From the Editor

Spirituality, Alston, and AS's were among the preoccupations of the past year at Westminster. David Hargreaves investigates

One response is the intolerant one. What on earth did these people expect? Given the spiralling decline in church-attendance nationally, and in the tenets of literal religious belief, it is scarcely surprising that Westminster contains its share of doubters. Equally, one or two of the Inspectors work in schools and in parts of the country where regular church-going is a feature of social conformity, itself more obviously prized than it is here. The articulate scepticism of our pupils to such considerations may have unnerved them.

Another response is to get snappily defensive and talk about all the good and genuinely useful work many of our pupils do via Community Service or PHAB or in St Botolph's. Or one can point to the greatly reinvigorated fund-raising that has taken place this year to promote worthy causes. Many pupils are involved, and they do it extremely well.

Such retorts, however, are far too easy on ourselves. London is awash with consumerism, and we know perfectly well that our constituency is particularly affected. It is disturbing to encounter a pupil who seems satiated with luxury and ennui and to have seen and done everything by the age of sixteen. Such an individual is rare, even at Westminster (whatever the Inspectors may have thought), but he or she may be disproportionately influential.

But the huge majority of boys and girls here, just like their parents, their predecessors, and indeed their teachers, have a more diffuse value system. They may be capable of having their heads turned by a smart label, but they are also too obviously caring of each other, and too curious about the world, to be designer junkies. Moreover, in most cases from their first days, their parents have devoted huge care (and expense, no doubt) to stimulating their senses and their intellect. Such effort is never wasted. If spiritual values involve the abnegation of self and a love of truth, we should take good care to nurture the life of the mind.

Perhaps the most underrated assault on materialism in our society comes through study: it touches on most of the cardinal virtues - not least those of perseverance and humility. It opens our eyes to the wisdom of others, to the dissemination of subtle, elusive truths. Westminster, if it cares about spiritual values, ought to show missionary zeal in maintaining the most rigorous academic expectations of its pupils. We know perfectly well that two decades of curricular overhaul, for all its accompanying rhetoric, have been motivated by political opportunism and characterised by intellectual banality.

The Inspectors are quite right to speculate on what it is that drives our pupils, other than the lure of lucre. Let us hope they are sufficiently imaginative and detached to find their answer. If parents and teachers can continue to foster rigorous, liberal humanism, our pupils will have earned the enormous privilege their education afforded them. They will be great servants in the world outside Dean's Yard - writers, producers, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, teachers and the occasional virtuoso - mindful of others, compassionate, impatient of cant, and restless for truth. There, there, is the life of the spirit.