Church schools should stop discriminating against teachers and pupils, say church leaders

[edam]

This news story is interesting. New group of church leaders and 'secular figures' campaigning to stop religious schools discriminating against non-religious families and staff, or those from the 'wrong' denomination.

(I have looked to see if there's a thread on this already but couldn't find one.)

witless superstition and corruption

if we're all witless superstitious and currupted..why do you want to get into our schools? be witless in your own!

They aren't YOUR SCHOOLS. They are PUBLIC SCHOOLS

That is the point

I would be happy for my dd to go to the school at the end of our road. I would rather it had nothing to do with the church at all. But she isn't allowed to because we don't believe in that particular fairy tale.

The one published by the catholic church that is

Threadworm - your argument that qualifying for disability benefit by becoming disabled is the same as qualifying for a religious school by becoming religious is probably the most stupid thing I have ever read on this board - and that's quite an achievement!
My son was fricking BORN disabled (he has autism)! Kids are not BORN religious. They have to be indoctrinated. Disability is something that happens to you, and is REAL.
I cannot choose to believe in a religion that I think it utter mumbo-jumbo. I do not believe in virgins having babies or any of the rest of it and can't make myself do it any more than, say the average Catholic could 'choose' to believe in Ra or fairies.
This idiotic argument that 'there are services I can't access' - there are NO other publicly funded, essential services that can legally reject you for your religion or lack of it. Not your GP, not your bin collection, not your dentist, not the Opera. In every other part of life this is called discrimination and is illegal. I think this tends to show that society thinks it is wrong. And fans of faith schools admit they would be outraged if their local GP refused to treat them because of their religion (even if they could see another GP five miles away)- yet see no contradiction in their position.

I'm a Christian: a pretty serious one as I have jsut spent 2 years at Bible College.

I want religion out of school asap. For one, we have to respect that we live in a secular society, and if we want to have Christian beleifs respected, than we also have to have others respected.

Secondly, I have seen "acts of worship" and assemblies and RE classes done SO badly, which totally misrepresent what Christianity is. So I am sure they are doing the same with other faiths.

If you want to bring your children up in any faith, then thats your call, but it is not he job of the state to do it. I hate the discrimination in the name of religion. It is so totally not what it is about.

Make all schools secular. In RE (which is different from observance) bring in loads of people to pass on their ow understading. Me, an Iman, a conservative catholic preist, a Jain, a Bhudist monk, an agnostic, an athiest - the lot.

Kids are better than adults are at sorting it all out.

FFS Daftpunk, we don't want to get into 'your' schools (oh the arrogance and unpleasantness). We want schools to be equal open to children regardless of what their parents happen to believe.

Excuse me I pay good money to go to the opera! Since when has it been free?

cd;
this isn't about letting women vote... and fwiw i would fight for any cause i believed strongly in..and i'd be chained to the railings long after you lot had packed up and gone home.

Weegiemum, while I obviously agree with you that schools should be secular, I am fiercely and entirely opposed to you being allowed to preach to my children while they are at school. I would NEVER allow my young kids to be preached at by religious extremists. That's not education, that's indoctrination. I also don't want the local TOry candidate, local Labour candidate and the guy from the British National Party coming into primary schools to tell them why their particular political ideology is so great.

Yet you advocate that others should shut up and accept that this is how things are??
Your "c'est la vie" attitude shows a total lack of empathy for the causes of others in that case

And no I wouldn't want dd in the school at the end of the road as it rams this fairy story down their throats on a daily basis which is not what I want for my child

When she grows up she can decide which (if any) story she believes.

I understand the frustration with faith schools. I have no truck with them myself, despite having a religious faith, and my children don't attend them. However, the vitriol heaped on people who practice religion on these threads by some posters is just too much.

'Vitriol'? It's the bloody religious lot who want to ban the children of parents of other religions and none from more than a third of all publicly funded schools, not the atheists! They think it's funny that people are barred from their local schools. That's what I call vitriol. No atheist/agnostic wants to ban the children of religious parents from ANY schools.

but cd...not allowing non catholic children into catholic schools isn't oppression is it? not allowing women to vote was...and i would have been fighting for that change.

how are your children suffering? can you explain. how are you suffering? all i can see is that you object because you pay taxes towards them?

It is some of them.

I am one of "the bloody religious lot". And, as I said, I am not a supporter of faith schools. Either in theory or practice.

Daftpunk, it is discrimination. You have said you wouldn't like to be banned from your local GP's list because of your religion, haven't you? Yet you could go on another list?

OK, it's some religious people who love it that they can legally discriminate against children and adults of a different religion or none. And NONE of the atheists/agnostics want to do it. And you accuse atheists of 'vitriol'!

Daftpunk - cd cannot send her child to her nearest school, even though she helps to fund it.

In a village near us, the only school is a CofE school. That actually has no special admission criteria, but is a faith school. So peole in that village have no choice but to send thier child to a CofE school, even if they have a different or no faith.

And in fact all schools are required to have a daily act of worship of a broadly Christian nature.

It is imposed. And has bugger all to do with education really.

Plenty of children suffer because of this.

They are excluded from their local school ffs!

And fwiw I think it is a form of oppression. It is a throw-back to days of yore where religion was widely practised. That is not the case these days. So instead the system promotes lies and hypocrisy (I know of many who have just gone to church to get their kids into a school).

It is oppressive to insist that people pretend to be something they aren't just in order to use their local school. To make them practise a religion that they don't believe in (and yes I am aware that some believe but a lot don't AND are very open about it esp at our local C of E schools)

"Oppression is the act of using power to empower and/or privilege a group at the expense of disempowering, marginalizing, silencing, and subordinating another"

Well there you go.
EXACTLY

No msdemenour. I made the accusation of vitriol. And not against atheists. Most posters can state their objections without the insults, and without reducing the arguments to atheists vs religious

OK, where are the insults and vitriol? Because the only really offensive stuff is people saying that they are glad our kids can't go to their kids' school. That's really unpleasant.

MsD there was something about "witless superstition and corruption" earlier on... not sure if that counts as vitriol but certainly insulting.

I wouldn't want to see faith schools banned at this point simply because there seem to be so many good ones, so I think it would be a mistake disrupt a part of the system that actually works on ideological grounds.

Allowing them to select pupils on the basis of religion just has to stop though (it won't of course). It is grossly unfair for all the reasons already stated on this thread, and - at a time when we are in dire need of all the religious tolerance we can get - dangerously divisive.

i have no issues with faith schools, i have no problem with them being state funded. i dont understand why non-catholic parents would want to send their children to catholic schools?
if you are not religious why would you want your kids going to a school where religion and education are intertwined?
i live in northern ireland and i cant imagine where it would happen that a non-catholic would be sent to a catholic school just because it was the closet school to their house.
i dont think of this as discrimination either, simply practising catholics sending their children to schools where religion and education are equally important
all schools have admission criteria, if religion happens to be one of the criteria for certain schools then so be it.
and i find a lot of the comments on this thread to be verging on the ridiculous..daftpunk has been given a hard time on this thread. i totally agree with what she says. to suggest that she doesnt want her kids mixing with 'nasty protestant kids' is just silly.
and to put people down because of their religious beliefs, well its not clever is it. just because someone is athiest and thinks christianity is a load of tripe doesnt give you any right to mock those who do believe
i am not religious btw

harleyd - I went to a convent school where almost half of the children were non-Catholics. The parents of the non-Catholic children presumably sent them there because it provided a reasonably good education and they liked the ethos. I am certain that the school was much the better for the mix of backgrounds.

If a school is state funded it should be obliged to cater for all local children equally. Why should children of non-Catholics (or whatever religion it happens to be) be excluded from their nearest school, while their Catholic counterparts are entitled to go to any school in the area simply because of what their parents choose to do on a Sunday?

HarleyD - 'all schools have admission criteria, if religion happens to be one of the criteria for certain schools then so be it.'

No, not so be it at all. It's illegal to discriminate on grounds of religion in all other parts of our life, why should education be excluded from that?

msdemeanor, though it is quite exciting to have made a remark that might qualify as the stupidest on the whole of Mumsnet, my point was just that a test of fairness for access to tax-funded benefits is that we are all equally eligible for them provided that we meet the relevant criteria -- and that failing to meet those criteria can be a legitimate grounds for exclusion. That is a trivial point, but it seemed worth making just then. Sometimes highly contrasting cases are a good way of drawing attention to the similarities that nonetheless exist, and naturally I am aware of the differences between disability and faith!

I suppose you are objecting to the inclusion of beliefs as possible criteria in some cases. My idea was that they can count as relevant criteria in just some cases, because of social benefits associated with a thriving culture, that might only be attainable by fostering the participation of people with certain beliefs. I also said that these sorts of benefits could be trumped by considerations of social justice if there was a conflict. I think that there often is a conflict, and that in some parts of Britain ther existence of so many faith schools does make difficulties for fair educational provision.

I'm an atheist. But I believe that religion is a huge and valuable source for culture. As well as being a source of problems: it goes without saying that state support of faith schools needs to try to avoid fostering negative features of faith.

but cd...you have the option of becoming a catholic if you want? a bit extreme i know, but you have that option, (people do it). i'm sorry that you're having problems with your local school i really am..it's normally the other way around..not enough faith schools. in my area i have 4 primary schools to choose from, only one is catholic, alot of catholic familys don't get in.