FAITH SCHOOLS! If you don't agree with them, step this way, my dears.

[onebatmother]

What can be done?

It seems to me that many of us don't agree with them, and some of us (not I) are quite knowledgeable about the ins and outs.

Could we not start a movement?

It's all so wrong, really, isn't it?

I agree with u snowleopard but that would be an even harder thing to impose

Swedes, perhaps there would be no need to abolish them. just don't fund them at all and provide ample schools for the rest. Then if anyone chose to go to a faith one and wanted to pay that would be ok.

Would that be acceptable to you or do you insist that we pay for your beliefs?

That's complete hogwash nametaken - I would rather home educate than send my child to be brainwashed by people who believe their version of "the Truth" is the only valid one and that they are somehow supernaturally contracted to persuade everybody else of this. Impressionable children in school - rich pickings for religious evangelism

Sadly for many families the choice is either a) to feign belief in something which makes no rational sense, or b) to incur considerable inconvenience to send their children elsewhere. And as others have pointed out, when chucrch school use cynical tactics to filter their intakes and cream off the most 'suitable' children, they are in essence skewing the intake of other local schools and making a mockery of the idea of parental choice.

And "choice" is enough of a mockery already without it being skewed even further.

quite

Has anyone else come across religion being pushed in a pre-school setting? e.g. singing of religious songs at nurseries and playgroups

Nametaken - actually my child WAS offered a place at a highly over-subscribed CoE school on the basis of his SEN - and I am very very grateful that they used their discretion to do that.

I would have sent him there too (in the end an appropriate community school also offered), and been happy. BUT that doesn't mean that I agree with the system that made that possible.

If you are saying that all faith schools should be abolished because you don't have faith, then that is just intolerant bollocks. The tax point has been covered above by other posters - there are loads of things that are not applicable to me but that are paid for by my taxes and it is a good thing - roll on diversity and all that.

If you are saying that everyone should have a choice as to what school their children go to and should not be forced to send them to a faith school then I absolutely agree.

But the solution to that is not to abolish all faith schools - baby and bathwater and all that - but to campaign for more schools.

I suspect that all this argument re faith schools is very distracting from the real issue and that your campaign would do better to focus on what it is you actually want ...

Leave the poor persecuted faithful alone - they've suffered enough!

LOL at the "poor persecuted faithless" - Christianity has more blood on its lovingly outstretched hands than any other movement in human history

faithful [freudian]

libidoless I don't think the argument here is that all faith schools should be abolished, but rather that they should not be funded by the state. If you want your child indoctrinated into your chosen faith or superstition, you should either do this at home or at a place of worship or pay for a faith school.

State education shouldn't be mixed up with the church.

I thought the faithful liked to be persecuted, thought it was all part of their religion and they would get their rewards for it in heaven...exept if they actually read their bibles right they would realise that they wont be going to heaven anyway and have wasted their time

Agree with Greeny too, poor persecuted faithful indeed! Most bloodshed in the history of humankind has been religiously motivated.

Not Christianty but people, individuals, have blood in their hands. Faith and religion provide a good excuse to it, but don't cause it. Same as football provides a good excuse for some violent individuals to behave like brutes, but nobody thinks of banning football.

cf Marana's post; "I am amazed at the general hostility towards Christians these days - not just on MN, in society in general, it does make me sad
Most of the practising Christians I know are generous, liberal, broadminded people...not hate-fuelled, bigoted snobs."

I think the faith schools issue isn't helping actually with people feeling tolerant towards Christianity. I feel far less tolerant towards Christianity lately because of this issue (and it's not actually affecting me massively on a personal level, we have been lucky enough to live near non faith schools, and my local secondary school isn't a faith school). But it makes me angry partly because most Christians that I know actually DON'T really believe in segregated education and encouraging middle class (mostly white) Christians into segregated schools. But they are putting up with it, I don't hear much complaining from the churches about the segregation and inequities which the established churches are perpetuating (documented in several recent reports).

There's no need to be so disrespectful, fiodyl.

Where are these indoctrinated children? If faith schools are 'indoctrinating' the children of non-religious parents, where are these new converts? Where are the parents complaining about their 14 year olds trying to drag them to church?

Footballers aren't mystically compelled to convert everybody else to the worship and practice of football at any cost. In terms of potential for engendering lashings of murderous violent atrocities, it's a pretty heady first premise to a belief system

And as for the 'Good News' Christians have nobly spread across the globe.....it seems largely to have consisted of measles, genocide and socio-economic servitude.

if you want the answer to your question girlfrommars, you need look no further than this thread.

exactly girlofmmars - I always say that the best prevention against becoming a religious fanatic in adulthood is to attend a religuous school as a child lol

ST why am I being disrespectful? I read the bible and thats what it said

"Footballers aren't mystically compelled to convert everybody else to the worship and practice of football at any cost"
They are worshipped all the same, and people beat each other up in their name.

UQD - "Faith schools are like schools which are ONLY for gay people, or ONLY for black people, or ONLY for ginger people, or ONLY for Taureans. In fact, they are worse - because you can at least prove you are gay (sort of), and you can definitely prove that you are black, or ginger, or a Taurus."

What about Arts Council funding then. Public money. Do the hoards on council estates benefit (or even know about it)?

How do you "prove" you are worthy of Arts Council funding?

Intolerance exists amongst believers as well as in non-believers. That is a fact, as this thread illustrates.