Yet more dumbed down pseduo science in our schools.

[DominiConnor]

The government wants a new, "science" certificate that is absolutely impossible to fail.
Dumb

Given that both Tony and Cherie Blair are both comitted christians, perhaps this is the game plan ?
Evolution is bunk

The government has already put millions vinto schools with a policy of teaching that evolution is nonsense.

Given the relative size of the two populations - French Algerians and Cambridge graduates - that is not necessarily terribly surprising.

It is surprising given that the majority of Cambridge grads are British, and Britain is much bigger country, and it's easier for us to find people there.

As for the superiority of the Scottish system, and it's possible use to England; flexibility is good when you are empowering competent people in a sound process, not sure how you can apply either of those to one of the worst achieving countries in the developed world.

My original post mentioned just what happens when you give British people "flexibility" in schools We get creationism on the science syllabus in schools that receive extra funding to teach bollocks.

my kids go to a catholic school and are taught evolution.

in fact it would be interesting to have a statistic of schools as a % that actually teach creationism, and a figure to match that same % informing us how our taxes paid for that teaching - & in what context these lessons take place.

i think these borad brush strokes about faith education are unhelpful and deliberatley inflamitory

Britain is a much bigger country? Than what other country?

I have no idea how many students graduate from Cambridge every year. 4,000?

If there are 2 million French Algerians with a lifespan of 80 years, that makes 25,000 French Algerians in any one year group. Only we can assume quite safely that French Algerians have a high birth rate and therefore let us correct that to 35,000 French Algerians in the 22 year old year group.

So we are comparing a population of 4,000 with a population of 35,000.

Sure, then you have to correct the population of French Algerians for the % undertaking higher education. Say 50%. So you've got 17,500 French Algerians.

Very few French Algerians are going to do studies in the arts or humanities (too elitist for their background). So you'll get a huge majority going into sciences/business degrees, which is I presume what you are looking to recruit. Whereas probably 50% of the Cambridge graduates are studying subjects that don't interest you.

I agree the argument is still crude, but my point still holds on the relative size of the population.

Catholics believe in evolution or so I'd always thought.

DC - another thought. What percentage of your French Algerian graduates are Muslim and what percentage Jewish?

Both the Pope and the Archbisop of cantebury have agreed with Evolution as a Theory and do no see it as being counter to the teaching of the Catholic/ catholic and apostolic church. It is more of an issue in some Fundimantalist protestant circles (there is that car sales man chap Vardy (?) who is funding some schools where creationism is taught)

Lack of physicists - it isn't surprising that there is a shortage of physicists in the UK. It is perceived as being a hard subject and physics teachers are scarce. Good physics graduates are much in demand in the City where they can earn many times the amount they could in research or teaching. I am concerned at the proportion of foreign scientific and technical staff that UK companies now have to recruit because they can't get local staff. Clever British students go into the city. Clever Chinese students become scientists and technologists.

A pity that you do not care. Religion is an interesting facet of a person's cultural and educational make-up.

The socio-economic profile of French Jewry is quite unlike the socio-economic profile of the general population. The two shouldn't be compared.

I think Xenia's right. The Catholic church has learned from it's past mistakes (burning people for saying the world wasn't flat, getting biologists burned for supporting evolution, and getting doctors hung and midwives burned).

Also "Intelligent" design inexorably leads you to believe that the Christian God is stupid malicious and deceitful, which officially the Catholic church does not see as virtues.

That's actually my problem with ID etc. Not that it's wrong, lots of things kids get taught are wrong, but that it's simple and stupid.
It's a crap lie.
To me a sophisticated lie is interesting and a sign of respect.
If I spend time and effort concocting a lie, it implies that I believe that you aren't easily fooled, and that your opinion is valuable enough to justify the effort.

Creationism and ID are overtly based upon the stupidity and ignorance of the target Christians.
Hence it is part of a process by bulk Christian groups to attack science. Not because science disagrees with Biblical "fact", but because it allows kids to ask awkward questions. Bulk Christians don't like kids asking questions because it makes them uncomfortable, hence their attempts to stop sex education as well.
Ironically, in recent years, quite a number nuns have gotten into serious hard line sex education. The nature of that calling is that suffering in the name of God is a worthy thing, so they can cope with the "discomfort" that many Christian parents cannot bear.
They also have sussed out that lack of sex education can lead to abortions which they feel is worse than pretty much anything else a young girl might actually ever do.

A pity that you do not care.
No it isn't.
I make decisions that radically alter people's lives. I despise religion and regard it as a mental illness, it is part of my self discipline that it does not affect those decisions.
You still want me to take it into account ?

Religion is an interesting facet of a person's cultural and educational make-up.
A facet, yes, flaws are often more interesting than bland perfection. But useful ? No.
Most people take the religion of their parents if they take one at all. I care about how well they think not their mother's superstitions. I can't even imagine how I'd care about their culture. If they don't speak English they don't exist, but apart from that I give not one thousandth part of a stuff.

The field I work in is an almost uniquely meritocratic game. Your parents are of no interest to me, nor the defects of the shithole country you are trying to get out of.

The socio-economic profile of French Jewry is quite unlike the socio-economic profile of the general population. The two shouldn't be >compared.
Hmmm.
True. Actually the profile of Jews in most countries is atypical. But I worry about statements like that, typically they are made by closet anti-Semites, or occasionally by people who genuinely believe Jews to be the chosen people and that murdering Palestinians is OK.
Neither group endear themselves to me....

DC

I am not religious and I am not bringing my child up in any religion (though she will be fully informed about her cultural heritage, including the relious aspects of that).

But religion shapes people's lives even if they do not practice or believe.

My partner is French Jewish, so I know quite a lot about French Jewry. I don't know why statements of fact are in any worrying - unless you think that any statement about any religion is a sign of prejudice. Surely rather a dramatic position?

Where I see terms lie "group x should not be compared to the general population", I do suspect some form of bigotry going on.

The sort of people we look for aren't "shaped by religion", since that implies a degree of personal weakness unlikely to equip them for a job where their personal abilities are more important than which gang their parents belong to.
As it happens, a couple of the people whose writings have most affected my view on life happened to be Jewish atheists, but they didn't "shape" me.
That view is not confined to religion, my view of a genuinely smart person is one who sees a culture as a servant or an entity that he finds inspiration from. A weak person in one who sees his culture as a master, and says things of the form "because I'm an X, I believe Y" because they are to weak, ginorant or plain stupid to work out for themselves what they think.
Some very smart people I know are religious, but they aren't "shaped by" their religion, and one who happens to be a bishop seems to have committed his life to changing the religion he works in.

biological differences exist between different racial groups. And also between some religious groups.

It isn't always bigotry.

And I'd say that some of your comments on religion and religious people boarder on bigotry dc

I know a bishop....some of my best friends are black

Found this definition in the cambridge dictionary one line DC

'Definition
bigot Show phonetics
noun [C] DISAPPROVING
a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who thinks that anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong:
a religious bigot
He was known to be a loud-mouthed, opinionated bigot.'

BTW I practice no religion myself. I don't grow begonias either but I don't feel that I have to crap all over those that my neighbor grows.

Actually MB, if you read carefully, I never said I wasn't bigoted. I was saying that I ignore these views when making decisions about people.

My point which you are being careful to miss is that everyone has groups that they find it OK to screw with.
My point was that the more you get interested in people's religion, "culture", or whatever, the more likely you are to find something that triggers it.

Yes biological differences exist between groups, though I'm very suspicious of the term "race" when thinking about them, since at best they are statistical, and people's urge to find (or hide) differences often mean the data is suspect or couched in misleading terms.
Anna888's post implied that there was some sort of French "race" that the Jews there were distinct from. Not sure how you'd define a French race, especially when we were talking in the context where I had mentioned French Algerians.

DC - don't put your words in my mouth.

French Jewry is a distinct social group (with sub-groups) just as French Algerians are a distinct social group (YOU being the first to mention them). American Wives of Europeans are a distinct social group, too. Etc etc

Since when was very basic common-and-garden sociology and anthropology an indicator of bigotry or prejudice?

And I don't know anyone clever enough yet to assess other people ignoring all cultural facets of their personality (and why would you want to?). The nature versus nurture debate continues and science does a lot to help us in our understanding of that, but we haven't yet got to a stage where we can make an easy separation of one from the other.

Biologically speaking 'race' can be seen as an extesion of 'variety' of plant or 'breed' of animal. A group with distinct characteristics but that is still part of the same species, ie is capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.

I have to say, DC this is a MN first. Off hand I can't think of anyone who has admitted to being a bigot.

There are some large differences in the physiology between racial groups btw (for example in the incidence of hypertension), and there are also marked differences between the incidence of genetic diseases. You don't need to 'look' for the differences, they exist. Recognising these differences isn't racisim, it is simple practical medicine.

MB - indeed, when I was pregnant my NHS midwives got very excited about my baby's Jewish genes and thought I should have extra tests until they realised that they didn't need to worry about all the diseases of inbreeding that affect Jews because my baby was half English.

A friend of mine had a scare under similar circumstances. Her dd was being tested for a very rare and serious eye problem. The doctoors explained to friend that in Westindians/ Africans this marker isn't a problem but in caucasians can be a marker for a condition that casuses blindness. Friend laughed with relief and told them that she is half Jamaican (but has very light skin). Docs all relaxed

MB, at the risk of double negatives I didn't say I was a bigot either. I am saying that no one is 100% not a bigot, and that I consciously avoid such issues in decision making.
Many of the people who claim loudly not to be bigoted just have more politically acceptable ones.
My favourite piece of left wing racism, which I've heard several times is
"All Americans are racist", which says at least as much about the speaker as Americans.

You 8don't ignore the issue though, do you. you think that all people who practice religion are sufferening from a mental llness.

In spite of not being a psychiatrist.

You make a blanket decision based on one facet of their personailty and like choices.

Pure bigotry

Religious people report hearing voices in their heads, when confronted with objective facts they are observed to deny them, and are well known for reacting violently to these facts.
Some religious people talk in tongues, and this is observed to correlate with extrme hysteria that can result in collapse.

Sounds pretty much like mental illness to me, what would you call it if a kid in your class started doing these things without the excuse of religion ?
Would you not assume mental illness or drugs ?

I know not all religious people do this, but only a minority of schizophrenics exhibit violence, doesn't mean they are well.

In any case my position of objectivity is independent of whether I'm right about this. That is the point, which you seem determined to not get.

DC - You haven't demonstrated much of a capacity for objectivity or rational analysis on this thread.