ABSTRACT
Children inhabit private and family worlds, hardly known for quietness and security in our society. Schools can therefore be places of refuge and stability in the lives of many children: teachers’ responsibilities for enabling their pupils effectively to learn must therefore include their pupils’ emotional as well as intellectual backgrounds. A teacher has in a class of twenty to thirty children an immense range of differing private and family worlds, and the way children were brought up, and their varying personalities, moods and emotions, must affect their ability to learn. This is the rationale for pastoral care.
