Live webchat with Richard Dawkins, Wed 23 June, 10am-11am

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We're pleased to welcome Richard Dawkins for a webchat on Wednesday 23 June from 10am-11am. Richard is a celebrated evolutionary biologist and atheist, and author of the best-selling God Delusion.

He has presented programmes on Channel Four that range from enthusing about the Genius of Charles Darwin to arguing against religion in Root of All Evil?

His latest project is taking a long hard look at education and the role religion continues to play in it.

He wants to hear first-hand from Mumsnetters what faith and church schools are really like. How successful are they? Are they selection by another means? Are they divisive? And are they making hypocrites out of non-believing parents who go to church just to send their children to them?

If you can't make the discussion but want to contribute, please post your views here.

Thanks and hope you can join us.

A lot of other parents do face the same problem as us locally, yes. We live in a very diverse part of Birmingham with children from a broad range of religious backgrounds, as well as a lot of non-Anglican protestants of various denominations. All of these are forced to send their children to another part of the city, or home school.

In particular there is a very high rate of home schooling among muslim parents locally; we do not live that far from where Khyra Itzhak was starved to death & part of the reason that social services did not spot this was that they have come to accept home schooling for muslim children as a norm.

I don't have any intelligent comments to make, just that my dd's best friend is convinced her mother is about to have a baby called Steve because she prayed for it and their church school has taught them about the power of prayer

minipie: what if it just prioritised logic, reason and fact?

No mention of faith. Let faith be a personal matter.

Pofaced in many areas this is not the case, the secondary schools in our catchment require a letter from a church and you have to go to church every week to get one. They take a register. If you do not attend one week you have to prove that you had a good reason not.

brightspark2-I think the Christian faith has had slightly more relevance to the history and development of this country than the brothers Grimm but you did make me laugh..

On sex education I remember looking at frogs...Friday night so time to go to the pond...

what i would consider to be a 'proper' atheist school wouldn't prioritise, it's not a child's fault that they've got religious parents.

slug - you have made that clear. I am trying to balance the facts though. Many don't.

Pofacedagain. Yes there probably is no truly fair system. But that is not a reason for introducing yet another gratuitous unfairness. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I think an atheist school without religion in the curriculum would not be interested in the faith of its students as it would be of no consequence.

And, Richard, is there not an argument that allowing faith schools to offer places first to children whose parents have faith, is no worse a way of "selecting" pupils than allowing parents to "buy" a place at the best schools by purchasing a house next door to the school?

In fact, you could maybe argue that less-advantaged children have more chance of getting into a "good" school this way because faith is not money issue.

RichardDawkins can I ask you a question (as an admirer of yours)?

looking back: do you think that in your new-atheist writings and speeches that perhaps you have been too rude? contemptuous even?

what I mean is, do you think that a more measured tone would have been more successful?

or is your ability to shock and upset an important part of being heard.

(declaration of self-interest: I am also rude )

Can anybody tell us what it feels like going to church for the sake of your children, when you don't believe a word that is said?

i find the headscarf thing quite interesting - on one level you are banning people of a certain religious affiliation from the school, but on another you are making the school a place free from religion, which seems like a good thing. However, I think personal liberties should always come first and I wouldn't really like to see any banning of religious paraphernalia in this country.

many people have asked about atheist schools including Cauliffe. DoubtUnites - I look forward to receiving your children's letters. Thank you for suggesting that I should start an atheist free school. I like the idea very much, although I would prefer to call it a free-thinking free school. I would never want to indoctrinate children in atheism, any more than in religion. Instead, children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded. If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists. I would also teach comparative religion, and teach it properly without any bias towards particular religions, and including historically important but dead religions, such as those of ancient Greece and the Norse gods, if only because these, like the Abrahamic scriptures, are important for understanding English literature and European history.

We only did it for one week and decided against it. We simply couldn't bring ourselves to go again. The church is very evangelical and it terrified the children.

IMO schools of no religious persuasion also foster divisiveness purely for being a different school.

I understand that people don't like the idea of indoctrination, but if children were sent to a mosque, or a temple to see what worshippers there believe as part of their religious studies class, would that be met with such horror from some parents as a visit to a church would? It is all part of RS and learning what other faiths believe, surely?

Can you open it in Milton Keynes please?

I can say that I hated watching my daughter be christened because her paternal grandmother wished it. I felt the chill of non-belief. I would rather home school than have to go to church to guarantee a school place.

That ^ is the school to which I want to send my children.

Thank you for your reply. I agree I didn't really mean an "atheist school". We bring our children up to make their own decisions

As regards religious 'education', my (NI state grammar) school taught nothing but Protestant-style Christianity for all those years of RE. No ethics, philosophy, nothing.

And they got around the requirement to teach about different faiths for GCSE by covering CofE, Baptist, and Salvation Army IIRC.

HoochieMizzle, I think you're spot on. I've noticed alot of people describing Prof. Dawkins as rude, and without warrant so far as I can see. But then I am probably also rude!

Free-thinking schools would be awesome! Do it! Please?

The faith schools where I live are so afraid of non-believers tainting their school that after they have taken as many christians or catholics as they can, the selection criteria prioritises children of other (contradictory) faiths above those of no faith at all.

JoeBauwens - you are raising a lot of interesting points. Yes, one of the biggest problems with faith schools is that they are divisive. They encourage children to segregate into tribes. In Glasgow a few years ago, the Roman Catholic bishop was reluctantly persuaded to remove his opposition to a mixed Catholic/Protestant school, but only on condition that they had separate entrances to the school! Just like apartheid South Africa, or the segregated southern states of America. This is one reason why I think faith-based education should be phased out and replaced by schools that teach comparative religion, and teach it properly without bias, as a branch of anthropology, with the bible taught as literature.