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.

Hello Richard, thank you for joining us.

Do you think that religion has a place in our schools?
Should it be taught as a separate subject with no cross over or should it be woven into other sujects?

I agree that as a piece of literaqture the bible is a wonderful text but should it be taught as a reality or as a piece of fiction?

My daughters school has just got a new HT. He is very religious whereas the school is most definetly not.
I have already noticed that my youngest is coming home with all kinds of religious nonsense.
Am I over reacting by wanting to complain about this new religious fervour at school?

Yup, I'd send mine to that school too.

Are there specific things at home we can do to foster more critical thinking in our children?

Prof Dawkins, I would love to see comparative religion taught at my children's primary school, with no emphasis on any particular one. My children have learned no particular religion in their school, which is fine by me, but I do worry about them missing out on some very significant literature.

Spixblue I so sympathize with you about feeling obliged to baptize your children. Infant baptism is bizarre when you think about it. Pre-empting a child's right to decide for herself. Actually committing a child to particular opinions about the cosmos and morality before it has learned to speak.

Pofacedagain - at our local faith school children living in the parish but of no faith are bottom of the criteria. Kids living in the next town who go to church will bte higher up the list than us!

What angers me is that our local Council refuses to allocate the streets in the parish to the catchment of another non-faith school, or alternatively force the faith school to switch to cathment basis. That means that we end up bottom of the list for everywhere because they are relying on a discrimatory system to deliver educational services!

Anyone got ideas on what I can do about that?

legspinner I agree that teaching comparative religion is incredibly important

Well that answered my question, thank you

"Free"-thinking schools I like that.

It is nothing to do with a measured tone stubborn hubby - it is to do with being philosophically facile. Sorry to keep repeating that phrase, just sums it up really.

This thread is so self-satisfied it is really distasteful. Science is not full of self satisfaction and closed minds - it is about having an open, enquiring mind, and the asking of questions, and knowing that vast amounts are not known. Would you say 'I do not believe in other intelligent life forms as I have never seen one' ?

I am agnostic. And I think that is the best logical position. I have absolutely no problem with the position of an atheist, but I go have a big problem with the superiority and closed mind that sometimes seems to go with it, as here.

And also to Ronshar, yes the bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture. I made the same point to Donnie the teacher, who wondered how to teach Hamlet without biblical knowledge

The problem in funding free schools is that there needs to be a surplus of places in schools for there to be genuine choice, but our country seems unable to afford this surplus.

i personally find it quite difficult attending church with my husband. He has no problem with any of it

I am much more...Yes...agree with this bit, what... no, no...mmm yes that sounds nice..that WOULD be nice..ahh a song..I like this one...

I suspect a lot of other people do the same...

and Prof Dawkins it is nonsense to say baptism is pre-empting a child's right to decide for themselves. Absolute nonsense.

Isn't infant baptism just the legacy of high infant mortality rates? A pre-emptive strike against the risk of purgatory.

I studied evolutionary biology to PhD level and I am an admirer of your early work.

I would not consider sending my children to a school run by atheists. I find many of the atheists that I meet in real life and on here every bit as evangelical as the religions that they attack. I want my children to learn to evaluate evidence and form conclusions, of course, but not from people such as yourself with such a skewed agenda.

pernickety I think it is a remarkable story and symbolises one of the aspects that are so worrying about faith schools.

Faith schools have a reputation for being academically successful. If true, what do you think is the explanation?

chocolatelover the answer to your question is that visits to mosques, temples etc are treated as visits of 'cultural interest' - let's see what 'other' people believe. My problem with the church visit is that it is delivered as 'let's where we worship'.

It's the assumption that this is what we all believe that bothers me.

Richard Dawkins, we commit our children to "particular opinions about the cosmos and morality" every time we answer our 3 year olds' "why" questions or tell them not to behave in a particular way. You don't avoid indoctrinating children by avoiding the rituals of established religion.

Thank you BoiledEgg, my aims, if ever did start a school would be identical yours. I couldn't put it better than you have. Learn to evaluate evidence and form conclusions. That is all I ask. What have you read of mine that makes you think I have a skewed agenda?