Educational law requires that every school/academy promotes the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of all pupils. In the spiritual component, faith schools and academies will ensure that the children learn about their distinctive religions. Non-denominational schools/academies will, teach the pupils about faiths generally and encourage tolerance of all religions and none. Good institutions, through the cross-curriculum strategy, ensure that children have access to social and cultural development as they do with moral education.
However, there is one aspect of the moral strand that vexes many. That is about telling the truth. From an early age, responsible parents and institutions encourage children to speak the truth, even if that means getting themselves into trouble. That is as it should be, especially in an age when we have a surfeit of fake news spouted on the internet by social media and leaders of some countries.
At election time, as we have seen recently, politicians seeking people’s votes blast out whatever it takes to get them first past the post and into parliament. At their best, they are economical with the truth – withholding information that could be unpalatable to the electorate.
In good schools/academies, teachers warn pupils about not believing all they read and everything they are told, to be wary of people who are attractive, articulate and offering them gifts, in short, to be critical of what they see and hear. In 2018, the Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills run by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Literacy and the National Literacy Trust, reported that only 2% of children and young people could judge correctly whether a news story was real or fake. Over 50% of teachers did not feel that the national curriculum was developing the literacy skills of pupils critical enough to judge whether something was true or false.
According to Ann Mroz, Editor of The Times Educational Supplement, there is “lots of examination of prepositions but less of propositions; plenty of nouns but sadly not enough nous”.
