ABSTRACT
It is now commonplace to describe our present community as post-Christian, secular and pluralistic. In so doing we inadvertently do great injustice to those whose value commitments are orthodoxly religious, and also to those many people who, though indifferent to formal religious practice, are humanistic in their altruism to their fellows and homogeneously religious in their beliefs as they perceive a universe controlled by some power greater than themselves. To deal with religion explicitly in schools in this situation may seem undesirable, if not downright foolish. The problem is further compounded when the school curriculum is seen as a vehicle to promote an enterprise culture whose underlying values are drawn from the power of effective economic units. Yet, if the present climate in our community has been adequately described, the need to help pupils become reflective about the values they hold and their underlying beliefs is pressing and urgent.
