This aversion to moral education is embedded in most of Britain's teacher-training courses. At the beginning of my Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), a lecturer was asked about behaviour in the classroom. He responded with the astounding claim, "I am a sociologist. I don't judge misbehaviour, I understand it." Our initial reading lists stuck to the prophets of "progressive" education, such as the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky died in 1934 and is mostly forgotten by the rest of the world, but his spectre still haunts university education departments. In his 1926 work Educational Psychology he wrote: "From the standpoint of social psychology, ethics must be looked upon as a certain form of social behaviour that was established and evolved in the interests of the ruling class, and is different for different classes." To this day, many middle-class teachers are constrained by the guilt complex of vulgar Marxism. They are uncomfortable with compounding the oppression of the masses by expecting pupils to uphold the moral norms of "bourgeois society". 

Even so, schools today are not completely indifferent to their responsibility for shaping the character of their pupils. Both the current government and the previous government have leant heavily on schools as means of embedding what are, in the neutered moral vocabulary of today, known as "social and emotional skills". However, having discarded the tools of traditional education, schools suffer from a profound confusion about how this can be achieved. Still uncomfortable with the idea that children should be nurtured through the moral authority of adults, schools attempt to build pupil character in an atmosphere of moral relativism. This style of moral education has become known as "value clarification". As writers such as Gertrude Himmelfarb and Allan Bloom have explained, the 20th-century shift from speaking of "virtues" to speaking of "values" demonstrates a wider change in Western thought from normative morality to moral relativism. Whereas virtues are collectively recognised by society and necessary for the common good, values are contingent, personal and dependent on the ethical conclusions reached by individuals. 

As so often happens in education, "value clarification" has been reduced to the glib maxim, "teach, don't preach". According to this doctrine, schools should not expect pupils to uphold society's accepted virtues, but instead should impart the information and experience that allow them rationally to develop their own values. So it is thought, if pupils are sufficiently well informed about issues such as drugs, sexual relationships, or the need to work hard, they will be "empowered" to make the "right decisions" in life. This principle is mostly applied through a subject called Personal, Social and Health Education, or PSHE, an acronym that strikes fear into the heart of teachers across the country. Introduced as a compulsory subject for state schools in 2000, PSHE is the means by which New Labour believed that schools could help young people "enjoy healthy, safe, responsible and fulfilled lives". 

I had the misfortune of having to teach PSHE in my first year, and it was hell. I have yet to find a teacher, or pupil, who does not consider it the low point of their week. I remember with horror the first     PSHE lesson I ever taught, which descended into total pandemonium. Inexperienced and idealistic, I decided that I would go for an informal vibe. "No seating plan," I chirped as the year ten pupils        filtered into the room. Once the class was seated, I perched on the edge of my desk ready to orchestrate a freewheeling discussion about that day's topic, "Personal Values". The class had me for breakfast: milkshake was spilt over a desk, pupils were listening to their MP3s, and one girl was attacking another with her umbrella. It was one of the longest hours of my life. On reflection, I am now amused by the irony of attempting to persuade my class to reflect on their "Personal Values", at a time when such "values", or indeed a moral framework of any kind, were so clearly in short supply.