The Secular Society
As part of the Great Julien Pritchard Thinking Drive 2006TM I thought I'd post about something that's been in the news a bit recently. Namely this business about faith schools. It got me thinking again, back actually to the Richard Dawkins documentary from January that I watched on youtube, and about religion, athieism, and secularism generally.
As usual, the government made a massive U-turn this week. Well I say as usual because anything remotely controversial for middle-England always ends up on the "would have been nice if we weren't so dependant on the Daily Mail" pile. For those of you who aren't up to speed on this, the plans the government had were to force faith state schools (that's schools that are the government's responsibility and funded by the taxpayer after all) to accept 25% of people from outside the faith of that school. Now this would have mainly affected Anglican and Catholic schools, but also the few Muslim state schools as well. The Government's line was that it would have helped social cohesion, by forcing people to mix you start to break d0wn some of the ghetto like barriers we have constructed in our society. But the government made private agreements with both Catholic and Anglican Churches and the matter was considered solved, and therefore not needing changes to the law.
Now for me this raises a couple of worrying issues; 1) That the government is still too scared to force schools that are state-run and funded by the taxpayer to accept people from all religous and cultural sections of society. 2) That they have only made agreements with the two big Christian churches and therefore the Muslim faith schools are not bound by the agreement and are not going to do their bit to help with intergration. Now, I know what some of you will be thinking, that you can't force religious schools to do things against their religion, and that governments shouldn't tell people how to live their lives. However, if you're going to be serious about intergration you do need some force of coercion, granted you need to use the carrot as well as the stick, but change doesn't just happen on its own, someone needs to be taking a lead somewhere.
Now wait a minute, if the government's arguement was that it is better for intergration that people from different faiths mix, which is why they needed quotas of people from outside the faith, then why bother with faith schools at all? I mean if mixing is good, then surely total mixing is good. And secular schools does not have to mean a lack of morals, discipline, decency and respect. In fact it could if done properly, mean the opposite, if we treat all faiths equally in our schools (and in our society generally), then we can all learn to interact and respect different views and beliefs. We don't have faith swimming baths, faith public libraries, faith police stations, and so on. So why have faith schools? We live in a secular society (forget this Christian country rubbish, the number of worshipping practising Christians is not any greater than for any other religion). Children should be taught about all religions equally, and not given priority to their own.
Or should that be their parents own? Because here comes my other problem, because as Richard Dawkins mentioned in that documentary I watched, why are children forced into their faith at such a young age? I mean I know my parents talked to me about politics young, but I was never told exactly what to believe. I was no more a socialist child, than my friends were Tory children, and yet had I been brought up in a Christian household, (or a Muslim or Jewish household for that matter) I would have been called a Christian child, or a Muslim child, without ever having given my consent. Children in their early teens are old enough to have their confirmation in the Catholic church, to make such a decision about the beliefs of the rest of their lives(sic), and yet they are not deemed old enough to make decision about relationships or sex.
Now obviously we can't force our way into a family's life and say that parents must be secular and apolitical, but surely the education that the state is providing for these families should be free of all bias. There would quite rightly be uproar if a school started saying a certain political doctrine was better than any other, and yet we don't bat an eyelid for religion. My point is that in a secular society, we should devolve schools from religious instruction, and let young people make up their own minds!
As usual, the government made a massive U-turn this week. Well I say as usual because anything remotely controversial for middle-England always ends up on the "would have been nice if we weren't so dependant on the Daily Mail" pile. For those of you who aren't up to speed on this, the plans the government had were to force faith state schools (that's schools that are the government's responsibility and funded by the taxpayer after all) to accept 25% of people from outside the faith of that school. Now this would have mainly affected Anglican and Catholic schools, but also the few Muslim state schools as well. The Government's line was that it would have helped social cohesion, by forcing people to mix you start to break d0wn some of the ghetto like barriers we have constructed in our society. But the government made private agreements with both Catholic and Anglican Churches and the matter was considered solved, and therefore not needing changes to the law.
Now for me this raises a couple of worrying issues; 1) That the government is still too scared to force schools that are state-run and funded by the taxpayer to accept people from all religous and cultural sections of society. 2) That they have only made agreements with the two big Christian churches and therefore the Muslim faith schools are not bound by the agreement and are not going to do their bit to help with intergration. Now, I know what some of you will be thinking, that you can't force religious schools to do things against their religion, and that governments shouldn't tell people how to live their lives. However, if you're going to be serious about intergration you do need some force of coercion, granted you need to use the carrot as well as the stick, but change doesn't just happen on its own, someone needs to be taking a lead somewhere.
Now wait a minute, if the government's arguement was that it is better for intergration that people from different faiths mix, which is why they needed quotas of people from outside the faith, then why bother with faith schools at all? I mean if mixing is good, then surely total mixing is good. And secular schools does not have to mean a lack of morals, discipline, decency and respect. In fact it could if done properly, mean the opposite, if we treat all faiths equally in our schools (and in our society generally), then we can all learn to interact and respect different views and beliefs. We don't have faith swimming baths, faith public libraries, faith police stations, and so on. So why have faith schools? We live in a secular society (forget this Christian country rubbish, the number of worshipping practising Christians is not any greater than for any other religion). Children should be taught about all religions equally, and not given priority to their own.
Or should that be their parents own? Because here comes my other problem, because as Richard Dawkins mentioned in that documentary I watched, why are children forced into their faith at such a young age? I mean I know my parents talked to me about politics young, but I was never told exactly what to believe. I was no more a socialist child, than my friends were Tory children, and yet had I been brought up in a Christian household, (or a Muslim or Jewish household for that matter) I would have been called a Christian child, or a Muslim child, without ever having given my consent. Children in their early teens are old enough to have their confirmation in the Catholic church, to make such a decision about the beliefs of the rest of their lives(sic), and yet they are not deemed old enough to make decision about relationships or sex.
Now obviously we can't force our way into a family's life and say that parents must be secular and apolitical, but surely the education that the state is providing for these families should be free of all bias. There would quite rightly be uproar if a school started saying a certain political doctrine was better than any other, and yet we don't bat an eyelid for religion. My point is that in a secular society, we should devolve schools from religious instruction, and let young people make up their own minds!
posted by Julien at 23:02
1 Comments:
Ooohh! Interesting!
Having watched the said documentary, a very interesting watch I must say, I think faith schools would be an altogether bad idea.
Not only would they be encouraging seperation of the faiths, they would be forcing the religion upon the child, which isn't right.
Instead, I think more work should be being done on integrating a whole range of cultures and religions in secular schools, were children are taught a whole range of religions, with no particular religion being made to be seen as being better.
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