Abstract
It was back in October 1973 that I first met Trevor Cooling. We were both in the final year of studies for education degrees at the University of Cambridge and we discovered that we had a shared concern about what we perceived to be a dominant rationalism in the analytical philosophy of education that we were studying.
Professor Paul H Hirst was Head of the Department of Education and, at that time, a leading exponent of such an approach to education. A year earlier, he had published an article entitled ‘Christian Education: A Contradiction in Terms?’ (Learning for Living 11(4), 1972: 6–11), in which he argued that the pursuit of a Christian approach to education was fundamentally mistaken. Both Trevor and I thought that this was a mistaken thesis, and we decided to convene a ‘Christianity and Education’ Study Group, which met regularly through the year to discuss these ideas.
Towards the end of the year, Trevor and I co-authored a short article under the title ‘Education: The practice of the absence of God’, which was published the following year in Spectrum, a predecessor of this journal (Spectrum 7(3), 1975: 24–25). For each of us, although we did not know it at the time, this was to be the beginning of decades of work in reflecting upon and promoting a Christian approach to education. In much of this, it has been my privilege to work closely with Trevor.
After graduating, we went our separate ways – Trevor to teach Biology in Banbury School and I to teach Mathematics at Aylesbury Grammar School. Trevor met and married Margaret, a teaching colleague in Banbury, and after 2 years, they went together to study for theology qualifications at London Bible College (now London School of Theology). Towards the end of their studies there, to my surprise and pleasure, Trevor turned up in Aylesbury to be interviewed for a vacancy for a teacher of RE (Religious Education). The interviewing panel recognized that he was both a scholar and an outstanding teacher, and that marked the start of a period of 7 years during which he not only made a huge contribution to the life of the school but also studied for an MA degree in RE. Margaret was also a part-time teacher at the school.
Trevor and Margaret moved to Stapleford, Nottinghamshire in 1985, when he took up a new post as Director of an Education Centre run by the Association of Christian Teachers. In the following 18 years, as well as working for a PhD and developing the Centre’s programme of weekend courses for Christian teachers, Trevor was responsible for a number of ground-breaking initiatives. These included the ‘Concept Cracking’ approach to RE, a distance-learning MA course for Christian teachers validated by the University of Nottingham, and the Stapleford Project, a curriculum development project for teaching Christianity in schools. His PhD thesis was published as A Christian Vision for State Education (SPCK, 1994). He also led the process of setting up the Stapleford Centre as an independent charity and a move in 1997 to new premises in Stapleford. For 9 happy years of this time, I was also on the staff of the Stapleford Centre, working closely with Trevor and being continually amazed at his strategic thinking, energy and drive.
In 2003, Trevor and Margaret left Stapleford to move to Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. In the 6 or 7 years that followed, Trevor worked first as a Principal Lecturer in the University of Gloucestershire, then as Secondary Schools Adviser for the Anglican Diocese of Gloucester, and from 2006 as leader of the ‘Transforming Lives’ Project. This was a trust-funded project based at the Stapleford Centre which broke new ground in promoting teaching as a Christian vocation and encouraging young Christians to see it as such rather than merely as a job or a career.
In 2010, the one-time Cambridge student who was so sure that talk of ‘Christian Education’ was not a contradiction in terms became Director of the National Institute for Christian Education Research at Canterbury Christ Church University, and subsequently Professor of Christian Education, supervising Masters and Doctoral students in Christian Education. Under Trevor’s leadership, a major focus of the work of NICER has been on the impact of Christian ethos on teaching and learning in schools that are sponsored by Christian organizations and are part of government education provision in Britain. NICER and the Centre for Christian Education at Liverpool Hope University have worked together in sponsoring international conferences for Christian educators.
In 2010, the Theos think tank published a book by Trevor entitled ‘Doing God in Education’ (Theos, 2010). (Remember the title of that first short article back in 1975, ‘Education: The practice of the absence of God’?!) The central argument of the book was that God belongs in the classroom not simply because it is a right that comes with living in a liberal society, but because the Christian contribution to education is positive and constructive, contributing powerfully to the common good. The book attracted enormous interest and became the subject of both a lively live-streamed debate at the Royal Society of Arts and of a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education (38(5), 2012).
By this time, Trevor and David Smith (senior editor of this journal and a former Stapleford Centre colleague), working with Christian educators from several countries, had set up the ‘What If Learning’ website (www.whatiflearning.com). This was yet another project that broke fresh ground in that it developed a new set of strategies for connecting Christian faith and teaching across various ages and subjects.
By 2010, Trevor had also become a regular visitor to Australia, where he has worked with Anglican and other schools in the development of their distinctively Christian character. In addition to serving as deputy editor of this journal, he is also on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Religious Education. He has a long-standing involvement in the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values, and has served as its Deputy General Secretary. He is also Chair of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales.
Trevor has made a massive contribution to Christian education in the UK and around the world. His work has been focused on the development of a distinctively Christian approach to teaching and learning and on the place of distinctively Christian education in religiously diverse contexts. His grasp of the complexities of education policy debates and his giftedness as a strategic thinker have meant that his speaking and writing have gained respect for a Christian approach to education on the part of educators whose worldviews are very different from his.
In Colossians, Paul urges his readers: ‘Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don’t miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out’ (Col 4:5–6, The Message). Ever clear, ever gracious, ever constructive, Trevor exemplifies all that Paul asked for.
Readers of this journal and its editorial team will miss Trevor’s contribution, but I doubt that he and Margaret will retire into a life of caravan holidays or sea cruises. There will surely be more writings and conference presentations, and I wonder if he can go for long without taking on a new project. I am grateful to God for his friendship through nearly five decades and all his Holy Spirit-inspired ministry in the cause of Christian teaching and learning.