Faith Schools

[Ad Lib]

Fairness. I think its a simple enough concept to grasp.

Fair on whom, exactly? How does forcing a monopolised set of state norms on everyone, in almost all certainty preventing many thousands of pupils currently in the private sector from achieving their full potential constitute "fairness"? This is lowest common denominator stuff and it's completely wrong. It is more unfair to enforce a one-size-fits-all approach which limits the potential of many to put them on equal terms with everyone else.

That is why fairness and equality aren't the same thing. Fairness comes through choice: competition of ideas and education systems is the best route to fairness, as the best ultimately prevails.

[xbl]

But the supposition that the state is the only arbiter of what children should be taught isn't fair, either.

FWIW I regard indoctrinating a child into a faith as a form of emotional and mental abuse, but I can't square that circle around stopping the state from having a monopoly that could be even more damaging in a different way. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part but I regard secular state schooling with private alternatives as the least evil of the options.

I just don't like any private alternatives, and while the state may have a monopoly, in an ideal world I would like there to be some form of competition between schools, i.e. driving up standards, offering different extracurricular activities, trying to poach the best teachers etc., but significantly, all secular, all free for all, and all teaching the same curriculum. I wouldn't have a problem with private schooling, providing that entrance and the teaching was not based on religion or money. Its not a case of the state being the arbiter of what is being taught, but I see it more as the state ensuring that all children are taught equally as far as possible.

[Swampy]

I just don't like any private alternatives, and while the state may have a monopoly, in an ideal world I would like there to be some form of competition between schools, i.e. driving up standards, offering different extracurricular activities, trying to poach the best teachers etc., but significantly, all secular, all free for all, and all teaching the same curriculum. I wouldn't have a problem with private schooling, providing that entrance and the teaching was not based on religion or money. Its not a case of the state being the arbiter of what is being taught, but I see it more as the state ensuring that all children are taught equally as far as possible.

There is no reason why secular state education can't have diversity in the subjects on offer, the methods of teaching, etc. In fact it would be absurd for it to be any other way.

The closest thing to a private school not based on money is the PPP "Academy" system, in which private companies, charities, churches etc. can buy franchise rights to schools from the government. Needless to say a great many of these are owned by weirdy beardy religious sects. They were introduced by Labour and have been seized upon with glee by the new coalition, probably because they involve someone else putting their hand in their pocket.

[19QOS19]

Scottish Government (2008) states that children "have the right to say whatever they believe, as long as it does not harm or offend other people."

Surely if children are forced into religion that right is waved away? To me we should not be putting our own religious beliefs onto our kids until they are at least 16 and can make their own choices. If you forced food down a child wouldn't that be child abuse? Metaphorically speaking, isn't forcing religion down a child's throat the same thing?

I'm an aethiest (sp?) and my kids will be whatever religion they choose to be.

EDITED (That post sounds as if I mean parents shouldn't force them, but that goes for in school as well).

[Growl3th]

Children are indoctrinated with ludicrous beliefs that they are too young to resist when they go to faith school. For a very young child, "Don't run out into the road, it's dangerous" and "Be good or you'll spend eternity in a lake of fire" are not qualitatively different: they cannot process the latter as a metaphor, or take a skeptical view of it. Plus faith schools, by virtue of the name, tend to prize at least in some lessons faith and dogma over reason and experience, which is a completely backwards way to educate someone.

I would like to raise my child to worship Baal. Will there be a school for me? What about the Scientologists? The Mormons? The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Surely these people pay taxes as well?

Why draw the line with schooling? Surely "people of faith" have the right to be judged by their own legal systems? Jews and Christians who read the Old Testament will be able to own slaves and stone people for adultery. Muslims can impose severe penalties - ranging up to death - for apostasy. After all, they pay their taxes!

You say ludicrous beliefs I say faith. And since when were faith and dogma and reason and experience mutually exclusive? As long as faith schools are producing results compatible, or in many cases, better than non-faith schools what is the problem?

If you wish to raise your child to follow Baal that is your choice and it is your right to to canvas support for your own school (wouldn't hold out much hope though) in the same way that we now have state run muslim schools.

[Swampy]

Good post from XBL. There are number of the new schools built which house both the Catholic and non-religious schools in the same building but with different playgrounds etc. for each. You are creating division from an early age.

This is what VikingTon and HB are talking about. There is this ludicrous misconception that non-denoms are somehow neutral and aloof, and that the big bad Cafflicks are the ones causing the division. First of all, non-denominational doesn't even mean non-religious: it is mandated by law that they have a religious ethos, which they do. That ethos is in many, many schools - including both the primary and secondary that I went to - explicitly Christian and explicitly Protestant.

It is ludicrous that people get away with calling these "non-religious" schools when they are mandated by law to have six sessions of religious observance per year.

[An Sionnach]

You say ludicrous beliefs I say faith. And since when were faith and dogma and reason and experience mutually exclusive? As long as faith schools are producing results compatible, or in many cases, better than non-faith schools what is the problem?

If you wish to raise your child to follow Baal that is your choice and it is your right to to canvas support for your own school (wouldn't hold out much hope though) in the same way that we now have state run muslim schools.

I quite agree - well said.....

http://www.witchschool.com/

[Swampy]

You say ludicrous beliefs I say faith.

I say potato, you say something stupid.

And since when were faith and dogma and reason and experience mutually exclusive?

Dogma by definition trumps experience and reason. Seriously, look up what it means.

Faith, meanwhile, is a trickier proposition, but in my experience there always comes a point at which someone of faith will hit a "wall" with their understanding or processing of real-world experience. It would be far too simple to say that this is always a product of dogma - even religious philosophers as conservative (by our standards) as Maimonides held that if science and the Torah clashed, science was to be given a fair hearing - but it is undoubtedly the case that something held as a matter of faith cannot be budged easily. This has real-world implications. Where I live, 41% of the adult population believe that Jesus will return to earth some time in the next forty years. If you don't think this colours peoples' thoughts on foreign policy, for example, then you are hopelessly naive. Now, there is nothing to suggest that Jesus actually will return at all, be it in 40 years or ever, and a great deal to suggest that he won't - but there is little point in trying to have a frank discussion about it because, well, it's a matter of faith, and it's what people believe, so even if it was polite to discuss it it would have little effect.

The best way to inoculate people against such beliefs is not to raise them in an abusive system in which faith is drummed into them. Faith schooling, though, is only a very small part of that (where I live virtually everyone goes to a secular school.) Nonetheless, an important part it is.

The above isn't to be taken as an argument that personal experience is 100% reliable or correct, by the way. We know definitively that it isn't. But this is no more a defence of faith than it is a defence of walking around with one's eyes closed.

As long as faith schools are producing results compatible, or in many cases, better than non-faith schools what is the problem?

As long as schools that lock students in cages all day are producing results etc...

If you wish to raise your child to follow Baal that is your choice and it is your right to to canvas support for your own school (wouldn't hold out much hope though) in the same way that we now have state run muslim schools.

Ah, so it's nothing to do with being a tax payer and everything to do with being a taxpayer of sufficient clout to get one's way in government?

That's not quite what you said before, but I appreciate this unusual show of honesty. You may now return to your regular scheduled mendacity.

[ICTChris]

I am agreeing with Swampy's posts on this thread. You can't ban private education and as long as there is religion peole will want their children educated in a 'religious environment', whatever that means. You can stop the state funding these schools, in the way that they do in the United States and France.

[The big chair]

What on earth do you mean by "my choices"?

The state should be secular. That is a political, not a religious opinion. It therefore follows that the state should not sponsor religious based activities, and that includes religious based education.

Who's political opinion? The state sponsors many religious activities as well as spending millions on diversity and anti-discrimination laws. Why would anyone living in a democratic society wish forgo this diversity, discriminate against certain sects and remove a persons right to choose, when religion pays such a major part in many peoples lives? Your suggestion that everyone should adhere to your idea of what is and isn't important for the curriculum is the ranting of a bigot.

So wanting my child to get an education based on facts rather than being fed tired (and in some cases damaging) dogma based on fantasy makes me a bigot?

I think we've got different dictionaries.

No, wanting to remove the choice from people who do wish to send their child to a faith school makes you a bigot. I don't think they really care where you send your child, why should you worry where they send theirs?

As long as the school teaches the state approved curriculum I don't care what else they garnish the timetable with. Richard Dawkins or Satan himself could set up their own chain of schools and if they can attract enough pupils then I see no problem with the state funding it.

I think his dictionary is a pop-out picture-book.

Yes and it's got a picture of you as the definition of a c**t.

[Ad Lib]

Yes and it's got a picture of you as the definition of a c**t.

the only funny and valid sentence in your entire post. I'll leave Swampy to dissect your nonsense as he'll do a better job than I will.

[Monster]

No, wanting to remove the choice from people who do wish to send their child to a faith school makes you a bigot. I don't think they really care where you send your child, why should you worry where they send theirs?

Okay, fair point, but I'd still like to see the removal of state funded faith schooling, and the includes the C of S toss we get in our village primary school. The minister (who is the absolute double of the actor that played Father Ted, but that's neither here nor there) is never away from the place. Luckily I dealt with the whole imaginary overlord issue when mine was young, so now he doesn't pay any heed, but I'd still like it not to be there in the first place.

The crux of the issue is parenting really. Parents who stamp their feet and demand their own religion be taught in school (or worse, seperate schooling) ought to make the effort to get off their lazy arses and subject their offspring to whatever belief system they want in their own bloody time. Unless of course they're fat, because then they'll be chased away from bus stops at gunpoint, eh?

[Swampy]

Who's political opinion? The state sponsors many religious activities as well as spending millions on diversity and anti-discrimination laws. Why would anyone living in a democratic society wish forgo this diversity, discriminate against certain sects and remove a persons right to choose, when religion pays such a major part in many peoples lives?

Anti-discrimination laws are "negative" in that they seek to allow people to enjoy a right - in this case to worship and believe without penalty - rather than "positive" in that they actively promote them. Few would say that anti-discrimination laws aren't worthwhile.

Meanwhile 'diversity', inasmuch as it has any meaning in your sentence, probably comprises "positive" laws such as the implementation of faith schools and so on. These are the ones we are talking about. Suffice it to say that you have the whole thing completely backwards: when the state lavishes money or support upon any given religious group it is by definition "discriminating" against the rest. That we have in Scotland faith schools for RCC, Islam, Judaism and so-called "non-denominational" is discrimination against unrepresented sects such as Mormonism, Scientology, Satanism, Kiltism etc. Were the state secular, and aloof from such religious competition, it would be unable to discriminate against any.

As it stands it is you and Growl3th and similar, with your bizarre insistence upon tax thresholds and the like, who are telling the entire country what and what isn't a legitimate religious enterprise: the clearest example of discrimination and anti-diversity that is conceivable in a liberal democracy.

Your suggestion that everyone should adhere to your idea of what is and isn't important for the curriculum is the ranting of a bigot.

Meanwhile two paragraphs on you say that everyone must adhere to the state-approved curriculum. OMG state-sponsored bigotry!

No, wanting to remove the choice from people who do wish to send their child to a faith school makes you a bigot. I don't think they really care where you send your child, why should you worry where they send theirs?

I can't speak for Ad Lib but as I was capable of reading his post I should point out that he never said he wasn't in favour of parents having the choice of where to send their children. He merely said that if they sent them to a state school then it should be secular. So, this is a straw man.

As long as the school teaches the state approved curriculum I don't care what else they garnish the timetable with. Richard Dawkins or Satan himself could set up their own chain of schools and if they can attract enough pupils then I see no problem with the state funding it.

Richard Dawkins' school wouldn't be affiliated to any religious sect.

The part in bold, again, has this strange threshold of pupil demand. Why is this a factor when we all pay our taxes?

Basically every single one of your arguments is either incoherent, a tired old theist canard, or both.

[Swampy]

Okay, fair point,

No, it's not a fair point at all. Don't play into the hands of people who call secularists bigots. It's fucking idiotic.

[Ad Lib]

I can't speak for Ad Lib but as I was capable of reading his post I should point out that he never said he wasn't in favour of parents having the choice of where to send their children. He merely said that if they sent them to a state school then it should be secular. So, this is a straw man.

[Monster]

No, it's not a fair point at all. Don't play into the hands of people who call secularists bigots. It's fucking idiotic.

You said yourself that an outright ban would be illiberal, and that's what I accepted. The rest of my quote qualified my views. I wasn't playing into his hands at all. It's clearly not bigotry to expect people who want beliefs rather than facts to be taught to pay for them themselves.

[Swampy]

You said yourself that an outright ban would be illiberal, and that's what I accepted. The rest of my quote qualified my views. I wasn't playing into his hands at all. It's clearly not bigotry to expect people who want beliefs rather than facts to be taught to pay for them themselves.

If you read the first paragraph of that post it's clear that he's equating the state's expenditure on diveristy with this right to choose. To even entertain the idea that people who back state secularism are bigots is, in my view, irresponsible. There is nothing to be gained from engaging with people who use this mode of argument, and everything to be lost.

From what I can see there are precisely two people in this thread who disagree with the concept of a paid-for sky-fairy education, and it's not clear that they do so for any reason other than the financial.

[Monster]

If you read the first paragraph of that post it's clear that he's equating the state's expenditure on diveristy with this right to choose. To even entertain the idea that people who back state secularism are bigots is, in my view, irresponsible. There is nothing to be gained from engaging with people who use this mode of argument, and everything to be lost.

From what I can see there are precisely two people in this thread who disagree with the concept of a paid-for sky-fairy education, and it's not clear that they do so for any reason other than the financial.

No, it isn't a diversity issue. Feel free not to engage with him, but otherwise what's the point of the thread?

Religion is a hobby. People should have to pay for their own hobbies. It's a financial issue to the extent that it's an extension of a principle: you covered that with your Baal comparison.

[The big chair]

Anti-discrimination laws are "negative" in that they seek to allow people to enjoy a right - in this case to worship and believe without penalty - rather than "positive" in that they actively promote them. Few would say that anti-discrimination laws aren't worthwhile.

Meanwhile 'diversity', inasmuch as it has any meaning in your sentence, probably comprises "positive" laws such as the implementation of faith schools and so on. These are the ones we are talking about. Suffice it to say that you have the whole thing completely backwards: when the state lavishes money or support upon any given religious group it is by definition "discriminating" against the rest. That we have in Scotland faith schools for RCC, Islam, Judaism and so-called "non-denominational" is discrimination against unrepresented sects such as Mormonism, Scientology, Satanism, Kiltism etc. Were the state secular, and aloof from such religious competition, it would be unable to discriminate against any.

It's a negative to allow people to enjoy a right?

I'm the one calling for the state to end discrimination here. It's your nasty bigot ilk that wish to limit choice. By allowing any sect to set up a school it gives people the right to choose, and I don't really care if it's Kilt, Ron Hubbard or the flying spaghetti monster as long as they teach the state approved curriculum they should be eligible for state funding

As it stands it is you and Growl3th and similar, with your bizarre insistence upon tax thresholds and the like, who are telling the entire country what and what isn't a legitimate religious enterprise: the clearest example of discrimination and anti-diversity that is conceivable in a liberal democracy.

What? You do know that the people who wish to send their kids to faith schools pay taxes too? Why shouldn't their money be used to give their kids the schooling they want them to have. Give people the choice of what school they want to send their kids to, the good ones survive and the crap ones go belly up.

Meanwhile two paragraphs on you say that everyone must adhere to the state-approved curriculum. OMG state-sponsored bigotry!

Ok Mr pedantic what should we be teaching in schools?

I can't speak for Ad Lib but as I was capable of reading his post I should point out that he never said he wasn't in favour of parents having the choice of where to send their children. He merely said that if they sent them to a state school then it should be secular. So, this is a straw man.

There are no secular state schools at the moment, it's the elephant in the room that you're ducking and diving round, and if the state is sponsoring one sect it should sponsor them all.

Richard Dawkins' school wouldn't be affiliated to any religious sect.

Who said he would?

The part in bold, again, has this strange threshold of pupil demand. Why is this a factor when we all pay our taxes?

It's only important in so much as our taxes should be divided up equally. If there is 15% of tax payers looking for Kilts beliefs to be taught in it's own school then Kilt should receive 15% of the educational budget.

Basically every single one of your arguments is either incoherent, a tired old theist canard, or both.

While yours are the rantings of an intolerant bigot.

[Law Stud]

But the supposition that the state is the only arbiter of what children should be taught isn't fair, either.

FWIW I regard indoctrinating a child into a faith as a form of emotional and mental abuse, but I can't square that circle around stopping the state from having a monopoly that could be even more damaging in a different way. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part but I regard secular state schooling with private alternatives as the least evil of the options.

I've said already my preference would be to simply end state funded education. I think that would be the best option as it would increase efficiency, be more cost effective, and the proof is already there in the current system that private schooling achieves better results. However given that no government is likely to scrap state funded schooling I would agree with you completely. The taxpayer shouldn't be footing the bill for religious education.

When I got married my wife's family were devout Catholics. I'm an atheist. Because they wanted a church wedding a priest interviewed me to ensure I was "suitable"! In that process I was supposed to concede to my wife bringing up my future children as Catholics, I was to concede to my wife getting them baptised, having their fist communion etc. My stock answer was if the wife wanted to do that it was fine with me - until we got to schooling. I dug my heels in. No way was I going to send a child of 4 or 5 to a school 6 miles away when there was a perfectly good primary school 200 yards down the road. Eventually the priest said I had to concede to my wife providing extra curricular religious education in a convent or monastery - I said if the wife was willing to do that it was fine with me and the job was done. The point - even priests accept that a child doesn't have to be educated in a faith school to learn a faith.

If the taxpayer is being stung with the bill then it should only fund secular schools. That seems perfectly fair and rational to me.