Attending Church, purely to get to a certain school

[sleepydad3000]

They're aren't many things I feel so strongly about, but this issue is one of them. I am currently looking at schools for my daughter. I am a non religious person and my partner is a none practising Catholic, doesn't go to church at all anymore.

I personally think it's wrong on a moral level to exploit a church for 6 months or however long, just to get your child to a certain school. It's almost like, "Oh hi, yes thankyou, I've got what I needed, you'll never see me again!"

2 schools near me are both decent, 1 outstanding and 1 good (Ofsted ratings) interestingly enough, the NON Catholic school has the higher mark as of 2017.... just saying. Both schools are great in my view, religion aside. But I'd feel awful and wrong and like I was cheating or manipulating the system, just to get my girl to a certain school, and then waving bye bye to the church after, as I know for a fact, my partner and I have no intention of going to church afterwards.

Agree very much that a good grounding in Judaeo-Christian tradition and history is vital. But people do need to be receptive to learning about it.

There's a massive difference between learning about and believing. I love reading about Greek mythology but I'm not receptive to it in that I think it's in anyway based in reality.

What is believe in? Is the ceremony meaningful to you? I guess that's what I mean. Because it's very meaningful to a lot of people and just taking that and running with it for your own purposes seems kind of wrong to me, like wearing a Native American headdress at a party. But you have to live within your own moral compass really and I can see the temptation might be quite strong in some cases.

Learning about Christianity and participating in Christian worship are two different things, but participating is quite a good way of learning. I was quite anti the church aspects of my dad's school and Brownies but if I end up at a church service with them I do actually feel quite happy that's she's witnessing thatbsnf understanding it. If course I would like her to do the same with other religions and we have some opportunities to do so - though these would be fewer if her school had only Christians attending as we would have fewer invitations to participate in important cultural occasions of her classmates' faiths.

You don’t have to “believe” in God in order to practice the teachings of Christianity in RL and work out their value for yourself based on experience.

Propaganda? That's an odd way to look at it.

“School teaching without practice is mere propaganda”

I’m beginning to think you are taking the piss. You can’t possibly think this.

No you don't Maria. I am not sure anyone in this thread has argued otherwise, except perhaps you when you said faith and educational ethos were part of a holistic whole.

Bertrand - I believe it very strongly indeed. School gave me some useful concepts but I couldn’t own them until I’d tried them out repeatedly in RL. And I rejected quite a lot, and tempered others.

I’m asking for children not to be excluded from state education based on cultural specificities

Children are not excluded from faith schools. If you want to insist they are, we could also talk about some schools excluding children who don't have a sibling already at the school, or excluding children from families who can't afford a house on the doorstep.

I didn’t say that, longest. You really mustn’t put words in other posters’s mouths and then criticise them for what they didn’t say.

OK. I officially no longer understand what you are saying, Maria.

Bertrand - I know for sure that you attach greater value to the ability of school alone to transform minds and bodies than I do ;)

Sorry-don’t understand that either.

Well you can correct me if you wish. I thought you told a pp that they wouldn't have bought into the ethos of the school such that they could make a meaningful contribution to it unless they had faith. If I have misunderstood that bit then I really don't understand your objection to people having the right to decide for themselves whether they are on board with the ethos of a school.

Bridge you really can't see that there's a difference between a criterion based on sibling links and one based on prioritising people of different faiths? With an ascending order whereby Christian (other) ranks above Jewish or Muslim? Because until we have history which includes persecution of peoples based on whether they have a sibling, or an Equality Act which lists "only child" as a protected characteristic I think there's quite a fundamental difference.

You think school is very powerful. Hence wanting to give every child a similar wide range of opportunities in comprehensive schools.

To me it's fairly clear what you mean Maria. You think some kids for whatever reason are going to be a negative influence on your DC and that by surrounding yourself with like minded "community" people, you will get the best outcome for your DC. It's not really about the school itself. I think this is also what you meant by your "different origins" comment earlier, which I found similarly hateful and am trying charitably not to read with a racist slant on it.

Your post is really offensive, lurker. I haven’t said any of those things. You should not call posters prejudiced or racist.

What bollocks. If I think someone has said something prejudiced or racist I will call them on it. Your comment was ambiguous but is the sort of thing used to justify racial segregation. It's a dangerous and hateful way to think, that people are born with inherent limits on where they end up.

I have said nothing of the sort. I think children have different talents and will have different life paths and that school does children an injustice by lumping them all together and ignoring the references - it becomes a lowest common denominator race to the bottom.

differences

And those talents and life paths just happen to conveniently correlate with faith, it church attendance at the very least, such that that is a perfectly logical way to determine school admissions? Perhaps you'd be better looking again at what you have posted and examine your own inbuilt biases, which we all have, rather than leaping in the defensive.

I think that there should be lots of choice of school! The government does too.

The Government thinks what its voters think, and there is plenty of ugly thinking going on in this space.

In any case, as I have repeatedly said, you seem to think that certain choices should be denied to some.

As I have said repeatedly, schools always select. The issue on this thread is that some children have less eligibility for several schools than others. Set up a free school to meet your own criteria!

“that school does children an injustice by lumping them all together and ignoring the differences”
What sort of differences do you mean?

Linguistic differences, for example. A child who speaks a language other than English at home deserves a bilingual education.