ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the problem that of compulsory religion in schools that belong to the whole public in a multi-belief and increasingly non-belief society. There is one kind of commonsense that is not sensible, the kind that always seeks some comfortable halfway house when a question ought to be thought out clearly and a decision of principle made. If a boy or girl leaves the public school as a reasonably responsible person, intellectually and morally, but with different opinions from those of his teacher, teacher who understands what liberal education will not feel failed. However, priests and ministers in schools will be philosophically tolerant. Charles Kingsley, that very militant churchman, expressed the view when public education came in with the 1870 Act that in an increasingly secular age teaching in these schools should be secular and the clergy left to teach about God.
