ABSTRACT
Most children in state schools in England and Wales attend morning assembly and receive religious instruction as a requirement of the 1944 Education Act. The indications are that a new Education Act will be drawn up about 1970 or soon after that date, and the debate is already beginning in public and in private as to whether the religious clauses of the 1944 Act should be continued or abandoned. It is true that in later syllabuses attempts have been made to relate them to children’s experience and further efforts have been made to grade the material in what is thought to be ascending order of difficulty with increasing age. Implicit in the presentation of this kind of syllabus is the general idea that if only Bible stories or narrative are encountered often enough and attractively taught throughout a child’s schooling, some meaning will rub off and stick, even though the details will be forgotten.
