Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Our Father who art in the classroom

Isn't it obvious that the state-funded proliferation of single-faith schools is going to do absolutely nothing for race and inter-religion relations in the UK? Today the first state-funded Hindu school was approved. This will, in the long-term, take 240 students out of mixed-faith and secular schools and segregate them from the rest of the community. The remaining schools in the area will be deprived of some of their cultural diversity. Who is this good for? Well it's good for the religious leaders who want the chance to really drill their religious doctrine down the throats of young people...

4 comments:

David Hadley said...

Well, we do have the wonderful example of Northern Ireland to show what remarkable achievements these 'faith' schools can achieve. I can vividly remember the TV showing the terrified and bewildered infants from one school having to run the gauntlet of chanting, jering, bile-filled adults from the other faith in NI as they made their way to school.
I suppose it was character-building for them, though.

Stephen Newton said...

The bombing of schools continues in NI. Just this week:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1820575,00.html

This teaches children that those of other faiths are evil.

staghounds said...

This is almost entirely the fault of the teachers and administrators- who started as teachers- who run the state schools.

They provide a "free" service so poorly that parents will pay to have it done better.

This plays into the hands of the priests/mullahs/pandits or whatever other superstition merchants want targets.

If the teachers would abandon psychosociopolitical modification and accept and succeed at teaching, they would have much less competition.

Cruella said...

I find it quite hard to blame the teachers when you consider how porrly paid and little-respected teachers are these days, it's kindof inevitable that the profession no longer attracts the brightest and best. I agree though that the fact that the current system is so often so poor is what has allowed the faith schools with just a teeny bit more effort to turn out better results and left parents with a choice between a poor education and a good one with a religious bias...

Yeah I remember the scenes at Holy Cross (?) school. And when you think that that was just two different flavours of Christianity - what will happen when our major cities have schools for 3 or 4 major distinct faiths??!