Take all religion out of our schools!

Submitted by Matthew on 11 June, 2014 - 11:20

A group of three academies, one other academy, and one council-controlled school in Birmingham have been put into “special measures” by Ofsted government inspectors for allegedly acting like “faith schools”.

Ofsted complains that Park View school has weekly “Islamic-themed assemblies”, with invited speakers “not vetted”, and that from year 9 onwards religious education is almost all Islamic. Faith schools are explicitly allowed to have their assemblies, and their religious education, organised around their chosen religion, and to imbue other subjects with religious ideology.

Over 35 per cent of all state-funded schools in England are “faith schools”. They can freely do all or most of what Ofsted complained of in Birmingham.

The furore about an alleged “Muslim plot” to turn the Birmingham schools into indoctrination centres for “extremist” Islam rips the covering right off one of the great scandals in British life.

The scandal is not about Muslims, but goes right across the spectrum of the religious indoctrination of children in Britain. The huge majority of faith schools are Christian. Some of them are bland about their religion, and some of them militant.

It is not only about the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition administration. Faith schools increased under Labour from about a quarter to over 35% of schools.

The Government’s answer is that faith schools should continue, but they must be obliged to teach “British values”.

That is dangerous nonsense. The real answer is that all schools must be secular. Religious preaching of all sorts must be taken out of them.

The problem is in part the marshmallow language the Government uses — “extremists” and “moderates”. It is also that much of the Government’s talk about “British values” is “spin” rather than something that has or will have substance to it.

The government lists among those values “tolerance” and “respect” for those of different faiths.

When a school is run by vigorous, convinced, ardently religious people, mandating “moderate” values is either an infringement on religious freedom, or a nonsense, or both.

All serious religious people believe, and in the nature of religious belief must believe, that their own faith is the one true faith. All of them teach that. Explicitly or by implication, they believe that other religious beliefs and practices are wrong, pernicious, even the work of the Devil.

When a religion ceases to think it bears the only real truth, it is on the road to self-weakening and dissolution, at a quicker or faster pace. Anglicanism is an example. Serious belief in the truth and godly inspiration of one’s own religion implies intolerance and contempt for, and desire to subdue, the false religion.

Now the Government says that devout Muslims — often the most convinced and most militant of contemporary religious people — must be “moderate”, and must have “respect” and “tolerance” for those whom their religion tells them are mistaken and sinful.

No doubt the majority of British Muslims do not hold the “extreme” positions, but those who do have the moral high ground against them, appealing to precedent, age-old tradition, and sense of historical identity and affinity.

Governments should enforce the law against, for example, those who plot religiously-motivated bombing campaigns. And governments have a right and a duty to interfere with what religious people do when they break the social code — for instance, ill-treatment of children by Christian sects, such as the one Victoria Climbie’s murdering religion-crazed aunt belonged to, or mutilation of the genitals of young girls.

But there is no way a government can tell a religious community what to think and believe and pass on to young people. How can a government eradicate the belief of its devotees that a religion or a sect is the only right one, that its devotees are the only “saved” people? It cannot, not without enormous repression; and that would not succeed either. The opposite: it would drive adherents of the faith being targeted into the camp of the “extremists” and “martyrs”.

What follows? That we should “defend” those who might want to indoctrinate children with beliefs and practices that are foul and might point some of them towards jihadism? That we should focus on the demand for “extremist” Muslims to be treated not with suspicion but like bland school-running Anglicans?

That would be absurd.

In the name of religious freedom and the equality of all religions before the law and the state, it would be to “defend” vigorous religious education of all stripes, at whose heart is the systematic and long-term psychological abuse of children. Religious education implants intense emotions, fears, and beliefs in children who as yet have little power of reason and judgement. It is vicious child abuse.

No, the Government has been drawn onto the dangerous ground of threatening to impinge on the freedom of religious belief because its scheme makes no sense.

The real solution is to make all schools — including those now Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, etc. — into secular schools, places where religion is studied only in the cool comparison of different religions, their histories, the origins of their sacred books, the derivation and evolution of their core beliefs, etc.

That would give the children some secular space to retreat to in face of bullying, insistent parents or religious officials, and give them different values to counterpose to the religious values of homes which may be spiritually from a different age and very different societies.

The children of religious parents are entitled to the protection of society and the social institutions.

In some faith schools today small girls go about covered from top to toe in Islamic religious dress. A society that does not win children freedom from such impositions is obscene, and if it does not use the law to stop them will be convincing neither to itself nor to the serious religious people who have contempt for modern commercial society and for those who would regulate and “moderate” them.

The possible social consequences of the continued development of faith schools are dreadful to contemplate. Faith and ethnicity here often go together. Faith schools are also often race-segregated schools. Instead of schools being a force for integrating communities, they entrench social, ethnic, and religious antagonisms. Children are moulded and narrowed in one outlook.

Faith schools in Northern Ireland played an important part in maintaining, reinforcing, and perpetuating Protestant-Catholic sectarianism. It was the Catholic Church, the church of the most oppressed people in Northern Ireland, which insisted on faith schools — or rather, on its own right to indoctrinate children with its beliefs.

At the height of the Troubles, a small group of people started “mixed” schools, as a means of helping to destroy sectarianism. The movement has so far had little success. It would have been better to have had “mixed” schools before sectarian conflict had ripped the society apart.

What all this means for Britain now and for what sensible people should advocate for Britain now is plain: take religion out of our schools. Make education public and secular. Make religion a private matter.

Comments

Submitted by Matthew on Wed, 11/06/2014 - 12:54

It strikes me that the key issue is local authority control, or rather the lack of it, rather than religious groups running schools per se.

One of the ironies here is that it is in supposedly secular Academy schools that ultra-conservative religious attitudes towards women, creationism, evolution etc. have flourished; conversely, in local authority-controlled Anglican and Catholic schools, education, even in RE, is far more likely to conform to more liberal attitudes. Local authority should be extended to include not just the curriculum but also ensuring admission isn't restricted to just pupils of the school's faith and that all pupils have the right to opt out of its religious activities.

By what process would the Government turn "all schools — including those now Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, etc. — into secular schools" given that they are owned by dioceses or other religious bodies? Unless they voluntarily gave up their control to the State – with or without compensation – it would also require the suppression of all private schools (to stop them just becoming private religious schools) and presumably the simultaneous disestablishment of the Church of England to avoid the anomaly of the State church being barred from running state-funded schools.

Submitted by KieranMiles on Wed, 11/06/2014 - 21:57

In reply to by Matthew

"Religious education implants intense emotions, fears, and beliefs in children who as yet have little power of reason and judgement. It is vicious child abuse."

We should not be squeamish about saying this. Telling anyone that natural things like being gay, or having sexual thoughts, will send them to Hell is horrifying. It's particularly grotesque to hear in school, a place which should foster critical thinking, not utilise the threat of eternal torture for disobedience. The repetition of this message over years to young children, whose critical faculties have not yet reached their potential, and for whom the lessons of the teacher are unquestionable, is emotional abuse.

"it would also require the suppression of all private schools (to stop them just becoming private religious schools) and presumably the simultaneous disestablishment of the Church of England"

Abolition of private education, and secularisation of the state? Sounds good to me! Dare I say, it also points to republicanism - if there is no state religion, it undermines divine right somewhat.

Submitted by Matthew on Thu, 12/06/2014 - 09:08

In reply to by KieranMiles

The question though is whether religious education in local authority-controlled faith schools consists of telling children "that natural things like being gay, or having sexual thoughts, will send them to Hell". As I said above, that kind of thing is far more likely to happen in Academy, free and private religious schools.

If you think any religious education amounts to psychological abuse of children, then surely you should be demanding that the State intervene to stop it wherever it happens – churches, mosques, synagogues – and not just in schools.

Another irony is that for a number of reasons – providing a overarching framework in which to see the world, an alternative culture to that of the English establishment – religious, and especially Catholic, schools have over the decades produced far more revolutionary socialists than their secular counterparts, Sean being just one example.

Submitted by dalcassian on Thu, 12/06/2014 - 14:23

the "Muslim schools plot".

Submitted by LM on Thu, 12/06/2014 - 15:28

'Let me put this question to you - if we DID "take all religion out of our schools", what would the result be?
I believe it would lead to a generation of children who have no knowledge of the belief systems of others, and, as a result, would then be wide open and defenceless to the first street evangelist who they encountered.

Teach our children to think. Teach them how to weigh up what is being said to them. But don't treat them as stupid, and make sure there are checks and balances in the education system to make sure they are not being brainwashed. Teach them how to make up their own minds, without turning ourselves into fanatics.'

Did you actually read the article? There is a difference between teaching about religion on the one hand, and religious preaching on the other. As Sean writes:

"The real solution is to make all schools — including those now Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, etc. — into secular schools, places where religion is studied only in the cool comparison of different religions, their histories, the origins of their sacred books, the derivation and evolution of their core beliefs, etc.

That would give the children some secular space to retreat to in face of bullying, insistent parents or religious officials, and give them different values to counterpose to the religious values of homes which may be spiritually from a different age and very different societies."

Submitted by AWL on Fri, 13/06/2014 - 21:20

Liam writes: "Teach our children to think." KD writes: "[Children] need to be taught to think." KD, are you actually reading what's being written here, or are you arguing against a straw-man?

When we talk about taking religion out of schools, we obviously do not mean that education should pretend religions do not exist. The article is clear: "The real solution is to make all schools — including those now Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, etc. — into secular schools, places where religion is studied only in the cool comparison of different religions, their histories, the origins of their sacred books, the derivation and evolution of their core beliefs, etc."

We're in favour of religions being learnt about in schools, but only secular education about religion can guarantee children the freedom to make informed and consenting choices and develop their own beliefs.

What about that do you disagree with?

You say our view is "extremist". Yes, it is. Part of the article's point was to highlight the ridiculousness of the term. Anyone who is remotely serious about their own ideas — anyone who believes seriously in their own worldview, and in its rightness — is an "extremist". We are "extremist" in our revolutionary-humanism, our secularism, and our socialism. To be anything otherwise would be utterly meaningless.

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DR

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