ABSTRACT
The appearance in the UK alone of several major policy documents from such hallowed sources as the NCC (National Curriculum Council), OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) and the SCAA (School Curriculum and Assessment Authority) —as well as the proliferation of professional conferences, academic books and journal articles on moral and spiritual education-attests to a recent explosion of official and professional educational interest in spirituality and spiritual education.1 This interest seems to have been driven by at least three main concerns: first, a sociopolitical worry about the decline of social co-operation and common purpose in contemporary conditions of cultural pluralism and liberal individualism; second, anxiety about the breakdown of traditional values under the influence of secularism and materialism evident in the decline of youth discipline as well as in recent events (notably in Britain and the USA) of anomic murder and mayhem; third, a professional concern that recent political interest in improving educational standards has focused more on the economic than the moral benefits of education. Indeed, some would regard recent British and other educational reforms as in themselves symptomatic of that obsession with economic consumerism that has fuelled the spread of selfish materialism and hedonism in western society.
