Opinion: The issue is not faith schools but freedom of conscience
Written by Joe Otten on 10th March 2008 – 7:45 amThere has been a lot of comment on Lib Dem blogs lately attacking the faith school system and religion in education. I want to use this opinion piece to offer a different and more liberal perspective on secularism. Secularism to me means that the state has no business deciding on matters of religious truth, and no business telling parents what faith, if any, they ought to bring their children up in.
While I am no believer myself, what matters to me in politics is whether somebody shares tolerant liberal values, whether they are in favour of a critical and questioning approach to problems or simple obedience to authority. It may seem too obvious to be worth saying, but there are religious people and atheists on both sides of that question.
So I would like to see us adopting a policy towards religion in education that has three characteristics:
1. The state does not decide for parents how they should raise their children.
2. We should not attack schools that are well run and have good results. It is my view that in the case of successful faith schools, this is largely due to selection. But then why should a selective faith school be treated differently to a selective community school? And is it not safe to assume that faith schools take a uniformly less broad and less tolerant view of faith than non-faith schools.
3. There should be choice within schools. We have to admit that for all the talk and good will in the world, there is very little choice of school for many people. It should therefore not be assumed that a choice of school represents an endorsement of a school’s faith identity (or lack thereof).
Faith is not just an issue for faith schools. Community schools are also required, in nearly all cases, to assume that their pupils are broadly Christian and are not permitted – in the rules for seeking a “determination” from the SACRE – to canvass for the actual religious views of children or parents.
Let me repeat that.
Schools are not permitted to find out what faith allegiances parents and children actually have. This is illiberalism of the absurdest degree. So rather than focussing – as the faith schools debate usually does – on who runs schools, I wish to focus on the rights of parents and pupils to equality within the system whether they are Christian or not.
I propose:
1. That all schools should respect the faith identities of all children who happen to attend. Parents/children will be asked what they believe in and be put under no pressure to pick one option over another.
2. That there should be parallel provision for all such faith identities represented by a reasonable number of pupils, with philosophy and ethics for non-believers.
3. Initially parents make the choice of identity for their children, but as children grow older, they should progressively gain freedom to make their own choices.
4. Parents and children have the right to change their faith identity.
5 (a), (ideally), faith identity shall not be a permitted criterion for selection, or (b), (compromise) where faith identity is a criterion for selection a pupil/parent declaration shall be considered entirely sufficient. (This deals with the clerical gatekeeper problem.)
Such a policy dismantles what is most objectionable about faith-based education while preserving – and in fact increasing – parental choice, and increasing the opportunity for parents to find an education for their children consistent with their own values.
This policy would maximise the cultural diversity within schools, which is far more effective than the sop of links between schools.
In addition to specific provision for each faith identity, some strictly neutral RE and philosophy should be taught to all pupils to promote understanding. I’m not saying how much of either there should be, this would be a matter for the governors.
I don’t address the question of governance, so in principle faith schools, community schools, academies and so on are equally untouched by this proposal; but at the same time equally bound to respect our human right to freedom of religious conscience. Nothing short of this will end the scandal that allows the freedom of (ir)religious conscience to be impinged upon by where you happen to live.
Simply put, this debate should move beyond these illiberal arguments over what kind of religious education other people’s children should get. Rather, whatever schools we are lumped with, our right and freedom to settle our own questions of faith should be paramount.
I do think this proposal will upset a little people who do want to exercise religious authority over other people’s children. But it will leave them naked of the defences that they are meeting a demand (this meets even more demands) or that their schools are better run – you can still run them, just respect our rights. If anybody claims they could not run a faith school under these terms, I would like to hear, in some detail what the problems are supposed to be. How can you offer 25% of places to non-believers and treat them with respect, if you can’t do this?
The kind of secularism I subscribe to is not about attacking people of faith, but about ensuring that the state, and therefore schools, do not act like an authority on questions of religion. When a state does act like a religious authority, it denies the rights of believers and non-believers alike.
This policy will offend authoritarians who wish to impose religion on others – many of whom, I suspect, are conservative atheists themselves. But, I hope and believe that it can unite liberals with and without faith. Arguing the toss over whether God exists does our party no good at all, and is on the path to (a)theocracy. Arguing for the state to butt out of this one is the only way forward.
* Joe Otten is a Lib Dem member in Sheffield, and blogs here.
Posted in Op-eds 190 Comments »
10th March 2008 at 8:27 am
“But it will leave them naked of the defences that they are meeting a demand (this meets even more demands) or that their schools are better run – you can still run them, just respect our rights”. Hmm.
Many church schools are massively oversubscribed, and would be more so if any declaration of faith were permitted. I think many churchgoing parents would be upset were their kids not to get to go to the church school because someone was prepared to lie to get in, and then better met the next criteria (distance, lottery, whatever) than they did.
Indeed, in that case there would be an unmet demand – which, as you say, is a legitimate demand. Obviously if the church is free to found more schools at will, on the Dutch model, then the objection will not be valid. But are liberal secularists and secular liberals prepared to see that happen?
10th March 2008 at 8:51 am
I find it hard to actually engage in a debate about this, because it isn’t possible to take religious belief seriously.
10th March 2008 at 8:58 am
I agree with the broad thrust of Joe’s argument, the state must not interfere with freedom of conscience.
Ultimately this whole question will not be solved until we sort out the whole education system though. I believe the only way to make a start at that is to expand choice for parents to send their children to any school they like. That might include strict religious schools as well as the more open church schools and secular schools. If that is what parents want for their children then who are we to stop them?
10th March 2008 at 9:14 am
Tristan Mills, in extreme cases children need to be protected against their parents, as they’re in no position to defend themselves. We know by now what happens when parents and teachers have unlimited power and children’s rights are not taken seriously, don’t we?
I don’t know where that line should be drawn, but certainly ignorant, uncaring or sadistic parents shouldn’t be given a free rein.
10th March 2008 at 9:22 am
“1. The state does not decide for parents how they should raise their children.”
In many other spheres of childcare the state *does* decide how parents raise their children (usually only indicating the extremes that are not acceptable).
The way I read your proposal is that parents should be able to choose which religious subjects their children are taught in all schools and that this would increase “parental choice, and . . . the opportunity for parents to find an education for their children consistent with their own values”.
Surely this is just another argument about what religious education “other people’s children” should get. Ie you are advocating that schools act as the agent of the parent who doesn’t want their child to learn about other religions or, indeed, that it’s acceptable to have no religion at all (and are you really suggesting that philosophy and ethics are the non-believer’s equivalent of religion? I think many of religious people would be offended by such an assertion!).
Surely, the state through schools should never be used to promote one religion above another, even if parents get a choice on a child-by-child basis about which religion they want pushed onto their child? I’d like to see a religious curriculum that looks at all the major UK religions/lack of religion from an objective point of view, broadening people’s horizons, emphasizing what they have in common/where they differ.
This would support children making their own decisions about religion in later life – which, as a liberal, is paramount.
If parents want anything additional to this, they are free to organise their own out-of-school teaching.
10th March 2008 at 10:31 am
Tim@1,
So much for trying to ignore governance.
What I would say to you is that any parents group, dissatisfied with local provision should be entitled to set up a new school. Groups of parents organised on religious lines would probably be one of the more common examples of this, as they already have a network. So they set up a school, call it St Alix, appoint clerics to the board of governors – in what sense is this not a faith school? Perhaps they will want a charter guaranteeing clerical seats on the governing body in perpetuity, and perhaps that shouldn’t be allowed – in which case they have a faith school today that might not be a faith school in future.
And yet we haven’t treated these parents any differently to anybody else.
People already lie to get into schools. The outrage is not that they do, but that they have to lie to get an entitlement that they have already paid for with their own taxes. Another indecency is that some truthfully witness their faith and are not believed because their parents have to work too hard to have time to mow the vicarage lawn.
10th March 2008 at 11:51 am
Asquith
It’s a given of good system design that you try to set up a system that caters for the majority and then deal with the exceptions afterwards. You seem to be suggesting that we shouldn’t allow parents freedom to educate their children as they like because of the tiny minority who would abuse that freedom. Do you really mean this?
10th March 2008 at 11:56 am
It all sounds very reasonable and liberal.
I happen to think we should remove the ill defined mish-mash subject of RE (which seems to be different from one school to the next) and split it into Comparative Religion and Religious History, teaching the facts about what religions there are, what they believe how they differ, their impact on the history of our country and the world and how their followers acted and act because of them; all of it, the good and the bad. We should also, as you’ve suggested, have a subject that deals with philosophy, morality and ethics, which can be taught entirely without recourse to religion; give kids the tools to decide for themselves if one or other religion agrees with their moral values.
There are also a couple of caveats that I’d like to raise.
1) If a child is in a predominantly “Religion A” school then that acts as a form of peer pressure against the freedom to chose their own religion or to chose to abandon it. In a religious school any child that wants to leave that faith is choosing to become an outsider, with all negative effects that entails. In a school where there is no religious focus at all, there is no such peer pressure (at least from the side of the school) on the child. Isn’t it more liberal to remove that peer pressure, and provide the child with an environment that gives them more space and less hurdles towards choosing for themselves?
2) Parents have the right to raise their children as they see fit already. They have all the time at home with their kids to teach them about their religion. Why should this be extended into the school environment? Schools should teach facts. Parents can teach faith. We already have specialist “schools” for teaching faith that parents can send kids to, they were called Sunday Schools in my day. Give the kids the choice.
3) We need an instruction for schools along the Swedish lines of making the teaching of faith or religious tenets as fact illegal. The world is not 6000 years old, there’s no evidence that people can be born of virgins or raised from the dead or that souls can be reborn in different bodies after death or that places like heaven or hell actually exist. You’re free to believe all of that, just as you are free to believe in unicorns, faeries and dragons. Just don’t expect that schools should teach any of that as anything other than speculation, conjecture or fantasy.
By teaching religious matters of faith as fact, or implying they are fact, poisons the well of knowledge kids use to decide on their own beliefs. Kids are free to ignore that knowledge or disagree with it, but schools should do everything they can to keep that well untainted and leave the choice of what to do with the knowledge up to the kids.
10th March 2008 at 12:35 pm
I agree completely with Grammar Police and MartinSGill. The trouble with giving “more choice” to parents it can often be used it to restrict the choices of their children (usually with the best of intentions, but still not with great results).
Parents have complete freedom over their offspring’s upbringing every morning, evening, weekend and school holiday. The role of a school education should be to teach *facts*, broaden horizons and open children’s minds to ideas other than those held by their parents and immediate social circle. I’m not claiming that schools always live up to this ideal (far from it!), but faith schools actively work against the principle of unbiased fact-based learning.
Imagine if a group of parents wanted to set up a school exclusively for Conservative/Labour* supporters, in which children would be taught that Tory/Labour values and policies are superior to those of all other parties. There would, quite rightly, be an uproar.
* I omit the Lib Dems here simply because we’re all too cuddly and liberal to try such a scheme, naturally…
10th March 2008 at 2:40 pm
Since, under your proposals, faith schools would not be able to pick those of the faith and neither would they be able to teach the faith – in whay way would they remain faith schools as we understand the term?
10th March 2008 at 3:19 pm
Schools do not just teach facts, they teach about interaction, community, being stuck in a room with people you might hate and general society. Having a religious basis to that is not as hidesouly outlandish as many in our party often try to make out.
The issue as ever is that a minority of loony religions and religious practitioners tend to tar the others so we good LDs demand that all the babies are ejected with all the bath water.
Rather than getting into the philosophy of faith schools, two examples may be apposite. My son attends a faith school, along with most other children in his village. He happens to be taken to church by me but many other children at the school are not. Religion is never imposed on them, it is introduced to them. My Christian son has occasionally come home to greet me with an Islamic phrase or Jewish blessing. That suggests he is being given a balance of views.
A second example is the faith school I attended as a child in south London. The school had pupils with a range of cultures and we learned about them all. They never had Christian culture imposed on them but they did get a damned good education in what was then quite a poor part of the city.
Its not faith that is the problem, its the bad application of religion which can damage children.
The original post is well thought out and sensible but I remain convinced that there is role for religion in giving all children an ethical basis to their lives. What we must ensure is that the grounding they receive does not exclude other belief systems.
Asquith, I don’t think I’m ignorant, uncaring or sadistic but I guess that’s for my son to say…
10th March 2008 at 4:54 pm
When religion is taught openly in faith schools which are part of the local authority system and subject to local authority scrutiny, it tends to be taught in a way which while obviously grounding children in their parents’ faith culture, does it in a fair and liberal way. As “Wit and Wisdom” has noted, in practice state faith schools don’t take the approach which many of their detractors assume – teaching a narrow “our religion is best and you should hate all others”. People who are antagonistic to religion tend to assume all religion is like that – as comments in this discussion already show – but that is just an indication of their own bias and narrow-mindedness.
I very much fear that passing teaching religion to after-hours private organisations with no public scrutiny will much more likely lead to it being taught in a way which is offensive to liberals. Is this not what we tend to see – those faiths which have the biggest problems with illiberal extremists are those who don’t have faith schools – Islam and evangelical Christianity, while those with faith schools – Catholicism and Anglicanism – tend not to have as much of problem of extremist illiberal followers?
It seems to me that the deal with religions and their faith schools – you get your schools, but in return you are subject to scrutiny and you do your religious teaching in the open – is a good one.
10th March 2008 at 5:06 pm
I’m not sure what to say about all of this – I’m a secularist governor in a CofE school but haven’t found that fact as challenging as I thought I would. I love the fact that the children are being taught religion – there is so much you learn through it so I read your article with great interest.
10th March 2008 at 5:22 pm
“1) If a child is in a predominantly “Religion A” school then that acts as a form of peer pressure against the freedom to chose their own religion or to chose to abandon it. In a religious school any child that wants to leave that faith is choosing to become an outsider”
Depends on the school. I was a day pupil at a Quaker boarding school which went out of its way to support pupils chosing another religion including allowing them time off in the evenings to go to confirmation classes (and possibly arranging transport for them).
10th March 2008 at 6:24 pm
I agree it does depend. I went to a religious boarding school, I was already mostly atheist in my outlook. Was I forced to attend chapel, was I told off by teachers for disagreeing with their beliefs; yes I was, yet I’d never call that school overtly religious and it wasn’t, but that’s an example of what I mean by the peer pressure. I was denied the freedom to be myself to chose my beliefs.
What I find telling though in your comment is that your school “went out of its way”. That implies to me that it’s rare for a faith school to do that (also supported by my own experiences). If we truly had fully inclusive faith schools then that should be the norm, not something a school has to specially go out of it’s way to do.
I was also under the impression that there weren’t a lot of Quakers in the UK, so could it be possible that the only way for that school to survive financially was to make sure it attracted non-Quaker pupils and therefore had to make a greater effort to accommodate them?
The point for me is that being a faith school does not make a school intrinsically bad, nor does it mean it has to provide a poorer education or that it automatically indoctrinates kids, but what it does do is provide that school a ready avenue and means for that to happen.
Fully inclusive and balanced faith schools are a losing proposition to religious leaders, in my view, and they will always oppose them or work to undermine them (at least in private). The whole reason d’etre of faith schools is to promote their own faith, to give it precedence amongst all others; how can a faith school therefore ever be fair and balanced, isn’t the whole concept an inherent contradiction?
The very definition of fair and balanced is to provide favour and preference to none.
10th March 2008 at 6:58 pm
When religion is taught openly in faith schools which are part of the local authority system and subject to local authority scrutiny, it tends to be taught in a way which while obviously grounding children in their parents’ faith culture, does it in a fair and liberal way.
I’ve taught in a number of RC schools in Glasgow. I had a ‘please take’ for an absent RE teacher who was obviously teaching stigmata as if they were incontestable miracles. What’s ‘fair and liberal’ about that? And where do you get this idea that the average local council is the least bit interested in how religion is taught in our ‘faith schools’?
10th March 2008 at 9:48 pm
Hmm. A nice thoughtful article, which deserves a nice thoughtful response. Oh what the hell . . .
Secularism to me means that the state has no business deciding on matters of religious truth . . .
This is not really saying much because nobody is in any position to decide on matters of religious truth. The reason is simply because there are no actual facts to be ascertained. I know this because the Archbishop of Canterbury as good as admitted it when I saw him recently.
. . . whether they are in favour of a critical and questioning approach to problems or simple obedience to authority. It may seem too obvious to be worth saying, but there are religious people and atheists on both sides of that question.
It’s not obvious – in fact it’s barely even true the way you’ve phrased it. Every single religious believer accepts a higher authority without question. His name is God. He is omniscient, so there’s really no point in arguing with him. By contrast, I don’t know of a single atheist who accepts a higher authority without question. Oh yes, of course the glib accusation is hurled in the direction of me and others on a regular basis, but I have yet to discern any substance to it. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there are such atheists who blindly follow a higher authority. Give them some credit – at least Richard Dawkins actually exists!
1. That all schools should respect the faith identities of all children . . .
Children don’t have any faith identity. Rather, children inherit their faith identity from their parents. A bit like a genetic illness.
2. That there should be parallel provision for all such faith identities represented by a reasonable number of pupils . . .
Including Jedi?
3. Initially parents make the choice of identity for their children, but as children grow older, they should progressively gain freedom to make their own choices.
Since when did that ever happen? Since when did you ever hear of a child raised in the Church of England, say, deciding at the age of fourteen to become a Sunni Muslim?
4. Parents and children have the right to change their faith identity.
Easier said than done, when the theoretical punishment for so doing is death.
In addition to specific provision for each faith identity . . .
Why? Why? Why? Why can’t this “specific provision” be confined to the Church, Synagogue, or Mosque, where it so manifestly belongs?
This policy will offend authoritarians who wish to impose religion on others – many of whom, I suspect, are conservative atheists themselves.
I don’t really understand that line. Please explain.
Arguing the toss over whether God exists does our party no good at all . . .
Ultimately, it will all come down to that hoary old chestnut. By the way, you haven’t said what you would do with Sir Peter Vardy. I can think of a few suggestions . . .
10th March 2008 at 10:00 pm
It’s true it depends on the school and it’s equally true that not all religious people are of the “my faith is best, we should hate all others” variety – in fact I’m sure the majority of people of all religions are just as tolerant and liberal as non-believers. So it’s not a question of being antagonistic to religion in general – it’s a question of being uncomfortable about the state teaching children what to believe, and in some cases teaching belief as “fact”. I would be equally uncomfortable about an officially atheist school teaching it’s pupils that no god(s) exist.
No, not all faith schools teach about miracles and creationism etc. And I’m sure they don’t all force pupils to go to church/mosque/insert building here. But even those that don’t – even the schools that are wonderfully supportive of children of other faiths – they can’t help but create an atmosphere of education that promotes one faith above others (or above no faith). That’s one of their main purposes, after all – apart from providing good education of course, but I think any school that could employ selection as faith schools do would achieve equally high standards (at the expense of the children it didn’t want to take on).
And I don’t think Islamic or evangelistic extremism has much to do with the provision of faith schools – that issue has roots in various political situations, and just finds it’s outlet in religion. There were plenty of Catholic/Anglican extremists during the height of the Irish troubles, in spite of segregation. And you could fill the country with Islamic schools tomorrow, I doubt it would reduce the resentments in the Muslim community over Iraq/Israel/Palestine/civil liberties…
10th March 2008 at 10:17 pm
We need an instruction for schools along the Swedish lines of making the teaching of faith or religious tenets as fact illegal. The world is not 6000 years old, there’s no evidence that people can be born of virgins or raised from the dead or that souls can be reborn in different bodies after death or that places like heaven or hell actually exist. You’re free to believe all of that, just as you are free to believe in unicorns, faeries and dragons. Just don’t expect that schools should teach any of that as anything other than speculation, conjecture or fantasy.
This is exactly right. If we could, as a party, adopt the Swedish model, then I’d feel we were getting somewhere.
Imagine if a group of parents wanted to set up a school exclusively for Conservative/Labour supporters, in which children would be taught that Tory/Labour values and policies are superior to those of all other parties. There would, quite rightly, be an uproar.
Yes, but religion’s different . . .
It’s not faith that is the problem, it’s the bad application of religion which can damage children.
It absolutely is “faith” that is the problem – fuelling religious violence the world over.
I had a ‘please take’ for an absent RE teacher who was obviously teaching stigmata as if they were incontestable miracles.
I once met a guy who had the stigmata – an old priest in Rome. His hands were all bandaged up and he was really pious and holy. What a tosser . . .
10th March 2008 at 10:38 pm
At last – LB has got out of bed!
10th March 2008 at 10:38 pm
“The issue is not faith schools but freedom of conscience”?
Um, what about the freedom of conscience of the children?
No, sorry, you’ve not convinced me at all. It strikes me that any child whose parents are devout enough to deny him any respite from his indoctrination, even when he is not in their presence, is exactly the sort of child who needs access to an environment free from dogma.
The state cannot stop parents from trying to indoctrinate their children, but it should not be aiding and abetting them.
10th March 2008 at 10:57 pm
The way out of faith schools is to make all of the other schools work, then parents won’t lie/convert/pay lip service to get their kids a decent free education.
That said, faith schools should not be free to pick and choose on confessional grounds, any more than schools should do so on class, income or political grounds. They should also be subject to robust monitoring of what they are about – I went to a catholic school, it did me no harm (in fact was very pleasant) but it did find as many opportunities as it could to ram tenets of the religion down our throats – our RE and biology classes would have been the stuff of a great sit-com.
11th March 2008 at 6:22 am
It strikes me that any child whose parents are devout enough to deny him any respite from his indoctrination, even when he is not in their presence, is exactly the sort of child who needs access to an environment free from dogma.
This is exactly right. My parents were deeply religious. I should have been receiving the antidote at school. Instead, I was sent to Catholic school which just had the effect of gently confirming all the lies I was being fed at home.
11th March 2008 at 9:36 am
Thanks for these many responses.
MartinSGill and others: yes, clearly the
SwedishAmerican model of not having any religion in schools is a possibility. But it is not liberal – you are seeking to impose the view of the state on all parent in a way that many find wholly oppressive. And I suggest that the kind of religion that flourishes under the American model is baser and more self-serving than what we are used to.Shuggy: No I am not saying that schools cannot teach the faith. They can teach it to those pupils who sign up to it. Indeed a handful of children may choose to chop and change between groups to learn more about each, and this should be encouraged.
Wit and wisdom: What do you mean “but I remain convinced there is a role for religion…”? What role does my proposal deny religion?
Laurence: you can have a reply of your own.
iainm (and others): What about the freedom of the children. I addressed this point, but not in any detail. The state does not trump the parents without evidence of real harm. Children get to make their own decisions in more areas as they get older. I am not going to start specifying here how to settle disputes between a child and their parents, although there will need to be guidelines etc.
11th March 2008 at 9:47 am
Laurence:
Every single religious believer…
No. A great many religious people (perhaps unfortunately more clerics than laypeople) admit that they do not always know what the higher authority wants of them, and therefore are willing to question and think about it.
Including Jedi?
Yes, if there are enough of them. Certainly including Wicca.
There is a problem here: deeming what is or isn’t a religion. I don’t think Scientology is a religion, I think it is a money-making-scam cult. (Of course you will say that all religions are money-making scam cults.) I look forward to the fireworks.
Since when did that ever happen? Since when did you ever hear of a child raised in the Church of England, say, deciding at the age of fourteen to become a Sunni Muslim?
I think it is not uncommon for children to find or lose religion altogether. Also it is not rare for people to move from Christianity to Wicca – to the horror of their parents and teachers.
I don’t really understand that line. Please explain.
Have you ever wondered why you meet very few Tories in secularist organisations? Because conservative atheists think, as a rule, that religion is good for other people to believe in, to keep the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate, etc.
11th March 2008 at 10:17 am
MartinSGill and others: yes, clearly the Swedish American model of not having any religion in schools is a possibility. But it is not liberal – you are seeking to impose the view of the state on all parent in a way that many find wholly oppressive.
No, they are seeking to make the state religiously neutral, and so fair to all. Far from oppressive, it is the very definition of secularism.
The fact is that you can’t gaurantee that 100% of the pupils at a catholic school are catholics, or that 100% of kids at a muslim school are muslim, or that 100% of kids at a CoE school are CoE, and at the same time you can’t guarantee that 100% of parents who don’t want their kids to go a faith school do not have to, or that 100% of religious parents can send their children to a school that matches their own denomination, and so long as you can’t guarantee any of that then by definition faith schools are always going to imposing an alien view on a great many children against their will.
Surely it must be better for the state to take no position on religion at all, and concentrate on providing an education, leave religious indoctrination to the family, the home and the places of worship where it belongs.
iainm (and others): What about the freedom of the children. I addressed this point, but not in any detail. The state does not trump the parents without evidence of real harm.
Q.E.D.
11th March 2008 at 10:29 am
I agree there are problems with the US system and there are lessons there to be learnt. I suspect the problem in the US is that they went too far. Religion should be taught, but not as fact or truth, but as background information, this is what people think; this is why people think that, and this is why people disagree; making no value judgement at all. I’m much more in favour of the Swedish approach, which is essentially what I’ve just outlined.
Having secular schools is not imposing a state view, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s not imposing a view of any kind. By having secular schools you bias no single point of view; you don’t address it at all. Religious or non-religious, you simply state how things are and make no value judgement in any way. All are equal, none is preferred or predjudiced. Teach the kids to think critically, give them knowledge and the tools and in their spare time and after school they can make up their own mind.
Faith schools enforce their — or in the case of establishment religions like the CoE, the state’s — view on the children, both on those kids there willingly and those there because they don’t have another school to go to.
Sending a child of Catholic parents to secular school, which is by it’s nature not predjudiced against Catholicism, is a lot more liberal than sending a child of Muslim parents to a catholic or CoE school, which are by their nature are biased against Islam. If all schools are secular no-one is disadvantaged; if some or all schools are faith-schools then someone will be disadvantaged. I choose the more liberal approach, the one where no-one is disadvantaged.
11th March 2008 at 10:33 am
iainm beat me to it… and I think he said it better.
11th March 2008 at 11:09 am
You can’t guarantee that 100% of the children at a faith school hold that faith because that would be illiberal. Proper religion is a set of values which are considered beneficial to human society. It is not about indoctrination.
At the risk of opening up a religious divide, I’m CofE and the one thing the good old CofE does not do is indoctrinate. It is so mild in its faith as to be almost meaningless but it does instil the values which many parents consider important.
No school I’ve ever been involved with has ever taught the ’stigmata’ and if it did I’d raise Hell because this is nonsense. However, this is also nothing to do with Christianity. It is voodoo.
Finally, to the best of my knowledge the state does not take a position on religion as far as education is concerned. Schools do not have to be religious, although traditionally schools have emerged from religious institutions.
Church schools exist alongside non-faith schools and anyone can choose where they send their kids. There is no pressure to send one’s children to a faith school, in this country and long may it remain so.
11th March 2008 at 11:45 am
Joe, I think I agree with your broad point, and also with Wit and Wisdom. I am equally uncomfortable with the state deciding what my children should be taught about religion, especially if it was some state-approved ‘facts’ – even, I may say, your concept of ‘basic RE’. Sends a shivver down the spine.
I don’t really understand why so many in the Liberal tradition – which derives in so many ways from tolerant religious concepts – should try to deny the right of parents to opt out of state-approved soulless utilitarianism in schools.
My own view is that Liberals ought to stop sitting on the fence on religion, which is an issue of growing importance – as if all religious faith, however crual and outlandish, is exactly the same as any other. We need to develop a Liberal view on how good religion and bad religion can be defined.
And if you’re scared of that, I’m happy to provide a definition on the back of my shopping list!
11th March 2008 at 12:03 pm
W&W,
Actually I think part of the problem is that there is for many people little practical choice of school. For many there is only one school you can get into. Or only one school in the village. And it may be a faith school or a community school. Therefore all these schools should cater for everyone.
David,
Thanks for your comments. I must say I have never heard of utilitarianism (Bentham etc?) being taught in school. Personally I think there is a big problem with deontological ethics, and that a range of consequentialist and virtue ethics theories should be up for discussion, and that RE fails spectacularly to do this.
But I don’t think you’re really talking about ethical systems are you? What are you getting at? What is it that the state is sponsoring? Community schools at present, remember are required to be – and usually are – broadly christian.
11th March 2008 at 12:07 pm
No, but when people talk about the job of schools being to teach ‘facts’, it is more than a little Gradgrindian. They may niot be teaching utilitarianism, but it’s there.
11th March 2008 at 12:47 pm
No… religion is a set of values which that religion considers beneficial to human society. By your definition Catholicism is not a “proper religion” because it abhors contraception, which has been shown to be beneficial to society. Any religion that would deny rights to homosexuals would not be a “proper” religion by this definition, so that’s CoE, Roman Catholic, Islam…
The only way to discuss matters of morality and ethics, in other words values, without starting a war or insulting someone’s prophet/messiah/deity is to make it a secular argument. Instead of saying “because God said so”, you need to be able to justify your moral position in such a way that anyone of any faith can see the benefits. Make your moral arguments based on reason, rational debate and above all, don’t be dogmatic, but open to change. If your values are based on the infallibility of your prophet, messiah or holy text, the diktats of your god, then changing your mind, going against those diktats, is that much harder. Attitudes change, the words of your prophet don’t. It’s always the religious organisations that fight change most, many times you actually have religious groups on both sides of the argument, both loudly proclaiming that “god wants”, or “Jesus says” that their view is the right one. The recent changes to homosexual discrimination laws show just how detrimental to society values based on dogma, not intrinsic value are; note the religious opposition to those changes (wanting “special dispensation”, an exemption from the law) from Catholic, CoE and Islam alike, because it goes against their holy texts. Only once you remove all of the “god says” type arguments and approach morality and values in a secular fashion, based on merit, can you define what is “good” or “bad”.
You might want to take a look at humanism, a moral and value framework based on just that which exists both as religious (our moral sense comes from god) and secular (our morel sense is the result of nature and evolution) versions and has been around (in various forms) longer than Christianity (documented, mostly from ancient Greece) and probably longer than all current religions (I suspect); the modern incarnation actually derives from it’s rediscovery by Christians around the 14th century, which in turn was probably inspired by the humanistic values that created the Islamic golden age in the middle ages.
As to sitting on the fence. I’m not. Almost all religion is fundamentally flawed, it tries to instil moral values by building them on a foundation of half-truths, myths, misconceptions and wishful thinking. It’s the reason I believe religion inevitably leads to the horrors we’ve seen both in modern and previous times. If you build a house on a weak or unstable foundation there’s a chance it will fall over, maybe spectacularly. Not every house will collapse, but some will, and if the houses are in tight “communities”, then one house can trigger the collapse of the next, resulting in waves of destruction.
By all means teach morals and values in school. But do so in a secular fashion, in a manner that treats all values and morals on their intrinsic value and not a value they gain by being associated with a book, person or deity.
11th March 2008 at 1:17 pm
Martin, the CofE does not deny rights to homosexuals or oppose contraception. If it did I wouldn’t be a member of that church.
The moral arguments behind religion are based on the societies of their day. I absolutely agree that any call on a supreme being for justification for any action is mad but that is not the basis of sensible religion. Religion should guide and inspire but it does not have to take over someone’s life.
Perhaps the bottom line is that this argument is centred on an eithor-or argument about religion when what Lib Dems should surely be promoting is a free choice agenda.
I will still want my children to go to a Christian school but I will also support the availability of alternatives for those that do not. I will also vigorously oppose any attempt to indoctrinate children. If (when?) my son turns round to me and says all that religion mullarkey is nonsense, I won’t despair, I’ll be quite impressed because it will demonstrate that he has the wit to think for himself. However, I will also expect him to carry through life a set of Christian norms which I believe will help, not hinder him.
Your final argument is that all religion is flawed. Well, so are all value systems, regardless of whether they call to a higher entity/truth. All value systems are based on human interpretation so they’re all bad in some way. As long as we all cling to that fundamental truth we can allow theist and secular religions to function and be taught in schools.
Fundamentally I don’t think this is an argument LDs need to have. We should promote – and defend – diversity and if some people choose religion, so be it.
11th March 2008 at 1:19 pm
Right, I had to look up Gradgrind.
Utilitarianism seeks to measure outcomes to determine which is morally the better, and Gradgrind is good satire because we simply don’t have the means to measure most of the important things that contribute to the moral significance of an outcome.
However I still think you, David, are using utilitarianism as a general swear word to describe any failure to hold the right sort of values, which is a little bizarre because I bet there are utilitarians around who would agree with you on any particular practical moral question you can think of, if not all of them. (A bit like the way the pope uses the word ‘relativist’ to describe anyone who disagrees with him, which is funny because relativists can’t really disagree with anyone.)
If you look at the causes Bentham and other utilitarians supported, you might not agree with them all, but it is hard to argue that they are generally the wrong causes, or that utilitarianism is a big issue or a big problem today.
I suspect, David, your real beef is with egoism, which is quite different. However, I still don’t agree that schools or the state are promoting it – well perhaps Thatcher did somewhat.
We have strayed slightly from the topic. I realise that many believers have this nihilist view of non-believers, and that it is probably true of a handful of us (and a handful of you). And I seek to address this concern explicitly with the philosophy and ethics classes for non-believers. Does this do nothing for you?
11th March 2008 at 1:32 pm
The Archbishop of Canterbury, who I believe is the head of the CoE, wrote to Tony Blair (link) demanding an exemption for the CoE from the Equalities Act (which outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexual orientation). The only reason I can see for wanting an exemption is so that they may discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; in other words, deny rights on the basic sexual orientation.
Does this mean you’ll be leaving the CoE?
Your attitude regarding your son is great, and I plan to take the same stance towards any kids I might have. I also agree that the CoE is not into indoctrination and is pretty liberal as religions go. Having secular schools though will protect kids from those religions and religious organisations that are not like the CoE, and from a future CoE that might not be as liberal and tolerant as the current one.
11th March 2008 at 2:26 pm
wit and wisdom(?):
The one thing the good old CofE does not do is indoctrinate.
Really? So what exactly does go on in Sunday School these days then?
It is so mild in its faith as to be almost meaningless.
Is that anything to boast about?
But it does instil the values which many parents consider important.
Like being woolly and vague?
No school I’ve ever been involved with has ever taught the “stigmata” and if it did I’d raise Hell because this is nonsense.
Why is it the “stigmata” any less nonsense than standard CofE teaching that Jesus was born of a virgin, walked on water, turned water into wine, died, stayed dead three days, before rising up from the dead and then shooting off into the sky?
However, this is also nothing to do with Christianity.
I think it might be a bit.
It is voodoo.
Hey, that’s what we need! Voodoo schools!!! We train up an army of school kids to stick pins into effigies of the beaded idiot. It’s got to be worth a try . . .
The CofE does not deny rights to homosexuals.
So pray explain why the Right Reverend Gene Robinson is not invited to the Lambeth Conference this year? Is it because Genes are really selfish?
That is not the basis of sensible religion.
Sensible religion? What is that exactly? I think it might be humanism, in which case why not just call it by its proper name?
11th March 2008 at 4:03 pm
Okay, here goes.
Martin, I am no defender of Rowan Williams. I think he’s a fool but my understanding is that he is desperately trying to hold the Anglican communion together because of the split over homosexuality. He seems to be treading a very fine line on this issue so as not to alienate either side and for this reason I understand that he is trying to avoid the church being dragged into any discrimination legislation. As I said, I’m not a defender of him but I can understand what he is doing.
*sigh*, Laurence…
1. Sunday School is voluntary, I don’t know of any Sunday Schools still in existence near me and if they existed I would not encourage my children to go. However, once again, I would allow others to choose what they did. Wouldn’t you?
2. I would rather the CofE was mild than that it was a hang ‘em and flog ‘em religion. It doesn’t have to scream from the rooftops to be valid.
3. The underlying faith is not woolly or vague but it also does not tell me how to butter toast or open a boiled egg. Anyone who says religion can tell them about every aspect of their lives is a nutter. It is a general view on how to live life.
4. The Gospel is a story, an interpretation, a way of understanding the faith. I certainly do not believe all of it but I recognise that, like so many other stories, it is a way of explaining things (see earlier answers). The stigmata is b*ll*cks dreamt up by later clerics to ‘prove’ that they are really serious about their religion.
5. No it isn’t, just one quite loopy part of the whole Christian faith.
6. Not sure there are enough Voodoo teachers in the country to make such a school viable. I wonder if the new government diploma might cover this.
7. The whole homosexuality issue relates to the global Anglican communion, not the CofE. I don’t agree with what ‘daft’ Rowan Williams did re Gene Robinson but I can understand why he did it. As I said, if the CofE starts to get difficult on homosexuality, that’s me off.
8. Sensible religion is a belief system which guides and enriches your life, rather than indoctrinating you. If your belief system is humanism I, as a good LD, would defend your right to follow that. However, if humanism requires you to have such an issue wiuth Christianity, I wonder if it really is the positive force you suggest…
11th March 2008 at 5:01 pm
Sunday School is voluntary, I don’t know of any Sunday Schools still in existence near me and if they existed I would not encourage my children to go.
That’s semantics. Perhaps they call it “junior church” these days, but essentially if you go to church with kids, then they typically get whisked off for the first part of the service into various groups. I have no idea what goes on in these kiddies groups, but somehow I very much doubt they study the enlightenment philosophers.
[Religion] is a general view on how to live life.
You’re not related to James Graham by any chance? Religion is not just a general view on how to live life. Hey, even I have a general view on how to live life! Religion makes a whole series of specific and particular claims concerning reality which vary in character from being highly unlikely to downright fraudulent.
The stigmata is b*ll*cks dreamt up by later clerics to ‘prove’ that they are really serious about their religion.
Well the gospels were written decades after the alleged events, so I guess they could be described as being “later bollocks” too.
Sensible religion is a belief system which guides and enriches your life, rather than indoctrinating you. If your belief system is humanism I, as a good LD, would defend your right to follow that. However, if humanism requires you to have such an issue with Christianity, I wonder if it really is the positive force you suggest.
I don’t really go in for belief systems. I merely observe that everything you are telling me sounds like just like humanism which really is a “general view on how to live life.” So why not quit pretending? And I only really have one small issue with Christianity which is that its claims are false.
11th March 2008 at 5:32 pm
Now back to Joe . . .
A great many religious people . . . admit that they do not always know what the higher authority wants of them.
That is not quite the same thing. The point is that if they did know for sure what God wanted, then they would follow his wishes without question. Here is a phrase you never ever hear from either end of the spectrum: “When it comes to sex before marriage, I think I’m more or less in agreement with God on that one.”
Including Jedi? Yes, if there are enough of them. Certainly including Wicca.
Christ on a mountain bike . . .
Of course you will say that all religions are money-making scam cults.
Not really. I just say that the claims of religion are false.
It is not rare for people to move from Christianity to Wicca – to the horror of their parents and teachers.
Yes, I can well imagine the horror of realising that, having carefully inculcated one’s children with a set of batshit crazy ideas, they then have no bulwark against all the rest.
Have you ever wondered why you meet very few Tories in secularist organisations? Because conservative atheists think, as a rule, that religion is good for other people to believe in, to keep the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate, etc.
Ah, I see. Well there might be a bit of that, but I always took it to be because conservatives are religious in the main. Religion is, after all, a profoundly conservative enterprise, with its constant reference to 3,000 year old texts, and its winners and losers, the former at the expense of the latter of course. You can see why it appeals.
11th March 2008 at 6:15 pm
Yes, and it’s because of the people that agree with him, and all those that are even worse than that, that I feel we need secular schools.
What if Rowan decided the only option to save the CoE is start condemning homosexuality as sin again. All the CoE schools will start teaching that as fact. Will you withdraw your son from the CoE school when that happens? If the school were secular you’d not have that problem.
What about those “new” sins the delusional man in the Vatican just had announced. Catholic schools are expected to teach that now, just like that. What’s to stop the lunatic from announcing some new sin that is fundamentally opposed to our values (not the some of them aren’t already) and catholic schools teaching it? How exactly do catholic schools manage the juxtaposition of having to teach that homosexual behaviour is sinful and will send you to fry in hell for eternity, while saying there’s nothing wrong with being gay and gay people should be treated with equal respect?
Not all religious people are like you, neither are many in the CoE. We can’t just say “no catholic schools, you’re nutters”, or “no jedi/vodoo/scientology schools you’re nutters”, but “it’s okay to have jewish and CoE schools, we don’t mind your views”. The state should do it’s best to remain neutral on things like that, religious belief should be a personal affair, done in private or places dedicated to it, not in areas shared by everyone. Secular schools are the only way to provide that fairness and inclusiveness across the board without ever having to make a value judgement about anyone’s beliefs.
As to humanism. I think it’s actually pretty difficult to be a liberal without being essentially a humanist. It’s all about valuing the individual and that individuals decide for themselves what’s right and what’s wrong instead of abiding by diktats from divine or mundane (e.g. papal) authority (basically what you’ve already described, reinforced by your willingness to leave the CoE if it’s values stop aligning with yours). The CoE is also essentially humanistic in it’s views and values; some insane bishops (c.f. Carlisle) aside.
Everyone has a belief system (I prefer to think of them as value systems, as I think belief implies faith and that’s not required), you just haven’t given yours a name. Secular Humanism works for me as it happens to be pretty close to what my value system is and means I don’t have to keep explaining it to everyone; although that cunning plan seems to be failing so far…
11th March 2008 at 7:10 pm
Do I have to have a belief system? I’ve certainly got a few beliefs. And I guess they need to hang together after a fashion. Is that a system? OK then, I have a belief system.
11th March 2008 at 7:30 pm
“I must say I have never heard of utilitarianism (Bentham etc?) being taught in school. Personally I think there is a big problem with deontological ethics, and that a range of consequentialist and virtue ethics theories should be up for discussion, and that RE fails spectacularly to do this.”
This is all getting dangerously near John Hemming’s leadership manifesto pledge to tackle the “Deontology vs Consequentialism” debate.
http://johnhemming.blogspot.com/2007/10/position-statement-for-leadership_16.html
11th March 2008 at 8:06 pm
While it is marvellous on a personal level that we want to settle the existence of god and the nature of religion and atheism, one way or the other; I think that a policy can’t do this, and must recognise that these differences of view exist. That is what I have tried to do.
11th March 2008 at 9:16 pm
A few people here seem to have too much time; time, perhaps, better spent delivering leaflets and knocking on doors.
It’s really very simple. The purpose of schools is to educate children. Educate, not promote ignorance and superstition. Therefore faith has no role to play in schools or the educational system.
End of story. Now let’s get back to winning some more seats on May 1st.
11th March 2008 at 9:56 pm
Do we have state-funded faith hospitals, faith police stations, faith fire stations, faith job centres, faith prisons, faith warships or faith sports centres?
Why single out schools?
11th March 2008 at 10:23 pm
Anax, yes, mostly.
Wasn’t there a catholic hospital in the news recently for obstructing a theraputic abortion. There are police stations with “multi faith” prayer rooms – one was in the news for some dispute when one officer’s faith paraphenalia was offensive to another. There is certainly talk in this government of faith-based back to work programs. There are faith-based programs for prisoners with excellent success rates based on throwing off and not counting anybody who doesn’t reform. All warships AFAIK have chaplains. Sports centres, maybe not.
I guess this doesn’t really support my point, but please get your facts straight anyway.
11th March 2008 at 10:51 pm
I seem to be a lone voice crying in the wildernes on this (Geddit?!). The bottom line, as I have said before, is that there seems to be a lot of intolerance in this discussion to sensibly held views and to a legitimate desire for faith schools among a large number of parents.
Count me in with the opponents to Rowan Williams, religious fanaticism and any attack on people’s sexual freedom but do remember as a party that we support diversity – and that means religious diversity too, guys…
11th March 2008 at 10:51 pm
It’s some leap though Joe from that to them being “faith based” services. Leeds train station has a chaplain which I walk past every day but I think you’d be hard pushed to say it was a faith based railway*
* Yes I know there is an obvious response
11th March 2008 at 10:59 pm
If there is to be separation of Church and State, as I think there should, that necessarily means that the state does not operate or fund schools that openly proclaim a particular belief system and/or teach that belief system.
So I am as opposed to religious state funded schools as to state funded schools that promote atheism and materialism.
The state should only teach that which is certain, and one thing which is famously uncertain is whether there is or is not a god.
The former education minister, John Patten, once notoriously said that fear of hellfire is the only effective means of maintaining order. So clearly there is a utilitarian attraction to the elite in promoting certain kinds of religious belief.
Conversely, the belief that there is no free will and that death is the end of everything encourages escapism and boosts the sale of anti-depressant medication, all of which is good for the economy (apparently).
Parliamentary politics is about appeasing powerful interest groups, in large part, so it is unsurprising that there will be those in the party who regard it as “liberal” to give organised religion what it wants (except for the unfortunate Scientologists who get frozen out of the club).
11th March 2008 at 11:02 pm
11th March 2008 at 11:04 pm
I think you’re confusing intolerance to faith schools with intolerance to religion in general (well, perhaps with a few exceptions).
I doubt there are many here who would argue with anyone’s right to legitimately held beliefs (or even non-legitimate beliefs actually, as long as people don’t act on them if said beliefs break the law). Or for that matter, with parents’ rights to teach their children their beliefs themselves.
But bringing religion into the education system crosses a line. By all means teach kids about religion in RE classes, but running entire schools under the auspices of a particular faith is not, IMHO, liberal, no matter how cuddly and wooly the faith is. I won’t repeat all the arguments as most of them have already been mentioned. But it’s that that many Lib Dems object to, not religion itself. (OK, I’m sure some Lib Dems object to religion in general, the same way some believers object to atheism in general, but the majority are tolerant as far as I can tell.)
11th March 2008 at 11:05 pm
Sorry forgot to close the first quote properly. My comments start at “The point is that…”
11th March 2008 at 11:48 pm
Don’t today’s revelations that faith schools are at the forefront of indulging in illegal behaviour when selecting pupils put an end to the arguments for maintaining them?
They should either be state schools, or go independent but be subjected to appropriate, robust scrutiny.
12th March 2008 at 12:29 am
. . . and I thought Saint Paul made it clear that the temporal law is always to be obeyed, even if the end of the world happens to be just around the corner. Clearly standards in religious education are not what they once were . . .
12th March 2008 at 12:36 am
Do we have state-funded faith hospitals?
It’s been proposed, and I’m all in favour of them in fact . . . with one crucial proviso. That they should perform all procedures through the power of prayer alone.
12th March 2008 at 3:40 am
Laurence – as ever with this topic – your comments make my day!!
May the force [farce?] be with you!!!
12th March 2008 at 8:34 am
@Joe Otten
Generic chaplaincy facilities are not the same as faith schools. There are a few faith hospitals (does anyone know how many?) but from what I can tell these are mostly private/charitable operations. I’ve little objection there.
Faith schools are largely funded by the taxpayer.
If a large number of Zoroastrians move into a neighbourhood, not many Lib Dems will argue that the taxpayer should fund the construction of a Zoroastrian temple. But would you support them getting a taxpayer funded faith school?
Presumably the temple will be of greater importance to their ‘faith identity’ than the school. Even for the kids, if their parents are serious about the religion. So why doesn’t it deserve funding?
12th March 2008 at 10:43 am
Faith schools have emerged as part of the fabric of our country. Most early educational institutions derived their status from religion as that was the way this country was run back then. The emergence of more diverse forms of faith, along with non-faith based education has changed the field somewhat but the fundamental tradition in this country is still faith based.
That does not mean that we all have to fall to our knees every Sunday but it should mean that a sensible political party (that’s us, I believe…) should recognise the heritage we live with and work with it.
A blanket declaration that all faith schools are wrong and should no longer be state funded would put a very large cat among a lot of pigeons. Most importantly, it simply isn’t necessary to have this argument with voters up and down the country.
I can only speak for my part of the world, where most of the schools are affiliated to the church and where they top the national league tables most of the time, but I imagine that the great majority of faith schools outside my area also provide a perfectly good education to local children of all faiths and none and only a minority will be involved in dodgy selection practices.
If that large number of Zoroastrians could make a good case to the local education board for a school and they could demonstrate sufficient student numbers AND they could guarantee that all local children would have equal access to a decent education at that school, with their individual beliefs accommodated, why shouldn’t they have a school?
However (wait for the explosion) we have a Christian tradition in this country which continues and which is highly likely to represent the majority culture for many, many years to come. That doesn’t mean everyone goes off the church on Sundays, merely that that is where our culture derives much of its traditions, values, norms etc from.
Unless that is recognised in party policy, quite simply, you’re not going to understand how things work.
Now, Jesus tells me I must do some work.
12th March 2008 at 10:45 am
Look at how the illiberal opponents of faith schools switch their arguments – when it suits then one way, they’re just a ruse to introduce selection so that middle class parents pretend to “get religion” to get their kids in, when it suits them to go the other way, they’re brainwashing organisations forcing a particular sort of fundamentalist belief on kids. If they were the latter, why would anyone pretend to get religion to get their kids into that sort of school, if they were the former why would they bother with the fundamentalism?
David Boyle has it quite right – one person’s neutrality is not another’s, what one person may regard as a neutral explanation another may regard as unacceptable pushing of one particular ideology. We are aware, are we not, of the BBC’s idea that getting a Conservative and a Labour politician to slug it out with each other is politically neutral? In the days of Communism, the Communist states thought that teaching Marxism was objective neutrality. I think we need only look in this discussion at how the champions of secularism here portray religion – in nearly all cases it is offensively stereotyping and shows no understanding of the subtle, allegorical and liberal approach which actually is far more predominant than they suppose – to see that any education on religion they would concoct should rightly be rejected as unacceptably biased to their own narrow world view.
As liberals, our watchword should be our ability to tolerate the expression of views with which we disagree. Not only that, but actually to understand where those views come from, and the arguments for them, even if we feel that those arguments are wrong.
As a minor point, since the issue of stigmata has been mentioned, I would refer readers to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the subject:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14294b.htm
Remember, this was written in 1912, when the Catholic Church was much less liberal than it is now. As the article says, it is not an essential part of Catholic belief that one believes these reported phenomena have any supernatural basis, and sincere Catholics are entitled and do look for purely natural explanations of them. It is not a central part of the Catholic faith to place any great attention on things like this, it’s a bit of Catholic cultural trivia, which I guess a teacher might just mention as a way of waking up kids on a boring day.
Someone suggested that the Catholic Church teaches that people who engage in homosexual behaviour “fry in hell”. I very much doubt that such words, or anything like them, would be used in a modern catholic school. A summary of what the Catholic Church does teach can be found in its Catechism, which can be found here:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM
I do not think the words “homosexuals will fry in Hell” are found anywhere on that site.
I have a fair amount of experience of Catholic schools, and from that experience, it seems to me that mostly they tend to be oriented towards the more liberal interpretations of that religion. That is not to say they always are everywhere, of course. But I can be pretty sure that if the passing on of Catholic culture was taken away from them and put instead into the hands of private enthusiasts doing it in little Sunday schools, there would be far more danger of it being passed on in a way which is extreme and over-focussed on eccentric side issues.
The issue of how we bring up children is a contentious one – yes, there has to be a balance between parents having a right to pass on their own culture and express some bias towards their own beliefs when bringing up their children, and the children’s own rights to make their own minds up. But it would seem to me that if we say that faith schools are unacceptably biased, we must also say that anything parents might do privately with their children outside school hours might be unacceptably biased. And where that could lead to if we were to take it as a serious concern would surely be supremely illiberal.
I’m concerned that antagonism towards religion is reaching a tipping point in our party, and will soon lead to people who do have some sort of religious attachment – mainstream, not fringe – feeling they can no longer support it. The militant secularists who always seem to rise up in party debates on this subject frighten me – I find their illiberalism on it horrendous and not something I would want to be associated with.
12th March 2008 at 11:16 am
However (wait for the explosion) we have a Christian tradition in this country which continues and which is highly likely to represent the majority culture for many, many years to come.
I can see you’re a man of very strong faith.
Now, Jesus tells me I must do some work.
Wow! There aren’t many who can follow a conversation in Aramaic.
12th March 2008 at 11:38 am
Matthew, thanks for your support, and your appeal for tolerance. One question tho’.
Where do you draw the line between disagreement and intolerance? Boyce et al have been doing their usual stuff in this thread, disagreeing with me and thee, but isn’t this a perfectly acceptable robust expression of one’s viewpoint?
David Boyle referred to Gradgrind, invoking satire against utilitarianism. Is this intolerant mocking of utilitarians? Surely it is fair game.
12th March 2008 at 11:49 am
How unnerving that the Google ad at the bottom of this thread is for some entitled ‘The god who wasn’t there’. Spooky, or is Google simply all pervading these days.
Final world Laurence: I’m not a man of strong faith at all. In fact I spend much of my time agonising over all the contradictions in Christianity, as in other faiths but I still see some inherent value in it so I adhere to it.
Great debate, compliments to the writer of the original article for generating such interest.
12th March 2008 at 12:07 pm
I appears you haven’t actually read what’s written on those pages you link to. The text itself shows your statement is factually in error. Before you therfore suggest I’m mis-representing what catholics are supposed to teach, perhaps you should take a closer at it.
Here then (from the link you provided) is a “summary of what the Catholic Church does teach”.
So what is a mortal sin?
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8.htm
So.. Mortal Sin is a violation of the ten commandments and for committing one you go to hell.
What does the Catholic church tell us about hell?
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P2O.HTM
Ok.. once in hell you stay there for ever and are punished with “eternal fire”.
So what about homosexuality?
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm (The section on the 6th commandment )
This therefore is a violation of the 6th commandment, and hence a mortal sin. It even uses the word “grave” in the text and further reinforces this with “Under no circumstances can they be approved.” Pretty strong language there.
So… if you are in a homosexual relationship you are committing a “grave” act that is a violation of the 6th commandment and hence a Mortal sin. For commiting this sin you will “descend to hell” where you will be “punished” by “eternal fire”.
My sentence that “homosexuals will fry in hell” is therefore, while a paraphrase, supported as accurate by the link you incorrectly claim denies it. That is the official doctrine of the Catholic Church, from the Vatican’s own website and I cannot see how any liberal person can in any way approve of it or defend it, let alone fund schools that are supposed to teach it.
Instead therefore of going through every religion and denouncing everything that’s wrong with it (offending pretty much everyone in the process), let’s just make it simple and say that religion has no place in our schools.
The difference is that the state funds faith based schools from tax payer money and therefore the state has a duty to ensure that what is taught there is neutral and unbiased. Since faith-based schools are by their very nature biased the state should not support that. The state should avoid interfering the private lives of its citizens as much as possible, but schools are not part of their private lives.
I assume by this you mean “2:aggressively active (as in a cause)”, as opposed to “1:engaged in warfare or combat”. I’ve never yet come across a secularist who matched definition 1, yet I’ve no problem thinking of religious people that match it.
Your post also qualifies as militant by the 2nd definition, as does our campaigning for a reform of politics, let alone our walk-out, or pretty much any political endeavour.
If you consider demands for a neutral place to educate our children militant, what then would you call the actions of people like Cardinal O’Brien (and also O’Conner, elsewhere) who says Catholic MPs that do their duty and vote will of their constituents (i.e. pro-abortion, the majority position of our population) and not the doctrine of the church should be excluded from the church? (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1864670.ece)
There are even some reports that suggest church leaders think Catholic MPs that vote pro-choice are committing a Mortal Sin just for voting. I’d call that working to undermine democracy, maybe even blackmail.
12th March 2008 at 12:17 pm
How unnerving that the Google ad at the bottom of this thread is for something entitled “The God who Wasn’t There.” Spooky, or is Google simply all pervading these days?
That’s how Google ads work – by matching the content. I’ve got the DVD. It’s not bad in parts.
I’m not a man of strong faith at all. In fact I spend much of my time agonising over all the contradictions in Christianity . . .
Take my advice – give it up for lent.
12th March 2008 at 12:21 pm
Look at how the illiberal opponents of faith schools switch their arguments . . .
Simple question Matthew – would you like to see Marxist schools?
. . . when it suits them one way, they’re just a ruse to introduce selection so that middle class parents pretend to “get religion” to get their kids in . . .
Oh I think we’re perfectly entitled to point out all the little hypocrisies surrounding faith schools, up to and including the recent incidents of law breaking.
. . . when it suits them to go the other way, they’re brainwashing organisations forcing a particular sort of fundamentalist belief on kids.
Why does brainwashing have to be fundamentalist? More subtle forms can be just as damaging. But if faith schools do not indoctrinate in some form or another, then . . . what is the point exactly? In that case, they are nothing but a form of social apartheid. It’s another one of those arguments which you really can’t have both ways, though I feel sure you’re going to give it your best shot.
I think we need only look in this discussion at how the champions of secularism here portray religion – in nearly all cases it is offensively stereotyping and shows no understanding of the subtle, allegorical and liberal approach . . .
You’ve left out a bit there Matthew. It should be “subtle, allegorical, liberal, and deeply dishonest approach . . .”
As liberals, our watchword should be our ability to tolerate the expression of views with which we disagree. Not only that, but actually to understand where those views come from, and the arguments for them, even if we feel that those arguments are wrong.
Please can we stop this meaningless whitewash. Are we going to tolerate holocaust deniers (whose beliefs, incidentally, look credible when set alongside the “miracles” of Jesus) running our schools? It’s really time we took a long hard look at these “beliefs,” held them up to the sky alongside their fellow travellers, and arrived at some objective value judgments concerning their veracity and consequence. I can so tell you don’t want that to happen . . .
Remember, this was written in 1912, when the Catholic Church was much less liberal than it is now.
Oh yes, they’re so liberal today.
Someone suggested that the Catholic Church teaches that people who engage in homosexual behaviour “fry in hell.” I very much doubt that such words, or anything like them, would be used in a modern Catholic school.
But that is what Catholicism teaches. Next time you see the Pope, try asking him if practising homosexuals will go to heaven. If you get a straight “yes” out of him, then I’ll give you a million pounds. You appear to think that there is some credit to be had from phrasing these vile teachings in polite form.
But I can be pretty sure that if the passing on of Catholic culture was taken away from them and put instead into the hands of private enthusiasts doing it in little Sunday schools, there would be far more danger of it being passed on in a way which is extreme and over-focussed on eccentric side issues.
So we’re supposed to tolerate the insanity of faith schooling, otherwise you freaks will go even more crazy. Sweet Jesus . . .
But it would seem to me that if we say that faith schools are unacceptably biased, we must also say that anything parents might do privately with their children outside school hours might be unacceptably biased.
I’m sure parents are unacceptably biased all the time. So what? That’s private.
I’m concerned that antagonism towards religion is reaching a tipping point in our party . . .
I wish it would.
. . . and will soon lead to people who do have some sort of religious attachment – mainstream, not fringe – feeling they can no longer support it.
Ah, but that would indeed be a shame. We’d have nobody to take the piss out of then.
The militant secularists who always seem to rise up in party debates on this subject frighten me – I find their illiberalism on it horrendous and not something I would want to be associated with.
Sounds a bit like you want me out of the party, Matthew. Well I’m not going anywhere!
12th March 2008 at 1:20 pm
I do so love the way the religious try to paint any attempt to remove any of the many unwarranted and unreasonable privileges their faiths enjoy as some sort of act of oppression.
“Help help I’m being oppressed! Look at them treating me exactly the same as everyone else!”
The plain fact is that if the churches didn’t think they were indoctrinating the next generation of believers then they would have no interest in going anywhere near schools in the first place, but they do, because they know full well that the chances of successfully indoctrinating a person shrinks rapidly as they get older, less credulous, and less trusting of authority, and that if they wait until a person is old enough to make an informed decision for himself it will in all likelyhood be too late.
So it comes down to a balance of rights: the child’s right to freedom of religion, to be protected from this intentional brain-washing by the churches or mosques or temples, and by parents acting as vicarious agents of those institutions (however well meaning), until he is old enough to choose a belief system for himself versus a parent’s right to impose his own faith on a child too young to understand the issues.
To my mind, speaking as someone whose own parents were religious, the child’s rights should always come first. In fact I would go further than most here. I think that faith schools should not simply refused government support, I think they should be outlawed completely.
I mean seriously, can anyone think of any other realm of society where people who claim to be liberals openly support discrimination on the grounds of belief?
12th March 2008 at 1:37 pm
Coming late to this, and I can’t quite bear to read through the later stages of the comments when Laurence “Silly” Boyce gets in on the act…
But in principle I like the idea of cutting the Gordian knot by ensuring a degree of plurality within each school, whatever its denomination. I also like Martin Gill’s Comparative history of religion idea (as I think I’ve said before). My concern is that we are still, fundamentally, talking about entrusting individuals and communities to ensure this liberal plurality. And, as this comment thread demonstrates, not everyone – religious or atheist – would support a liberal plurality when it comes to religion.
So how would we enforce this? Don’t we just fall into the NuLabour trap of imposing thought-standards that individuals can easily interpret in the light of their own beliefs?
How about a mischievous market-related solution: schools have the flexibility to offer parents a number of options for what is currently the assembly time. These might include religious assembly in the denomination of the school, religious assembly in another denomination represented by a reasonably number of pupils in the school, an atheistic community assembly of some sort… or extra-curricular literacy lessons.
12th March 2008 at 2:10 pm
Alix, faith schools are pluralistic. They simply have a basic ethos at the root of what they do. They should not – and do not, in my experience – discriminate in any way.
Martin, only Catholic sinners will ‘fry in Hell’ since there is nothing in the Bible which describes Hell in any detail. The book of Revelation is allegorical and jumps around all over the place but even this does not describe Hell as a pit of fire or any such thing (as far as I remember. Perhaps one of the humanists, who seem far better versed in the Bible than this poor sinner, can confirm this…)
Many of the original Christian philosophers believed that Hell was simply being away from God’s presence so, judging by the tenor of many commentators on this issue, if you want to avoid those pesky Christians, sin!
12th March 2008 at 2:18 pm
Mr Wit and Wisdom wrote:
“They simply have a basic ethos at the root of what they do.”
And what ethos is that? If you refuse to grovel to priests you go to hell and burn for eternity? Which is what Christianity is about in a nutshell.
“They should not – and do not, in my experience – discriminate in any way.”
Eh? You’re not being serious? Only two days ago on the TV news there was a story about the Jewish Free School (a state funded comprehensive)refusing entry to children considered by the Chief Rabbi to be insufficiently racially pure. If that isn’t “discrimination”, then pray tell me what is?
12th March 2008 at 2:38 pm
W&W, as I understand it, it is currently obligatory for state schools to have x hours of assembly time and/or x hours of religious teaching time per week. Naturally, faith schools use this to push their own particular faith. I don’t see how you can think this is pluralistic.
“Pluralistic” does not mean the same as “teaching only a very mild and inoffensive form of religion”. Perhaps, as a Christian, you don’t entirely appreciate just how, er, weird a lot of this stuff seems to an atheist. A couple of years my parents and brother and I had cause to go to a church service for the first time in, probably, at least a decade for each us. None of us would see ourselves as being anti-religious, or even particularly humanist. We’re just comfortable, woolly atheists. But actually coming face to face with Christianity in action, however mild and tolerant in form it is, is a bit disturbing for someone without a religious bone in their body. After a while my dad stopped singing the hymns because the concepts within them were so outlandishly embarrassing.
I appreciate I’m not making the most sophisticated point by saying that, er, I think religion is weird, and I certainly don’t wish to associate myself with Illiberality Boyce. But Joe’s whole argument is based on the assumption that faith schools do not currently practise religious plurality and I highlight my own position only to explain why I agree with him.
12th March 2008 at 2:54 pm
One more reason to not be a catholic and chose a different, or better yet, no religion.
The book of revelation is not allegorical but actually literal truth to quite a large number of Christians the world over. People like Peter Vardy, who runs schools in this country with government funds and support, considers Genesis, and hence the creation myths, to be literal truth not the allegory most Christians accept it to be. Yet he is setting the agenda, the “values” and “ethos” of the schools he runs with tax payer money. This government, which supposedly values science, is giving money to this second-hand car salesman so that he can undermine the science teaching of the next generation of citizens with religious dogma. I wouldn’t be surprised that when ofsted isn’t looking his biology classes run along the lines of “We will now look at evolution. This is one view of how the earth came about, but any good christian knows that God created the world and humans, fully formed, 6000 years ago. You are all good aren’t you?”
I’m not talking about people preaching to the class or punishing free thought. It doesn’t take much, just the odd sentence every now and then, to prejudice children by implying they face a choice between science and God, between tolerance and God, between being good (i.e. god) and not being good (i.e. not god).
As to hell and fires…
The point I was making was that Catholic doctrin and teachings (contrary to what Matthew Huntbach alleged) do instruct followers that being gay is a mortal sin and for mortal sins you go to hell where you suffer eternal fire. This government funds schools with tax payer money that follow “catholic values” or the basic “catholic ethos”. The Vatican site clearly outlines just what these values/ethos are, yet our government still funds these schools.
12th March 2008 at 3:27 pm
“And what ethos is that? If you refuse to grovel to priests you go to hell and burn for eternity? Which is what Christianity is about in a nutshell.”
Er, no. That is, only if you adhere to one particular type of Christianity. I am deeply heartened that all the criticism of Christianity seems to centre on ‘brands’ other than the CofE.
Or did you miss the Reformation, when the glorious Henry VIII decided that the dominant religion in this country would be protestant, i.e. that a Christian’s relationship would be directly with God, not through a cleric, in accordance with the superb work of one Martin Luther.
I have never grovelled to a priest and I never will. Indeed my local vicar is a good friend who would never dream of getting people to grovel to her, even if they felt so inclined. She also teaches in the school where she is very much respected by all the children, yet funnily enough the children don’t all wander around the village with crucifixes preaching hellfire and damnation. Most of them don’t even ‘do’ God.
Get a sense of proportion in your criticism of religion. Criticise the philosophy, criticise the involvement of religion in schools – which is, after all, where we started from – but for Heaven’s sake leave the barbs and insults out.
Sure Peter Vardy’s a nutter, Tony Blair’s a vicious, conniving bastard for allowing him to get his claws into schools and there are examples of faith schools which are badly run but that’s not typical. Please get this fundamental point: most faith schools are good, sensibly run and pluralist.
[Thinks: we've had evil priests, stigmata, Hell, homosexuality and creationism. It must be time for the Inquisition or the Crusades, surely...]
12th March 2008 at 3:48 pm
Mr Wit and Wisdom, I assuredly didn’t miss the Reformation, since the various Christians who tried to indoctrinate me were very much aware of it themselves (being Protestants of the Evangelical persuasion).
Yet they shared with the Papist enemy the belief that those God doesn’t take a fancy to go to hell and burn for eternity. Indeed, I recall one of them saying to me (when I defeated him in an argument): “You’re going to hell anyway, so I’m not going to waste time arguing with you.”
What I was taught was this. In order to avoid going to hell, it is necessary to demonstrate total, unstinting devotion to God every moment of one’s life. Nothing less will do. But that’s just hoop No 1. Those who pass the test (total, unstinting devotion to God throughout their lives), have to jump through hoop No 2. God has the absolute discretion the save whomever he so chooses, and he will take only a “chosen few” out of the much larger qualifying pool.
So we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.
Do you really want this dreadful garbage taught to kids?
(Oh, and if you think the COE are just woolly do-gooders in fancy dress, be aware that almost all newly ordained Anglican priests belong to the fire-and-brimstone tendency.)
12th March 2008 at 4:10 pm
“Help help I’m being oppressed! Look at them treating me exactly the same as everyone else!”
Great stuff Iain!
The plain fact is that if the churches didn’t think they were indoctrinating the next generation of believers then they would have no interest in going anywhere near schools in the first place.
I’ve never figured out why they don’t just trust the Holy Spirit to touch people’s hearts at the appropriate time. Maybe he/she/it needs a little help? A case of omniscient, but not that omniscient?
Coming late to this, and I can’t quite bear to read through the later stages of the comments when Laurence “Silly” Boyce gets in on the act.
Oh no. First the Lib Dem blogger of the year calls me a bigot, and now the “gender balance” Lib Dem blogger of the year calls me silly. I’m finished . . .
Only two days ago on the TV news there was a story about the Jewish Free School (a state funded comprehensive)refusing entry to children considered by the Chief Rabbi to be insufficiently racially pure.
And there you have it. After a long struggle, we have reached the happy point where racism is wholly unacceptable among intelligent people . . . but of course there’s one glorious exception. When it comes to our craven toleration of religion, it’s double standards every step of the way.
I certainly don’t wish to associate myself with Illiberality Boyce.
You see it does get a bit annoying after a while. Are you seriously telling me Alix that you think the Pope, or Catholic teaching in general, is liberal? Yet we have thousands of Catholic schools in the land and, for opposing this, apparently I’m illiberal? It’s just cheap innuendo, which like the bigotry accusation a while back, cannot be substantiated. Hey, I can even feel another article coming on . . . “Et tu Alix?” maybe . . . STOP BUYING INTO THE DOUBLE STANDARD WHICH RELIGION HAS BEEN WORKING SO HARD FOR SO LONG TO MAINTAIN! Ahem . . .
Peter Vardy’s a nutter, Tony Blair’s a vicious, conniving bastard for allowing him to get his claws into schools . . .
Rest assured “wit and wisdom(?)” that Sir Peter is so very grateful for the cover you “moderates” generously provide him, though he still despises you utterly . . .
12th March 2008 at 4:22 pm
But you are illiberal, Laurence. You would ban faith teaching in all its forms for everyone in the state sector, whether they agreed with your views or not. That’s not liberal. You’re just as illiberal as a hardline Catholic – the fact that your argument makes more immediate sense to me is immaterial. If I allowed that fact to influence me, that would be a double standard.
12th March 2008 at 4:23 pm
Re the UK’s Christian tradition:
Yes, the UK has a Christian tradition. But it’s very much in decline. Only 10% of the population regularly attend church and politicians who talk about God get ridiculed for it.
Whatever role faith schools have in shaping Christian identity, it would seem that they are not working. With a fully secular education system, British Christianity might be able to renew and redefine itself, shorn of institutional complications. Or not. But the sad, slow death of Christian Britain is painful to behold. Sink or swim.
12th March 2008 at 4:24 pm
Wit and Wisdom – I could actually have quite a strong argument with you on your points about the English Reformation, based around the idea that it smashed up popular diverse religious culture and instead imposed state uniformity, in which everyone had to worship as Henry VIII (or rather, a middle class elite who had emerged as the new men following the destruction of the old order in the Wars of the Roses) wished. That, however, would only really illustrate my earlier point that what one person regards as neutral comment, another find appallingly biased.
Joe, you ask “Where do you draw the line between disagreement and intolerance?”. I think it’s where someone lards their argument with insults and with stereotypical views of the person they disagree with, so they are refusing to accept that person for what they are, and refusing to give that person the right just to be different.
I don’t particularly wish to get into deep religious argument (for what it’s worth, my own position tends very much towards the allegorical rather than the literal). I just want to report that what I experience of religion and what it is like to have a religious practice is very different from the stereotype which dominates the argument of those who are opposed to state faith schools. So it seems to me they are arguing from a position of bias, that is one which lacks the tolerance to accept there are other people whose position is different from how their own assumptions hold it to be.
I have already accepted there is a genuine conflict and issue of balance here. I do believe parents must have the right to pass on their own culture and beliefs to their children. It would be monstrous if we insisted that only a state-approved culture could ever be taught. The dangers of this state-approved culture approach are to me so strong that I do see state faith schools as a necessary safeguard against it. On the other hand, of course I agree that religion must be taught in a way that it is made clear it is one position, and that those taught it are given a chance to make up their own mind and opt out. Given that Catholic schools have a fairly poor record at keeping those who pass through them as practicing Catholics, I rather feel the charges that they are “brainwashing” people into the religion are over-the-top.
As I’ve already said, I do see the current position of state faith schools as a reasonable compromise which works. As a liberal Catholic I actually do fear that if our religious practice were forced underground as some wish, it would actually greatly strengthen the hands of conservative factions within the Church. It does seem to me that a big problem with Islam in this country which is leading to the issues of religious extremism is that education in the religion is in the form which those who oppose state faith school put up as the model – done privately by religious enthusiasts, rather than publicly by trained teachers.
12th March 2008 at 4:37 pm
I agree with “most”, I mostly agree with “good, sensibly run”, I disagree very strongly with “pluralist”. They are not, by definition.
Nope, even the current churches have finally given up trying to justify those, and until the government funds a faith school with someone who wants to teach kids that God demands they rise up and smite the infidels in a holy crusade that won’t be an issue. Of course, “Undercover Mosque” revealed that’s already happening in some of our mosques. Let’s hope that such stuff never makes it into government funded Islamic faith schools. But then I never thought someone with such irrational views as Peter Vardy would be given money to run a school that follows his ethos and values.
Out of interest, just how would a non-islamic girl (having not received a place at her first or second choice school) feel in a “pluralistic” Islamic school where all the other girls were required by faith-inspired school rules to cover their faces (but exceptions made for non-muslim girls, or worse no exception made)? Would she think of herself as an outsider? Would she conform just to not feel singled out? Would she face teasing? What type of atmosphere would that create for her to learn in?
What about a muslim girl forced by her parents, and their view of their religion, to have her face covered at all times without her even being given the chance to decide for herself? Might she not appreciate the chance to go to school and just be like all the other girls? Some girls might want to follow that dress code of course, but then there are lots of things I want and can’t have.
Would the government meddle in religion some more (bye-bye church/state separation) and dictate dress code norms to such a school, singling out one faith where members believe they are required to wear such dress, and not others without a dress code or with less visible symbols? (Yes I know this will also have to be addressed for secular schools, but then at least the rules could be written in such a way that it applies equally to all religions without singling out any one faith, e.g. “no wearing of religious symbols, jewellery or clothing”).
No veils, no rings, bangles, necklaces or lapel badges that proclaim “god is a lie”. Nothing to do with religion.
If a religion is a “good religion”, as people have said here before, it will surely insist you obey the laws and rules of the land and surely not fault you for doing that? Won’t that mean in a secular school, the only people that lose out are those that force their religion on their children?
Since “most” Christian schools are good, I don’t doubt that “most” Islamic schools will be good. That just leaves those that aren’t “most schools” to tarnish and spoil the education of our children, the future of our country?
Wouldn’t it be easier, fairer, better and more liberal for everyone to just remove religion entirely from schools and, as I’ve said before, treat everyone equally, making no allowances, special treatment, exemptions or preferences for any faith or the lack thereof?
12th March 2008 at 4:54 pm
That, as it happens, is also my greatest fear, with the US and it’s religious problems a prime example of that. I currently don’t have a solution to that.
That said, it still doesn’t stop me believing that secular schools are the most liberal solution, the only solution that truly treats everyone equally.
Greater control and regulation, a stricter control of what religious schools may teach about religions would be a compromise I could live with. As I’ve mentioned before, Sweden is a good example of the way forward.
A law that makes it illegal for schools and teachers to teach religious belief as fact or truth; and to ensure that any teaching about religion stresses that each belief system is just one point of view and that it might be wrong, and kids should examine them all and make up their own minds.
The punishment for a school found to breach those rules should be conversion into a secular school. (They can apply a few years later to change that status again, with parent/pupil approval).
Maybe divide the time in RE based on the population make-up, if 60% of the country is non-religious then 60% of RE should be spent teaching non-religious issues, and appropriate percentages for other beliefs represented in our population. I’d still make time for comparative religion though, and religion in a historical context.
The problem is that I have a very hard time seeing how religious leaders could accept any of that.
12th March 2008 at 5:01 pm
But you are illiberal, Laurence. You would ban faith teaching in all its forms for everyone in the state sector, whether they agreed with your views or not. That’s not liberal. You’re just as illiberal as a hardline Catholic – the fact that your argument makes more immediate sense to me is immaterial. If I allowed that fact to influence me, that would be a double standard.
Why does my argument make more immediate sense to you Alix? Could it be because religion makes a whole series of ridiculous, unproven, and indeed quite unprovable, assertions? Why can’t you see that at some point we’re going to have to come off the fence here? Otherwise the only logical conclusion is Joe’s insanity of Wicca and Jedi schools to add to all the other stuff with which to burden our children. My way, we have religion confined where it belongs: to the Church, the Synagogue, and the Mosque, while schools are left to get on with teaching . . . useful stuff!
I’m going to go out on a limb here Alix. I think I know why you, James, and everyone else with a few exceptions can’t see it. It’s because you’ve never actually been there. I was raised a Catholic but, crucially, I was no wishy-washy believer. I believed the entire canon of the Catholic faith, just like you’re supposed to. I have lived and breathed the damage it can bring – to myself and to others – damage I was shamefully complicit it.
Let me tell you that when you’ve actually been there, you no more want to hear about “moderate” believers than you might want to hear about people who are only a “little bit” racist. You think I’m just like a hard-line Catholic? Well . . . you might just have a point there. I daresay there are parts of my brain which are still wired up that way. And thus, you perfectly make my point.
13th March 2008 at 2:19 am
Far from silly, or illiberal, Laurence is one of the few who makes sense on these issues!
13th March 2008 at 6:48 am
Thanks Felix. My fan club is small, but beautifully formed!
13th March 2008 at 10:37 am
I was going to avoid jumping in with two feet on this thread, but hard as I might try to wish them to work, not one of you lot has so far responded to my prayers to make the contributions I want added.
Firstly, Laurence isn’t a bigot, he’s overcompensating. He has a latent catholic guilt complex allied to the zeal of a convert and consequently he selects his evidence to fit his conclusions. Hardly scientific.
Secondly, whenever I’ve talked to Christians in the knowledge that they were strongly of the faith I’ve always indiscretely tried to steer the conversation around to religious matters. In every instance it has been further confirmed to me that no two belivers actually believe all the same things, which means they definitely make up a broad church (isn’t that where the term comes from?). It also strikes me that this fact would also make them all good liberals (though never perfect) including that their leaders preach in public and argue in private.
Generally speaking, I think the points that it impossible to rescind heritage (including the uncomfortable historical fact that scholasticism recieved it’s impetus from religion) and that neutrality is not abscence of bias (nor is secularism absolute disestablishment) were made and also do hold firm.
I don’t think, however, that many people (especially here) are happy that a prepondeance of arch-religiosity may be allowed to infiltrate into the general curriculum, though it’s probable that we agree government indoctrination is a lesser evil (since we, the general public, have some nominal control over that, at least).
As the curriculum, examinations and the timetable are the only tools we do have to control education I think we should use them – in the same way as many academies are developing specialist departments, I see no reason why religion (as one of the humanities) should not also be equated equal standing (footing? kneeling? genuflecting?). If, and thus because, we accept creationism is incorrect, where it is taught and provided as an answer in various tests it should be marked wrong and therefore no Vardy school could qualify a geologist…serve them right, by the book!
That done, we can advise parents about the best course of action for their children then sit back and watch the market forces take effect.
Timetabling offers its own challenges, especially considering all the additional pressures squeezing socially desirable subjects into the currently limited schedules. Personally, I’d have no problem with compulsory 6-day school weeks (ie incorporate sunday schools into regular timetables), provided that specialist accomodation for different departmental facilities were developed on different sites (ie sport, science etc) and an active pupil timetabling choice was created for attendance rather than a parental scramble to get on waiting lists or lotteries.
The one thing that constantly amazes me is the complete waste of capacity within the education sector, which is created by ridiculous and infuriating administration and exacerbated by ridiculous and infuriating under-resourcing.
Of course it is impossible to extricate any society from the noose of antecedent influence, but that doesn’t stop us occasionally wishing for a purist modernity that makes a complete break with the past, though we should also ask what opportunity risk is posed by this possibility.
I think the reasons how and why different religious movements developed during different and particular times is completely fascinating and still offers lessons, particularly to budding political operators.
13th March 2008 at 11:43 am
“Well . . . you might just have a point there. I daresay there are parts of my brain which are still wired up that way. And thus, you perfectly make my point.”
I actually really like this argument. “I am an awkward so-and-so and we don’t want any more of them, do we!” Yes, I’ll buy that!
Also like Oranjepan’s analysis that you’re over-compensating – and as s/he says, the guilt is still evident in what you say here, as I’m sure you realise.
Hm, I appear to have achieved a greater empathy for the personal psychohistory of Laurence Boyce. Not sure it convinces me to secularise the state school system (Martin Gill is coming far closer there) but at least I get it. Was this the aim of the article, Joe??
13th March 2008 at 12:40 pm
Laurence, I’m not suggesting Wicca and Jedi schools, simply that Wicca and Jedi children should have equal rights to christians and atheists in the school system.
Wicca children (my what a useful shorthand this is) in particular suffer considerable discrimination from christian teachers who think that Wicca has something to do with their concept of Satan. This is an outrage. These teachers assume are only rebelling and trying to cause trouble. This would of course be true of the Jedi, nearly all of them at least.
History, science, mathematics, literature, these all give us different ways of thinking about the world, and there is broad agreement that they are worth teaching. There is broad disagreement over religion, and for that matter over philosophy and ethics, but it is a legitimate social choice to say that those who want these things in schools should be allowed to have them. It is what public services rarely are, but ought always strive to be, that you get what you would buy with your own money in a free market, which for some includes religion.
My suggestion offers an extra safety-valve over abusive and extreme religious teaching because children/parents can switch to a parallel stream or demand a new stream.
Arguments from atheists based on the greater fidelity of extremist religion compared to moderate religion are just bonkers. You should consider both equally false, but the moderates at least you can talk to – they haven’t rejected thinking for themselves – and therefore have got something right that the extremists have got wrong.
As for my aims for the article, beyond that I think it would be a good policy; I see the fault line emerging throughout society and the party as religion finds itself on the agenda more. I am convinced this has the potential to be utterly toxic to the party if we allow ourselves to become aligned according to whether we are believers or not, and so I am looking for some common ground.
13th March 2008 at 12:56 pm
Joe, I disagree that there is any more agreement or disagreement over either the value or method of teaching history, science, mathematics or literature compared to that regarding religion.
Of course the volume and vociferousness regarding religion are ramped up, as it is a more primary subject, engages with people at a more primary level and therefore also initiates engagement with more people.
This does not mean that religion is any less a contentious subject than many more technical or obscure areas for investigation or study, just that more people are tempted to make the foray and attempt to assert definitive notions.
Here’s a starter for ten – Shakespeare and Dickens, anti-semitic?
13th March 2008 at 2:15 pm
[Laurence] has a latent catholic guilt complex allied to the zeal of a convert and consequently he selects his evidence to fit his conclusions.
I guess religion might select its evidence too, if it actually had any.
I actually really like this argument. “I am an awkward so-and-so and we don’t want any more of them, do we!”
Yes, I quite like it too! But if you want a better argument for the damage caused by religion, then just open a newspaper on any day of the week.
Also like Oranjepan’s analysis that you’re over-compensating – and as s/he says, the guilt is still evident in what you say here.
You guys talk such a load of bollocks. I was brainwashed as a kid, so that makes me guilty? I am sorry to inform you that I am not in the least bit guilty about anything at all. Maybe stop and think a moment before you trot out the clichés.
Laurence, I’m not suggesting Wicca and Jedi schools, simply that Wicca and Jedi children should have equal rights to Christians and atheists in the school system.
Totally agree with you there Joe. All religions should have equal rights to special treatment with the education system . . . that is to say they should have no rights at all in this respect.
Wicca children in particular suffer considerable discrimination from Christian teachers who think that Wicca has something to do with their concept of Satan.
Satan – scary stuff. Could it be, perchance, that they both have more to do with the concept of Santa?
This is an outrage.
It’s more of a farce than an outrage, don’t you think?
Arguments from atheists based on the greater fidelity of extremist religion compared to moderate religion are just bonkers.
They are in fact vital and essential arguments, and ones which I can see a lot of people don’t want to have aired. Moderate religion makes no sense whatsoever and is entirely parasitic upon more consistent versions of the story. I mean what the hell is moderate religion exactly? “Hey guys, we’ve got the key to eternal life, but we’re going to play it down a bit . . .”
You should consider both equally false, but the moderates at least you can talk to.
And I do talk to them. I give them a really hard time. Time I would not waste on a fundamentalist. And then I get called a bigot.
As for my aims for the article . . .
Whatever your aims are, I am grateful to you for bringing the issue to the fore. We have absolutely got to have this debate out in the open. This thread looks like its heading for 100 comments, as opposed to just two for your previous LDV article. If this argument is boring, then I must say it’s a boring argument which always appears to arouse considerable interest!
13th March 2008 at 2:20 pm
And finally . . . read this and weep. (Or alternatively just resume a state of denial.)
13th March 2008 at 2:32 pm
I come to this debate late, but as someone who considers themselves bith a liberal and a Christian (of the Anglican persuasion) I feel drawn to say something.
My daughter is now in her first year at secondary school. She sings in the church choir, has taken communion, but does not want to move forward to confirmation – whether at this point or ever, who knows. All of these are her choice and no-one who has met her would think that this is done under sufference for me.
We did look at a range of secondary schools for her. There was an Anglican school that we could have got a place at and a RC school at which we might have obtained a place. However I feel quite strongly that religious instruction in school is wrong and shouldn’t be a part of the state sector. Nor should it intervene in the provision of the National Curriculum.
Two points that I would like to pick up on:
Alix – most churchgoers find some of the hymns quite archane, but there are many good ones, both modern and ancient.
Sesenco – our parish is a training parish, so we get a new curate every 2-3 years. None of the 6 that I know, who have come straight to us from theological college have been in any way ‘fire and brimstone’.
13th March 2008 at 3:08 pm
Laurence, no it is an outrage not a farce that followers of Wicca are bullied in school by their teachers.
I’m glad to provoke discussion, but I was hoping – forlornly I know – that most of the discussion would be with people other then yourself.
13th March 2008 at 3:38 pm
it is a legitimate social choice to say that those who want these things in schools should be allowed to have them
But that is really, seriously, fundamentally NOT what the choice is. I think that it is thoroughly illigitimate for parents to choose to force religion onto their children, because any modern religion you care to choose is exactly as valid as jedi-ism, and we don’t teach that because it’s a bunch of made-up rubbish. I think that forcing children to become religious seriously damages the life chances of several by impairing their critical faculties, not to mention increasing their likelihood of being bullied for being gay or non-conformance to other religious requirements, and that as liberals we should think of the safety and mental well-being of children first, and the religious backgrounds of those children’s parents a distant second.
13th March 2008 at 4:06 pm
Thanks Sanbiki. The damage caused by religion occurs at so many levels. Tolerating the irrational hurts individuals, compromises the educational process, poisons our public discourse, and could yet bring a world divided along sectarian lines to the brink of disaster. But I know it’s a bit impolite to say this . . .
13th March 2008 at 4:06 pm
sanbikinoraion – I would rather leave it up to parents than to the state to decide what is considered nonsense that children should be banned from experiencing. That is the nub of the argument.
13th March 2008 at 4:15 pm
Laurence, no it is an outrage not a farce that followers of Wicca are bullied in school by their teachers.
OK then, it’s an outrage. But it’s an outrage that will be best dealt with by confronting the lies of Christianity, rather than enhancing the status of joke religions.
13th March 2008 at 4:15 pm
So you’d rather leave it up to parents to decide if their kids should be racist or not? Instead of giving kids the chance to decide for themselves if that’s a good thing?
13th March 2008 at 4:17 pm
Religion should be taught. Religious history should be taught. I’d go so far as to say has to be taught to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. The difference is that I think religion should always be taught dispassionately and neutrally. Nothing should be taught that could in any way imply one or other religion (or none) is more or less valid than any other.
Yes religion does engage people at a more primary level, or more correctly at a more primal level. It engages people at the emotional level not the rational level. Whenever you talk about science or factual subjects (even to a large extent philosophy) you always end up a set of facts and a debate about what those facts represent or show, a rational discussion. With religion every debate eventually comes down to people “feeling” or “knowing in their hearts” that their religion is right. Once you reach a certain point it’s impossible to continue any rational debate about religion. The best you can do is talk about the effects of certain values and the implications of certain beliefs not if they are right or wrong; a religious person will always “know in their hearts” (or through emotional attachment to religious dogma) if something is right or wrong regardless of rational merits. A religious Christian will never ever say that Jesus or God was wrong. They will say our interpretation is wrong, our record is wrong, or the text is wrong; anything else would invalidate their deepest beliefs, the omniscience of their god.
That’s why faith schools are wrong. A faith school will by it’s very nature encourage the emotional attachment to a concept and encourage a bias towards an emotional world view. An emotional attachment isn’t always a bad thing, but neither is it automatically a good thing.
People and society become better, more moral; values change, be that women’s rights, racism, slavery, gay rights etc. Whenever society changes, religion doesn’t. People have said that catholic schools have a hard time retaining kids as believers. The reason for that I feel is because current Catholicism is a lot less in step with current morality and values than say the CoE. Hence it’s much easier for kids and others to see it as unsuitable and not be emotionally attached to it. Catholicism has to all extents fragmented. There’s European Catholicism which is mostly liberal and generally disagrees with the pope’s stated values (abortion, contraception, etc) and then there’s the rest of the world which is a lot more strict. The CoE has that same problem with it’s African members. The reason is that the values and morality of those different societies are not the same.
All of this can be taught in secular schools, without ever having to suggest any one value system is right or wrong, without, importantly, encouraging an emotional attachment to any one value set. Faith schools though presume that their system is right and build up that emotional attachment. There’s a good reason faith’s want it this way. When a faith changes direction or stance, it wants it’s followers to follow along with them, the evangelicals realise this, even acknowledge it, it’s why they are targeting creationism and other such stuff at schools, and not the adult population. If there’s an emotional attachment at an impressionable age then people are less likely to just turn their back on them, to step back and examine the implications, to re-evaluate. Our post-enlightenment society has already been encouraging people to step back, it’s why religion has been in retreat for so long. Faith schools are a mechanism for the religious to create an environment that works in their favour. The Jesuits said it best “give me the boy and I’ll give you the man”. Teach a person when they are young and impressionable and you can shape their beliefs into the mould you want them to be. We should be shaping our young people to think for themselves, to be able to examine everything on it’s merits and not just on an emotional bias.
Our emotions are what bring out the best and the worst of our humanity, our strongest and most dangerous asset. Great art and music, passion and love, yet also anger, jealousy and hate. Great charity and great violence and harm, and sometimes even both at once (Hamas does lots of good charitable work as well as terrorist bombings).
In our schools we have the chance to teach our children to temper and understand their emotions and to be able to decide on a rational basis where their emotional attachments should go; to recognise the good emotional attachments and the bad ones.
Emotional attachments are very powerful things. The attachment to your military unit is what makes you willing to die for your comrades. The emotional attachment to your football team and you fellow supporters is what makes people commit violence against opponent supporters. Emotional attachment to a concept, an ideal, or person drives people to create great poetry and music, great feats of heroism.
Faith schools encourage and promote the emotional attachment before we’ve given the kids the tools to rationally understand the consequences of that emotional attachment and before we’ve given them the tools to decide wisely. In many ways the faith part of the school is trying to negate what the rational part of education is trying to achieve. An emotional attachment, once formed is a very hard thing to break, you don’t just turn your back on your football team because they’re having a bad season. It’s probably why people like Laurence and others who’ve abandoned their faith in later life tend to exhibit anger and resentment towards them; all that emotional energy has to go somewhere and because they feel they were never given a free choice when they were young, they lash out at the people that denied them that choice. In a very real sense religion created it’s most angry opponents.
The emotional attachment is already very strongly encourage by the children’s parents and their beliefs, by extra-curricular activities. School should not act as a counter balance, but as a tempering force, tempered steel is much more resilient than untreated steel.
Give children a secular, rational environment without an emotional bias, and if they chose to join a religion they do so out of rational conviction and their emotional attachment will be all the stronger. Surely that works in the best interest of religion as well?
13th March 2008 at 4:23 pm
I would rather leave it up to parents than to the state to decide what is considered nonsense that children should be banned from experiencing. That is the nub of the argument.
I suppose that is the nub of the argument, Matthew. So may I ask you another question which you won’t answer. Who do you think should have a say in how the NHS is run?
a) all of us
b) only the users of the service, i.e. ill people
14th March 2008 at 12:18 am
Laurence, stop mixing your arguments. You are protesting too much to be convincing.
Different subjects test different techniques, emphasising different areas of specialism.
Healthcare and parenting might be interrelated, but there are clear demarkation lines, anyhoo, all doctoring involves dealing with the patient as well as the problem, and so long as the patient isn’t delirious or unconscious (which are also possible symptoms) a dialogue with the patient is often the swiftest way to diagnose the both the cause and the cure.
Additionally we are all users of our health services, whether we are ill or not, and we also all have the opportunity to have a say in how it is run, though customer satisfaction surveys are irrelevant if you’ve not been served/serviced.
14th March 2008 at 12:47 am
Would I rather leave it to parents to decide if their children are to be racist?
To be blunt – yes.
The alternative is that every home must have a policeman in it who will sit there monitoring the parents, and if the parents don’t behave in the state -approved manner, they will be punished.
People like Laurence and Martin have a right to see religion in a negative way, but then they shouldn’t also claim they know what it is to be neutral. They are not neutral – my point is no-one is neutral.
So rather than the state saying “We know what it is to be neutral, and the only form of education acceptable to us is what we deem to be neutral”, I say we must have a diversity of forms of education. It is that diversity which guartantees freedonm, even if it means some people are bringing up their children in a way of which we don’t personally approve.
14th March 2008 at 1:58 am
Matthew we’re not talking about the state monitoring parents, which is just wrong, and it never should. I have stated this a number of times already. We are, and always have been, talking about the state supporting schools that follow a specific ideology.
Essentially your interpretation of what it means to be liberal is that in your view (while you might not agree with it) it’s perfectly acceptable for parents to group together to create a school whose ideology is that white people are superior to black people and for it to receive state money and support. Oh and it’s a “pluralistic” school so there’s no problem with black kids going there, they won’t be disadvantaged.
All you need to do is replace the word white with Catholic/Jew/Muslim, and the word black with CoE/Hindu/Atheist and you have the current situation we have with faith schools. I don’t for the smallest fraction of a second believe that you’d put a Muslim school as the first choice for your child if there was an otherwise identical good Catholic school next to it. At some level, in some small (or large) way, you consider one or more aspects of Muslim teachers inferior to the Catholic teachers.
As a religious person supporting faith schools, your essential position is no different to that of an apartheid-supporter supporting schools apartheid schools, or an Atheist supporting Atheist schools. All that’s different is the name of your ideology and it’s focus. It’s sad that you should not see anything wrong with that.
You’re attitude is not liberal, it’s authoritarian. In your stated view the state should help parents force their beliefs on their children or at least allow them to place their children in an environment supportive of and biased towards their ideology.
I’d never want the state to fund an Atheist school, that’s why I consider myself liberal; I put the right of others (kids included) to freely form and hold their own views above my wishes and hopes to have them share them.
14th March 2008 at 10:32 am
Martin, no, I do not believe that Catholic teachers are superior to Muslim teachers. The only superior-inferior argument that has been made by anyone here is from you and your fellow militant secularists, who insist they are superior to those who have a religious belief or practice.
I have said, several times, that I accept there is a conflict between the freedom of people to bring up their children according to their own ideas, and the freedom of their children to break away from that cultural background. Where we stand on the correct balance on this conflict differs.
The secularists here have made snide comments about how they believe religion to work and faith schools to operate, which from my experience are far from the truth and are based on a stereotypical view of religion which tends to see it only in its most extreme fundamentalist form. If they are taking this snide and biased approach, then I don’t think they can also be accepted as neutral commentators in this argument. That is, your snide comments have quite seriously undermined the point you were trying to make. In the same way, if I were to lard my points with snide comments about atheists – suggesting they are all immoral people bent on causing harm to society, it would undermine the points I am making about diversity of cultural provision in education being part of liberalism.
As I have also said, there is a balance here, and I think the current situation gets it about right – state faith schools are permitted, but also under the assumption that they teach their faith in a reasonably liberal manner. That is what I observe done in most Catholic schools that I am aware of. If I were to hear of a Catholic school which really was saying things like “gays will fry in hell” and “Catholics are superior to Muslims”, then I would wish it to be closed down.
Again, there is a balance we can argue about – just how far does legitimate cultural expression go before it becomes illegitimate?
14th March 2008 at 11:44 am
Matthew, I think you are missing the whole point.
Yes, I see religion as working in a certain way. That only reinforces and supports my point that we need secular schools. Schools that do not favour or bias children and teaching towards any one faith; including my own!
As to inferior and superior; you’re being disingenuous. If you (or I) were given a ballot paper with two secret candidates on it and the only thing we knew about them was that one was a LibDem and one was a Conservative, we’d vote for the LibDem. If you didn’t think the LibDem candidate in some way superior you’d not vote for him. If the choice was between a catholic and a muslim I’m sure you’d chose the catholic. It’s simple in-group bias (many times unconscious), and is a documented scientific fact. Only once you start knowing more about the candidates might you change your mind. That’s why if there are two identical schools, with identical teachers you will consider the catholic school and teachers superior to the Muslim school and teachers. In my view not realising that people (even ourselves) behave this way (most of the time subconsciously) is a very dangerous thing for a liberal.
They’d never (same as you) say the latter out loud, it’s not politically correct, despite being true; if they didn’t feel that catholics were superior to muslims, they’d not see the need to have a catholic school and be perfectly happy with just muslim schools. Even if they don’t say it out loud, the message is there all the same and permeates everything. If you didn’t think catholic were superior, why chose a catholic school over any other? Again, the same would apply if this were an atheist, apartheid or marxist school.
As to the former. You should be glad that the secular morality, a morality independent of any one religion, has forced the Catholic church’s hand so that, unlike a couple of hundred years ago, such blatant disregard for catholic doctrine on your part no longer results in your excommunication and ostracising. In official Catholic doctrine you are in defiance of God, since you’re in defiance of the church and it’s head, the Holy-see (the Pope), who is God’s direct representative on Earth and infallible. By official catholic doctrine you are a heretic; they just don’t exclude you so that when they lobby politicians for the right not equally provide services to homosexuals they can point to you (as officially a catholic) as one of their supporters. Because you say you’re a catholic, the church can say it has your support when lobbying politicians.
It’s impossible to say, and it’s up to society as a whole to decide that. Cultural expression is a private and individual matter and the state should never favour one view over the other and should ensure that no one is allowed to force their culture on someone else, be that forced marriage, genital mutilation, religion or styles of dress. The state should provide services in a manner where no one is coerced into one view or the other.
14th March 2008 at 12:13 pm
For one thing, I simply don’t accept the premise that secularism is itself a form of bias.
Not teaching that one religion is correct is not the same as teaching that no religion is correct. Telling kids that X number of people believe A, Y number of people believe B, and Z number of people don’t believe any of them, isn’t biased towards any of those belief systems. Failure to be biased in one direction does not automatically show bias in the opposite direction.
And for another thing, even were that not the case I still would not accept that faith schools don’t do far more social harm than they can ever do good.
Where I grew up in Scotand, there were Catholic primary schools and Protestant primary schools (technically non-denominational), but because the town wasn’t big enough to warrant more than one secondary school there was just a single “bog standard comprehensive” that all the kids had to go to. Even by the time we left that high school, after six years, the Catholics and Protestants hadn’t completely integrated and were still identifiable as two distinct groups, and that was just as a result of primary school apartheid in a quiet little Scottish village of only a few thousand people.
Then when I was at uni in Glasgow there were two students on my course who, it turned out, were the same age and who had lived in the same street in Cumbernauld for most of their lives, but didn’t even know each other’s names because one was a Catholic and had gone to Catholic schools and the other was a Protestant and had gone to non-denominational state schools, just as their own parents had before them.
You are never ever going to convince me that that is a healthy situation that should even be permitted, let alone supported, by the state.
14th March 2008 at 1:00 pm
Laurence, stop mixing your arguments. You are protesting too much to be convincing.
Not at all, Orange pan. I’m highlighting (yet another) double standard in our discourse. It goes without saying that we all have a say on the NHS. We’ve all used the service, we’re all going to use it again but, in any case, it’s in everyone’s interests to have as healthy a nation as possible. The same goes for education. We’ve all been to school, one day we may all have children who will attend school but, in any case, it’s in everyone’s interests to have as well-educated a nation as possible.
But, bizarrely, you wouldn’t necessarily know this. The way the debate is framed, you would think that the only people with any interest in the education system must be parents. So if a faith school is “what parents want,” well that’s pretty much case closed and dismissed. It’s just yet another dishonest ploy to add to all the rest employed by those who have come to regard exceptional treatment as some sort of right.
I say the following without a trace of exaggeration – that there would be more sanity and reason restored to our education system if everyone had a say in how schools were run apart from parents. It’s certainly not what I would propose, but just think on that for a minute before trotting out the “parental wishes” argument. It’s not even their education we’re talking about, for Christ’s sake.
14th March 2008 at 1:05 pm
“You are never ever going to convince me that that is a healthy situation that should even be permitted, let alone supported, by the state.”
Well precisely, Ian M.
The reason we have segregated Catholic schools is because the RC Church insists upon them, and would kick up one hell of a stink if the state decided to integrate them.
Segregation has existed in Scotland since the 1920s. In England and Wales, it dates largely from the comprehensive reorganisation of the 1960s and 1970s. Back in the 1930s, Labour made a Mephistopholean pact with the Pope: the priests would deliver their congregations to Labour provided Labour gave them segregated schools.
It is very difficult to persuade adults that every time they take Communion they cannibalise part of Jesus’s body, or that Mr Ratzinger is infallible. But if you drum it into terrified children from a very early age you can hold them captive for life.
So the purpose of segregated schools is to facilitate the indoctrination of children and thereby maintain the RC population, without which the remaining priests, monks and nuns would have to look for proper jobs.
Oh, and the nice bit is – we taxpayers foot the bill for it!
People like Matthew may be inmpeccable liberals on most issues, but their first loyalty (which comes before family of country) is to Mr Ratzinger and his Church. They will never tell you the real reason why they support segregated Catholic schools, which is the Church to which they belong wishes to indoctrinate children at the state’s expense. Nothing to do with being liberal.
The more you argue the Church’s case on the internet, the fewer Hail Marys you have to say – I guess.
Have separate schools for Moslems? Well, that’s insanity as anyone in their right mind can see.
14th March 2008 at 1:07 pm
You’re just terrific Martin. I really ought to retire and let you get on with it!
14th March 2008 at 1:10 pm
Martin, yes, I am glad that liberalism has forced a change on the Catholic Church from the position it took a century or more ago, and has, I believe caused it to become closer to the teachings of Jesus.
But your position that what I am saying is “blatant disregard for Catholic doctrine” is untrue. In fact there is a great deal of discussion in Catholic circles on these issues, and these days there is an almost universal reluctance – I mean amongst cardinals and the like, not just amongst ordinary Catholics – to suggest anyone “goes to Hell”.
The Catholic position on “infallibility” is NOT that everything the Pope says is the “word of God”. In fact there have only been two officially infallible declarations in the history of the RC Church. Catholics can and do hold a variety of interpretations, people who have vigorously argued against points made by popes have been canonised.
This intolerance I have talked about is precisely this over-willingness to assume the worst about religion and people who have some attachment to it, and to make judgments on that basis. This illustrates how difficult it is to achieve true neutrality. What you would regard as neutral information on the Catholic Church, I would regard as outrageously biased comment you might expect from someone who is prejudiced against it. That is why I find it so difficult to accept there can be universally accepted “neutral teaching” in the way you and other propose.
Iain – the points you make would apply so long as there was any choice on any basis between schools. I don’t like the idea of the state “not permitting” something. I would rather two people living close to each other not know each other well than the state stepping in and forcing them to live in a particular way because it thinks it knows best.
14th March 2008 at 1:17 pm
“Catholics can and do hold a variety of interpretations, people who have vigorously argued against points made by popes have been canonised.”
Er… I thought the Pope only became infallible in 1870?
But they won’t be canonising Professor Hans Kung, will they? He was excommunicated by Wojtyla on Ratzinger’s recommendation. So much for freedom of debate within the RC Church.
14th March 2008 at 1:31 pm
You’re right iainm, secularism is not a bias. Thanks for the insight, I’d realised that Matthew still conflated secularism and atheism.
Matthew, I’m assuming you are a liberal democrat? During the leadership election hustings I asked what role religion should play in politics (it’s on youtube, the internet hustings, last 2 min, it’s very quiet, I know). Both Chris and Nick clearly and unequivocally stated that the state has to be secular and should take no position or have any part in religion, Chris even said we should disestablish the Church. If you therefore believe that a secular school is biased against you as a catholic, then you must equally believe that a secular state is biased against you. Which puts you in the wrong party.
Could it be that because you don’t approve of my view of religion or my lack of belief that you are prejudiced against anything I might suggest? Do you expect that because a vocal atheist suggested it it must in some way be biased against religion? Is that what you’d do?
(NB: I’m a way for a couple of days, so I’ll have to rebut the continuing illiberal attempts to support religious privilege and bias when I get back)
14th March 2008 at 1:40 pm
The alternative is that every home must have a policeman in it who will sit there monitoring the parents, and if the parents don’t behave in the state-approved manner, they will be punished.
That’s not what we’re talking about Matthew. The home is private. The schools is public. As you well know. But please don’t let that prevent you from advancing your disingenuous argument.
The only superior-inferior argument that has been made by anyone here is from you and your fellow militant secularists, who insist they are superior to those who have a religious belief or practice.
Personally, I don’t feel superior to anyone (except possibly towards condescending atheists). I just think that the claims of religion are false.
I am glad that liberalism has forced a change on the Catholic Church from the position it took a century or more ago, and has, I believe caused it to become closer to the teachings of Jesus.
Would that be Jesus about whom, objectively speaking, we really don’t know the first thing?
These days there is an almost universal reluctance – I mean amongst cardinals and the like, not just amongst ordinary Catholics – to suggest anyone “goes to Hell.”
Do you think this is because they have stopped believing in Hell, or because they have finally woken up to the need for improved public relations?
There have only been two officially infallible declarations in the history of the RC Church.
Here’s another question for you to ignore, Matthew. Why don’t you tell us what those two infallible declarations are, what evidence lies behind them, and whether or not you actually believe in them yourself? Or am I being too snide again?
14th March 2008 at 1:56 pm
Just quickly before I scoot off…
It’s not intolerance, it’s an acceptance that there are a wide number of interpretations even in a single religion, and that while the school you went to and you’re kids go is currently favouring one interpretation, it doesn’t mean that others are like that or that it will even stay that way.
I don’t assume the worst about religion, I can point to evidence that shows considerable (majority) support amongst the worlds billion catholic’s for those views. That means they exist and that means by supporting catholic schools the state gives official sanction and support to ALL catholic view points, especially not if those view points are in written, black on white, in that religions doctrines. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean it’s not catholic law or policy.
The whole point of having secular schools is so that we don’t have to worry about any of this. We don’t need worry or wonder if the people setting up this catholic school are the “burn gays in hell” type, or the “gays are ok” type.
A secular school can simply point to the church’s own texts and say that, the catholic catechisms say this about homosexuality (same as I did above) and that this is official policy that many Catholics agree with. They can then also point out that many other Catholics strongly disagree with this (including you) and want it changed. They can then compare this to the various muslim views, CoE views and atheist views. That is a fair, balanced and unbiased education, and it can only be provided by a secular school.
The only way you can ensure you don’t get the loony “burn in hell” bias, or the “all religion is evil bias”, is by ensuring you don’t allow any bias at all into schools.
Please don’t, I need someone who brings out all their worst prejudices so they can make a strawman out of them which I can then rip to shreds.
14th March 2008 at 2:26 pm
So would you allow all-white or all-black schools? Because if parents were to have a conclusive influence on their children’s attitudes to race, that would be necessary. Otherwise at school children would be exposed to differing viewpoints and influences (not to mention come into contact with children of other races), which might considerably weaken their parents’ teachings.
I expect (and hope!) that what you really mean is that you would leave it to parents to teach their children their opinions on race in their own homes, but that you would not allow segregation into the education system. That is exactly the argument against faith schools. Nobody is saying that parents should be prevented from bringing up their children as they see fit according to whichever religious tradition (or lack thereof) they wish. But schools should not be segregated by religion any more than they should be segregated by race or sexuality.
The state does monitor parents. We dictate to parents the acceptable bounds of how they can treat their children. If social services suspect physical / sexual abuse, emotional trauma or neglect they will step in. Well, ok, perhaps not always as the Climbie case showed, but the principle is there.
The key point of course is that we don’t have a “thought police” to check up on what values parents are instilling in their children, nor should we as that would be very illiberal and would restrict freedom of speech. But we do need to consider childrens’ rights to freedom of thought as well, and if the only value systems children are allowed to experience are those of their parents then I believe that would be just as illiberal. That’s why schools act as a crucial counterbalance – a place where children can (hopefully) experience the full diversity of their community and be exposed to a whole range of different opinions and ideas. Faith schools dilute the benefit of this counterbalance, and generally just reinforce the values of the children’s parents. That’s not freedom, at least not for the children (whose rights, I believe, should come first).
Which is exactly why atheist schools shouldn’t be allowed – because the teachers there would, by definition, be prejudiced against all religious belief and so children who did have faith would be educated in a very unwelcoming environment. Ditto for faith schools.
What is being argued for is not atheist schools – which as you rightly say would be just as biased as faith schools – but secular schools, making no judgments about religion one way or the other, thus being truly neutral so children of all faiths and none can feel welcome and have the freedom to believe what ever the hell they like without fear of peer pressure or their teachers’ disapproval.
How do faith schools promote diversity? If a child goes to a CofE school, they’re not experiencing diversity at all – they’re just experiencing the CofE.
14th March 2008 at 2:57 pm
Iain – the points you make would apply so long as there was any choice on any basis between schools. I don’t like the idea of the state “not permitting” something. I would rather two people living close to each other not know each other well than the state stepping in and forcing them to live in a particular way because it thinks it knows best.
Choice is irrelevant. Whether or not parents had the right to choose to not send their children to schools that instilled and encouraged a sense of social division and separation between communities in no way negates the harm caused by those actions, either to the child or to society as a whole.
As for being uncomfortable with the state not permitting something, the state doesn’t permit things all the time. The state wouldn’t permit white parents to set up a white school where kids’ ethnicity was a factor in selection. The state wouldn’t allow a group of communist parents to set up and run a school and set its ethos in line with Marxist-Leninist values.
And the reason they would not allow these things is because it is not in the best interests of the children and it is not n the best interests of society as a whole.
And yet, as ever, religion somehow demands and is granted status as a special case.
In point of fact, since we’re talking about special treatment, I should point out that the state already explicitly does not allow atheist parents to set up a specifically atheist school in order to have their kids brought up completely free from religious pollution, because that would require the removal of the part of the education act that requires all children to be subjected to a daily act of worship, and the CofE would never let the government to get away with that. If our agenda really was an atheist one we would be arguing for that right, rather than in favour of a secular system.
14th March 2008 at 3:11 pm
No Martin, I am fine with your view of religion, you are as entitled to it as I am to mine. Nowhere am I calling for the support of the establishment of any particular religion in this country, I have been talking – and I mean it only as an example – of schools which happen to be affiliated to a religious organisation which is NOT the established Church of this country.
My point is one of liberalism – that is the extent to which ANY of us can truly claim to be neutral, and therefore offer education which is so neutral that no-one could object to it. I believe the right to dissent from what the state dictates as “neutral” is a critical one. So if most people think a certain sort of education is fine and neutral, they do not have the right to say to a minority “We are right, you are wrong, and we will force our view of what is neutral teaching onto you”.
So my case is PRECISELY the case AGAINST the establishment of religion. The established Church we have in this country is what was historically regarded as “neutral”. That is, the people at the time it was set up thought it was so obviously the correct interpretation, supported by the majority in Parliament, that quite obviously it should be imposed on everyone and only unacceptable extremists would object.
So within limitations, which I have suggested, I do support the right of
a minority cultural group to have a state supported education in the form it wishes. This is not in conflict with the idea of a secular state, since it is not biased towards any particular culture. I would most certainly support the right of a group of atheists, for example, to set up their own state school oriented towards their own point of view if they felt the existing state schools were too biased in favour of religion.
14th March 2008 at 4:38 pm
I kind of agree with Matthew that it is impossible to teach religion neutrally, but I think that is because it isn’t true. In general theories that can be argued both ways can be taught neutrally, you can look at all the evidence and all the arguments. With religion, that approach will always seem hostile to religion, rather than neutral.
Of course, we are told there is more going on than evidence or reason – I consider this rejection of reason when it hurts, shallow and problematic not deep and profound, for reasons like those given here: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/12/letter-to-ibrahim-nuclear-option.html
However many people are understandably terrified by this. They think, for instance, that the only way you can talk about values is by appeal to the supernatural, and they are convinced (and I agree here) that schools should talk about and teach values.
At risk of bringing up the “marxist school” analogy again, I do think that followers of Ayn Rand, are in many ways closer to a religion than a political grouping. Her “objectivism” (pah!) is not a religious philosophy, but it is self-reinforcing in the way religions are.
Now under my proposal students could reject a humanist education and demand an “objectivist” one. Yes, they would be demanding something unsound, something with some perverse moral values, etc, etc. Do we say, well that’s OK, as long as there is nothing supernatural in it? No, I think they deserve parity with every other unsound philosophy.
And should the state be judging which philosophy is sound and which is unsound? Nope. It hasn’t got a clue. The incentives for politicians are all wrong, it is in the nature of politics. History is replete with disasters brought about by government getting involved in this sort of decision.
Final point. Realpolitik. Religious education is compulsory in this country. All schools are faith schools. Let’s make it optional. You are not going to win a turnaround from compulsory to prohibited, certainly not with us liberals – who don’t like compulsion or prohibition, remember – anywhere near the median on this issue.
14th March 2008 at 5:00 pm
Joe, I think you are broadly right here. Since you got me to take a look at this strand some days ago, I must have had more than 50 messages sweep through my computer about the intricacies of this debate – I kept on giving up reading in horror, but have been enticed back every time. I have a different starting point in this debate than you, but end up in much the same place.
Perhaps I could just say this in the hope that I will stop reading and do some work:
1. The ignorance and intolerance about religion in some of the contributions has made me wonder whether I really ought to be voting the same way as some of your contributors.
2. There is a failure here to distinguish between good religion – questioning, open-minded, spiritual – and intolerant fundamnetalist superstition. I think it’s time Liberals began to distinguish between the two, rather than saying that every half-baked claim to religion has to be put on the same par as traditions reaching back centuries.
3. This is just a personal feeling, which I expect will draw down heaps of horror. But, I would prefer my children to be brought up and educated inside a tolerant religious tradition, than in an empty attempt at even-handedness between everything, good and bad – a kind of flaccid, ersatz liberalism – which I fear creates the kind of vacuum that multinational advertisers want, so they can sweep in, gleefully declaring that their brands are “the new religion” (Young and Rubicam).
4. I don’t expect everyone to see it this way, but kind of hope that Liberals would understand at least where I was coming from.
14th March 2008 at 5:11 pm
David . . . get back and do some work.
14th March 2008 at 6:27 pm
@David Boyle.
Multinationals want to create a religious vaccuum? They could just as easily want to create a religious ‘framework’ to hang their gimmicks on. Remember the messianic fervour that accompanied Enron and the New Economy?
14th March 2008 at 6:32 pm
In point of fact, since we’re talking about special treatment, I should point out that the state already explicitly does not allow atheist parents to set up a specifically atheist school in order to have their kids brought up completely free from religious pollution, because that would require the removal of the part of the education act that requires all children to be subjected to a daily act of worship, and the CofE would never let the government to get away with that. If our agenda really was an atheist one we would be arguing for that right, rather than in favour of a secular system.
Well said Iain. It helps to be reminded from time to time just how absurdly slanted the present set up is in favour of religion.
14th March 2008 at 6:35 pm
Multinationals want to create a religious vacuum? They could just as easily want to create a religious “framework” to hang their gimmicks on.
Great point Anax. What’s the world’s best-selling book? It wouldn’t be the Bible perchance? No money to be made there then . . .
14th March 2008 at 8:02 pm
“I say the following without a trace of exaggeration – that there would be more sanity and reason restored to our education system if everyone had a say in how schools were run apart from parents. It’s certainly not what I would propose, but just think on that for a minute before trotting out the “parental wishes” argument. It’s not even their education we’re talking about, for Christ’s sake.”
Maybe not, Laurence, but I prefer to advocate an inclusive form of participation, rather than to start drawing up a list of groups which should be excluded from having their say, otherwise voluntary civic engagement becomes replaced with complusion, to be followed by sanctions.
Either you allow people to make up their own minds in the process of confronting issues byb ensuring the level of choice is maximised or you are dictating with a dangerous level of certainty.
On the question of neutrality, when we get a vote, will it be a free vote or will there be a three-line whip to abstain?
14th March 2008 at 8:19 pm
I said it’s not what I propose. What I propose is that we all have an equal say in how our schools and hospitals are run. Not just sick people. Not just parents. All of us. Not too controversial, I hope.
15th March 2008 at 7:25 am
This is quite funny.
15th March 2008 at 10:20 am
There is a failure here to distinguish between good religion – questioning, open-minded, spiritual – and intolerant fundamnetalist superstition
Er. Open-minded religion? Like, believing that you could possibly be wrong, and that there is no supernatural force? Or is that a bit too open-minded?
The ignorance and intolerance about religion in some of the contributions has made me wonder whether I really ought to be voting the same way as some of your contributors
Well I don’t like the way that several religious contributors to this thread are attempting to paint the atheists here as intolerant nutjobs, when they are the ones who hold an utterly unsubstantiatable belief in a supernatural force that loves them, but is happy to rain down wars, earthquakes and tsunamis down on its followers, and reject the beliefs of all of the other people who believe in different supernatural forces that love them on the basis that their supernatural force told them that it was the one true supernatural force, and that they shouldn’t be seen hanging around with any other bugger’s supernatural force or it will stop loving you.
C’mon. Grow up.
15th March 2008 at 3:40 pm
Yes, there is really no equivalence whatsoever between the believer and the sceptic. The believer makes a whole slew of preposterous claims, while the sceptic just says, “show us the evidence” – how unreasonable! But it is clear that the religionists on this thread, aided and abetted by their secular appeasers, are desperate to establish just such an equivalence. “It’s a question of freedom of conscience . . . you’re entitled to your view, I’m entitled to mine . . . there’s no such thing as neutrality . . .etc.”
Of course people believe all sorts of things but they do so, wittingly or unwittingly, according to a scale of probabilities proportioned to the available evidence. You can, should you wish, believe that the Holocaust never happened, but you do so in the teeth of the existing evidence. There is therefore an onus upon you to produce some new evidence, and a failure so to do brings on an entirely justified scorn and derision against the believer.
But this is clearly too advanced for some on this thread. They demand respect for their beliefs, complain that their beliefs are being caricatured, but do they actually tell us plainly what their beliefs are? Heck no. Of course it’s no surprise really You only have to soberly state Christian belief – that Jesus was born of a virgin, walked on water, turned water into wine, died, stayed dead three days, before rising up from the dead and shooting off into the sky – to realise how utterly ridiculous it all is.
Well, you may indeed assert your right to believe this garbage – stuff that makes Holocaust denial look reasonable by comparison – but all you have done in effect is to assert your right to be thought a fool.
15th March 2008 at 5:27 pm
Lawrence, don’t you have some canvassing to do or leaflets to deliver? If you don’t, I can find you some.
15th March 2008 at 5:55 pm
I think I’m opposed to leafleting on environmental grounds. Besides, demolishing religion is pretty much a full-time occupation. I’ll see what I can do for May, but Cambridge is very safe. They’d probably thank me to stay away.
16th March 2008 at 6:43 pm
It is a pretty high-flown ambition to want to demolish religion, Laurence, considering how all religions have withstood the attacks of large numbers of better argued counter-arguments throughout the centuries.
Anyway, I’d have thought any average joe can see that the purely statistical chance of religious claims being true or false are exactly 50%.
Don’t you support the absolute right for all (idiots and geniuses alike) to be wrong, without which there would be no right to disagree?
I mean, socialism and social democracy are flawed by a drift toward irrelevance, while conservatism is fundamentally incoherent, yet more than half of voters consistently support them because both still have something (however little or much) to offer to the political debate.
Prohibiting things we dislike, disagree with or consider dangerous is simply impossible as well as being damaging to dialogue – where would evolution be without contrast?
16th March 2008 at 7:14 pm
It is a pretty high-flown ambition to want to demolish religion . . .
I know, but I believe in aiming high.
. . . considering how all religions have withstood the attacks of large numbers of better argued counter-arguments throughout the centuries.
You see this is just not true any more. Religion is not withstanding the attacks. Religion in the UK (as measured by church attendance) has been in decline for over 100 years (see Bob Jackson, Hope for the Church). The philosopher Anthony Grayling has likened the resurgence in religious fundamentalism we witness around the world today, to the last desperate lunges of a cornered animal – and I think I would go along with that. We have a real opportunity to finish off religion for good. Of course it will always linger around like a bad smell, but we will never ever again have God telling the US President to go to war in Iraq with the connivance of a deeply Christian Prime Minister. Religion will have been rendered unacceptable among intelligent people.
Anyway, I’d have thought any average joe can see that the purely statistical chance of religious claims being true or false are exactly 50%.
Well I must be really stupid then, because I see the statistical chances of the claims of religion being true as infinitesimal, if not zero.
Prohibiting things we dislike, disagree with or consider dangerous is simply impossible as well as being damaging to dialogue.
Who’s talking about prohibition? I just don’t want these fruitcakes running our schools, that’s all.
16th March 2008 at 7:46 pm
Laurence, you’ve proposed an argument which conflates the level of church attendance with the numbers of faithful – where is your evidence that one has a bearing on the other?
Church attendance is far more easily explained as the level of faithful support for the religious institutions as they are run (considering the difficulties the ABC has run into by encouraging debate is this any wonder?).
Grayling’s comparison is a non-sequitur, as religion in general and any specified modern religion is the archetypal amorphous and fractious broad church. Viewing any branch or extreme wing of an institution in isolation is selective and fails to incorporate or predict the balancing mechanisms which exist in all heirachies.
On the 50/50 point, you’ve confused probability with statistics and then compounded your mistake by imposing your personal bias to prejudicial effect.
16th March 2008 at 8:14 pm
Laurence, you’ve proposed an argument which conflates the level of church attendance with the numbers of faithful – where is your evidence that one has a bearing on the other?
Well of course it’s just one measure. But in the context of this argument on faith schools, it is the main religious institutions we are talking about.
On the 50/50 point, you’ve confused probability with statistics and then compounded your mistake by imposing your personal bias to prejudicial effect.
Really? Well thanks for putting me straight there. So tell us Orange Pan – what do you think the chances are that Jesus rose from the dead 2,000 years ago?
16th March 2008 at 9:04 pm
Laurence, it really depends on your terms of reference whether your belief or anti-belief is based on a fixation of something that doesn’t fit our current understanding, or a search for deeper meaning and eternal truth.
I’m personally quite fond of the linguistic argument about textual interpretation in which ‘rose from the dead’ can be understood as ‘revived’, or ‘resuscitated’, or the historical and cultural translation of ‘wine’ (in ‘water into wine’) as compatible with ‘cordial’ – call it literary truth if you want.
What’s more I fail to be convinced by any attempt at debunking religion which doesn’t properly fisk all composing tenets of the faith: how do you account for ideas like the Holy Spirit, unless you decide to make a value judgement about what might be ‘holy’ while simultaneously acknowledging the group mentality and unity that accords with ’spirit’?
The problem with religious sources is the same as listening to spin-meisters like Alistair Campbell, you have to disentangle the campaigning propaganda from the actuality, because they are never objectively neutral about framing their presentation when they have an investment in one particular outcome or institution at the expense of all else.
16th March 2008 at 9:08 pm
Ah, I can see you belong to the “religion is just what you make of it” school of thought.
You win . . .
16th March 2008 at 9:25 pm
Much as winning might be desirable to some, and as flattering as it might be to get you to make concessions, I don’t accept your overly-simplistic characterisation.
Belief and knowledge are both necessary and are necessarily complementary methods of discovering truth, each providing a measuring stick for the other.
16th March 2008 at 9:33 pm
I don’t accept your overly-simplistic characterisation.
I do! If a thing can’t ultimately be boiled down to simple terms, then it isn’t really very useful.
16th March 2008 at 9:48 pm
Laurence, that’s just so lazy and self-indulgent that it’s unbelievable you stated it, then again maybe not.
Not nearly every choice can be presented as a yes/no question, otherwise there’d be no point to multi-party politics.
16th March 2008 at 10:02 pm
Laurence, that’s just so lazy and self-indulgent that it’s unbelievable you stated it.
Not really. It’s just borne out of years (mis)spent in the software industry. Look at a computer – incredibly complicated. How many people understand the whole thing? Very few. But at the end of the day, you switch it on, and the damn thing either works or it doesn’t.
16th March 2008 at 10:13 pm
A logical complex isn’t difficult to get your head round because it’s complicated, but because it’s functions and possibilities are so far-reaching.
16th March 2008 at 10:39 pm
. . . whereas the theological version goes a bit like this: Look at God – incredibly complicated. How many people understand the whole thing? None at all. He is completely beyond all human comprehension. Now give us your money . . .
16th March 2008 at 11:22 pm
No, it doesn’t. Faith and knowledge are two completely different things which can lead people to exactly the same conclusions.
Confusion and conflict makes things complicated, not complexity. The problem is how people cope with and overcome a lack of certainty on a daily basis, not how to expand one’s scope while maintaining focus without requisite time or patience – those are just natural constraints.
16th March 2008 at 11:30 pm
How all this refers back to schools policy will probably upset you, Laurence, though I don’t see a way to avoid the logic.
Either we have multi-faith schools where mono-faiths families can happily send their children, or we separate the teaching departments from the institutional administration, or we continue with the current mish-mash with its offer of non-competition over ideas, unfair registration process and unbalanced resource allocation.
16th March 2008 at 11:32 pm
*mono-faith and no-faith
16th March 2008 at 11:44 pm
It is a pretty high-flown ambition to want to demolish religion, Laurence, considering how all religions have withstood the attacks of large numbers of better argued counter-arguments throughout the centuries.
I wouldn’y say “demolish it”, I would say banish it from the realms of rational discourse and confine it to the home and to the temple where it belongs in the name of the children in question as well as in the wider name of social coherence.
Anyway, I’d have thought any average joe can see that the purely statistical chance of religious claims being true or false are exactly 50%.
Arithmetically illiterate rubbish. Just because there are only two possible answers to a question does not mean there is a 50% probability of either answer being yes.
Am I holding the crown jewels of Brunei in my hand right now? There are only two possible answers, yes or no, so by your reasoning that means there is a 50% probability that I am holding those jewels, right?
Don’t you support the absolute right for all (idiots and geniuses alike) to be wrong, without which there would be no right to disagree?
It’s not about the rights of the idiots or geniuses, it is about the rights of the idiots’ or genuises’ children to be idiots or geniuses in their own right, and the rights of wider society to not have to deal with the legacy of childhood apartheid that faith schools are fostering. Get it in to your head. A child is not the property of his parents to do with as they please, he is a human being in his own right, and a family does not exist in isoltion, it exists in a community and its actions have consequences for that community.
I mean, socialism and social democracy are flawed by a drift toward irrelevance, while conservatism is fundamentally incoherent, yet more than half of voters consistently support them because both still have something (however little or much) to offer to the political debate.
If you think our ridiculous political system allows us to divine anything about what the voters really think, then you are even more deduled than I already thought you were.
Prohibiting things we dislike, disagree with or consider dangerous is simply impossible as well as being damaging to dialogue – where would evolution be without contrast?
We prohibit things we dislike all the time. We do not, for example, allow racist selection policies, even in private organisations. We do not allow parents to physically or mentally abuse their children. Do you think these prohibitions are “damaging to dialogue”? And if not, what, objectively, makes the question of forcing children into religious apartheid in the schools system any better (or even just different) from either of these issues?
16th March 2008 at 11:45 pm
There’s a word for when faith and knowledge lead to exactly the same conclusions – it’s called luck. But my scheme is simple: Religion is confined to the Church, the Synagogue, the Mosque. Look, they get a whole day to indoctrinate kids, if that’s what the parents really want! But the rest of the week is spent at school where kids are equipped for life. Specifically this life, not the next.
17th March 2008 at 12:26 am
Doesn’t this demolish the faux arguments that what goes on in faith schools is more or less okay:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/ban-anticatholic-books-in-schools-says-bishop-794996.html
Liberals for book-burnings anyone?
17th March 2008 at 2:34 am
iainm – deluded, how so?
1) please define the realms of rational discourse?
2) what exactly is the difference between probability and statistics?
3) what rights does ‘wider society’ have?
4) is our political system really designed to enable everyone to go on the nearest talkshow and mouth off about the smell of flatulence, or to create and manage the process by which decisions are made and undertaken?
5) Do we prohibit things we dislike because we dislike them and want to supress them? If not, why do we and on what grounds?
Please also explain how you get from what I clearly stated to an inference in support of ‘religious apartheid’.
17th March 2008 at 2:42 am
Laurence, religion won’t be confined – it offers a design for life (not that I’m either necessarily or fully in accord with it), so your suggestion to keep religion away from all daily routines is a futile gesture – perhaps we should shroud all religious buildings too?
I’ve been told inumerable times that faith grows from experience, be it existence or non-existence of whatever, because that is how we learn. Conversely, it is also true that what a person believes will signify what their experiences are – an idiot shows more of his education than does a genius.
17th March 2008 at 6:44 am
Laurence, religion won’t be confined . . .
Don’t I know it.
. . . it offers a design for life . . .
As well as a pack of lies.
. . . so your suggestion to keep religion away from all daily routines is a futile gesture.
Could somebody please explain this caricature? I just want the damn stuff out of our schools.
17th March 2008 at 10:09 am
Oranjepan:
yes, religion offers a design for life. So does philosophy. The difference is that philosophy does it using a set of rules that are sort-of derived from first principles, so to speak, instead of being a set of made up rules that were perhaps applicable 2000 years ago and less so now. Philosophy can change with the times, religion can’t. Humanism and utilitarianism provide very sensible codes for life that don’t require the existence of God. Religion does not have a monopoly on morality.
17th March 2008 at 10:49 am
sanbikinoraion, you’re confusing religious belief with the institutional infrastructure of organised religion, and you’re projecting the non-believer’s stereotype of religion onto believers.
It simply isn’t true that religions can’t or don’t change, as every religion and communion is the product of a revolution or reforming tendency dealt earlier.
Nor is it true that individuals don’t modify their understanding throughout their lives as they confront new experiences.
I agree that no code requires faith in the existence of a super-being and that monopolies on morality don’t exist. Nevertheless we both accept that everything comes from somewhere.
I just find it hard to escape the fact that without taking all the steps along the evolutionary path we would have reached the same point as we are at and that individual human development is best served by mirroring that progression.
17th March 2008 at 2:55 pm
The problem is that you aren’t even trying. Yours seems to be an attitude of apathy that tries to disguise itself as concern for the rights of others, while ignoring the rights of yet others still. You ignore the rights of kids to choose in favour of the rights of parents to impose on them, or in your case it seems, make a political statement.
You cannot force neutralness on anyone or anything. Even suggesting that is silly; you can force an ideology on someone, such as religion or atheism. What you can do though is provide a neutral environment, an environment where the people are free to choose which direction they wish to go themselves, instead of having others impose their bias (their non-neutrality on them), and environment where no agenda is pushed.
Further because you accept that no one can be truly neutral (something I agree with, incidentally) instead of trying to do your best to make things as neutral and unbiased as possible you go to the other extreme, or are just plain apathetic, and just say let them do whatever the hell they want. That type of attitude has always been (luckily for us) on the losing side of slavery, racism, women’s rights, gay rights and all other movements that have tried to bring equality (i.e. neutralness, no bias) to all parts of society. Instead of denying equality to women or slaves in favour of the rights of men or slave-holders to choose for them, you’re denying the rights of kids in favour of the rights of parents to chose for them.
Just because you think religion will survive, that neither makes it right, nor does it make it rational nor sane. Almost all religions that have ever existed are dead, buried and forgotten. Almost all we still know anything about are taught as mythology. The few exceptions would also be if it weren’t for the undue influence of religious leaders and the fact that those leaders and their followers blow a gasket if you try.
I’d have thought any average joe can see that the purely statistical chance of me holding a winning lottery ticket is either true or false. Therefore there’s a 50% chance I’ll win the lottery this week. That’s a pretty good summary of the reasoning used to justify being religious.
I do support the right of everyone to be wrong. I don’t support the right of parents to inflict their errors on their kids. Kids should be allowed to make their own mistakes, not inherit the mistakes of their parents. Many will of course will happily embrace their inheritance, but that doesn’t mean the state should push them or allow them to be pushed.
A multi-faith school, i.e. a school that favours no single religion or non-religion over another is also known as a secular school. A secular school would not have to bear the excessive burden of providing separate facilities for each religion present (of equal size/dimension/cost/upkeep/accessibility to prevent conflict, resentment or impression of favouritism) or provide a “multi-faith” room which is just asking for trouble if experiences from companies that have them are anything to go by.
It’s the institutional infrastructure that’s wanting to run our schools and influence our children. Saying it’s okay to have faith schools because most people aren’t like the minority is like saying we don’t need laws against murder because most people don’t want to murder anyone. You also cannot demand people ignore the stereotype when the stereotype (in the form of Peter Vardy) is already running faith schools in this country. How many more schools are run by less visible (more subtle, more covert maybe?) stereotypical, religious people?
Finally, the shifting, nondescript vapour that seems to be the cumulative definition of “religion” in these comments cannot be taught, and certainly doesn’t require faith schools. I’d actually say it essentially just boils down to a round-about description of spirituality, something I as an atheist do have and appreciate but don’t attribute to any supernatural causes or influences. Just because I can’t fully describe it or explain its origins, doesn’t mean I need to invent some super-being to attribute it to, nor create and document an entire framework to try and justify said super-being to others and eventually create schools to ensure my kids don’t even get the chance to arrive at their own interpretation but are “encouraged” to use mine!
17th March 2008 at 11:01 pm
Cassilis provides a good summation. I think the line about how attempts to eradicate religion only lead it to reappearing in grotesque and potentially dangerous forms, and may well lead to religiosity multiplying, hydra-like, offers important insight.
http://www.cassilis.co.uk/2008/03/atheist-diatribe-for-holy-week.html
The question is then begged, therefore, how to we implicate religions in the functioning of a better society – in the area of education, does this mean concessions to the vested interest of specific religions, or compromise over what we cannot agree?
18th March 2008 at 1:04 am
Oh please, no-one is attempting to “eradicate” religion, we’re just suggesting that it has no place in the public education system.
You can carry on building your straw men if you like, but it isn’t going to divert attention from the fact that you’ve signally to failed to suggest a morally, ethically, intellectually or even just rhetorically coherent rationalisation for why a parent’s fondness for or loyalty to a particular bronze-age superstition should take presedence over a child’s right freedom of religion and his right to receive a balanced education in a socially inclusive environment.
As an aside, isn’t it funny how a god botherer has to resort to violence in order to be branded a militant, wheras all a secularist need do is politely object to the advantaged status of faith?
18th March 2008 at 7:18 am
Er, yes they are, though you obviously don’t fall into that category.
Freedom of conscience is one thing I think we can all agree with, but it can twist anyone up in knots when trying to decide on what equates to fair and balanced education.
There is plenty of rationale behind why parents get to choose what school they think is best for their offspring as well as having the right and opportunity to have a say in the running of schools, not least that they are legal guardians with the duty of care and responsibility for the upbringing and wellbeing of their children, otherwise you are implying we should compel universal and uniform state intervention from the moment a sprog is dropped.
18th March 2008 at 9:10 am
You are obfuscating.
Arguing that a parent should have a choice in his child’s school and a say in the running of that school is not by any stretch of the imagination a coherent rationale for claiming that he has a right to impose his religion on that child with state assistance, or a right to demand the continuation of a segragated educational system that is likely to prove socially disasterous, to everyone’s detriment, which is what I challenged you to provide.
You got nothing.
18th March 2008 at 9:15 am
In some cases the latter might well be what’s better for society, especially looking at some of the entirely apathetic and irresponsible parents whose kids are apparently running riot in our streets. But that’s not what secularists want, and certainly not what liberals want. There are dozens of things we don’t allow parents to do, from child abuse to using kids for unpaid labour because society as a whole thinks we can’t trust all parents to actually fulfil their responsibilities and duties and we must guard against those that don’t. Most parents don’t abuse their kids, yet we still have those laws. For the same reason we don’t allow employers to employ under-age children in because some might try to exploit children (for which we have evidence), we shouldn’t allow religions to educate children in case some might try to indoctrinate/exploit them (for which we also have evidence).
We don’t allow parents to raise their kids as they see fit. We certainly wouldn’t allow parents to send kids to work in the mines instead of going to primary school because they feel it “makes them better adults”. Should we allow them that freedom as well?
The argument here (which you are ignoring by drawing up strawmen, maligning and name-calling you opponents instead of countering their reasoned arguments) is that the state should not provide any support to any school or institution that inherently favours one ideology over another.
We’re not talking about banning faith schools. If parents are that desperate to send their kids to faith (or atheist) schools, then as liberals we shouldn’t be allowed to stop them (at least no until we can show actual harm to the kids or society, which some might argue is already the case with religion), but they must pay for them entirely themselves. The state should only pay for neutral, unbiased, unprejudiced and non-discriminating education.
18th March 2008 at 9:39 am
Straw men arguments? that’s not a matter of fact.
Name-calling? where? at whom?
Maligning? is that forbidden even where justified?
Neutrality and absence of bias doesn’t exist, there is only a balance within debate.
Pray tell me, at what age do you think a child will develop a conscience and be able to activate their freedom to choose? And what does society do with children until that point?
How does any person learn to think for themselves unless they are free to be confronted with illogic?
I don’t fear religious teaching because I remember being on the recieving end, picking holes until I could pick no more – it’s not like kids are stupid enough to swallow everything hook, line and sinker, we all take what suits us in a way which applies to our own situation.
18th March 2008 at 10:16 am
Pray tell me, at what age do you think a child will develop a conscience and be able to activate their freedom to choose?
At no particular age. All is gradual and imperceptible.
And what does society do with children until that point?
What we ought to do is to reflect that imperceptible change in our social arrangements but, for practical reasons I guess, we tend to prefer sudden step changes. So a child suddenly becomes an adult at the age of 18 or whatever, even though nothing has in fact changed.
18th March 2008 at 3:03 pm
A snippet from Hayek’s “Why I am not a conservative” is perhaps relevant here.
Now I daresay that each side in this debate will claim to be on the side of non-coercion. But when there is a conflict between parent and state ostensibly opposing each other’s coercion of a child, I will tend to side with the parent.
People have all sorts of daft beliefs that we should be relaxed about: that steam engines are cool, that rugby union is better than rugby league, that pickled onions are not very nice, that Hegel will make sense if you study him hard enough, the law of averages, etc, etc. I’m getting lots of emails from my little brother in India about his chackras.
When you have religious groups like the Quakers who are hard to fault for their values – although I don’t agree with their pacifism, it was probably the right position at the time it was adopted – and non-religious ideologies that cause a great deal of harm (eg Western medicine doesn’t work; socialism, conservatism); then it seems quite absurd to become agitated over whether an ideology is religious, rather than over whether it is harmful.
18th March 2008 at 3:41 pm
i>But when there is a conflict between parent and state ostensibly opposing each other’s coercion of a child
This is the nub of the absurdity of the issue right here. What sort of mental gymnastics are required to equate a neutral, secular position as a form of coercion? That is a ridiculous, fundementally dishonest equivalence.
When children go to sports clubs, they do not go to faith sports clubs, they go to sports clubs that have no religious overtones whatsoever. Are those sports clubs therefore coercing those children into a secular or atheistic outlook?
No, of course they’re not, they are simply neutral on a subject that they have no Earthly need to take a position on.
18th March 2008 at 3:51 pm
Indeed. In a secular school system, no child would be coerced into being Muslim, or Catholic, or Atheist. Whereas, in a faith system, some children will be coerced into faith groups.
Secularism is NOT the same as atheism!
18th March 2008 at 4:39 pm
iainm, Quite… I don’t suggest that a strictly secular education coerces a child into atheism. I’m suggesting that it coerces some parents out of their choice of education for their children.
There is no big issue of principle about what is or is not on the curriculum. There is a big issue of civil rights with the present system that treats all non-christians as second class citizens. That is what my proposal addresses. Demanding that christians shouldn’t impose their view of education on us all, you want to impose yours instead, is not a compelling argument.
18th March 2008 at 5:10 pm
Imposing a lack of imposition is stretching it a bit, though, isn’t it? As has been mentioned elsewhere, we do not have faith groups in any other sphere of life: there are not faith companies, faith sports clubs, etc. Why school?
18th March 2008 at 5:42 pm
Surely the proper response of a liberal to the religious is not secularism, but indifference?
18th March 2008 at 5:47 pm
Since 9/11, I’ve found it quite hard to be indifferent to religion.
18th March 2008 at 6:06 pm
I didn’t claim it was easy …
18th March 2008 at 7:59 pm
We accept in law that children are not fully capable of making sound decisions, hence juvenile sentencing/courts etc.
If someone says “this is the right way” they are inclined to believe them, especially if it’s their parents, and even more so if it’s reinforced daily at school. We should let kids make up their own minds.
You talk of civil rights, but you’re dismissing the rights of children, people we consider much more vulnerable in every respect than their parents. Surely in any system of civil rights, the rights of the most vulnerable should be the ones we should strive to protect first and most?
Parents can exercise their rights at home, at weekends and during holidays. During school the rights of the children should be paramount and that means an education free of bias or prejudice.
19th March 2008 at 12:46 am
This thread seems to have moved on from the original issue which was church schools, which should have no place in a secular society. What is more the CofE has gone all out to expand its secondary school base here in Gloucestershire and even further the Local RC school and CofE church working together to form an academy school with the support of Ed Balls and his dept. This to be set up in an area of deprivation on the back of a Sec school closure (phoenix from ashes). prerequisite is that 70% of pupils must have a faith back ground so excluding many of the local children from this site. Be careful this could happen in your back yard. This is a school were 80% of pupils use to walk to school. A sad day for education and an even sadder day for freedom of choice.
19th March 2008 at 8:02 am
It’s all a far cry from the days when Jesus was telling us the world was about to end any minute, and that his kingdom was “not of this world.”
19th March 2008 at 8:04 am
“Parents can exercise their rights at home, at weekends and during holidays.”
Well, exactly. They can send their kids to Sunday school.
19th March 2008 at 8:27 am
One person’s objectivity is another’s subjectivity – which means the idea of avoiding bias is less important (and impossible) compared to achieving balance. All of which pales beside the necessity of relevance.
I really don’t like the negative connotations of stripping away things which one or another segment of society don’t like, as it fails to address any real questions of actual content.
Faith in schools and faith-based schools are fine in my book, provided that they can come up with an acceptable context for lessons (though this thread shows how difficult it can be to reach agreement) – especially as each of us should be able to distinguish those from the ‘faith schools’ in which knowledge is passed on by assertion of the “trust me, I’m a priest” kind.
MartinSGill – Your statement appears self-contradictary: if we want kids to make up their own minds, how can they do so without dissenting from any authorative views they recieve?
The scandal of league tables is how it has opened up the controversy over whether it is better to just replicate what you have been told (in a vague hope that some of it will sink in), or whether more value is gained by making mistakes on your own terms and using these as examples to learn from.
In one of my schools we had a teacher who encouraged plagiarism and learning by rote, but she was kicked out when this was discovered, even though some parents pointed out their kids exam marks would suffer.
The utopian ideal of an unbiased teacher just creates an intellectual vacuum where facts are forcefed without empowering young minds to grow their understanding or find methods, means or sources of application.
I guess that the dividing lines are defined by whether it is better to advocate revolution, reform or the status quo.
19th March 2008 at 8:52 am
Not in the slightest. The kids shouldn’t have to dissent at all.
To make up your mind about something, you find out all the views, examine all the facts and then make your determination as to the best conclusions. This is what happens in secular schools.
In faith schools you are told that something is a certain way, your mind is already made up for you. Oh and some other people believe some other stuff as well. In a faith school the only option is to dissent and rebel. You either accept the status quo or you turn your back on it.
In a secular school there is no status quo, there’s nothing to rebel against, there’s nothing to turn your back on. Instead you can more forwards towards your own best conclusion as to the validity of whatever views are presented.
In a secular school you present the kids with a wide open field and they can decide to stand wherever they want to. In a faith school you have that same field, but you erect a big wall around your section of the field and stick all the kids in it. (or if you’re not of that school’s faith, on the outside of it). Everyday they add to that wall, increasing it’s height. For the kids to go stand in a different part of the field they first need to climb over the wall you’ve erected.
The so-called “good” faith-schools build a wall that is much lower and easier to climb over than the “bad” faith-schools, but that wall is there all the same.
Why would anyone, other an someone intent on ensuring their kids never stray to another ideology, i.e. to trap them, want such a wall?
19th March 2008 at 9:18 am
Much of this debate is intellectually dishonest.
Rather than admit that they want the state to pay for the indoctrination of children, the religionists talk disingenuously about human rights and whine about persecution.
Then we have the appeasers, who talk feebly about being “liberal” and showing “respect” to people of “faith” (though not Scientologists).
The key issues are surely these:
(1) Should the state be funding the indoctrination of children with religion (though not Scientology)?
(2) Should the state be facilitating the segregation of children on the basis of their parents’ beliefs?
My point about Scientology isn’t facetious. Religionists and materialists are very adept at colluding to freeze out common foes. The main victim of this collusion is, of course, the New Age Movement, at whom it is perfectly acceptable and politically correct to sneer.
Scientology has been characterised as a nasty cult (ever since Lord Denning lambasted them in 1970). But are they any nastier, are they any more cultistic, than established, “respectable” religions?
19th March 2008 at 9:40 am
What might be true about so-called secular (ie state) schools in theory, isn’t completely true in practice.
Where kids with engaged parents have supportive environments to encourage free-thinking, those without avoid difficult answers in the vain hope they might find some security.
How else do you explain the drift and disenchantment that leads to a lack of qualifications? Are some kids just thick?
My point of disagreement is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, as all kids are different, have different needs and respond in different ways – so we should investigate and use the full variety of methods available.
I accept many difficulties arise from trying to match the child to the right school (not least issues of choice and advice), but liberalising the education market inevitably places demands on consumers to select their prefered provider.
I’m just highly sceptical of what monopolies achieve (especially state run ones), however well-meant they are.
19th March 2008 at 9:45 am
John Morris: Yes, this is the scandal, and there will be no effective opposition while the loudest opposing voices are opposing faith in school altogether.
Wake up people, there is simple power/identity politics going on here – new schools for us and our friends, you scum get lost.
Martin: The trouble with this appeal to the “right of a child not to be misled” is that believers make exactly the same appeal. It is not for the state to settle this question.
Sesenco: Yes, there is some unjustified whining about human rights from those in privileged positions. And this is a great reason to do what I’ve done and demand equal rights for non-christians. That’s all I’m asking for, and it is a demand against which they are defenceless. On the other hand their defences against Boyce et al’s demand that we treat them how they are treating us, are good enough to hold for a long time yet.
Is Scientology nastier than Quakerism? Yes.
19th March 2008 at 9:55 am
Joe Otten wrtote: “It is not for the state to settle this question.”
Sure. So the state shouldn’t be teaching children that if they disobey the Church they will go to hell and burn for eternity.
Joe Otten wrote: “Is Scientology nastier than Quakerism? Yes.”
Is Islam nastier than scientology? Yes.
19th March 2008 at 10:40 am
And we’re back to the perfect reason why the state should never ever fund faith schools.
Do we fund Islam, Scientology, Wiccan, Quackerism, Buddhism, Creationists, Devil Worshipers, Human-Sacrifice-Sun-Worshipers? How do we decided? Do we restrict some but not others and what criteria do we use to restrict them? We can fund all of them, in which case we’ll get some we object to, or we fund none of them, in which case we’ll get none we object to. Or we selectively decide which to fund and get called illiberal and create community strife and unrest because we’ve “labeled” one or more religions as “bad” and are “discriminating” against them.
What’s happening with respect to power politics is that the dominant powers, the religious, want to continue being able to indoctrinate their kids. They are realising that they cannot just get away with this as easily as before, so they trot out a superficially liberal policy that allows everyone to indoctrinate their kids, but ensures that they can make sure their kids go to the indoctrination centre of their choice. As long as they can indoctrinate their kids in the way they want, they don’t care what others do with their kids. The reason religious people oppose secular schools is because they don’t want to lose their privileged position of being able to indoctrinate their kids. All religions are happy with this, because they can all indoctrinate to their heart’s content. The people that lose out are those opposed to indoctrination, the religions/cults/ideologies singled out as “not worthy” and of course the kids who are merely the pawns in what is essentially a bloodless religious war for the dominance of an ideology.
You’d think that all those “militant atheists” that are apparently dominating the opposition to faith-schooling would love the idea of indoctrination centres where they could ensure that kids learn the “truth” instead of “the lies of religion”. What’s really happening is that while those atheists are never shy of demonstrating their dislike of religion they are not calling for atheist schools, but for secular schools; secular schools that should teach about religion. Those atheist are saying, hey, give us a fair chance, we know our view is the best, and all we need is a fair chance. Surely a fair chance is all any religion should need, since if it’s obviously true and right, then what more but a fair hearing is required for people to realise that?
Would someone pro-faith-school please explain to me how your children would be disadvantaged by going to a school that teaches all religions (and none) equally, fairly and unbiasedly? You can’t. The only people disadvantaged are the parents, who are unable to reinforce their own ideologies. The kids gain all the advantages in a secular school.
That is exactly my point. The state should teach children that “Religion A believes this, because of this, Religion B believes this, because of this. Non-Religion believe this, because of this”. You’re not misleading the child at all, which is the best possible approach. No-one of Religion A can say their child is being misled if he is taught exactly what people of Religion A believe. If Religion A is so obviously true as you believe it to be, then surely your child, given an unbiased view of it will make that same decision? The problem is that religious people know their religion is no more true than any other and hence want their view given preeminence to ensure their child picks it; they know the only way to win is to stack the deck and rig the dice, hence they oppose any semblance of a level playing field.
In faith schools you can also say “Religion A believes this, because of this, Religion B believes this, because of this. Non-Religion believe this, because of this”, but given it’s said in a school of Religion A, by teachers that are all of Religion A, with symbols, prayers, references and examples based on Religion A every day, the child is clearly and inevitably being led to believe that Religion A is better/more-correct etc, and hence every single person who isn’t of Religion A can claim (validly) that the child is being misled.
19th March 2008 at 11:38 am
Amen!
19th March 2008 at 12:35 pm
I’m not dogmatically pro or anti faith schools, but, as a rule, I’m not convinced that anybody learns anything by the consumption of facts alone – that’s not school-teaching, that’s a factory for creating workers and drones.
People learn from example and through practice, by finding out what works and what doesn’t. By being emphatic in an aim not to mislead a child in their education, you consequently lead them nowhere.
It is just absolute codswallop to suggest that religions are anywhere near dominant powers in society, but they have their place, so we should let them keep it and ensure they don’t overreach it.
The parents I know who want their children to be educated in religious environments don’t do so to reinforce any ideology or belief (some are as anti-religion as the worst militant atheists), they do so out of their firm conviction that it is in the best interests of their child. This can take many forms – which are all valid (if contentious) in their own particular circumstances.
I’d also find it slightly funny, were it not serious, that there is no consideration here of what indoctrination state schools indulge in.
19th March 2008 at 1:03 pm
I agree that teaching requires more than facts. Enthusiasm for the subject is very important. Just how much enthusiasm will a religious teacher bring to a religion she doesn’t believe in? Just how much enthusiams can you generate for Religion A if your surrounded all day on all sides by Religion B? If you need enthusiasm then secular schools can invite in local priests/followers to talk (enthusiastically) about their faith, but do that for all faiths, again providing a balanced view.
Religion is an extremely powerful and dominant power in society. 23 Complaints is all it took for an essentially harmless advert to be banned. Any time anyone talks about morality or ethics the government races cap in hand to the religious as though they have some monopoly on moral authority. Then we can start on all the laws that remain because of religion (like mandatory worship and prayer in school), special tax exemptions, laws, protection (we only just managed to get rid of that thoroughly illiberal and pro-religion blasphemy law; there are many more like it that favour religion over non-religious. Not to mention a state funded and supported church with religious leaders being granted uncontested seats in our upper house. The amount of power religion has in our society is massive. The only people that don’t realise this are the ones who aren’t discriminated against.
They want to send their kids to what they think is the best school, which I can understand. To do this they have to lie, because they know that their target school is allowed to religiously discriminate against them. It’s also starting to emerge that the only reason religious schools appear so much better is because they practice discrimination, and not just religious. Do you honestly think that if there were a secular school with the same quality of education and without the need for parents to lie, they’d not be rushing to get their kids into it? When it comes down to it, the parents hope that whatever indoctrination their kids receive either won’t be too bad or can be undone at home.
It’s not funny and we should be fighting any form of indoctrination, be it pro-religion, pro-communism, pro-labour, pro-racism, pro-homophobia, pro-whatever. This thread is about religion though. And let’s not get deluded by false liberalism that suggests it’s ok to have one form of indoctrination because there are also all these others out there.
19th March 2008 at 2:09 pm
It should be obvious that any school that is allowed to select on pretty much any basis is going to be better than non-selective schools, because being a better school results in a positive feedback loop as well-meaning middle-class parents pile in to get their kids there, and as soon as a school becomes oversubscribed it can just pick all of the best kids. The success of religious schools owes very little to anything to do with religion.
19th March 2008 at 2:20 pm
MartinSGill – you overindulge in supposition about things you cannot know, I’m afraid.
It is not a lie to state that you have a background in a religion of which you are a non-practioner in order to comply with entry requirements, nor is it unfair to have clearly stated entry requirements which are equally available for all to meet.
Your other points of discussion I shall politely ignore as I don’t think you accurately read what was written in the lines you quoted.
19th March 2008 at 4:07 pm
One person’s objectivity is another’s subjectivity.
Or put another way, those words have no useful meaning. So why are they in the dictionary I wonder? This sort of relativistic hogwash is going to do precisely nothing to lead us out of the abyss.
20th March 2008 at 8:02 am
What if you are an atheist living in an area with only 3 state funded schools, a CoE, a Catholic and a Jewish school. Each state their entry requirements as being a “demonstrable member of the faith”. No chance there of getting your kids into any school without lying or forcing those schools to cater to unwanted students by government fiat. Make no mistake about it, if faith schools could get away with it (legally and in public opinion), they’d only have places for kids of their own religion.
If I as an atheist went to a Catholic School and said my kids meet the entry requirements because I’ve been baptised catholic, most of my family is catholic, and I even recently went to church for my cousin’s confirmation recently. I have the background, but as an atheist I’m obviously a non-practitioner. I’d consider myself a liar. Factually it’s all true, but it’s a misrepresentation, a deliberate distortion. Maybe as an atheist I have a different interpretation to the 9th commandment than a religious person has.
As to the other points, I responded appropriately to the substance and content of what you wrote. If you meant to say something else, then please correct what you’ve said.
26th March 2008 at 7:50 pm
Have to disagree i’m afraid. I do of course agree that parents have the right to educate their child in the ways of their religion at home, or by sending them to church, sunday schools etc. However, schools should be a place in which children are taught with no particular agenda. A child has the right to learn factual information as it is, and not with any bias involved. I think that a change to the religious education cirriculum would be a better way forward. Children would be taught about all religions, past and present, equally, and would be taught with both arguments for and against the existence of a god. This would give children a far broader knowledge of religion, and would allow them the option of making an informed decision about which, if any, of the faiths to follow. This measure would also help reduce segregation help combat the often ignorant prejudices people can have towards the faiths of others.
Another point is to ask where the line is drawn on allowing parents to bring their children up in their own way. People for example, would not accept schools with a racial or political agenda, so why a religious one. What religions are acceptable to school children as well. Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all accepted, but what about other religions. A scientology school perhaps, or maybe a church dedicated to the flying spaghetti monster and the pastafarian religion. Schools are no place for bias or agenda, they are for educating children with facts, and at the same time aiming to promote inquisitiveness.
26th August 2008 at 12:03 am
“The kind of secularism I subscribe to is not about attacking people of faith, but about ensuring that the state, and therefore schools, do not act like an authority on questions of religion.”
I think you are missing a key fact. The Church Schools are not state schools – they are maintained schools. The Schools belong to the Church but are supported by the state.
The reason for this is that we (the Church) started work on providing a school for every child in 1811. Whereas the state did nothing until 1877 – because they wanted people kept ignorant lest they got too big for their boots. We (the church) paid for these schools and they remain popular with parents who want more of them.
The census showed 72% of the UK population to claim Christian faith. In this context it is not surprising that church schools are oversubscribed. The problem is most accute at secondary level where only about 5-7% of capacity is in church schools. It is the lack of places that causes the need for rationing and for admission criteria to do this.
There is no evidence that Church Schools in England or Wales are causing any of the problems of intolerance alluded to above.
The people who most often complain about the church schools are not those against them on moral grounds but people who having applied to a church school couldn’t get a place. The answer to their problem is build more places, therby eliminating so called selection.
We have in this country today a vocal and aggressive minority of atheists (the census showed no belief / atheism around 15/16%)who seek to make all schools humanist / atheist. This intolerant minority actually want to ram their religious views down the throats of us in the 76% majority who do have faith.
This intimidation is so extreme that even the primeminister feels he has to hide his faith. The comments above simply confirm that atheists hold the least tolerant religious views around.
Parents should decide this matter. This is the current case, except that they cannot usually choose a faith school at secondary level because there are hardly any of them. Freedom, Equality, Community – I do not think the evidence is there to justify restricting people’s freedom to choose the type of schools they can have in order to protect the community. The arguments you have mustered here seem to be you don’t want faith schools because you don’t have faith. That is not a Liberal argument.
Unless you can produce overwhelming evidence that faith schools by their nature cause serious harm to Freedom, Equality, Community then you don’t have cause. Selection does not give you that evidence as it is a function of demand exceeding supply and not faith.
26th August 2008 at 1:09 pm
Ben,
My point is about civil rights and is a departure from the usual arguments over faith schools that you have given the usual responses to. (Er, which prime minister has hidden his faith? And name me one person who intimidated them.)
Do you support the civil rights of pupils and parents of freedom of religious conscience, or do you seek to justify discrimination on grounds of religion?
25th September 2008 at 3:47 pm
As if in response to this article there is now a coalition of believers and non-believers pursuing more or less this agenda.
http://www.accordcoalition.org.uk/
2nd November 2008 at 10:00 pm
On the whole I agree with what the OP has said, but I do have a concern with point 3:
“3. Initially parents make the choice of identity for their children, but as children grow older, they should progressively gain freedom to make their own choices.”
This is simply a fact of life, it is not something that needs to be the concern of any school or government institution. Kids grow up, they leave home, they make their own religious choices. The wording of this point concerns me because it sounds like the school or state will progressively have more control over making sure this happens. That would entail an unwarranted intrusion of the state into family life.
Maybe it just needs rewording, but more likely dropping as a point, since it is in large measure a fact of life. To codify it is to give power to government and its agents to make sure it happens at a rate they decide. Adulthood is good for me, and we already have right to freedom of religion so no more regulations needed methinks.