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
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 lit