Yes/no poll on religion in state schools.

[seeker]

Do you think state schools should be secular, but with RE lessons giving information about all the main world religions as part of the curriculum?

[Tinfoil]

Where did you hear that? Even if it's true, surely it would only apply to some Christians.

"Christians are wealthier than average"

[oneopinionatedmother]

re: churchgoing in the uk vs wealth - see this article
main quote 'the evidence from the Tearfund survey is that the Church in the UK favours the well off by a large margin'

that includes RC and C of E churchgoers. for somereason, single mums on benefit don't go to church so much!

[Tinfoil]

It may be that more lower-income Christians attend non-conformist churches such as Baptist, Methodist, United Reformed, Quaker and so on. So it's not really a true picture to only look at the "establishment" C of E church, and Catholicism. Certainly the non-conformist churches have been especially concerned with social care (just think of the Salvation Army for example).

It costs nothing to go to church, and services are open to all. But maybe well-off people (especially if they are quite conservative-minded or traditional), if looking for a church, will gravitate more towards the "establishment" churches than the non-conformist ones. But having said that, there are many Anglican and Catholic churches in less well-off areas in the UK, not to mention around the world and I'm sure their members would be surprised to hear that they are supposedly "wealthier than average".

[GrimmaTheNome]

Hm, nice thought but I grew up in the URC and we had a lot of links with other churches (nonconformist and other) and really they were all pretty middle class.

Pentecostals may be different.

[oneopinionatedmother]

@tinfoil - this discussion is about the UK. and the research was done by a Christian group. Christians are on average wealthier.

there are some pockets where this is untrue - such as the afro-carribean community in london, which is poor, and Christian...but the general picture is precisely that.

so a schol allowed to select Christians is QED allowed to select in favour of children from wealthier families.

[daftpunk]

leningrad

Hi...

i thought it was you, but wasn't 100% sure (didn't want to do the "only gay in the village" thing).....

you are too nice, would love you to explain the meaning of life to me.... but sometimes the more i learn the less i know ...

now, i am off to do something of world importance...i need to get a replacement in for adebayor....

until we meet again

[daftpunk]

you wino, what are you doing drinking wine ? with your name thought you'd be on the vodka...

i can't talk, smoking atm listening to Gorecki...you should download that onto your ipod..really nice,

had Robinho...he was doing nothing so got in Adebayor...was doing good for me, now he's on a 3 match ban...bad luck or what...?

sorry, should be saying this on the FF thread...but can never find it....

(think MNHQ have probably deleted it..too common ..ha ha)

[Tinfoil]

oneopinionatedmother, I think it's more likely that wealthier and/or middle class people know where the good schools are. Some of these people then start going to church in order to get their children into good church schools. The result is that churchgoers (but not necessarily Christians) then seem wealthier on average.

[oneopinionatedmother]

@tinfoil- the conclusion of the church study was that Xianity was just not being made appealing to people on lower incomes.

if you take a look at the actual link, you'll notice the disparity is found in people of all ages, not just in those of the age where they are likely to have school-age kids.

i suspect there are a huge range of factors at work in that statistic. - a tendency for the poitically left-wing to be anti-reliious, for one thing.

[Tinfoil]

And left-wing Christians may be more attracted to non-conformist churches than C of E ones

[GrimmaTheNome]

Possibly so, tinfoil, but I still suspect they are mostly A/Bs.

[scaryteacher]

'That is the problem of religion in education. It enters into other areas of the curriculum in ways that are not to the benefit of an understanding of Science, Geography and so on.'

I have to disagree here. I taught RE in a large comp; I class myself as an agnostic, my colleagues in the dept were respectively an atheist and a theist, so the students had a teacher of each flavour.

We taught RE as an academic subject, covering 5 of the big 6 religions, as Sikhism tends to be taught at KS2 in the LEA I worked for. I made it plain that in my classroom all views were welcome from theism to atheism, and the fact that the majority of students are secular was accounted for in the lesson planning. I aimed to give the students an awareness that for some people religion does matter very much, and that as they grew up and moved away from Cornwall, they would encounter different religions and varying degrees of faith and would have to deal with that.

I also taught history and geography - can't say that I mentioned RE in Geography, apart from the difference between the symbols for a church on an OS map, when doing maps with year 7; but it did come into history, especially looking at the medieval world; the Tudors and the Civil War. However, you can't really have a discussion about Mary Tudor without mentioning the huge effect her faith had on her actions as Queen.

Part of OFSTED that presents a difficulty for rural schools in places like Cornwall is that diversity within the schools doesn't really exist. There are a very small number of ethnic minorities, and RE is one way of showing the students that there is a big wide world out there which they may one day encounter.

I think the system of a secular school with RE on the curriculum works very well, especially where the RE teachers teach it as an academic subject and nothing else; however, I do understand why there are faith schools and why some members of faith communities would want to send their children to one.

[MillyR]

Scaryteacher, I don't disagree with some RE being taught in schools. Clearly it would be impossible to teach English or Scottish history without reference to the important role religion has played. As for Science, I think the religious beliefs of the teacher are irrelevant to their ability to teach Science, RE or any other subject.

While RE can teach about diversity, it is only one aspect of diversity. I think that the specific teaching of RE as an individual subject should be reduced and become aspects of both diversity and philosophy as topics within PSE.

At the moment the teaching of RE seems to be an excuse to not teach children about diversity properly. Many people from minority ethnic groups do not belong to any minority religious groups within the UK.

People who belong to a minority religious group have almost nothing ethnically in common with someone just because they belong to the same religion. A Somalian Muslim resident in the UK and an English Muslim of Pakistani descent are lumped together as if they form one culture. Similarly, if someone is Iranian, people presume they must be a Muslim, because people are often (but not always) taught that while we are multicultural, every other nation in the world lives in some kind of convenient to explain religious monoculture.

I am sure there are many excellent RE teachers, who teach their subject in a fascinating and beneficial way. But there is no reason why RE should be held up as a sensible way of teaching diversity. The special status given to RE gives priority to one aspect of someone's identity over all others. That is exactly what many posters have objected to in this thread in their criticism of religious schools - we don't have schools for Socialists and Conservatives, so why have schools for religious identities? I am adding - why have a compulsory subject purely about religious identity?

We don't teach individual subjects called "National Identities Education'' or "Ethnic Identities Education." Both of these subjects are vital to understanding diversity, Geography, History, Art and Literature. So why do we need to teach RE as an individual subject in schools?

[splodge2001]

Yes the should all be completely secular and that comes from a convent girl.

[scaryteacher]

Don't agree at all Milly; and RE isn't about teaching diversity; it's ONE way that it can be tackled in a rural school in Cornwall where being ethnically diverse is coming from Devon.

I didn't train to teach RE to partake in the current insidious Citizenship creep in schools. Religion is a fascinating study, that has and continues to have a great affect on many people's lives.

You also do RE teachers an injustice by suggesting that we don't recognise and teach that ethinic diversity exists within a religion. You only have to look at how wide the Anglican communion is to realise the differences between the Evangelicals in places like Nigeria and the approach of some diocese in the US and how much their individual culture informs their take on their religion. For me whilst an Iranian may be Muslim, I also know Iranian Jews and Christians, so I wouldn't suppose anything.

RE does not give priority to that aspect of someone's identity...how can it if one is teaching non-religious students? It's an area of study that takes in philosophy and ethics; that looks at the nuts and bolts of several religions. For me it would be criminal to send students out without a degree of religious literacy and an understanding of what it means to some people to be religious. It will avoid them being arrested for inciting religious hatred by an off the cuff comment at the very least.

I could also argue that Religion is vital to an understanding of history, art and literature, as it informs much of what is out there.

The brief of an RE teacher is not to try to get students to have or espouse a religious belief. That is down to their parents. The job of the RE teacher is to teach the student learn from and about religion - how religion might inform the laws of a country for instance - lots of the laws of the UK could be lifted straight from the decalogue; what the welfare state is based on (the decalogue and the golden rule); the abortion and euthanasia debates; the value of human life; embryo research; hunting; war and peace; prisoners of conscience; criminal justice are all examples of things I've taught. Apartheid gets covered, as does wealth and poverty; non-violent protest is another topic.

If parents want to send their children to a faith school, then that is a matter for them If you have no objection to Montessori and Steiner schools for example, then why object to a faith one? Your children don't have to go to one; why do you have the right to deny that choice to someone who does have a religious belief? The fact that we are even debating this topic means that RE is alive, and well and on the agenda.

Incidentally, if you want schools to be secular, then you would presumably support a ban on hijabs and headscarves in schools, as well as crosses and other religious symbols?

[GrimmaTheNome]

Incidentally, if you want schools to be secular, then you would presumably support a ban on hijabs and headscarves in schools, as well as crosses and other religious symbols?

False presumption! For me anyway. I don't give a toss what people wear so long as its decent, safe, and doesn't impede them from doing what they are meant to be doing. If one of DDs schoolmates chose to wear a headscarf it wouldn't affect DD in the least, would it? If you don't believe in any of these religions, then all the external trappings are irrelevant.

[scaryteacher]

They might be irrelevant to you Grimma; they are highly symbolic to others. Two schools here in Belgium have just banned hijabs as they felt that the schools (state schools) were becoming too polarised. The head teachers are now both under police protection.

[GrimmaTheNome]

Why object to something that has meaning to someone else if it is meaningless to you?

The case you mention in Belgium isn't about whether the school is secular but about whether adopting certain dress is divisive. I doubt that community cohesion is going to be helped by banning one group's preferred dress codes.

[Tinfoil]

I think there's a huge difference between banning all religious things from a school, and allowing a wide variety of religious things from various faiths and none.

Which of those is the more tolerant?

Do most secularists wish to be more connected to dogmatic atheism or pluralism?

[scaryteacher]

The case I mentioned in Belgium is about the secular nature of education, as the political parties involved didn't want to swap, and I quote from this week's issue of Flanders Today,
'the stifling influence of Catholicism on Flemish society, with a Muslim variety'. The school population has changed from 50% Muslim, 50% others to 80% Muslim, 20% others.

The point about the hijabs was that if you are going to go down the secular route, then all religious symbolism has to be banned in schools, as it is in France, and religious things (a prayer mat, or the Bible, or the Qu'ran for example), become teaching aids. I don't have a problem with that, but if a devout Muslim came into my classroom and saw that the Qu'ran wasn't placed higher than every other book in the room, they would be offended.

As to the hijab issue, it might affect your dd if there were a lot of Muslim girls in the school, the pressure was on and the norm was to wear a scarf.

[Tinfoil]

IMHO that doesn't necessarily follow. You can (and should) still have freedom of religious expression in a secular school, for those who wish it.

In this country we accept that people may express their religion (or lack of it) in public, at work and so on, as long as this does not infringe anyone else's rights. The right to religious freedom extends to all ages including those who attend school.

"if you are going to go down the secular route, then all religious symbolism has to be banned in schools"

[GrimmaTheNome]

Secularism isnt atheism. So with that clarified (again ) I agree with tinfoil.

[Fossie]

I would not want to ban religious schools but I would want to make them more open to their catchment area. If you are happy to send your child to a school that has a christian outlook then you should be able to and not have to jump through hoops to prove church activities.

Just to be really confrontational - maybe religious schools do well because christian parents are more concerned about the quality of their dcs education and they are able to support them better. This could be because their beliefs mean they value marriage and family life. There are statistics to point out that married couples have greater wealth than single parents (not rocket science that one).