Canterbury Cathedral
Kent
In a handsome new building in the close, a small but dedicated education staff, assisted by around 35 children’s guides and 15 adult guides, operate an outstandingly imaginative education programme. While they do not aim to convert visitors to Christianity, they make it clear that this is a place of worship and belief. The possibilities they offer for schools are exceptionally varied.
Activities for adult visitors include around three guided tours a day given by guides whose training is taken extremely seriously through a Good Guide Course. The education centre houses an International Study Centre for adults, which offers courses in theology and related subjects.
Activities for children include specific events for church schools and confirmation groups but these are only one of many activities on offer. Before a visit by a school, the teacher is asked what the particular focus for the class is to be. The options on offer include:
· religious education: the idea of the pilgrimage (internal as well as physical), Christian symbolism and furnishings
· for primary schools, the life of Thomas Becket
· for secondary schools, the conflict between Church and State as exemplified in the conflict between Henry II and Becket
· architecture and the construction of the cathedral
· Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales (some staff can speak as Chaucer’s contemporaries would have done)
· for primary schools, a Costume Trail through the precincts, to study what it meant to be a monk.
Schools including children of various faiths come: one particular London school which includes many Sikh, Muslim and Hindu children makes regular visits, stimulating vigorous discussion of the similarities with and differences from those faiths and Christianity.
Major events within the cathedral are arranged on a regular basis. These include the annual performance of a play on the life and death of Thomas Becket, with each scene performed by a different school. This is organised within the framework of drama teaching.
The Visits Department of the Cathedral is unusually active in working with French schools, offering an introductory film, a teachers’ leaflet and an audio tour in French, creating references with the French curriculum (making comparison with medieval towns in France), and establishing connections with schools in the Pas de Calais (which has links with Canterbury City Council), some of whose teachers visit year after year.
While the budget is tiny, the creativity is huge. GW
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