Yesterday a commenter on Lib Dem Voice asked why the party had not responded to the Trojan Horse allegations about schools in Birmingham. Now I make no claim to any knowledge about the affair, apart from what I read in a decidedly partisan press, but I can at least raise some questions.
I was struck this morning by an article in the Guardian by the assistant principal on one of the schools that has been downgraded from Outstanding to Inadequate.
Lee Donaghy writes under a headline ‘Ofsted’s slur on the Muslim community of Park View School‘:
… after Ofsted inspectors first visited Park View in early March, they left us with a list of mild recommendations for improvement. We had an action plan ready to be implemented the very next day. However, when the same inspectors returned 10 days later, they told us within hours that the school would be rated inadequate. …
The inspectors’ conduct during that second visit left pupils and staff feeling like suspects in a criminal investigation. From female pupils asked whether they were forced to wear the hijab (despite girls in the same class clearly not doing so) to one staff member being asked “Are you homophobic?”, we were subjected to inappropriate and bizarre lines of questioning, designed to elicit the evidence required to damn us. This culminated on the second day in an inspector making a quip about there being “so many members of staff with beards” – a clearly Islamophobic comment.
Elsewhere in the same paper we are told:
Park View, which teaches 680 students, was also roundly criticised by the schools watchdog. Inspectors rated the academy’s work to “raise students’ awareness of the risks of extremism” as inadequate and found that boys and girls were separated when being taught religious education and personal development.
They also warned that external speakers were not vetted properly, that students were not taught sex education and internet safety properly and that no opportunities existed for non-Muslims to attend non-Islamic assemblies.
The Park View report released on Monday afternoon with 20 others found that staff had not received training in the government’s Prevent programme for tacking extremism. Although it commended positive exam results, it found: “There are few opportunities for students to learn about different types of belief and culture in the older year groups. Students are not taught citizenship well enough or prepared properly for life in a diverse and multicultural society.”
You can download the Ofsted report here. It appears that the school has been downgraded from the very top grade to the bottom on the basis of some perceived inadequacies under a couple of very narrow criteria. The overall achievements of the students had not slumped since the previous inspection; the ethos of the school, the happiness and well-being of the young people and the financial management had not changed. What was identified (albeit challenged by the staff) was that the school did not do enough to raise students’ awareness of the risks of extremism, that it separated boys and girls for some classes and that some aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, including citizenship, were not taught well. These may indeed have been justified criticisms, but I cannot understand how they can be sufficient to put a school in special measures.
The report does also criticise some aspects of governance and management at the school, and these may indeed be important action points for the school. But generally speaking poor governance is identified in relation to poor outcomes, and the only poor outcomes here are those I have already mentioned. The school is praised for all those factors which parents are likely to be concerned about: student achievement, quality of teaching and behaviour of students.
By way of background, I have spent my professional lifetime in education and have also done some work for the Home Office on the Government’s Prevent project. Over the years I have served as a governor in four schools, and chair in two. In one of those schools, also deemed outstanding by Ofsted, girls were taught separately for every single lesson in Years 6 to 11, but Ofsted has never criticised it for being a single sex school.
So here are my questions:
Is every school in the country expected to “raise students’ awareness of the risks of extremism”, and are all teachers required to undertake Prevent training, or do these only apply to schools with a substantial proportion of Muslim children?
Should failings in the delivery of PSHE/citizenship education alone be sufficient to downgrade a school from Outstanding to Inadequate?
Should single sex schools be forced to go mixed to avoid being criticised for teaching girls and boys separately?
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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78 Comments
Quote: ‘Is every school in the country expected to “raise students’ awareness of the risks of extremism”, and are all teachers required to undertake Prevent training, or do these only apply to schools with a substantial proportion of Muslim children?’
Yes, raising awareness of the risks of extremism applies only to faith schools which promote fundamentalist Islamic principles. This is because the extremism we’re concerned about applies exclusively to Muslims. Attempting to dilute the argument against the need for extra vigilance will enable herds of Trojan horses to charge through the gap!
An excellent article Mary in which you raise very important questions about a. the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter b. the agenda of Ofsted. c governance issues in academies.
It seems to me that there is a dangerous conflation of integration/multi-faith issues and extremism eg: violent Islamism. Although Theresa May is no liberal, she seems to recognise this but Michael Gove appears not to, hence his incursion into her brief in recent weeks.
Gove’s flagship policy of allowing more and more schools to leave the LEA, forego the national curriculum and set their own priorities, inevitably leads governors to take a more leading role in schools.
This also means that schools like Park View can discard the wonderful multi-faith Religious Education syllabus of Birmingham LEA and teach their own RE curriculum, with a bias towards orthodox Islam. So one ends up with a community academy behaving more like a faith school. Of course, these schools have been granted autonomy so this kind of action is perfectly possible within the law we have – this is what we were told was a good thing three years ago – setting schools free.
However, it is my view that there is a greater fear of Islam in this country than any other faith at the moment, the media appears to have seized these autonomous academies in Birmingham as examples of a ‘radicalisation’ plot. No hard evidence has been found for this allegation.
At Park View, it seems one or two conservative Muslims had begun to exert huge influence over the ethos and this seems to be what Ofsted has picked up on. However, this is not the same as finding a plot to inculcate violent Jihadism.
Much of this could have been avoided if Gove hadn’t been allowed his head with his Education Act of 2011 but he wasn’t stopped early enough. The system is in complete chaos thanks to government policy.
Regarding the Lib Dems being a moderating influence on the Tories – this is exactly the sort of issue I would expect Clegg to be standing up and using his political power to influence. Gove is using this as an opportunity to bring in on the spot checks, and to force schools to teach “Britishness” although this is as yet seemingly undefined. Education policy is a mess – yes, local communities can run schools to reflect their local needs and issues, as long as they are middle class and white, otherwise they will be deemed as failing and the governors will be replaced by “professional” governors, whatever they are.
I am a school governor in the Midlands, and this whole issue smacks of using OFSTED like some secret police force to scapegoat hard working local primary staff. Where is the moderating influence of the libdems now? Haven’t heard a word from Clegg who should be defending the local staff and community. He has the power to stop this dangerous anti-muslim bandwagon by pulling the plug on this government but guess what? Nothing….So much for moderation.
If the government want to encourage extremism they are going exactly the right way about it.
I have commented in some detail about the issues on my blog.
http://johnhemming.blogspot.com
@ Richard Harris: ” Gove is using this as an opportunity to bring in on the spot checks, and to force schools to teach “Britishness” although this is as yet seemingly undefined”
When Gove announced this yesterday, it seemed to me to be another example of political opportunism to impose his ideology on schools. He tried it first with his personal re-write of the History curriculum to focus entirely on chronological British History from the Viking raids up to the election of Margaret Thatcher. He was only stopped after a huge outcry from practically every historian and History teacher in the land.
Gove is now completely ignoring Citizenship, a national curriculum subject – which already provides opportunity for learning about democracy and other areas of life – ready to impose his own version of ‘Britishness’. What might that be I wonder? Could it simply be Toryism? Probably. Gove has the support of Cameron in this ‘inculcation,’ conveniently ignoring what is already in place and ignoring the complete chaos already unleashed.
Cameron is showing simply how weak he is – he cannot stand up to Gove and is simply allowing him to impose more and more initiatives on schools without any thought or consultation.
Good article, we need to be voicing our views on this subject more.
My experience was that my own secondary school didn’t do anything much to warn of extremism (this in the aftermath of the WTC attack and during the Iraq war), separated boys and girls for some classes and taught PSHE very badly, in so far as it bothered to teach it at all. Didn’t mean that the place had been taken over by an extreme Islamist cadre.
Cut through the nonsense of faith schools and go for a fully secular education system. If parents want their children to be taught religion, do it at home or in whatever religious establishment they use.
Richard Thomas: Did you read Mary Reid’s thoughtful and clear article? Have you followed the debate and found out the issues at stake here? This issue has nothing to do with faith schools, as the schools in question in Birmingham are the products of Gove’s academisation policy – these schools are community schools – recently changed to academy status and no longer required to follow the LEA. Governors can exert more influence in such schools, therefore.
Islamophobia is another issue in this debate aswell.
@ Richard Thomas
This is exactly the problem with the way politics gets involved in education. What on earth makes you so sure you are right? What right do YOU have to determine how every child in the state system gets educated? There are many people who have strong religious beliefs that want there children educated in the that culture so why deny them that right? Let schools decide for themselves within a common context of a national curriculum and with the involvement of LEAs. Then parents can decide which school to send their children to based on their own beliefs. You have no right to try to deny a religious education to my children any more than if I stood up and said I don’t think schools should teach PE (because for me and my family it has never been a subject of interest). Support choice, not centralised control.
It is still true that in most areas the schools most likely to be oversubscribed are the religious ones, so those who wish to avoid a religious input into their childrens’ education should be spoiled for choice!
I think there are problems with the schools in question, an interview with students showed the problem entirety, the school is not a faith school, and it is supposed to be an academy.
I really don’t have a problem with there being Faith schools, just not on tax payers’ cash under a guise of an academy… the question to ask yourself… would you send your child to any of those supposed academies, my own answer would be No.
http://news.sky.com/story/1278744/trojan-horse-pupils-school-is-too-extreme
Jim
Good article. This looks reminiscent of a Salem witch hunt.
The West invaded Iraq and many died. If you’re going to call all Muslims who are angry about that “extremists”, then you’re going to have an awful lot of extremists.
Theresa May gets that, which is why she wants to chase after only those who are actually involved in violence. Gove doesn’t get it (amongst a whole lot of other things that Gove doesn’t get.) As noted above, Gove has happily given schools more freedom, and has belatedly decided that he doesn’t believe in freedom to disagree with Gove!
The man should be sacked, and if the Lib Dems want to be more than a pudding-like buffer zone in the soggy political centre, the Lib Dems should be demanding that Gove be sacked.
As someone who has migrated to another country – what most British people would call an ex-pat even though I have no intention of returning and have children born in the new country – I am watching this debate with interest. I am trying to imagine if the situation was reversed, if those of us from a UK background wanted to have state-funded schools with our children schooled separately from the rest of the population in order to better inculate our Anglican values, and how the local population and government would react to this, but I find the whole situation hard to imagine. For a start the other potential parents would say that setting up such a school would negate the point of choosing another country to move to in the first place.
The obvious solution is simply to have no religious instruction (aside from neutral comparative surveys) or indoctrination at all in schools receiving state funding.
I am unsure whether to take Viv Henderson’s comment “the extremism we’re concerned about applies exclusively to Muslims” as sarcastic or not. If not, it is appallingly illiberal: the idea of targeting a single faith community boils down, ultimately, to an attempt to extinguish that community. I don’t doubt there are those who would like to see Islam extirpated from British soil, but they should not count a single liberal among them. If the word “Jews” or “Catholics” were substituted for “Muslims,” who would find such comments acceptable?
Readers hoping for a Lib Dem view that exhibits less of thoughtful, reasoned, balanced criticism posted above, and something closer to the government narrative can turn to Maajid Nawaz speaking on the Daily Politics, to whom the affair represents a Muslim Brotherhood led plot to Islamise schools from within – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHIOKY4DgEI
Richard Thomas
Cut through the nonsense of faith schools and go for a fully secular education system.
But that’s what we’ve got here. We have standard state school which happen to be in an area where most pupils come from a particular religious background. We also have the English system of organising schools, still quite a lot as set up by 19th century Liberals, where they have a governing body recruited from local volunteers which has a considerable say over how the school is run. In this case it means the people on the governing body tend to have this religious background.
Now, the issue is to what extent do you accommodate the predominant culture of the children in the area in what the school does? David-1 says “The obvious solution is simply to have no religious instruction (aside from neutral comparative surveys) or indoctrination “. So, ok, do we force-feed pork to the children on the grounds that allowing them to opt out of eating it is “indoctrination” into a religion which disapproves of pork? Do we tear off head-gear from girls who wear it on the same grounds? Do we patrol the school on the look-out for any suspicious bunch of kids who might be doing some sort of prayer together, and split them up and tell them they must not do that?
However, once we agree we don’t do this sort of thing, where do we stop? If we let the kids who have organised their own prayer group have a room to do it, how far do we let them go? If we allow girls to wear headgear, how do we stop the competition where they start out-competing each other in an “I’m more religious than you” game involving more and more covering up? If we are careful to make sure they are never in a position where they might be made to eat pork, how much further do we go to accommodate religious practices? If a kid doesn’t want to shake hands for example, do we allow that, or do we force them to shake hands?
David-1
If the word “Jews” or “Catholics” were substituted for “Muslims,” who would find such comments acceptable?
Go back and look at some of the previous discussion in this newsgroup on faith schools, which in this country are mostly Catholic in orientation. There you will find if you replace the word “Muslim” by “Catholic” it’s considered fine in this group to be much more aggressive against the religion, and to make attacking and negative comments against the religion without feeling the need for any sort of disclaimer.
@Mary Reid
Some potentially helpful information can be downloaded from the Ofsted website
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/framework-for-school-inspection
Good questions and analysis from Mary Reid.
I think we can conclude that this so called Trojan Horse Plot has about as much credence as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
We need to be able to clearly distinguish between three elements of Islamic society :
1. Islamic Terrorism – for which we must have zero tolerance and robust security measures in place to counter.
2. Extremist ideology and radicalisation – which must be consistently challenged by the entire British society, muslim and non-muslim alike.
3 Conservative Islam – which is a religious way of like to be tolerated and accepted as just as valid as any other mainstream religious faith.
That schools in predominantly muslim areas adopt conservative islamic traditions should not present a problem any greater than other social cohesion issues in a multi-cultural society. Children in the schools need to be adequately protected from any element of coercion or indoctrination. Texts that endorse the more abhorrent interpretations of Sharia law, such as stoning’s and amputations should be expunged from libraries and classrooms;and staff should be expected to ensure that extremist ideology or radicalisation is actively countered.
The Abrahamic faiths all suffer from a narrow worldview that tends to see things in black and white or good versus evil. We could all learn something about a more nuanced approach to spirituality from the Buddhist’s and Hindu’s. It is why the teaching of RE and learning about other faiths is important in the national curriculum and should be maintained in faith schools and state schools alike.
With violent Islamic extremism raging across the middle-east, there will always be more focus on the dangers of Islamic radicalisation within the British Islamic community. The only way to counter that is for Muslim Community leaders to continue to denounce such extremism and promote an interpretation of Islam that is consistent with the religious freedoms that we enjoy in the West.
David Allen
The West invaded Iraq and many died. If you’re going to call all Muslims who are angry about that “extremists”, then you’re going to have an awful lot of extremists
But the West did not invade Iraq as an anti-Islamic gesture. It invaded Iraq to remove a cruel dictator. If you are saying that Saddam Hussein was Islam incarnate, David, isn’t that somewhat heretical, and also I would say quite a nasty insult towards Islam? Of course there was also the hope that the cruel dictator would be replaced by someone who would be friendly to the west, but have you any evidence, David, of any plans to make sure the replacement was not someone of the Muslim religion? Indeed, what we actually saw, as we have seen elsewhere in those parts, when the dictator is removed, as the most organised forces around are religious ones, the replacement is bound to be someone of more religious fervour.
Many people died, yes. It was a stupid thing to do, yes. Though we decided to let the cruel dictator remain in place in Syria and let the local people there get on with trying to get rid of him themselves. Did it work out any better, David? Did fewer people die? No – there are people who are keen to whip up anti-western feeling and so whatever is done will interpret it that way. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
What happened in Iraq was the deposition of the cruel dictator was followed by a vicious civil war involving various factions owing allegiance to various interpretations of Islam. So I would call Muslims who get angry about that “hypocrites”. Given that the biggest victims of this Muslim v. Muslim conflict in Iraq and Syria have been the once large minority Christian communities, I’d call them “hypocrites” prefaced by a rude word. They want tolerance here, but they don’t give a damn for the lack of tolerance of their co-religionists elsewhere, and incredibly use that as an excuse to act in an aggressively intolerant way here. You may say “but not all Muslims are like that”, but as you yourself have said, “an awful lot” are, and in my opinion those who are not are not doing nearly enough to counter them and the way those with a narrow political agenda have twisted religious devotion to turn people into these intolerant hypocrites.
Now I know that if cruel things were being done in the name of MY religion in many other countries, what a vicious attack I would face here for that. I know that because when I have mentioned my religion in arguments in this very newsgroup, I quite often HAVE faced vicious attacks, with no-one making them feeling they have to lard their attacks with lots of “of course, most Catholics are not like that” and “But that’s not what the Catholic Church really teaches” disclaimers. Nope, being a Catholic here is like being a Liberal Democrat in most other places – people want to think the worst of you, will interpret anything said or done in the name of your religion in the worst way possible, and assume that once you admit allegiance to it you are just a mindless extremist who follows his religion as dictated by its leaders like an automaton.
JoeBourke
We could all learn something about a more nuanced approach to spirituality from the Buddhist’s and Hindu’s.
Er, have you been following the news from India recently? Do the letters “BJP” and “RSS” mean anything to you? What about Sri Lanka? Seen what the Buddhist Sinhalese get up to there when facing the Hindu Tamils?
JoeBourke
The Abrahamic faiths all suffer from a narrow worldview that tends to see things in black and white
Perhaps we can also learn something from this before we rope all those of “Abrahamic” faiths together in this way.
Is ‘Britishness’ about supporting the ethics of a country that has invaded 180 other countries in the World in the past 400 years. Is ‘Britishness about declaring war on a country because they didn’t want to buy our opium? Is ‘Britishness’ about continuing to claim sovereignty over small lumps of rock scattered across the globe, that happen to lie in someone else’s piece of continental shelf, or even as a potting shed in their back garden.
This all sounds like extremist nonsense to me, but I have no doubt it will be at the heart of any Conservative consensus about what the real meaning of being ‘British’ entails.
Who are the extremists in all this?
Why has no political commentator bothered to ask that question of May, Gove or Cameron?
Joe Bourke
I don’t disagree with the general aim of your comments but I’m a little concerned with this description: We need to be able to clearly distinguish between three elements of Islamic society :
1. Islamic Terrorism – for which we must have zero tolerance and robust security measures in place to counter.
2. Extremist ideology and radicalisation – which must be consistently challenged by the entire British society, muslim and non-muslim alike.
3 Conservative Islam – which is a religious way of like to be tolerated and accepted as just as valid as any other mainstream religious faith.
On points one and two: these are not elements in an Islamic society but a virulent ideology which has taken hold in parts of the middle east and has it’s roots in an extreme interpretation of Islam. It has little if anything to do with other schools of Islam and is a minority pursuit.
Extremism, as Theresa May rightly pointed out, has to be distinguished from integration in the Prevent policy adopted by this government. Michael Gove has done very little to foster social cohesion and integration of schools since he became Secretary of State. He allowed community schools with multi-faith RE programmes to become academies and opt out of LEA control. Conservative-minded Muslims who are local people and governors of schools, have begun to have a strong say in governance of these academies.This is the real issue here and your point three is relevant to this.
If some people are saying they don’t like socially conservative Islam, that’s one thing but it must not be conflated with extremist ideology, otherwise, are we going to condemn Orthodox Jews, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as extremists aswell? Where does it end?
” The Abrahamic faiths all suffer from a narrow worldview that tends to see things in black and white or good versus evil. We could all learn something about a more nuanced approach to spirituality from the Buddhist’s and Hindu’s.”
This is a sweeping statement because the Abrahamic faiths contain different schools of interpretation and practice which might surprise you – they are every bit as spiritual, tolerant and compassionate as those Asian faiths which are apparently so much more chilled out spiritually. We mustn’t fall for common stereotypes.
All those that seem to have an issue with the idea of the state subsidising a faith school will presumably be campaigning to pull funding from single sex state schools on the grounds that society should not be divided along lines of gender?
Helen,
in the early eighties, I spent a year in Dublin. Many of the pubs there had an informal rule that you could drink as much as you want and talk about whatever you like except for Religion and Politics (due to the inevitable rows that would erupt).
I came across a similar pragmatism in Japan in the nineties, where it was common for new babies to be blessed at a Shinto shrine, couples married in a non-denominational Christian Ceremony and funeral rites to be conducted at Buddhist temples.
Whether extremist Islamist ideology is a minority pursuit in the middle-east and wider area or a growing and serious threat, is perhaps a point of contention. Regardless, British Muslim community leaders and opinion-makers could do worse than adopt the kind of pragmatism in avoiding inflammatory speech that was common in Dublin and actively seek to demonstrate the tolerance and acceptance of different faiths and traditions (both here and in the Middle-east) as was evident in Japan.
Interesting piece in the Telegraph, might even have some relevant facts!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10775755/State-schools-isolate-non-Muslims.html
@Joe Bourke
“Texts that endorse the more abhorrent interpretations of Sharia law, such as stoning’s and amputations should be expunged from libraries and classrooms”
That would mean banning the Hadith. I don’t think that would go down too well.
@Richard Dean
Another interesting Telegraph piece here :-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10747220/Muslim-parent-Radical-school-is-brainwashing-our-children.html
Since the subject of the article is a Muslim gentleman with a child at one of the schools under discussion, it may be fair to assume that he (a) knows a little bit about what’s actually going on, and (b) can’t possibly be accused of Islamophobia.
Stuart,
regarding expunging inappropriate texts, I had the following more in mind:
In November 2010, the BBC’s investigative program Panorama reported that Saudi national textbooks advocating anti-Semitism and violence against homosexuals were still in use in weekend religious programs in the United Kingdom.
In October 2012, Robert Bernstein, who founded Human Rights Watch, serves as a chairman of Advancing Human Rights, and was a former chairman and CEO of Random House, and various other book publishers, expressed their “profound disappointment that the Saudi government continues to print textbooks inciting hatred and violence against religious minorities.” They gave an example of an 8th grade textbook which writes, “The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.” The publishers explained that “hate speech is the precursor to genocide. First you get to hate and then you kill.”
Matthew Huntbach,
“the West did not invade Iraq as an anti-Islamic gesture. It invaded Iraq to remove a cruel dictator. If you are saying that Saddam Hussein was Islam incarnate, David, isn’t that somewhat heretical, and also I would say quite a nasty insult towards Islam?”
Careful textual analysis will show that I said seven words about the West’s invasion of Iraq. These did not include a description of Saddam or his relationship to Islam. Some other topics I didn’t try to get into include the question of whether Muslims are justified in being angry about the invasion. I merely commented that many are.
You spend a lot of words attacking Muslim “hypocrisy”, which I find unedifying, but more to the point, unhelpful.
It was just a very simple point that I made. If large numbers of Muslims show an antipathy to Western government and a determination to promote the values of their own faith, then you are on a hiding to nothing if you call that “extremism”. You can’t “drain the swamp” if it is surrounded by sea. You can’t reasonably say that a large fraction of the adult Muslim population should be banned from teaching kids. And, whether you think Muslim antipathy to Western government behaviour is justified or not is totally beside the point.
@David Allen
What has Iraq got to do with anything? “Antipathy to Western government” pre-dates the invasion of Iraq. Think of the reaction in some quarters to 9/11.
OK Stuart, yes, we’ve been at each other’s throats since the Crusades by Christians against Saracens. With Gove and his like taking the lead, we’ll still be at each other’s throats seven centuries from now.
We can land on the moon, we can create a World Wide Web, we can burn enough fuel to cook our own planet, but we can’t respect anybody else’s religion or culture.
Joe Bourke
” British Muslim community leaders and opinion-makers could do worse than adopt the kind of pragmatism in avoiding inflammatory speech that was common in Dublin”
Talking about religion as it actually is, would actually be quite helpful in this debate. This is precisely what is needed because otherwise stereotypes, mythologies and media sensationalism coupled with their tendency only to show Islamist militants not good news stories, prevail and add to a growing anti-Islamic, anti-religious zeitgeist.
We need greater religious literacy in this country, not less. That’s how communities will integrate and dialogue with other communities and that’s how we foster community cohesion.
What a pity then that one of the first things Gove did was abolish the ‘contribution to social cohesion’ criterion from Ofsted inspections; what a pity he downgraded RE from the Humanities section of his precious EBacc; what a pity he allowed schools like Park View to go their own way and become academies, allowing socially very conservative governors to hold court in schools.
This is the real issue: governance and academisation of schools – who is overseeing these schools? The DfE not the LEA.
Helen,
as always, you speak a lot of sense and get to the core of the issue – governance and academisation of schools.
incidentally, I know from organising courses for Saudi women, that one of the main reasons they prefer a single-sex environment is that it is an opportunity for them to quite literally let their hair down and learn without all the extra clothing overheating them (in Central Europe they cover their hair and arms but are requested/advised by their government not to wear veils). I think you need to be careful about what order you solve the problems in when this stuff is interconnected in ways you might not realise.
@David Allen
Not sure who you mean by “we” – the crusades certainly weren’t anything to do with me. Nor were the several hundred years of conflict that had gone on already beforehand. In fact I think it’s a colossal tragedy that there are people in the world who think these events relate to them in any way whatsoever.
“With Gove and his like taking the lead, we’ll still be at each other’s throats seven centuries from now.”
OK. Tell me what you’d be doing differently if you were in Michael Gove’s job and the much-leaked EFA report landed on your desk containing the claims that school children had been “urged to join in anti-Christian chants”. You clearly have great disdain for the way Gove has handled it – but what should he have done instead?
Stuart Mitchell,
Well, I’d start by taking with a huge pinch of salt the sort of anecdotal evidence you mention. Typically, when stories like that emerge, they are isolated one-offs at best, complete fabrications by interested parties at worst.
Islamic extremism exists. So does Christian extremism. If we’re going to call something an emergency, we had better have real and well-founded fears about bombs going off. Kids chanting silly songs are not at that level.
More soberly, we should be thinking about something like pastoral guidance to address what you call “anti-Christian chants”. (Always assuming that these are in some way more serious than the numerous chants against the enemies of Israel which grace our Old Testament!)
An “outstanding” school which becomes excessively influenced by the peddlers of religious fundamentalism should be given an agenda to improve. It should not, ludicrously, be downgraded from “outstanding” to “failing”, a revision which merely serves to discredit Ofsted and to show that they are in Gove’s pockets. But its faults should be tackled. With the existing staff, not by sacking the staff.
Oh and by the way, there are rather too many schools which fall into this category – excessive religious fundamentalism, but eschewing extremist violence. The largest number Christian. Some Jewish. And yes, some Islamic too.
Well, said Helen Tedcastle.
Which party do I need to vote for to return academies to LEA control?
Religion, Tribal Custom, Fundamentalist trappings and customs – from wherever – have no place in Education. Remove all “Faith” (much of what we are seeing is tribal not religious – especially clothing and dreadful attitudes towards women) based schools from the system to prevent people hiding behind its cover. There is a warped inclusive policy which panders to ignorance and has no place in a modern Western European Country.
@David Lowrence
“especially clothing ”
How dare people wear what they want. Can you please tell me what clothing you are intending to proscribe for people and how you intend to enforce your authoritarianism?
A most interesting thread of discussion, reminds me why I love this party, such a diversity of views and a willingness to debate and research.
It seems to me there are a huge number of issues that are being conflated here, but the one that has had me shouting at the radio in the past few days is the very clear impression that Ofsted is being told what to conclude by Gove in reaction to press and not to the evidence of their own inspections. You can almost hear the raised voices emanating from Whitehall – “you did what? you gave these schools an ‘outstanding’? what were you thinking of? get back their now, this instant, and this time….”
@Helen Tedcastle and others.
There seems to be a mistaken understanding that because none of the schools in question are designated as ‘faith’ schools, they are secular. In fact, there are no state-funded secular schools in England. It would be unlawful to either set one up or convert an existing non-denominational school to secular status by removing the obligation for collective worship. Perhaps the only way to achieve secular status under current law would be for all parents with children at a particular school to exercise their right to withdraw their children form the act of collective worship. Google Monkseaton High School to find out what happened when the headteacher wanted to convert the school to secular status. Also, I may stand corrected , but I think Park View Academy has a local determination under the 1998 Act, which as I understand it allows the collective act of worship to be non-christian,hence he call to prayers etc. Hardly surprising, in circumstances where there are virtually no children of christian parents attending the school.
@Helen Tedcastle.
The problem with ‘faith’ schools is that they enjoy privileges accorded to certain groups in society. The downside is that for every privilege accorded to religious institution there is corresponding unfair discrimination against those not part of that group. In the state-funded sector this manifests itself in teacher employment, admissions policies and school transport, among others. I thought liberal democrats were against privilege and elitism. However, I take this back if you are a supporter of organisations like the Accord Coalition or the Fair admissions Campaign.
@Steve ‘How dare people wear what they want.’
Consequently, I assume you want to get rid of school uniform dress codes? Also, what about students coming to school in burkas. Would that be OK with you?
David Allen
Careful textual analysis will show that I said seven words about the West’s invasion of Iraq. These did not include a description of Saddam or his relationship to Islam. Some other topics I didn’t try to get into include the question of whether Muslims are justified in being angry about the invasion. I merely commented that many are
Here again are the words you used which I quoted “The West invaded Iraq and many died. If you’re going to call all Muslims who are angry about that “extremists”, then you’re going to have an awful lot of extremists”.
No, I don’t call all Muslims who are angry about that “extremists”. In fact I don’t use that word at all, or the word “fundamentalist” of those who advocate violence in the name of Islam because I believe even the use of those words is a partial acceptance of their propaganda. If one uses the word “extremist” for those who advocate violence, and the word “moderate” for those who don’t, then one is giving support to those who advocate violence, because the word “moderate” also implies “people who don’t take their religion seriously, for whom it is not a major part of their life”. If one uses the word “fundamentalist” for those who take a literalist approach to their religious texts and pick out and emphasise those sentences from it which endorse the political line they want to take, then one is agreeing with them that those sentences and their interpretation IS the fundamental part of their religion. I prefer to call such people (and I use it of so-called Christian “fundamentalists” as well) by the term “incidentalists” as that reflects my belief that they are taking incidental aspects of their religion and centring themselves on those rather than the real fundamentals.
Given that the rest of what you wrote in reply to me makes assumptions about me which are the exact opposite of my actual thinking, as explained above, I’ll ignore it.
On the first part though, yes, there are many Muslims who have been fired up and got to feel angry due to propaganda from people who want to make out the invasion of Iraq was some sort of anti-Muslim action. I appreciate what you are saying is that simply pointing this out does not necessarily mean agreeing with it. However, I have noted that since the invasion took place there have been so many well-meaning liberal people who have used language which can be interpreted as agreeing with the notion that the invasion of Iraq was somehow an attack on Islam, and I think this has very much encouraged those others who use that idea to whip up a divisive and violent interpretation of Islam. Two such people, whipped up in this way, killed a man just a mile from my house not that long ago because of the way they had been whipped up, or perhaps they were violent minded people who were looking for something to get whipped up about as an excuse to be violent.
David Allen
More soberly, we should be thinking about something like pastoral guidance to address what you call “anti-Christian chants”. (Always assuming that these are in some way more serious than the numerous chants against the enemies of Israel which grace our Old Testament!)
The fundamentals of Christianity are about the development of new ways of thinking about religion which rejects the approach which dominates the Old Testament. The central aspect of what Jesus is saying is to criticise the religious hypocrites of his day (his language, as given here is stronger than mine, perhaps you would condemn him as being unedifying and unhelpful for using such language) for being finicky on fine details of practice while ignoring the underlying message. Much of the writing of Paul is about breaking away from religion as about following a set of rules of practice, though a dangerous misinterpretation of that line led to the very necessary riposte from James, which Luther didn’t like. The Old Testament is the background to the New Testament, therefore anyone who takes bits of it out of context, whether chants against the enemies of Israel, or calls for punishment of homosexuals, or whatever else, is in my terms an “incidentalist”.
From what we have heard of these schools there have been things happening in them which if the exact equivalent happened in a school with a strong Christian orientation would cause an instant huge scandal. I’m sorry, but I think we need to treat Islam as we do Christianity, and therefore any criticism we would make of Christianity and people acting in the name of Christianity we should feel free to be able to make also of Islam without having to lard it with all the cringing stuff which liberals seem to feel they have to when it comes to Islam. For example, if large Muslim communities were being forced to flee in fear of their lives due to direct attack from people claiming to be acting in the name of Christianity in many of the countries of the world where Christianity is dominant, I think we’d hear about it here, and I think Muslims here would not dismiss it. You may not like it, but I treat all religions equally, so if they remain silent about abuse where they would be up in arms if it were the other way round, I feel the word “hypocrite” is quite appropriate.
However, I am also well aware from my own religious background of how small things can be taken out of context and twisted and made to sound much worse than is the reality. That is why I would not want to make an instant judgment on these schools without knowing more of the facts. For example, were some of the offensive terms quoted regularly used, or is it just that one unfortunate use of such a term is being bandied about to make it seem the norm?
Shaun Whitfield
Your definition of ‘secular’ accords with that of the National Secular Society, a group which advocates taking away any religious or spiritual expression from the public sphere. However, look around the world and each jurisdiction has their own settlement on what constitutes’ secular’. Britain has it’s own version too, even if it does not accord with your ideal.
Park View is ‘secular.’ It is not run or part-funded by a religious denomination even though most of the pupils are from a particular faith and ethnic community. The parents do not withdraw children from the act of worship at assembly because they are perfectly comfortable with it.
In fact, in my few years as a teacher in a community school, I do not recall any pupil being withdrawn from these innocuous assemblies – everyone joined in, even ones from religious minorities like Jehovah’s Witnesses, who traditionally object. They saw collective assemblies with a brief prayer or reflection and/or talk by the local Vicar, as a way of belonging to the school community and as having no harmful consequences.
When this school became an academy, it became self-governing and not surprisingly, the local governors comprise members of the Islamic community – it’s called local governance without ‘interference’ by the LEA. The Lib Dems signed up to this policy and voted for it in the lobbies.
Correction: ” When this school became an academy” should read, ” When Park View school became an academy”
@Helen Tedcastle
Blimey, I know definitions of ‘secular’ may vary, but I don’t think you can regard a state funded school that is legally required to have a daily act of religious worship as ‘secular’!
I still don’t understand how you can reconcile being a Liberal Democrat with your support for faith schools and the attendant privileges that religious institutions enjoy in the state education sector (I would say the same to a Labour
Party member on this matter).
The purpose of secular education, broadly speaking, is to teach generally accepted facts and methodologies for acquiring, analysing, and judging those facts.
The purpose of religious instruction is to teach religious opinions, to tell pupils that only one set of opinions is correct and that it is impossible to acquire new ones, and to discourage pupils from analysing or judging those opinions — at least, if there exists any possibility of them coming to conclusions other than the pre-approved ones.
I do not see any reason why these two totally contradictory approaches should be the responsibility of a single institution.
Shaun Whitfield
” I still don’t understand how you can reconcile being a Liberal Democrat with your support for faith schools ”
If that is really your viewpoint, I would invite you to reflect for a moment on just how intolerant it is.
I stick by the statement I made on the definition of ‘secular’ and the settlement we have in Britain. I don’t think that the 1988 Act on religious assemblies is widely interpreted in a way which actively causes harm to anyone.
However, the agenda of secularists is quite another matter. Far from advocating an open and plural society, they want to force faith communities and people of faith out of the public sphere and into the shadows. Far from being tolerant and celebrating diversity, their aim is to bleach the differences and impose their own version of ‘liberal, secular values.’ They are not tolerant of faith, indeed they actively mock it and sneer at anyone with the temerity to witness to faith.
Faith schools are a in a minority in this society. In fact, the freedom to open schools was granted to my faith community in 1856 after centuries of active discrimination and persecution. Faith communities which fund faith schools in partnership with the state, contribute a vital social good to life in Britain, along with the majority community schools. They offer a sound and well-rounded education in the context of faith for all pupils of whichever background.
Far from being a privilege, they are a hard-won right and all secularists want to do is take away their freedom and impose uniformity.
David-1
” The purpose of religious instruction is to teach religious opinions, to tell pupils that only one set of opinions is correct and that it is impossible to acquire new ones, and to discourage pupils from analysing or judging those opinions — at least, if there exists any possibility of them coming to conclusions other than the pre-approved ones.”
Oh dear. This assumption really isn’t correct and I am sorry that you have been led to to think it for whatever reason.
Religious Education is not the same as Religious Instruction. in fact, no school has taught RI for at least twenty five years. The educational landscape has changed.
Let me explain further. I used to be an RE teacher in first a community school and then a faith school. In the latter, I led the RE team and wrote the schemes of work as well as teaching up to university entry.
If I simply spouted a line and didn’t encourage my pupils and students to think critically and explore ideas, then none of them would have passed their GCSEs or A levels. None would have got into university. The fact that we had high pass rates and sent students to leading universities disproves your assumption.
In RE, education about religion, thinking about faith and understanding cannot be done unless one compares and contrasts and analyses viewpoints. In fact, it is likely deeper understanding of faith and non-religious positions will ensue if the teacher does their job correctly. Children reach their own conclusions.
So I quite staightforwardly looked at the writings of Richard Dawkins with my Year 9 pupils – we discussed his argument and compared it with religious viewpoints. I did the same at A level. I am not a radical teacher – we all did it in my RE department.
Please reflect on this and perhaps reconsider the assumptions you seem to have about RE and indeed faith schools.
@David Allen
“Well, I’d start by taking with a huge pinch of salt the sort of anecdotal evidence you mention.”
That goes without saying. But have you actually read the relevant Ofsted reports (rather than Mary’s highly inaccurate précis)? Any of the reporting by Andrew Gilligan and others? An awful lot of teachers, parents and pupils have come forward with evidence, some of them Muslims themselves, so putting all this down to Islamophobia just doesn’t wash.
“It should not, ludicrously, be downgraded from “outstanding” to “failing”, a revision which merely serves to discredit Ofsted and to show that they are in Gove’s pockets. But its faults should be tackled. With the existing staff, not by sacking the staff.”
One of the major issues with Park View (and some of the other schools) is that a lot of the staff that helped the school to that “Outstanding” grade two years ago have now gone – including the head teacher, who complained of being “marginalized” and excluded from decision making before retiring. This is one of the reasons why Ofsted did their snap inspection in the first place, and it’s perfectly legitimate for them to regrade so dramatically when the management of the school has been replaced and there are allegations of governors having undue influence. I’m not sure why you should think the new leaders who have turned the school from outstanding to inadequate in two years are the people best qualified to tackle the problems. Of course, you have made it clear that you have zero confidence in the Ofsted inspectors – but all that shows is that you think some bloke sitting at home reading the Guardian website is better equipped to make these judgments than an experienced team of inspectors who have spent several days in the school and spoken to numerous staff, pupils, and parents.
“Oh and by the way, there are rather too many schools which fall into this category – excessive religious fundamentalism, but eschewing extremist violence. The largest number Christian. Some Jewish.”
Can you name some? Preferably schools which (like Park View) are supposed to be non-denominational schools? Park View is not supposed to be a faith school. That’s kind of the whole point.
I don’t think anyone’s posted this link yet – it’s Ofsted’s summary of their findings in all 21 schools involved :-
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/other-forms-and-guides/a/Advice%20note%20provided%20on%20academies%20and%20maintained%20schools%20in%20Birmingham%20to%20the%20Secretary%20of%20State%20for%20Education%2C%20Rt%20Hon%20Michael%20Gove%20MP.pdf
I have to say, much of the debate on here – Islamism vs Islamophobia, faith schools vs secular schools – is wholly irrelevant to what’s happening in Birmingham. This isn’t about keeping religion out of schools, it’s about certain specific allegations of inappropriate indoctrination in a small number of schools – and as Richard Church has just unwittingly pointed out in another article, politicians have acted against Catholic schools doing similar sorts of things in the recent past, so there’s no basis for saying that Muslims are being singled out.
Two things are very clear to me in response to this Ofsted report: firstly it is in line with my extensive experience as one who has spent a lifetime in education and who now runs an educational consultancy which involves my visiting schools all over the country. I have a very low opinion of Ofsted, since they are prone to do just what they have done in Birmingham, ie to downgrade a school from top to bottom grade on the basis of one inadequacy. This is a ludicrous position to take. If a school is academically successful and displays one safeguarding issue, why do they not make that clear and leave parents etc to make up their own minds about the school rather than damning the entire outfit.
Secondly, however, I think this report and the whole furore it has unleashed shows the complete inadequacy of the initial inspection, in that they missed such a vital component of an excellent school, a commitment to diversity in all its myriad aspects. As a Liberal Democrat/Liberal over many decades I find it difficult to believe that anyone of Liberal values thinks it a good idea to have a school with such an ethnically ill-balanced intake No doubt in this case it results from our earlier incompetence as a nation in letting immigrants (or perhaps forcing immigrants) to settle in their own detached communities, so fulfilling the conditions that created the doom-laden words of Enoch Powell and have now led to the rise of Nigel Farage. This position is exacerbated by the many faith schools we have, many of which inevitably teach their own particular brand of values at the expense of widening students’ views in their most susceptible years, when they could be learning to judge other views with the respect . Until we grasp the nettle of creating a level playing field for all our pupils in education, we shall always fail to be a properly inclusive society.
David-1
The purpose of secular education, broadly speaking, is to teach generally accepted facts and methodologies for acquiring, analysing, and judging those facts
Hello Mr Gradgrind.
jean Evans
This position is exacerbated by the many faith schools we have, many of which inevitably teach their own particular brand of values at the expense of widening students’ views in their most susceptible years, when they could be learning to judge other views with the respect .
Given that most “faith schools” in this country are Catholic schools, if this were REALLY the case we’d have huge numbers of closed-minded extremist Catholics who think their own religion is all that is true and express a hatefulness for all others.
But we don’t, do we?
In fact while there is such a thing as an extremist closed-minded Catholic, the numbers of such people are tiny. There is simply not the equivalent of the “Muslim fanatic” that most certainly exists here, and seems to be attractive to quite a high proportion of impressionable youngsters. Can you point out ANYTHING anywhere in this country which demonstrates the existence of a similar sort of young Catholic? Unless you can, you have no evidence for what you are saying. Unless you can do what I am saying here, and give me the evidence of a large body of extremists Catholics here in England coming out of all the Catholic schools we have – which MUST exist if what you say is true – then there is only one conclusion that can be drawn from what you are saying. That is that you are saying it out of pure prejudice.
Shaun Whitfield
I still don’t understand how you can reconcile being a Liberal Democrat with your support for faith schools
Well, okay, but the alternative is that parents should have no right to bring children up in their own culture, that instead they must be forced to absorb what the state dictates to be correct “neutral” culture. Force-feed kids from Jewish or Muslim backgrounds bacon sandwiches on the grounds that denying them the chance to experience that is religious prejudice and should have no place in state schools.
What I feel is that one of the reasons we have not had this development of a big batch of closed-minded anti-everyone-else illiberal Catholics in this country is BECAUSE of the existence of Catholic schools. If, as I suspect you would put as the answer to my point, instruction of children in the Catholic faith were left to be done privately, I fear there IS a tendency that it would be done by those with more extreme and illiberal views on the religion. Part of the reason Catholic schools have worked and the Catholic community has become integrated into English society (I am saying “English” deliberately here) is, I feel, because Catholic schools have come under the supervision of local authorities and as such have tended to push a liberal and inclusive version of Catholicism. Indeed, go to the Catholic extremist discussion sites, and you’ll find them full of strange people moaning about Catholic schools being far too liberal.
So, I wonder if part of the reason there is much more of this illiberal and isolationist interpretation of Islam in Muslim communities is because their religion is being passed on largely in the sort of private closed way that the “there should be no state faith schools” people are advocating. Look, all the things that are being complained about in these schools here are known because they are publicly controlled schools, with a state overview. These things would still be going on, but behind closed doors, and probably in a far worse way, if it were left to private arrangement.
jean Evans
“This position is exacerbated by the many faith schools we have, many of which inevitably teach their own particular brand of values at the expense of widening students’ views in their most susceptible years, when they could be learning to judge other views with the respect .”
Like Matthew Huntbach, I am left dumbfounded by this comment. I am presuming you didn’t read my earlier comments which explained clearly what went on in a faith school of my experience. Never mind.
In your ‘extensive experience’ of schools, clearly you didn’t visit or experience the same schools as I did, where the ethos and values were welcoming open and inclusive. In fact, I am confident that your opinion is not based on any solid evidence.
If faith schools have their freedom taken away, then as Matthew writes, it is more not less likely that extremist views will gain ground – there will be no oversight at all.
In view of your remarks on immigrants and areas of settlement, I think one should remember that when immigrants came to cities like Birmingham in the fifties, sixties and seventies, it experienced the phenomenon of ‘white flight’ that is, local white families upping sticks and moving further out of Birmingham, leaving whole areas settled by Asian immigrants. The situation in Birmingham in 2014, is the product of decades. Children of Muslim immigrants are now British-born Muslims.
Any one with liberal values would be working for a socially cohesive, inclusive approach, encouraging all schools to maintain their multi-faith education programme. Of course, academies don’t have to follow it and can go their own way. This is the issue. Surely you would know this as an educational ‘expert.’
@Matthew Huntbatch
“Well, okay, but the alternative is that parents should have no right to bring children up in their own culture, that instead they must be forced to absorb what the state dictates to be correct “neutral” culture.”
No, that’s not the alternative. All I am saying is that, while parents have the right to bring up children in their own culture, the state should not be paying for it or for the proselytisation of any faith. Football and going to the pub is part of my culture, but I don’t expect the state to pay for my Arsenal season ticket and a pint of London Pride.
“Force-feed kids from Jewish or Muslim backgrounds bacon sandwiches on the grounds that denying them the chance to experience that is religious prejudice and should have no place in state schools.”
Good strawmanning there! Where have I advocated force-feeding bacon to jews and muslims?
I have seen the swivel-eyed catholic websites eg Protect the Pope (now closed I think), but whether or not there are state funded catholic (or muslim) schools the extreme fringes of religions will not be affected in my view. As we live in a free country this has to be tolerated as long as it does not tip over into something unlawful.
Faith schools are part of the awful balkanisation of the state education system. At a time when budgets are tight, they are extremely wasteful of resources. We have voluntary-aided, voluntary controlled, academies, free, community and bilateral schools, to name a few. Children travel all over the place, to the environment’s cost, while Councils pay for the transport, at least for those attending distant faith schools. These discretionary transport payments have been cut, to a degree, owing to the squeeze on public spending, but where still paid they remain an example of the discriminatory down side of faith schools. The subjects one of my daughters wanted to study at ‘A’ level weren’t available in the 6th form of our local comp, so she had to go to a 6th form college 10 miles away. I had to pay for the transport. Hypothetically, had we been a catholic family and the 6th form college a catholic secondary, the Council would have paid for her transport, even though there would have been a secondary school much nearer to our home. Such discrimination still happens all over the country. The only fair approach with discretionary transport payments is either for the council to pay for all students whose parents wish them to attend a more distant school or for no-one to benefit from such payments. Instead, everyone pays for a privilege afforded only to a minority of students, ie those attending distant faith schools. It is clearly financially untenable for the Council to pay the transport costs of all students, so the only fair and non-discriminatory approach would be to withdraw discretionary transport finance from all students who could attend a much nearer school. One of your MPs, Greg Mulholland, was bleating recently about his local council withdrawing transport finance from parents of children attending a Catholic school. Like Jacob Rees-Mogg, on these matters he takes the whip from Vatican Central.
Shaun Whitfield
” All I am saying is that, while parents have the right to bring up children in their own culture, the state should not be paying for it ”
So the state should not pay for parents to bring people up in their culture. So if a child’s culture is British and Anglican the British state shouldn’t be paying for it. The state should only pay for children of neutral culture. How many children do you think are brought up in a neutral culture?
” or for the proselytisation of any faith.” Please explain what you think goes on in a faith school. I am genuinely interested to know.
” Football and going to the pub is part of my culture, but I don’t expect the state to pay for my Arsenal season ticket and a pint of London Pride.”
Is this culture or a leisure activity? The latter, surely.
” Like Jacob Rees-Mogg, on these matters he takes the whip from Vatican Central.” No. He is supporting parents who have come to him from within his constituency. It’s a pity that all school transport isn’t subsidised, then maybe your axes wouldn’t need to be ground.
@Helen Tedcastle
“So the state should not pay for parents to bring people up in their culture. So if a child’s culture is British and Anglican the British state shouldn’t be paying for it. The state should only pay for children of neutral culture. How many children do you think are brought up in a neutral culture?”
For goodness sake, I was referring to state-funded education. The French have a fully secular system and they seem to have a culture. And the Finns (who seem to cope better educationally as a result, too, with their system of common schooling).
“” or for the proselytisation of any faith.” Please explain what you think goes on in a faith school. I am genuinely interested to know.”
Well, lets take a look at the Church of England. Two years ago they published ‘The Church School of the Future’ by Dr Priscila Chadwick (2012)
It said that Church Schools:
“stand at the centre of its mission” and that they enable “more direct engagement with children and their families than any other contact including Sunday worship”. It says that schools “must include a wholehearted commitment to putting faith and spiritual development at the heart of the curriculum and ensuring that the Christian ethos permeates the whole educational experience.” The report says that “religious education and collective worship should continue to make major contributions to the Church school’s Christian ethos to allow pupils to engage seriously with and develop an understanding of the person and teachings of Jesus Christ.” Church schools, it says, should be enabling children “to flourish in their potential as a child of God” and this is “a sign and expression of the Kingdom that is at the heart of the Church’s distinctive mission.”
If this isn’t promoting proselytisation I don’t know what is. It says: “New approaches are needed to ensure that the Church’s mission is more widely known through schools and is fully understood.”
I don’t doubt the more enthusiastic members of the church active in schools have taken this to heart.
And this is what goes on even in your so-called ‘secular’ schools, taken from ‘Evangelism in State Schools’ (National Secular Society, October 2013):
“Our [the NSS’s] investigation into the activities of evangelical organisations in schools was prompted by parents contacting us with their concerns. What follows is the testimonies of a few of those parents.
“Our son attends a non-religious [community] state Junior School in Sheffield and our understanding therefore was that the school would not have any affiliation with a Church or any other religious organisation. Quite by chance we became aware that members of a local evangelical church were visiting the school on a regular basis to conduct whole school assemblies. After writing to the head teacher, we were informed that the school had a “long-standing relationship” with an evangelicalchurch that adheres to a profoundly conservative and avowedly missionary agenda.
We attempted to enter into a dialogue with the school in order to seek clarification about the exact nature of the relationship and to raise questions about whether a relationship with this type of church was in fact appropriate or lawful given that the school is a non-religious school and that parents had not been informed that any such relationship existed. Unfortunately, the response of the school leadership and governing body has shown a profound reluctance to engage with the issues and we have been repeatedly denied prompt access to information about policy and practice at the school. Our Local Education Authority has appeared equally reticent to get involved pro-actively and to take our parental concerns seriously and we have been refused sight of legal guidance on the issues. We could never have predicted the delaying, obfuscation and hostility that we have faced as parents who have simply voiced concerns about the crucial issue of access to children in a state school. We have been left with a strong feeling that the degree of entryist “capture” of the school goes further than we had initially suspected. The school governing body has voted on a “new” policy on religious visitors to the school that has merely formalised the relationship with the evangelical church, but parents were refused any input into the new policy. The school has refused to disclose how
many members of the governing body are in fact members of the church concerned and therefore no governors have at any stage declared an interest and absented themselves from discussion and votes on the policy. We have repeatedly pointed out to the school and the LEA that this is in clear breach of national and local regulation
but again our complaints have simply been ignored. We have been left feeling disempowered and marginalised and meanwhile an ultra-conservative Christian evangelical church that openly preaches against both gender equality and freedom of sexuality has maintained privileged access to children at the school. We believe that access to children at a state school is not a given “right” for any religious group that seeks to avail itself of a missionary opportunity. The fact that local and national governance, accountability and democratic safeguards appear powerless to
challenge this activity is highly disturbing.”
And there are more like that. I know you don’t like the NSS, but i recommend you read this document.
Because they are white and christain ey don’t get
@Helen Tedcastle: I appreciate and believe in your good will; I’m just not convinced that your experience is generalisable, or that your methods are, in their context, efficacious or productive. There are thousands of religions in the world, and hundreds of varieties of non-religion, all differing in important ways and many claiming for themselves absolute truth. How is it possible to present even a balanced selection of them in a way which is fair (and would be perceived as fair by members) to all?
To take your own example: Dawkins is not a philosopher but a biologist who happens also to be a controversialist, a man who specialises in making inflammatory statements to get press coverage. Did you really think he was a good representative of anything except his own individual views? Or did you present Dawkins’ views as “the atheist view”?
The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for discussion of other religions. I really do not see how this can work below the university level. You can have a discussion of the externals of faith practices; you can have a relatively sterile comparative discussion of texts. But I don’t believe most teachers are qualified to teach about a viewpoint they don’t share from the perspective of someone who holds it. (It’s rare enough to find someone qualified to teach about philosophical views they do share.)
Beyond that, aren’t parents who send their children to faith schools expecting them to be inculcated with religious teachings presented as absolute truth, not just one opinion among many? Isn’t that the whole point?
Helen has raised important points about governance and academies on this thread.
The Ofsted Recommendations appear to be reasonably balanced and directed at these issues:
In culturally homogeneous communities, schools are often the only places where children can learn about other faiths, other cultures and other styles of living. All maintained schools and academies, including faith and non-faith schools, must promote the values of wider British society. If this does not happen, the principles that are fundamental to the well-being of our society will not be transmitted to the next generation. With this in mind, the government should:
consider urgently how it can provide greater public assurance that all schools in a locality, regardless of their status, discharge the full range of their statutory and other responsibilities
ensure that local authorities and those responsible for academies and free schools carry out their statutory responsibility for safeguarding all children, including protecting children from radicalisation
review the current arrangements for school governance, giving serious consideration to:
– mandatory training for all governors
– the introduction of professional governors where governance is judged to be weak
– requiring all schools to publish a governors’ Register of Interests
ensure that governors in all schools are bound by, and follow, the prescribed procedures if they wish to change the status or character of a school
review the Education Funding Agency’s arrangements for auditing governance in academies and free schools
provide much greater clarity to all schools (including academies and free schools) on what should be taught in a broad and balanced curriculum
review and monitor funding agreements for all academies and free schools to ensure that they are properly implemented
review existing whistleblowing procedures for all schools, including academies, and for local government and central government, so that concerns can be reported and acted on promptly
further investigate whether there has been organised infiltration and manipulation of governing bodies.
Ofsted will:
consult on introducing a new graded judgement on the wider curriculum as part of its changes to school inspection from 1 September 2015
work with government to review the current exemption that applies to the routine inspection of outstanding schools.
Shaun Whitfield
This is what you said: ” No, that’s not the alternative. All I am saying is that, while parents have the right to bring up children in their own culture, the state should not be paying for it”
and ” For goodness sake, I was referring to state-funded education. ”
So what we have established is that you would prefer to live in a secular system such as France where women can be arrested for wearing the Hijab in public, where you can be arrested for displaying religious symbols in a school and where the Front Nationale, a fascist party, has just topped the poll in the recent elections. France is not known for it’s social cohesion and in comparison to France, Britain is a tolerant, open and proudly diverse society.
As I argued earlier. If you force people to display their identity and their culture solely in the private sphere, it ends up pushing communities to the extremes. We are seeing this played out in France right now.
I asked you whether you knew what actually goes on in faith schools and you presented me with a mission statement. This is an overall vision and yet I was asking about the daily life of a school. The mission statement is hardly inflammatory – it’s the mission statement of Christian schools. Of course, their ethos focuses on the Gospel and person of Jesus Christ. Of course children should be able to flourish and develop their potential – some will do this in the deepening of faith, some won’t.. Why is this controversial? Why is it a problem that the Gospel is at the heart of a Christian school, that children find out about it and then either follow it or reject it? Are you saying that the Gospel is so dangerous that no one can find out about it unless they pay a tuition fee to a private school? If so, then this is discrimination against poor and deprived Christian members of society.
On the NSS document – some parents are worried about the visits of members of an evangelical church. Is this church running RE? Is it on the governing body? Are they influencing/writing the policies of the school? If not, then I don’t see why this school can’t engage with a local Christian group – no school can simply isolate itself and pretend these organisations don’t exist. What evidence is there that this group is advocating gender inequality? What did they actually say?
When I was a member of a Church youth group, the local Catholic priest invited the Mormons to come to talk to us – if he had taken the NSS line, he would not have done so for fear of their ‘proselytising.’ The fact that the priest had an open attitude meant that a group of young Catholics got to meet with and understand a minority group in our society.
That’s called enlightened in my book.
@Helen Tedcastle
Sorry, last post sent in error. The unfinished sentence was going to say something like because the people involved are white and christian they get much less media attention than fundamentalists who are asian and muslim.
In further response to your post:
“” Football and going to the pub is part of my culture, but I don’t expect the state to pay for my Arsenal season ticket and a pint of London Pride.”
Is this culture or a leisure activity? The latter, surely.”
You probably did not mean it, but that comes a cross as rather snobbish and elitist . Football: leisure activity for the great unwashed, thus inferring, for example, that ballet and opera is high-minded culture for the discerning. There is in fact a long tradition of serious writing about football (Brian Glanville, Arthur Hopcraft, through to Nick Hornby and Simon Kuper to name a few).
Anyway, I digress. You say finally:
“It’s a pity that all school transport isn’t subsidised, then maybe your axes wouldn’t need to be ground.”
Quite, but it’s not is it? I said the only fair thing to do is either subsidise/pay or all school transport, or not at all. The problem is, which you seem not to grasp, is that even limited discretionary payments to bus children to faith schools that are further from the nearest school cost an absolute fortune. In the early 1990’s, Wiltshire Council looked at saving on such transport costs (previous recession – looking to cut costs again). It was in the order of £300,000 pa. Goodness knows what that would be in 2014 prices or how many teachers it could have funded, but, unfortunately, as I recall, the cross-party religious block on the Council put a stop to any cuts and I assume savings were made elsewhere.
By the way, I agree with your comments on religious education, (ie not instruction). I think some posters may be relying on memories of their own school days, rather than what actually happens now.
David -1
” There are thousands of religions in the world, and hundreds of varieties of non-religion, all differing in important ways and many claiming for themselves absolute truth. How is it possible to present even a balanced selection of them in a way which is fair (and would be perceived as fair by members) to all?”
There may be local variations of religious traditions, individual cults and so on but it is possible to locate five or six major world religious traditions, each with variation in them but broadly locatable and describable. As Christianity is the major religious tradition present in this country and it’s history, it makes sense for pupils to find out something about it.
In order to write schemes of work and programmes of study, professionals have to be trained specialists ideally and will know how to research and locate resources to do this important work. They also have degrees in the subject or at least related degrees.There really isn’t much point in saying, the subject is so vast there’s no point studying it before university entry, otherwise children would not learn about History or Literature either.
” I don’t believe most teachers are qualified to teach about a viewpoint they don’t share from the perspective of someone who holds it.” Then there will never be any teaching of theory or viewpoints, because teachers do this all the time, particularly in the humanities and the arts.
On your final point, I don’t think many parents send their children to school to be indoctrinated, no, unless they are sent to a free school where rather extreme groups can take control of the curriculum. Hence their controversy.
Shaun Whitfield
” because the people involved are white and christian they get much less media attention than fundamentalists who are asian and muslim.”
Are you suggesting that a Christian group which comes in to take assemblies every so often, is equivalent to Islamic fundamentalists ie: extremists? This is stretching the point to new levels of absurdity.
On culture and leisure activities – I didn’t mean my point to come across as snobbish – I’m a football supporter myself but I wondered whether being a fan of football is the same as being immersed in a particular culture or religion such as Judaism or Catholicism. There are superficial similarities but they are not that comparable in details.
Finally on subsidised travel – as faith schools exist in far smaller numbers than community schools, those who wish to go to a faith school normally will have to travel a fair distance. For instance, a family may have to hire a taxi or take the train to travel over twenty miles each way to the faith school, especially in rural areas – hence travel subsidy. For those who do not wish to go to a faith school, normally they have a greater number of different community schools to choose from, located nearer to home.
@Helen Tedcastle
“” or for the proselytisation of any faith.” Please explain what you think goes on in a faith school. I am genuinely interested to know.”
I quote you again because I thought above you were denying that proselytisation took place in faith schools. Reading your reply you accept it clearlyy does. And what on earth is the value in looking at Mormonism, apart from poking fun at it’s risible origins. What next next, Scientology – I hear it’s now classed as a religion.
With regard to the NSS publication, I am afraid I can’t do links, but the document itself is fully referenced.
Not sure why you went on a rant about France and what the National Front have got to do with the matters under discussion.
Shaun Whitfield
“Reading your reply you accept it clearlyy does. And what on earth is the value in looking at Mormonism, apart from poking fun”
No, I don’t accept that proselytising is the mission of the school but I don’t deny that Christian schools centre their values and ethos on the Gospels and the person of Jesus Christ – of course not. The point is whether this provides a context and an ethos or whether children are systematically indoctrinated without thought, The answer to the latter is no. Schools are places of learning.
I think you missed the point of my anecdote about Mormons – yes it would be so easy to mock and sneer at other points of view and stick to our exclusive and isolated groups – you might have expected a priest to behave like this but he didn’t. He welcomed them and we learned about them – in fact, we learned to respect them, even though we profoundly disagreed with their position and questioned their beliefs. But that is the whole point of the encounter, isn’t it.
On France – it’s supposed to be secular in order to provide a space for tolerance and equality, yet we see a fascist party topping the latest poll in the elections and the police lock up women who wear Hijab. So much for tolerance and respect for diversity.
David-1
Beyond that, aren’t parents who send their children to faith schools expecting them to be inculcated with religious teachings presented as absolute truth, not just one opinion among many? Isn’t that the whole point?
No.
Shaun Whitfield
“Well, okay, but the alternative is that parents should have no right to bring children up in their own culture, that instead they must be forced to absorb what the state dictates to be correct “neutral” culture.”
No, that’s not the alternative. All I am saying is that, while parents have the right to bring up children in their own culture, the state should not be paying for it or for the proselytisation of any faith.
Since these schools cost no more for the state than any other schools, this is a false argument. There is no extra money going for “proselytisation”. In fact it is religions subsidising the state as a proportion of the capital; costs come from the religions.
“Force-feed kids from Jewish or Muslim backgrounds bacon sandwiches on the grounds that denying them the chance to experience that is religious prejudice and should have no place in state schools.”
Good strawmanning there! Where have I advocated force-feeding bacon to jews and muslims?
It follows naturally from what you wrote. Not eating pork is a practice of these religions. Therefore, if as you say the state should not in any way support religious practice in schools, it should not support the practice of abstaining form pork.
This is a standard reductio ad absurdum form of logic. I have taken what you said to its limits, and now you disagree with it. So now we are at the position of agreeing that the state should support some degree of religious practice in schools, and the question is where does it draw the line?
@Helen Tedcastle
“Are you suggesting that a Christian group which comes in to take assemblies every so often, is equivalent to Islamic fundamentalists ie: extremists? This is stretching the point to new levels of absurdity.
No it isn’t. It depends on the nature of the christian group. Muslim fundamentalists appear extreme to you because of their ‘otherness’, ie they are not of your faith. They probably think they are quite normal. But as an atheist I look at fundamentalist christian groups in the same way as I do Muslim fundamentalists. I find christians who are bible literalists and Young Earth Creationists pretty extreme in my view and they have no place in a learning institution, where, for example, evolution is taught.
YfC (founded by Billy Graham) and OAC Ministries are two of the organisation infiltrating state schools according to the NSS report. Looking at their websites they appear quite fundamentalist and extreme to me. here’s another quote in the NSS report from a worried parent:
“There is a Christian organisation which has successfully inveigled itself into every school in West Suffolk and visits them regularly spouting all sorts of unacceptable stuff. No other religious groups or associations visit at all. The visits are, ostensibly, to debate values, morals and society. When I’ve complained, I’ve been told that there just aren’t any other equivalent groups in the region. The trouble is, the staff at the schools are so naïve, they have no concept of how unacceptable the things that this group says to them are. On a recent visit to my son’s school ‘Matt the Christian’ was ‘discussing’ the merits of celibacy before marriage. I and my partner have been together for 20 years and are not married. We have two children aged 14 and 11 years. Matt also said that there wouldn’t be any paedophiles if there was more celibacy. On a previous 14 occasion Matt has said that because he follows the bible, as the man in his house,
he has the final say in any decision. This group visits the middle and upper schools on a regular basis. I really do feel that it is naivety and ignorance on the part of the schools and that the evangelists take advantage of this.”
You may pooh-pooh this NSS report, but this sort of examination of fundamentalism by secularists ultimately led to the ‘trojan horse’ scandal being exposed. Those concerned about what was happening in Birmingham schools first voiced their concerns in confidence to the British Humanist Association – check their website for the full story. I would hope that the NSS report (and more research is promised) is the first stage in exposing the activities of christian fundamentalists in our schools.
Your arguments in favour of retaining religious privileges in school transport are rather lame. What about someone who lives next door to a ‘faith’ school with spare places that wants their child to go to the nearest non-denominational school, some distance away? They would not be entitle to free/subsidised school transport to get there. This happened recently to families offered a place at Hindu faith school, who were told to like it or lump it:
“Families of children allocated places at Hindu faith school in the London Borough of Redbridge plan to appeal the decision, saying the school’s religious ethos is at odds with their own beliefs and values. Some families have missed out on all preferences listed on their school application form, and have instead been allocated places at Avanti Court Primary, a Hindu faith school in Redbridge. The development of “spiritual insight” is at the heart of the school’s curriculum, which draws on the teachings of Krishna Chaitanya, a 16th century Indian saint. Collective worship includes Kirtan (chanting mantras), meditation and prayer. Children are not permitted to bring in packed lunches for fear that children may share food which may be against individuals’ dietary requirements. Bruce Law, an atheist whose daughter Marietta has been allocated a place at Avanti Court Primary, said he regarded a Hindu faith school is an inappropriate place for his daughter’s education, and will appeal the decision. Mr Law told the National Secular Society: “One of the reasons we chose non-faith schools on our applications form is that they do not give prominence to any particular belief system. We want our daughter to make up her own mind on these matters when she is old enough. The school has told us we are able to withdraw our daughter from some religious aspects of the school. However after visiting the school it became clear that there is no escaping Hinduism and its beliefs. Even if we do exclude Marietta, we are concerned about the feeling of alienation this would cause. We were told there are only three children in the entire school who sit out in this way. How can they fail to feel segregated?”
When Mr Law’s wife, Shaheen, spoke to the local authority about their concerns, she was told the religiosity of the school was “neither here nor there”.”
Needless to say, if they find a place at non-denominational school that is some miles from where they live, the Council will not provide free/subsidised school transport. But you think this unjustified privilege should be retained for faith schools. Your answer is to extend school transport payments to all children, but I have already pointed out that’s financially impossible at a time when Councils are struggling even to fund discretionary school transport for attendance at faith schools. That’s why why I find it hard to understand how a Liberal Democrat can support religious privileges like this. The only fair (and therefore dare I say it) liberal thing to do is to treat everyone the same. You know, like we’re supposed to do under the law.
Also, your argument about the scarcity of faith schools won’t wash. In many rural areas the only available schools, particularly at primary level, is the village CoE faith school.
Returning to your rant about France and the National Front, I note that religiosity in Greece is among the highest in Europe, yet it has given us Golden Dawn, an even nastier right wing party than the National Front. See how easy it is to make spurious correlations? I think economic conditions may have something to do with it, not whether a particular country has a secular state education system.
Matthew, I have rarely seen a herring redder than the one you just caught. You must tell me where you go fishing.
There is absolutely no way in which allowing pupils the right to select their own food (for religious reasons, health reasons, personal preference, or no reason at all) can be seen as “support[ing] some degree of religious practice”; it is simply liberalism in action. This is tolerance of diversity, not imposition of religion; and it doesn’t cost a penny.
I am all for allowing pupils the greatest degree of self-expression — in diet, in dress, or anything else that does not reduce the safety and well-being of other pupils or their instructors — but I am not for a school administration pushing a “Gospel-centred ethos” or a “Qur’an-centred ethos” or any other sort of ethos (including “British values,” which I suppose really means “Tory values.”). That should not really be their business, and every ounce of effort spent on it is something taken away from teaching languages and mathematics and chemistry and history. It is illiberal as well, as it effectively creates two classes of students: those in tune with the “ethos” and those not (who will presumably burn in some sort of Hell). There is no justification for this sort of discrimination and de facto segregation; what we need are institutions that will integrate an increasingly diverse society (by bringing them together under one roof where they can meet each other and learn about what they are really like, not by preaching to them about “values”) rather than separating it into faith-based fractions.
@Matthew Huntbach
“In fact it is religions subsidising the state as a proportion of the capital; costs come from the religions.”
Not quite right and becoming even less true as the years go by.The 10% of capital costs only applies to voluntary aided faith school, not Voluntary Controlled schools. And now even this amount is being waived. Currently, a VA school that converts to an academy pays nothing. Also, under the Priority Schools Building Progamme, the DfE’s main school building improvement fund, the governing bodies of VA schools are no longer required to contribute to the costs of capital funding. When the original settlement was made in 1944 regarding VC schools, with regard to retaining their religious privileges, it was considered a 50% contribution to capital costs was reasonable, a proportion that has been whittled down over the years. Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain of the Accord Coalition puts it better than I can:
‘No school that receives state funds should be allowed to discriminate on religious grounds, or to deny pupils a broad education about the range of beliefs held in society. However, it is extraordinary that in 1944 the Government thought it a fair settlement to require faith schools that wished to be able to act in narrow and exclusive ways to make a 50% contribution towards their capital costs, while today the percentage met by faith groups is not far from zero.
‘As a consequence the argument that faith schools should be able to enjoy privileges and exemptions from equality law because they help to meet some of their own costs has been almost completely eroded away. Similarly, the argument that the wider community should have a say how state funded faith schools are allowed to operate only grows even stronger.’
(source: comments on BHA FoI request, 27 December 2013)
I think when supporters of faith schools say they can be justified because of the funds their religious organisations contribute we can now take that argument with a pinch of salt.
“Good strawmanning there! Where have I advocated force-feeding bacon to jews and muslims?
It follows naturally from what you wrote. Not eating pork is a practice of these religions. Therefore, if as you say the state should not in any way support religious practice in schools, it should not support the practice of abstaining form pork.
This is a standard reductio ad absurdum form of logic. I have taken what you said to its limits, and now you disagree with it. So now we are at the position of agreeing that the state should support some degree of religious practice in schools, and the question is where does it draw the line?”
Well, I am aware of the term ‘reasonable accommodation’ for religious beliefs. Where do I draw the line? Probably somewhere short of the French state school system.
Stuart Whitfield
” But as an atheist I look at fundamentalist christian groups in the same way as I do Muslim fundamentalists. I find Christians who are bible literalists and Young Earth Creationists pretty extreme in my view ”
So in effect, you don’t agree with their world-view, which you are entitled to. I am not a fundamentalist or an evangelical but if these groups are peaceful and respectful, I see no harm. However, there are other groups of violent extremists who I do worry about, who link a fundamentalist form of religion with a political ideology and incite hatred – they are most effective with disaffected youth who know nothing about the principles of their religion. Instead, they latch on to a simple message of hatred of the dominant society and of other Muslims who they see as less pure than themselves.
Anyone, whether they be atheist or Salafist, should beware simple solutions and simple messages and also watch out for the risk of condemning others for being, as they see it, less pure and perfect than themselves.
So to spend our time worrying about harmless groups like that run by Billy Graham is absurd and actually bordering on intolerance. Your point about celibacy is an example. I’m sure you know that there is a growing number of cases of young people who have sexual relations young and have multiple partners, resulting in the rise of STDs. Also, this country has the highest numbers of teenage pregnancies in Europe.
If this group is advocating abstinence before long term commitment, this seems to me to be eminently sensible. Perhaps other groups will simply shrug their shoulders and hand out condoms – they have a different approach.
How easy it is to conflate biblical literalism or qur’anic literalism of some groups with those who espouse a violent ideology which all of us are concerned about. The sensible and reasonable thing to do is not to conflate the two.
On Avanti Primary, one of only a handful of faith schools in Redbridge I note. This is it’s mission statement:
“An emphasis on independent thought and personal choice fans every pupil’s innate and emerging passion for learning. Our personalised approach provides tailor-made learning paths for all pupils. This motivates and enables all pupils to become reflective, articulate and independent thinkers, laying solid foundations for their future learning, vocation and self-fulfilment. Our approach is characterised by a mentorship and academic support system that is delivered in close partnership with parents.”
I’m trying hard to see the problem here. You will find all schools have policies on spiritual and moral development because the spiritual dimension of life is part of life – if you shield a child from knowledge of it, you are simply insulating them from understanding the world as it is. The mission statement seem eminently reasonable and it adds:
“… open to students of any faith and from any borough, Avanti Court offers a broad, challenging curriculum focused on core skills and subjects as well as specialisms in Mathematics and Performing Arts. What makes the school distinctive is its values-based approach to the humanities, which encourages pupils to value themselves, others and the environment, empowering them to be effective learners and good citizens. The school also offers opportunities to study ethics, philosophy, Sanskrit (as the root of almost all eastern and western languages), leadership training, meditation and yoga.”
It sounds absolutely brilliant and I wish I could have gone to a school which practised meditation and yoga!
“… this NSS report, but this sort of examination of fundamentalism by secularists ultimately led to the ‘trojan horse’ scandal being exposed. Those concerned about what was happening in Birmingham schools first voiced their concerns in confidence to the British Humanist Association”
So they are the ones responsible are they – the so-called ‘trojan horse’ letter – unsigned, undated, probably a hoax – responsible for causing the mayhem of misunderstanding and hysteria in Birmingham schools over the past few weeks. All these campaign groups are doing is stirring up division and suspicion and I’m surprised frankly, the BHA, with whom I have had some small dealings with in the past, would associate itself with such a letter. If the BHA are now a group of political agitators rather than a legitimate philosophical position (which likes to sit on SACREs), I think we should be told.
Abstaining from pork doesn’t require state support, it simply requires the individual concerned not to eat it.
@Helen Tedcastle
Wow! I am afraid you appear to be losing it. You think Billy Graham is harmless? Like his anti-semitic rants recorded on Nixon’s tapes? And abstinence really worked well in the States didn’t it? What’s needed is effective sex education, not trying to stay celibate before marriage.
“So they are the ones responsible are they – the so-called ‘trojan horse’ letter – unsigned, undated, probably a hoax – responsible for causing the mayhem of misunderstanding and hysteria in Birmingham schools over the past few weeks. All these campaign groups are doing is stirring up division and suspicion and I’m surprised frankly, the BHA, with whom I have had some small dealings with in the past, would associate itself with such a letter. If the BHA are now a group of political agitators rather than a legitimate philosophical position (which likes to sit on SACREs), I think we should be told.”
That, I am afraid, is really nasty accusation, which I think you should withdraw. I have invited you to read NSS and BHA literature for yourself, but you clearly haven’t. I used ‘trojan horse ‘ scandal as shorthand for the whole brouhaha, not because the BHA was the source of the document, they weren’t of course. Those in Birmingham who had first hand experience of events and were concerned about what was going on volunteered the information to the BHA, who as far as I know maintained their confidentiality until the story broke.
The rest of your post is hardly worthy of comment.
Stuart Whitfield
This remark is unfortunate:
” That, I am afraid, is really nasty accusation, which I think you should withdraw.”
It wasn’t an accusation but a conclusion based a. on what you said and b. on the various articles related to the matter which I read on the BHA website, helpfully signposted by you.
I’m sorry you haven’t commented on the rest of my post which I spent time researching for our conversation. It would have been interesting to read your view.
On Billy Graham: I have heard him preach and there was nothing in what I heard which was inflammatory or anti-semitic – it was entirely peaceful. Now if there are accusations about him from the 1970s, that is one thing but if he is going around preaching hate and encouraging others to hate – which he isn’t to my knowledge – that is quite another.
On abstinence: read my comment carefully. I did n’t actually write that this was the only way to prevent STDs or teenage pregnancies but it is one way and it seems to me that encouraging a little more abstinence in young adolescents is sensible – for their own health and well-being.
You are right though. It does seem as if there is an nasty atmosphere of accusation and counter-accusation going on and all it does is create tension and division.
Correction – previous comments should be addressed to: Shaun Whitfield.
Apologies Shaun.
@Helen Tedcastle
Oh come on, virtually everyone suspects that the ‘Trojan Horse’ document is a hoax. And you started the relevant paragraph with ‘So they are the ones responsible are they…’ which sounds pretty accusatory to me. Also how on earth did you draw that conclusion from what I posted and what’s on the BHA website. I put ‘trojan horse’ in the usual scare quotes and the BHA website treated the matter in exactly the same way:
“Today will see the publication of Ofsted’s reports into 21 schools in Birmingham where concerns have been expressed about an Islamically conservative environment and curriculum being taught. The British Humanist Association (BHA) was instrumental in enabling the initial whistleblowers about Park View School, the school at the centre of the allegations, to make their complaints to the Department for Education and Ofsted, prompting both organisations to launch their investigations into the school some time before the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ letter was mentioned in the press. The BHA has also supported those individuals in speaking out across the media. Today the BHA has called for a wider review of the place of religion in state-funded schools.”
Your comprehension skills must be pretty poor if you think that what I have said in posts above and the BHA’s reference to ‘…the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ letter…’ is evidence that they were the authors. So yes, your accusation was nasty and yes, you should withdraw it.
When I first commented above, I hadn’t realised that the schools in question were supposed to be secular. The Trojan Horse plot is even more worrying, in which case. I used to be a LibDem, but I’ve become hardened. .
I’m especially intolerant of Islamists – those who mix religion with politics. Most liberals believe that all religions should be tolerated equally. But Islam is quite different from all other religions and, if given too much leeway, does indeed pose a threat to our way of life.
Liberal mindedness is fine, so long as it’s reciprocal. Muslims are the least tolerant of all religions and expect us to bend our way of living to suit them. In my opinion, integration is the way forward, not multicultural separatism.
As for ‘the veil’ in its many forms, well, this is obnoxious to me. The veil is symbolic of female slavery and inferiority. It’s also an insult to men everywhere, as it assumes that all males are creatures lacking a cerebral cortex – and thus, quite unable to control their base desires, should they happen to glimpse a woman’s face or hair (let alone anything more).
Being an atheist, I’m not in favour of any faith. However, we can rest assured that no Christian (Catholic or Protestant), Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Jehovah’s Witness, or whatever, is likely to become a suicide bomber. Indeed, many of us underestimate the threat of radical Islam because it’s politically incorrect to criticise the Islamic faith. The radical Islamists (i.e. those who mix religion and Sharia law) are well aware of our fear of being labelled ‘Islamaphobic’ and are taking full advantage of our ignorance.
So write me off as an Islamaphobe if you wish, I don’t care. I used to assume the same of others who criticised Islam, but now I’m seeing things differently.