Headteachers in March. We hope you find the experience stimulating enough to respond.