This study investigates the principles and arguments of JH Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Newman argued that the mind receives impressions of revealed truth, which form a real and permanent inward knowledge that may be recognised implicitly or explicitly by those who possess it. This recognition is considered by Newman to be an insight into the act of assent to religious belief before it can be understood and explained. According to Newman's epistemology as articulated in the Grammar (in the principles of perception, apprehension, assent and inference, first principles, conscience, certitude and the illative sense) the human person can believe without understanding and proof. This is the hypothesis that is the driving force of this study that uses bracketing to isolate Key Stage Three (11-14 years) pupil insights in accord with qualitative research methods. The pupils of a Catholic Comprehensive in the Greater London area in this study discovered and experimented with age-old and contemporary conventions within the domain of the Philosophy of Religion in response to problem-solving tasks set on the doctrine of the Trinity. This teaching and learning took place long before a secular educational paradigm driven by stage theory would consider feasible. The perception of doctrine as provocative educational materials that the Catholic Church enforces through the processes of indoctrination is not verified in this study. The cognitive challenges of doctrine were found to be no more or less than the cognitive capacities of students. Teaching methodology needs to take a strong account of the teacher as expert as well as the teacher as facilitator oflearning. Newman's epistemology reveals the human person as a believing person demonstrating the inherent capacity to believe is critical to an understanding of how pupils learn in religious and non-religious matters.

This thesis engages in a critical examination of parents' rights in religious upbringing and religious education within a liberal perspective. One of the central features of a 'liberal perspective' is taken here to be a commitment to the importance of valuing and developing the autonomy of the child. This commitment has important implications for the defensibility of both religious upbringing and religious education, and for the scope of parental rights that can be exercised in relation to them. In the first three chapters it is argued that, given this perspective, parents have a right to give their children a certain kind of religious upbringing; one where their children are brought up to have an initial determinate religious commitment, but one which is both open to, and compatible with, the child's eventual achievement of autonomy. This view is defended against a range of objections and the character of such an upbringing is explored in some detail. In the next four chapters it is argued that, following on from this claim about religious upbringing, a broadly similar claim can be made about religious education and schooling. Parents are seen as having the right to give their children a distinctive kind of liberal education, including a form of religious schooling, which seeks the development of their child's autonomy from a particular starting point. The argument proceeds from an analysis of parents' rights in general concerning education, through a critical exploration of the notion of liberal education, to an outline of the concept of the `liberal religious school' and an analysis of the difficulties to which it gives rise. The thesis concludes with an exploration of further considerations which support the view that a plurality of forms of liberal education, including education in religion, should be acknowledged, in relation to which parental rights can legitimately be claimed and exercised.