The triumph of religious education for citizenship in English schools, 1935-1949

Abstract

The failure of the Association for Education in Citizenship to gain official support for the secular and pedagogically progressive forms of education for citizenship which its founder members endorsed has previously been explained by the political impotence of the association’s founder members and the professional conservatism of the educational establishment. However, this paper proposes that, as part of a wider cultural conservatism in England between 1935 and 1949, citizenship was recast in a Christian mould in response to foreign ‘secular’ political ideologies and that this enabled religious education to gain official endorsement as an essential form of education for citizenship.