ABSTRACT

The Newbolt Report speaks to a post-war society grappling with radical class division, philosophies of secularism and loss of shared meaning, and an awareness of the destructive possibilities of technological progress. It identifies a danger threatening the educational system of England—‘that a true instinct for humanism may be smothered by the demand for measurable results, especially the passing of examinations in a variety of subjects…’ (56)—and calls for a re-conception of ‘the full meaning and possibilities of national education as a whole’, advocating the central role of literary education in bridging ‘the social chasms which divide us’. This chapter places Newbolt in relation to some of the other reports commissioned by H.A.L. Fisher as part of a large-scale re-imagining of the post-war English Education system and considers how, with its explicit invocation of theological and evangelical metaphors, Newbolt articulates the hope of a secular redemption of education through literature.