to believe Faith schools should be privately funded ?

[Peetle]

I should explain my interest. The nearest primary school to my house is about 250 yards away and involves crossing two not very busy roads. It is a faith school. The next nearest is about 300 yards away, across a major road and in the middle of a council estate. It's ofsted report full of phrases like "higher than average English as a second language", "higher than average free school meals", etc, etc. Other local schools are over a mile away and we're likely to be out of their catchment area.

To get into the faith school families have to attend our local place of worship regularly for two years, know the officials and prove regular financial donations to the establishment. Of course, once these families have got their first child into the school they stop attending and donating. I also know of families of different and even contradictory faiths attending purely to get their children into the school. And I frequently see people picking up their children in cars, suggesting they live considerably further from it than we do.

We have no hope of getting into this school, not being hypocrites and not wishing to give our children the idea that it's alright to be dishonest about something if you want it badly enough.

My point is that I don't mind people wanting to give their children an education in their chosen faith, but I object to my taxes funding a school I can't use and which encourages parents to profess a religious belief they don't hold purely for the purposes of entry.

Xenia - Hawking never really thought there was a god. It was just a turn of phrase.

Fellatio, I wonder how you have come to the conclusion that God is a HIM? I am simply saying that religious positions throughout the educational syllabus are not outside the scope of enquiry and a number of different perspectives and conclusions should be tolerated educationally within the system for they enrich our society. On the subjects I have already mentioned like the humanities, art, English literature, and philosophy there simply isn't a neutral secular account that all within society could agree upon. Therefore the breadth of schools teaching a number of accounts and perspectives upon the historical facts should be tolerated and even encouraged.

HoB - She means that believers would instead be adding flavour to community schools. I'm all for that. It seems an odd view to take alongside supporting faith schools. Unless the idea is that by getting more non-beleivers into faith schools, they are more likely to pick up faith.

Only just notice that salt and light comment.

Mme Blueberry you are spoiling us with this high comedy

You are right though, it would be far more in keeping with a Christian ethos.

"Seeker - You want secular schools. I want to be able to send my children to a faith school. We both pay taxes. Why shouldn't we both be accomodated?"

Because you can teach your children your faith for the other 18 hours out of 24. I can't un-faith my children!

I used the analogy of smoking once to explain how I feel about this. I want air with nothing in it - people who want to add something to the air should do it in the privacy of their own homes. I don't want school to tell children that God does not exist - I want school to explain that some people believe in him and some people don't. But any child who goes to a State school in this country is taught with an undercurrent of Christianity being an objective truth. People who want their children taught that God exists and made the world should do so at their own expense or in their own time. As should Atheists. Or Hindus. Or Muslims. Or for that matter, Marxists.

Seeker's daughter goes to a grammar school. I would love my average ability daughter to go to that school, especially as we live practically next door, but - shock horror - she can't go there. She has to be content with staring out of the window wistfully and dream of what could have been. It's an even worse situation for my son.

Good post Henny. Perfectly summed up :)

Faith schools are not about teaching faith. They are about living faith.

The dark sees it not.

FuzzFace - Why can't we just treat a range of perspectives on those things within a school that does not say which is the preferred view of the school. So you could look at Marxist, Feminist, Christian and Muslim responses to a book in English, look at Muslim and Chinese readings of Asian history in history etc.

The school not taking a view on faith needn't dilute the discusssion of faith within the school.

What is living faith? Do you mean living according to the tenets of a faith? You can do that in any school surely?

Not sure what relevance my daughter going to grammar school has - I object to the faith component of any school. And I object very strongly to her wasting an hour a week on compulsory RE in the Senior school!

MeltedChocolate/Henny

If the statement was "You want Marxist schools. I want to be able to send my children to a neo-conservative school. We both pay taxes. Why shouldn't we both be accomodated? I've made the point earlier about there being no such thing as genuinely politically neutral schools."

Or "You want upper class schools. I want to be able to send my children to a middle class school. We both pay taxes. Why shouldn't we both be accomodated? I've made the point earlier about there being no such thing as genuinely class neutral schools."

Of course you CAN do those things. You just have to pay for them.

Why is faith different?

Yes - surely living faith can be done anywhere. Or should we be having faith shops, hospitals, bowling alleys?

Sent from my Dark Unsalty Corner

None of you are gonna agree. Both 'corners' have given their reasons and the other corner isn't accepting of those reasons. I think I should leave before I get sucked in to your never ending circle of debate :o

TheCoalition, faith schools are not teaching the exclusive viewpoint of their faith, but they maintain a balance of perspectives like any school would. However, to grow and develop within the scope of the educational system we all foster some, often unstated assumptions, at present we as a society cannot rule out categorically the assumptions underpinned by people of faith or by people who believe that there is no God or that God is unknowable. Nor are the various ethos's of secular schools proven to be better than that of faith schools. Therefore, the current plurality should be maintained and is I believe healthy.

Given that there is no neutral position on many subjects but only a conclusion right or wrong and other questions opened up by that conclusion I believe that plurality is the best option.

Disclosure: I was taught in a Christian school that had a separate assembly for Muslims. I was also taught in a supposedly secular State school where I experienced the grossest and most ignorant attack on Christianity and religious perspectives in general.

As much as we all say it, you don't seem to grasp that faith is not simply added to life, or living in a certain way, it is your life. We have every right to have faith schools as much as you have a right to have non-faith schools. And Seeker, no one is asking you to send your child to a faith school!

NOOO. Stay and play with us. Stay and play with us, Meltedchocolate. Forever... and ever... and ever.
/creepy dead twins.

Fuzzface - No I don't understand. Why do you have to be at a school where the staff and leadership follow the same faith as you in order to follow your faith? Millions of children manage it every day.

The argument that seems to be presented is that faith is different to everything else and therefore should be treated differently, with no explanation of why or how faith is different and deserves special treatment, or a description of what harm the lack or special treatment would do.

Seeker, why do you object to your DD being taught RE?

Xenia, there was an excellent post from Jack-someone detailing the history behind the church schools becoming state schools. Your point about 'unfair' representation doesn't take into account the relatively small number of people whose backgrounds are in other faiths.

Coalition - avast at ye, land-lubbers! (arf arf)

"And Seeker, no one is asking you to send your child to a faith school!"

No, but I have to send my child to a school with a christian ethos - because all schools are obliged by law to be. And if my nearest school is a Faith school, I either acfcept the faith elemen, or send my child to a school further away. ANd why should I? You can "do" faith in the other 18 hours of the day. I can't "un-faith" my children!

The point of your daughter's grammar school, seeker, is that it is even more discriminatory than faith schools.

But since you are on the right side of that particular fence, it doesn't bother you, right?

The thick kids and the boys who live next door to this school have to walk past it to get to the schools that will take them, even if some distance away.

Same argument, really.

Oh, and I have to pay for a grammar school quality (with better behaviour, of course) for my children, so why shouldn't everyone? I pay my taxes, stamp stamp stamp.

The Coalition, its not at all as simple as that (and I hope you realise this). I have talked quite a bit around the subject of 'epistemology' (the study of how we know what we know) and how this impinges in a particular way on religion.

However, besides that these schools existed often before many State schools. They were founded by religious organisations, who often make an ongoing contribution to the running of these schools (my school however was totally private). The land and the buildings owned by most faith schools is private land and buildings. Some of the teachers/ chaplains will be paid for by the religious organisation. Anyway, I am not arguing for a special treatment simply regarding religion though that is the scope of this thread. I would support the rights of non-religious institutions to be educational providers funded in part by the State as well.

What is so bad about a Christian ethos?

It does bother me. As I have said, loudly and vociferously on this forum on many occasions.

And I angsted about it, both in RL and here, at the time.

But at least my dd got into her school because of something she did - and the education she gets is suited to her abilities.

There is, presumably, no suggestion that being a practicing Christian means that you need different maths lessons to non Christians? Or that non- Christians couldn't keep up with the pace of the literacy at a Faith school?

Seeker, how can you not un-faith your children? Presumably you can teach them why your view which isn't based upon faith assumptions is valid if not personally a better reasoned perspective? If you can't then why do you hold the perspective you hold so firmly?

Anyway, I think I'm going to join Meltedchocolate for now and leave you grand people to this endless debate. :)