I don’t pay taxes to brain wash children
by Scoop Shachtman, 8 September 2007
The government continues to go in completely the wrong direction with education. With evidence that faith schools increase segregation, they concoct a half-baked plan to extend faith schools to integrate people. My own view is that faith schools should be disbanded. Since many parents choose these schools on the basis that they have better results - rather than the issue of faith - then I would rather we created secular versions with their best qualities, rather faith schools based on magical beliefs.
Barring that, then there should be a block on further faith schools. Equality of access be damned - social cohesion is more important. Religious segregation isn’t good for everybody either.
Monday 10 September 2007 at 0:52
Yah, fine. But why should I be forced to send my child to a secular school, eh?
And if faith schools are so segregated, how come Catholic schools have a higher proportion of African Caribbean pupils than their non-denominational counterparts?
If its religious segregation you’re worried about, why not just increase the supply of faith schools so that they can take an increased proportion of children from other faiths and none?
Monday 10 September 2007 at 8:41
If its religious segregation you’re worried about, why not just increase the supply of faith schools so that they can take an increased proportion of children from other faiths and none?
Because this would not serve the others and nones, and would not prevent the faiths from delivering the underlying message that they are superior, in charge, and have the power to separate.
In fact it would reinforce it. My eldest went to a CofE school with others & nones added and where “Christians v.s Muslims” football was played at break time. That really brought people together.
Next: how to cure childhood obesity by force-feeding thin kids Mars Bars.
Monday 10 September 2007 at 9:41
You’re not forced to send your child to a secular school. If you wished, you could pay for him/her to go to a faith school. The question I’ve yet to receive a convincing answer to is why the rest of us should be forced to pay for this, which is the position we find ourselves in now.
Scoop - I agree and also am a little sceptical of this idea that faith schools get better results. Schools with a more prosperous catchment get better results and, surpise, surprise, C of E schools have a higher than average share of pupils from more prosperous backgrounds. So much for the church’s mission towards the poor.
Tuesday 11 September 2007 at 13:15
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2007/09/ghettoes_of_superstition.html
“So the schools secretary, Ed Balls, and faith group leaders have formed a partnership endorsing faith schools as a force to improve social cohesion in England. This gasp-inducing statement is on a par with “let us build and run more nuclear power stations Chernobyl fashion - oh, and let’s put them in city centres”. In the face of the failure of multiculturalism, with the awful example of faith-divided schooling in Northern Ireland over decades, with news of Deobandi control of half of British mosques where hostility to the host community is preached, the government is choosing to continue to fly in the face of all reason and experience, and to design and pay for - with our tax money - greater future divisiveness and trouble. It is staggering.
On the news we hear: “At a conference in London, Mr Balls presented a joint policy statement with Church of England, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Greek Orthodox and Sikh representatives.” That is, representatives of an active constituency of weekly worshippers of 8% of the British population, all of them votaries of ancient superstitions, all of them with grubby hands rummaging in the pot of public funds, and some of them doing it with the useful background threat of violence and civil unrest unless the rummaging pays off. The spectacle is appalling.
The question is not solely one of public policy, or the fact that the government’s otherwise admirable desire for social cohesion is going to be negated, not enhanced, by paying to keep children apart from one another in competing ghettoes of superstition. There is the point also that if parents wish to bring up their children in their own traditional superstitions, they should do it on their own time and at their own expense. The secular majority in this country should bitterly oppose the use of their tax money for this misconceived policy. Religion, the bane of the modern world in so many respects, has got to be relegated to the private sphere and kept there. And religious worship (not of course historical and sociological comparative study of the subject) should be removed from publicly funded schooling, as being divisive there too - among many other deficits.
This argument has in fact been won, and won repeatedly. Those pressing for more faith-based schooling use a variety of contradictory claims to support their case, from standards (the contradiction here is the ever-improving, ever-mounting GCSE and A-level results across the education sector) to the grail of social cohesion. It is this latter where absurdity most appears. “We desire all British people to live together in peace, harmony and mutual understanding, so let us divide our children into a multiplicity of schooling apartheids where they can be taught that all the other children in their separate ghettoes worship false gods.” Good thinking, Mr Ed Balls. Let us, in your honour, officially baptise the policy “A Continuing Balls-Up”.”
Friday 14 September 2007 at 21:39
Increasing the supply of faith schools would not imply any reduction in provision for those who want a non-religious education for their children. The key thing here is choice. Parents should be able to choose the kind of education they want for their children, religious, non religious, single sex or mixed.
If faith schools were forced to go private, those who can’t afford private school fees would necessarily be forced to send their children to a secular school. Why should they be forced to do so?
Saturday 15 September 2007 at 0:31
“Parents should be able to choose the kind of education they want for their children”
No they shouldn’t.
Fuck off you Falangist bitch.
Saturday 15 September 2007 at 11:57
Ha ha. That’s quite funny, Will.
Why shouldn’t parents be able to make choices about their children’s education? And if they don’t have any rights over their children, what or who does? Only the state?
Saturday 15 September 2007 at 12:53
I don’t do debates with stupid catholic fundamentalist cranks (especially on terms set by them).
I have not said that parents should not be able to make choices about their children’s education. I have not said they don’t have any rights over their children.
Again — fuck off.
More comments from you will be deleted.