A matter of faith

Tony Kenny

This is an idiotic article by someone who has no sympathy for intelligent parents of limited means trying to provide the best education for their children. Where on earth is there any hypocrisy in this?

Andy

"These pushy parents are effectively saying that ‘doing the best for your kids’ is more important than questions of religious truth, and personal integrity"

You bet they are. I was lucky enough not to have to pretend to be a believer in order to get the best education for my kids, the local primary is non-faith and perfectly good, but I hold no grudge against parents who do play the system.

If you are a non-believer then 'religious truth' is a quirky bunch of mythology. Pretending to believe is an inconvenience, especially given the alternative (putting your kids in a poor school). It is really a no-brainer. The notion that this makes them bad parents is laughable.

My, don't our genes do compel us to do all sorts of crazy things to ensure their ongoing survival...

Oh, and delighted to not be your friend.

Hereford

"keep creationism off the syllabus."

Why is everyone obsessed with this issue. Why should educational establishments be keeping anything off the syllabus.

I am not a creationist, but I would hate to see discussion and debate on this view and it's alternatives.

Keeping things off the syllabus is the sort of thing that totalitarian right and left wing systems do.

However, I would still ban all faith schools. The teaching of a single faith has no place in education. If anything is guaranteed to "Keep things out of the syllabus," its Faith based education.

Verity

One more nail in the coffin of our supine civil society - too lazy or too embarrassed to resist the Left SS Thought Fascism behind this latest assault.

To Rabbi whatever and his Christian cohorts, if you believe in God, you believe he put people here for different purposes, and in different conditions, for their own souls. It is not up to dickheads like you to take it upon yourselves to even things out to create a socialist paradise here on Earth.

Bugger out.

I'm not Christian or Jewish.)

Marcus Cotswell

Luckily I doubt anyone would want to be your friend on that basis.

Atheists are rather likely to believe that doing the best for their kids is more important than religion. If they can get their kids into a better school just by going to church occasionally, I'd say the system's designed for abuse.

There's no question of an atheist sacrificing his or her personal integrity by going to church: it's just another building. And prayers and hymns are just meaningless mantras.

Oh, I'm genuinely sorry, by the way, if you find that insulting. But I find it insulting that my money is taken from me by the State and given to faith schools. So we're even.

Let's make a deal - no State funding for faith schools, and I'll join you in trying to stop people going to church.

William Norton

Wouldn't an even more constructive and intelligent contribution be to enquire why faith schools are better than the others? And then try to apply that reason to the other schools?

This article simply highlights some of the things which are fundamentally wrong about modern Britain: (a) education isn't considered on its own merits but as part of a wider argument, usually about class but increasingly about religion; (b) if someone is more successful than the others then it's a "problem" for the successful, and they've got to solve it by changing themselves.

Yes, of course people pretending to a religious faith in order to give their children a better education is rank hypocrisy. But that's rather a matter between them and the school, isn't it?

If Mr Hobson wants to legislate to abolish hypocrisy, then good luck to him. I wonder if he'd turn away people who only turn up to a church at Christmas and Easter. Someone once said something or other about sin and throwing stones. I'm not sure where He went to school.

James

The bottom line for Accord's ideas is that there should be more church schools taking more pupils. If, as they say, church schools should be open to all and demand exceeds supply, then supply must be increased.

If, like me, you find the idea of church schools basically agreeable, I think we should support any initiative that is likely to result in more of them.

http://www.bede.org.uk

GKC

"...the usual atheist suspects, who think that anything religious is intrinsically demonic."

No, they don't think it 'demonic', simply irrational and silly - which it is.

Forlornehope

Perhaps a bigger issue is control of the educational agenda. Should the state or any single ideology have a monopoly?

Personally I think that creationism and intelligent design are nonsense but I'd rather not handover to the state the right to decide what is and is not acceptable.

dennis

There’s something pretty offensive about ardent atheists changing their tune once little Charlie and Lola turn three. And don’t tell me this is a media myth – I have plenty of ex-friends who have done this.

One of the hardest myths to shake off is one that grips so many media people: that their friends (or ‘ex-friends’) are in any way representative of the people of Britain in general.

Ask yourself, Theo, how many of your ex-friends who behaved in this way earn less than 40 grand a year?

None? Thought not.

So your anecdotal evidence is confined to 10 per cent of earners then.

Not very representative of anything. Certainly not of faith schools outside London SW, W or NW postal codes.

If you got out a bit more you’ll find that most faith schools around the country recruit from a pretty genuine community of churchgoing believers. And by the way, ‘when Charlie and Lola turn three’ probably won’t hack it – schools are looking for baptismal certificates issued between six and eighteen months these days.

This Accord rubbish is simply re-cycled Polly Toynbee.

Wrong in every particular.

Andy

Hereford: because when Creationism is advocated as a subject, it is not proposed that it be put up for debate alongside Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden in Mythology class, but that it be taught as an alternative to Evolution.

If you have any understanding of evidence based science like I do then you should take issue with that.

Hereford

Andy, agreed.

But you can't actually prove to a 7 year old child that evolution is the truth any more than a creationist can prove that their view is the truth.

Even you, with your background in evidence based science are taking a huge amount of evidence, which you cannot have hoped to assimlate all of, on face value.

So why should your truth be taught and not others?

Perhaps the answer is to remove all philosophy from the education syllabus and only stick to reading writing and arithmatic. After all 2 plus 2 is always 4... ...isn't it?

:o)

Andy

Hereford: bizarre reasoning. Read The God Delusion.

dennis

Marcus Cotswell

I find it insulting that my money is taken from me by the State and given to faith schools.

What on Earth makes you think YOU are subsidising faith schools?

Jews, who are more than proportionately represented among higher-earning professions, pay quite enough tax themselves to pay for Jewish schools.

Church-going Catholics too are more likely than the general population to be middle-class and those that are not are more likely to be in work. In any case, Catholic parishes stump up 10 per cent of the capital costs of their schools.

Nor is there any evidence that religiously observant members of the Church of England pay less than their fair share of taxes.

If anything, faith communities are subsidising secular schools.

C Powell

The Guardian recently had a similarly rubbish column by Pol T saying that faith schools were the worst thing that Blair had ever done - and this is what I posted in reply, which works just as well for this pathetic column.

Easy to find good and popular schools in NuLab Britain: just look for the ones which the Left is trying to close or change - private schools, grammar schools, faith schools etc. Only a few of the commentators here have got the point: the reason these schools are popular is because they are - or are perceived by parents as being - better than secular state schools. So improve those. But, no, the Left is only good at destroying not creating. After 11 years, NuLab still thinks that tinkering with structures, admissions policies, imposing targets, changing them every 5 minutes, demoralising teachers, fiddling with grades, removing teachers' ability to deal with undisciplined pupils etc etc is the way to make schools better. And then they wonder why it is that parents will do practically anything to get their children into a decent school. And instead of realising that the reason is their failure to provide a decent education in the schools they control, they malevolently decide to attack the good schools, the parents who care about their childrens' education (by accusing them of being "middle class" - the horror of it!), by ordering universities to penalise those students who went to decent schools or who had the temerity to be born to parents who were also university-educated. The one thing they won't do is admit their own responsibility for the mess our education system is in nor will they do anything to deal with the particular faith schools which really do promote dangerous ideas and segregation - because that might involve losing what few votes they have left from NuLab's current pet religious/ethnic minority. And as for Pol, why should we pay any attention to what she thinks of state education? She chose private schools for her children? Why was that Pol? Do tell. Nothing wrong with wanting the best for your family. Surely you're not ashamed of that?

Depressing to think that we're getting the same sort of rubbish in the Spectator.

And William Norton: I couldn't agree more with what you say in your 2nd para. Education is good in itself, it is not there to be used by politicians to achieve some other end; elitism is good, high standards are good and high expectations of every child are good.

GKC: religion may be irrational and silly but given the horrors perpetrated by atheists over the last 100 years, they're hardly in a position to throw stones.

Verity

Dennis - well said, that man!

Tiberius

"The God Delusion" is a book written by a man desperately trying in vain to prove something to himself.

David Bouvier

My objection to state funding of church schools is that my daughter is excluded from 1/3 of the state schools in the country unless I acquiesce to their spiritual authority. You would think the reformation never happened.

It would be crude to break up schools that satisfy parents, but the corollary of taking state funds should be open access. Otherwise the existence of religiously-discriminating schools limits our choices - since those places are deemed part of the local supply.

There are three reasonably fair options -
(a) ending state funding, or
(b) freedom of entry for new schools seeking state-funding; or
(c) open access for all to the schools that accept state funds.

Anything else is just an "I'm all right Jack" stance that seems unworthy of those who genuinely believe their professions of Christian faith.

Tom

"But you can't actually prove to a 7 year old child that evolution is the truth any more than a creationist can prove that their view is the truth." No you can't prove it - it's a scientific theory. But you could fairly easily demonstrate how the theiry is supported by evidence and can be tested in a scientifically valid manner. You can't do that with God because there's no testable evidence that God exists.

"

Ian C

Hereford, your point about proving things to 7 year olds is the main one. If 7 year olds are taught about many lines of thought they are more likely to be curious when they do start learning about the application of proof. Thus, anything that stimulates that consciousness is good and religion should not be excluded.

The point is religions and their traditions should be taught in all schools so that awareness of what they are and mean is part of the broad enlightened 'liberal education' that all receive. Some might even go on to study them usefully at higher levels - as they tend to at faith based schools.

That would dismay our so called 'liberal' bretheren!

David Lindsay

We all know that the real objection to "faith schools" is that Catholic ones have been so good at, according to the old Christian Brothers' maxim, "taking the sons of dockers and turning them into doctors".

The professions, and thus the places where professional people live, now contain any number of people originally from Scotland, the North, the Midlands and the less salubrious parts of the South, with working-class grandparents or even parents, and with Irish great-grandparents.

Where will it all end?

C Powell

David Bouvier: you're assuming that the state has always been educating and that churches have piggy-backed on that. On the contrary: it has been churches which have been educating for a very long time, long before the state got involved. The continuation of CoE and Catholic schools was the price which had to be paid for the state's post-war nationalisation of existing schools. It was also a sensible recognition of the fact that the churches have always taken education very seriously and have been good at it. The state by contrast has been rather bad at it and lately gives the impression that it doesn't even understand what education is.

There would not be a problem for your daughter if the non-faith state schools were any good. That is what you should be addressing. There is no reason why those schools should not be excellent, as they are in other countries. But nothing will be done to improve such schools until people stop assuming that somehow there is a limited suppy of "quality/good education" in the state sector and therefore if grammar/faith schools have more of it everyone else has less. This principle is voodoo when applied to economics and just as voodoo when applied to schools. The problem is that the schools which the state runs are not as good as they should be. Maybe the answer is that the state shouldn't be running them. Just a thought.

dennis

My objection to state funding of church schools is that my daughter is excluded from 1/3 of the state schools in the country unless I acquiesce to their spiritual authority.

Chances are she is for all practical purposes excluded from two schools in your area (one Catholic, one CofE).

Since you clearly would prefer that she went to a secular school, I can’t see that this ‘exclusion’ disadvantages you or your daughter in any way. You presumably have a number of secular schools to choose from?

In any case it is not ‘State’ funding. The money is taken from the parents of those who attend these schools and from their fellow churchgoers in taxes and passed on to the schools. The State is simply the middle-man.

The problem with your ‘open access’ theory is that you assume that Faith schools would remain as academically (and otherwise) good as they are if they were no longer Faith schools.

Of course they wouldn’t.

Teachers, especially headteachers, matter – at the margin. But what really makes one school better than another is the qualities of its pupils.

If you took out the respectful, well-behaved, churchgoing boys and girls out of your local faith school and decanted into it drug-dealing, foulmouthed, knife-wielding yobs from the great unchurched, then the former faith school would soon be ‘failing’ too.

robertson

Parents go for faith schools because in general classroom discipline is better.

Allan Hayes

Theo,
You support Accord (www.accordcoalition.org.uk/) in its demand for an end to selection of pupils on the basis of parental religious allegiance. But you are prepared to have employees' careers depend on religious acceptability, to have pupils influenced by teachers and religious teaching that are required to support the school's religion. Besides being unacceptable to employees this would play right into the Church of England's strategy spelled out in the 2001 report 'The Way Ahead' (http://tinyurl.com/2o7s9u) to promote itself by using its schools to get at children who are no longer being brought to church. This is surely not acceptable, and it would inevitably lead to self segregation, division and, Theo, hypocrisy.
But there is a deeper reason to be concerned than simply to avoid segregation. If we are to live well together in a plural society then it is imperative that our schools promote an ethos that all can share, one that rests on our common humanity, and this is being smothered by present policy on faith schools and on religious education. This is a programme that we can all contribute to.

Verity

Allan Hayes writes: "If we are to live well together in a plural society then it is imperative that our schools promote an ethos that all can share, one that rests on our common humanity, and this is being smothered by present policy on faith schools and on religious education."

Ah, that precious Marxist levelling out! The sweet smell of uniformity and obedience to the state and its ideals. Who needs individual faith when you have the state to tell you what to believe and how to behave?

How does individuality of beliefs and how does religion militate against this precious "common humanity"? And a "plural society", whatever the hell that is? Isn't that a pleonasm?

"This is a programme that we can all contribute to."

No thanks. I'll decide what, if any, programmes I contribute to without your snippy interference.

The Laughing Cavalier

Accord is no more than the usual suspects with the addition of a few quislings.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

If the government stopped micromanaging schools via LEAs and introduced a true voucher system, not the faux edition the Tories are proposing, then this issue would melt away. As long as schools did not mistreat children, did obey company law and constantly improved their reading and mathematics abilities to a regulation standard, then it should be up to the heads and teachers to form, open and run schools and the parents to decide which ones their children attend.

Existing schools can choose to stay administered by the LEA - so losing a big slice of their funding to them - or not.

The Laughing Cavalier

Instead of trying to destroy successful schools the government should find out what exactly it is that differentiates faith and private schools from the failing morass of the rest and emulate it. It's not rocket science, just far too sensible for a government driven by dogma and marxist doggerel. As Accord people, The Catholic Herald is spot on when it asks us to imagine a North London dining room with them around the table. The Dinner Party from Hell.

Allan Hayes

Contrary to Verity, I see an ethos built on common humanity as necessary for us, religious and otherwise, to live together benefiting from our diversity. I see no problem in religions contributing to this