Diocesan Synod – 8 October 2005

The Bishop of St Albans: Presidential Address

Children and the Church

Miss Horwood had wavy, steel-grey hair and leaned forward slightly as she walked. She had lace-up shoes and a gentle voice, and first taught me about fire. I was seven. She was my primary-school teacher and we were crayoning. It led to that kind of quiet, soft reverie which children of that age relish. The pressure of learning by rote the multiplication tables was off; the back of the exercise book, provided by Gloucestershire County Council, with its curious lists about rods, poles and perches, had been put away and the classroom, a warm, wooden building, had that murmuring buzz created when children draw en masse.

It was November; our heads were full of 'Catherine Wheels', 'Jumping Jacks' and rockets that whooshed up into the night sky - and the thought that the Guy Fawkes bonfire would definitely be bigger this year than last. Unsurprisingly, given the time of year, Miss Horwood, with her wavy, steel-grey hair, asked us to draw a bonfire. We set to with a relish, though there was a sharp pang of recognition that the whiz-bang excitement of a real bonfire night could never quite be captured by the waxy crayons. Fire was bright red – and even when we made the accompanying noises of the sound of fireworks under our breath, our artistic efforts still did not, as it were, take off.

It was then that Miss Horwood looked over my shoulder at my attempt at a bonfire: brown sticks, red flames – and put into one of my solid, waxy flames, a tiny pointed yellow shape. That was how flames should really look! It a moment of revelation - remarkable.

It was many years later when I watched a grainy black and white television programme about teaching, that I began to feel a real desire to teach. It was about a schoolmaster in Liverpool who was shown blowing bubbles in a class of recalcitrant, defiant children - and capturing their imaginations with words like 'iridescent' and 'luminous'. It quickened my desire to teach.

I trained as a teacher at Bristol University and found myself being asked to do a child observation. In common with all the other students (the women wearing Mary Quant makeup, the men daring to wear jeans rather than green sports jackets and cavalry twills), I was told to do a child study in two ways. Firstly, I was required to watch a child as though I were a visitor from another planet, and send back a factual report: 'Gary is 5ft 3in tall, he has floppy brown hair and a sallow skin …' Then, secondly, I was required to write a piece as though I were that child: 'Fed up, I am. I don't like this place. My shirt-collar is too tight …'

The fact that I have not forgotten the experience shows what an impact it made. It was a simple exercise but was transformative. I began to sense the beautiful and sometimes chaotic inner lives of children – and then, to help us students to enter further into understanding, we were told to read novels, like Richard Hughes' High Wind in Jamaica; and John and Elizabeth Newson's Pattern of Infant Care, and Virginia Axline's Dibs: in Search of Self.

Those days of pink shirts and floral ties, and the whiff of cannabis in student digs and songs about San Francisco, in spite of the wreckage that was wrought on the lives of drug-takers, seems curiously winsome as I look back at them. Ofsted had not been invented; QCAs were unknown; and talk of a national curriculum was held to be very undesirable, partly because it was French. It was, to re-explain, 'child centred' and some of it, to be fair, was simply silly. But inside it, there was a glimpse of the significance of childhood. We did not use the word 'spirituality' then, but that is what we meant: a recognition of the uniqueness and value of each and every child. It was a dreamy, utopian vision, which had to be seriously re-examined when later I taught 3C on a wet Friday afternoon after they had had a double lesson of 'games'. They were not enthralled by the journeys of St Paul.

However, in that school (now a Comprehensive, then a Secondary Modern) I retained my conviction about the worth and ultimate value of each child, even those who sat at the back looking eternally bored: disengaged, desperate for their faces not to register anything, it was more than their life's worth to show a flicker of interest.

Later as an RE Adviser, I became much influenced by the work of Edward Robinson and the Religious Experience Research Unit – and this book, Johanna Klink's Your Child and Religion, because it, like Robinson's work, took the inner lives of children with immense seriousness. This led me to some research, in the late 1970s in Shropshire schools, about children's religious thinking, and the Primary Adviser, Mary Ellison, and I wrote a small book entitled Listening to Children. The research, for those of us involved in it, was a revelation. Let me explain what we did. We asked some children to talk about God and with their permission, tape-recorded all that they said. Let me offer you a quotation:

Teacher: All right, children, try to answer the question 'What do you think God is like?'

Kenneth: I think God is someone like the air and every time you breathe in and out it comes into your body.

Gale: Oh I don't know. I think He's sort of all around the place and not inside you. God is king – the only thing I don't really understand – is – if God's supposed to be kind – you know – and protect us and all that lot – well um – what I don't understand is like Priests and Monks and Nuns and all that – well, what I don't really understand is if God wants life – why can't – well, I don't understand why – kind of they don't get married and make life – D'you understand?

Helen: Yes, well how do you know he's really – sort of existing? There's no real proof in this thing, is there?

Gale: Oh, I think there is really – Jesus.

Kenneth: Yesterday we went to look at these two donkeys and we thought that proof could be on their backs, because we looked and saw a cross on their back and Jesus rode on a donkey to Jerusalem.

Gale: Well that isn't really proof, Ken.

Kenneth: Well I suppose it isn't really because cats have different stripes on them. I suppose it could be just a pattern.

Helen: Um.

Of course, all of this was in another county and decades ago, though I would be fascinated to know whether if similar research were carried out now, what the level of discourse might be.

I had two poems which I enjoyed in those days and enjoy still:

Ross Falconer's It is impossible:

It is impossible

for anyone to enter

our small world.

The adults don't

understand us

they think

we're childish.

No one can get in

our world.

It has a wall twenty feet high

and adults

have only ten feet ladders.

and On the Birth of His Son by Su Tung-P'o

Families, when a child is born

Want it to be intelligent.

I, through intelligence,

Having wrecked my whole life,

Only hope the baby will prove

Ignorant and stupid.

Then he will crown a tranquil life

By becoming a Cabinet Minister.

- and I felt that the research had provided us with an appropriate ladder and a way of helping to construct an RE curriculum.

And here we are, thirty years later, in a Synod. What all this leads me to is this. I am delighted by much of what I see going on in our church schools. The work of Jon Reynolds, Jane Chipperton, Alick Burge and the Education Team is stunning – it is imaginative, efficient and effective. But they would be amongst the first to recognise that we still need to give real attention to helping the inner lives of children to develop. It has to happen in every generation. At the same time, Vanessa Cato, as Children's Work Adviser in Hertfordshire, is building her contacts with those who work with children in parish settings: in Sunday schools, in weekday clubs, wherever children meet.

There have been some really significant developments in parish work with children, not least amongst those who have undertaken to help children and families learn about the reception of communion before confirmation. Then there are all those clubs and events for mothers and toddlers. I was at one such club recently where over thirty or forty young mothers (and one young father), with their children, met for worship, stories and conversation. The worship was led by the gifted curate – but she would be the first to recognise the role played by grandmothers and grandfathers who provide a kind of safe and wise space for the new parents and their children. Then there are robed choirs around the diocese where, through music, children are introduced to a rich theological, spiritual and musical repertoire. And then there are the pre-school clubs and the after-school clubs around the diocese, working with imagination and care with children.

The Church of England has recently produced a booklet, entitled Children in the Midst which is an attempt in 2005 to get us, as a Church, to pay more attention to children – in our communities, in our schools, in our churches. Not surprisingly, it begins with the story of Jesus putting a child 'in the midst' and from there, works out a theology of where children should be.

I have painted a picture – and I have not put in any of the shadows. There are children who suffer abuse – and we have, as you know, very clear guidelines in the diocese about child protection policies. Please contact Diane Wearne if you need any help or advice in this area. She brings much skill and professionalism to her task.

There are other shadows: the children who witness domestic violence; children who are bullied; children who live in families of great complexity; children who have no spiritual inner home and therefore face the world perplexed and angry.

This address is a plea. It is a plea to us all to ask two simple questions at our next PCCs: 'Where are the children?' and 'How can we serve them in Christ's name and for His sake?' Please ask both of those questions – and see where it may take the thinking and the practice of your church.

I return to my picture of Miss Horwood who, by one single stroke with a yellow crayon, transformed my understanding of the world. It was not the technique which was so enchanting, it was the gentle confidence-building kindness which she brought to her task, which was the key to unlocking my perception.

The children in our communities, the children in our churches – they are and should be our compassionate and liberating concern. Please help to ensure that they, and their families, are the focus of our attention.