what's the take on recent debate about perents effectively lying to get their kids into faith school?

[peacelily]

Not lying to the headmasters with a forged baptism certificate per se, but baptising their children into a faith which neither parent has any conviction to or alleigiance in so as to get them into better c of e or even better catholic schools (popular viewpiont not neccessarily mine).

Is this acceptable, is it ok to lie about your spirituality for the sake of your children's education and what does this teach the kids?

In light of a recent debate on "any questions"

The impact on local churches near good faith schools is interesting. I have been going to church for ever and am pretty involved (ex churchwarden etc). We have an influx of families whose eldest child is ~7yrs old (which is good for the choir) - they are regular attenders until the youngest reaches 11 yrs when they become sporadic for a year and then vanish. The local CofE secondary requires pretty much weekly attendance for 2 years before applying (although there are 10% community places in each year).
Some clergy are freaked out by this, some are fairly laid back. I am amazed that anyone is prepared to put in that much time if they are non believers ( some prison sentences are shorter). Also the school is quite religious so their children often end up as believers - sounds OK to me.

well that, blu, i agree is just plain stupid.

i do think really that even schools which struggle with funding etc can do a good job and that in those cases the right parental influence/support can make all the difference.

my secondary school was nice enough. it made us all (most!) into v nice, compassionate, well balanced people and it was a fabulously diverse place too, being an inner london school. but there were just too many of us and too many other pressures on the teachers (some damn fine ones of whom left coz they just couldnt take the stress) for them to pay enough attention to each child. i, for one, was allowed to fall through the cracks and a bright (i used to be!) pupil left with v mediocre exam results. otoh, my best friend had decided to do well and she did. 5 a's, 4 b's iirc.
so the education was there if you wanted it, or knew how to take it.

what on earth is my point? oh! yes. that given the right extra support i think most of us could have done a lot better in terms of exams. which would have been a nicer start to adult life.

so if i were a parent with a child at the school i went to, id concentrate on getting more involved day to day with their school/education than trying to get them into another school.

i find the idea that youd bend over backwards to get your kids into schools to be with other people like you, ignoring the better school, abhorrent.

ooh, blu, which school is that?

OK I agree with LBella. Education should not be divisive. It irritates me that my child cannot go to the nearest one when all the other kids form our road will go as I will not blithely tick the C of E box. The school she will most likely get isn't as good but it seems fine to me.

It just irritates, they are happy to take my money (in the form of tax) but will not educate my child. So no I'm not a hypocrite but I don't blame anyone for doing it. Children should choose there own faith, imagine setting up a vegetarian school or a tory one. It sounds mad but in my opinion similar.

I think it is a bad argument to say oh I wouldn't send my child to a muslim school for several reasons. One is that if a faith school is your only school you have no choice. So people are faced with this every year. Also the UK is culturally christian so the leap to c of e lets say is smaller.

Any way generally the only people who defend this system are those that benefit. Don't get me started on the fact that it is really a back door selection procedure to exclude disadvantaged children (for whatever reason they are disadvantaged).

"I remember as a child learning about the Holocaust asking WHY people didn't lie about the fact that they were Jews? I mean admitting to it meant almost certain death."

IIRC a lot of countries had general census questions which asked people's religion - so the information was readily available to Nazis from that databank (see IBM book for further details as to how the infancy of computer technology assisted with the Holocaust).

There shouldn't be faith schools in the state system, any more than there should be faith hospitals, buses or rubbish-collection.

"I remember as a child learning about the Holocaust asking WHY people didn't lie about the fact that they were Jews? I mean admitting to it meant almost certain death."

Goodpoint TotalChaos about the census. The other reason of course is that people were ghetoised (I know thats not a word). So they often lived with other Jews perhaps near the synagogue, often spoke Yiddish and society as a whole was not mixed. People like their neighbours would have known what faith they were.

There maybe a parallel I would like to move away from regarding segregated education systems.

I completely agree, UD.

as I said earlier - I'm with uqd on this one.

notjustmom - I have have strong beliefs about lots of things. however I will rely on myself and dh to teach dds about our beliefs and principles (which they may or may not chose to take on for themselves). my dd's moral and social education is, primarily, my responsibility. you said it would be "upsetting to not have your child receive a religious education" - why would going to a non-religious school for 30 hours a week, 39 weeks a year preclude your child having a religious education? why does a religious education have to take place in school? (I genuinely don;t understand that) and, perhaps more importantly, if an individual really does feel it is essential to have religion integrated into school life, why should the state subsidise that particular type of education above many other types of education? especially given that by doing so there is often a negative effect on other state schools. ie the state is not just subsidising a particular type of education above all others, it is susidising a system that is frequently detrimental to all.

UQD-But faith schools can be the only way for parents who can't afford to move or pay school fees to get their children a decent education

I'm not disagreeing, mrsruffallo, if we're looking at the situation as it is now. I'm just saying what would be even better than that would be for all schools to be non-faith-based. In general people don't want a "choice". They just want to send their children to the local school, and for that school to be a good one.

So do you agree with the private schools being scrapped as well as the faith ones? (sorry if you have already stated your case but I haven't had time to read the whole thread}

I'm not up for "banning" private schools. I think people should properly investigate all the options before ruling out state schooling.

But "faith" is a separate issue. I don't think, and have never thought, that superstition and faith-based education have any place in a state education system funded by all taxpayers.

If people want to send their kids to an independent faith school, that's their lookout and nothing to do with me.

The school I want my dd to go to is the local non faith school. However when we spoke to the head she advised us to look at other local schools too as dd wasn't guaranteed a place. The only other option for us locally is the local c of e school which is also v good. However neither is reputedly as good as the local Catholic school. Despite this I won't be attending mass or joining the Cathlic denomination as i'm not Catholic.

I agree that the inherent exclusivity of faith schools is unfair especially when they're government subsidised. I do still feel it's ethically questionnable to baprise your child into a faith of which you have no conviction in order to secure them a place. And deeply unfair for those parents who do have strong religious conviction to a certain faith and whose places are being taken by children from non believing families.

For myself and dh the most important thing is that dd is educated in an environment that welcomes and celebrates diversity, where her classmate may be anglican, catholic, muslim, jewish, hindu or sikh and she'll learn about tolerance and acceptance. Not elitism and superiority and that misguided sense of entitlement to the best by whatever means that so many middle class families seem to have.

Littlebella mentioned in her post of this morning at 8.55 that she feels it's ok to mock other peoples beliefs. Well it's not, it's disrespectful and derogatory.

I think this argument is being muddied by the blurring of two very separate issues - 1) what people do in the imperfect system in order to get the "best" for their children and whether this is in any way "wrong" and 2) the fact that this system exists, and the question of whether it should at all.

I don't disagree that "it's ethically questionable to baptise your child into a faith of which you have no conviction in order to secure them a place", but it's a hoop people feel forced to jump through. It's also ethically questionable to allocate school places on the basis of superstitious belief. It makes as much sense as having schools for parents' different football teams or political parties.

I think we have to leave a little room for mocking religion tbh. It seems that the people saying well, actually, I believe it's all nonsense are not being heard much at the moment
incase they offend people. I think that is wrong.
But I also feel that faith schools play a part in giving lower income families more choice if they have a very bright youngster and badly performing state schools in their area.
Personally, I would take all of the religion and fee-paying from the education system but looking at how things are right now I can see why faith schools are thriving.

In an ideal world I would too Mrsruffalo. I'm c of e but I would prefer total equity in the education system which involve abolishing religious and fee paying schools obviously. Dd can can come to church and Sunday school with us, from our point of view we don't need a school to provide this.

I think eveyones entitled to their own opinions and have total respect for those who aren't Christian or any other faith. I'm trying to be very careful not to sound critical or disparaging of peoples spirituality because it's a deeply personal thing. I have my own opinions re some of the teaching methods about religion that go on in Catholic schools (such as what adolescents learn about contraception and abortion) but this isn't the forum to ventilate them.

"Littlebella mentioned in her post of this morning at 8.55 that she feels it's ok to mock other peoples beliefs. Well it's not, it's disrespectful and derogatory"

I have the right to be disrespectful and derogatory about other people's beliefs, just as they have about mine. Particularly if the belief inovlves claiming that the world is only 8000 years old, or that evolution is just a politically correct fashion, or that women should always be covered in public, even if it means that schoolgirls trying to escape a fire in the middle of the night get beaten back into the burning building to their deaths by religious police, because they aren't dressed properly.

Why on earth shouldn't I be disrespectful and derogatory about certain beliefs?

And you talk about the culture of entitlement middle class people have peacelily (once again insisting that it's only middle class people who jump through hoops to get their kids educated). But it seems to me that lots of religious people have a ridiculously developed sense of entitlement about their kids getting a better education than everyone else's.

pl I also have opinions about some of the things catholics are taught re birth control and sex - and I absolutely reserve the right to mock.

Some of the practices thta go on in the name of religion are horrendous and I don't dispute that. Religion has a lot to answer for and can be both a negative as well as a positive force in peoples lives.

I once worked with a practising buddhist who was mocked and teased mercilessly because he meditated on his break at work on occassion. He successfully put in a bullying case against this and recieved a formal apology which he was fully entitled to IMO.

Being disrespectful and derogatory about peoples faith is well, just unpleasant really.

Speaking up about abuse perpetrated in the name of religion is another matter and obviously needs to be vocalised, loudly.

Just a thought here but- jumping through hoops is all very well but aren't you possibly disadvantaging another child through this, not just promoting your own?

Case in point: a child who attends the same CM as ds3. Lives about 200 yards from the school, catchment is a bit wierd so just outside but both siblings attend and there's notmally enough space - but becuase of the rather amazing number of attendee's in that intake he ahs been refused a palce at nursery, and will have to trek to the next closest, quite some trek. Mum works in the opposite direction, and her baby is due in february.

yet wheni go to Church, there's but 2 other parents from the school in attendance- WHERE are all these wonderfully religious aprents hiding? (you dont need a Vicar signature here, self certificating).

If the other local schools are ok, why is it so terrible that these people who are 'real' practicing Christians have to go there instead of the faith schools? As other posters have pointed out, you don't have to have your religious education at school. I don't get that idea, that it's so terrible that proper christians are cheated out a place, but it's ok for non-christians not to get the place???

The instance you cite is workplace bullying and of course is unacceptable. But you appear to be confusing deriding and mocking people, with deriding and mocking ideas. The former is unpleasant, the latter is perfectly reasonable and occasionally appropriate.

I'm fully aware of the distinction between deriding and mocking and don't require an explanation. I feel that the issue of faith is of such sensitivity that it's not appropriate to mock although there are other areas of life where mocking may be more innocuous.

I'm sure the pople at work thought they were mocking or teasing but they were needling at something that was at someones very core of their being. Different people have different thresholds for mocking/deriding with various issues. I happen to beleive that faith is one that shouldn't be mocked, that's what i believe and I make no apologies for it.