AIBU to think we need more ^inclusive^ education?

[LoveFoolMe]

AIBU to think we need more inclusive education? If children in a multicultural society such as the UK are educated together surely this promotes more tolerance and better mutual understanding.

So these proposals worry me:

Call to end limit on religious free schools

Considering how divisive and rigid religious attitudes can be, I think it's time to bring children from faith schools into mainstream schools and to encourage these children to mix with more diverse cultures.

Secular schools can still provide fact-based religious education in the classroom and would probably teach their students about a greater range of religions than a faith school would. Parents could, of course, provide a more personal approach to religion for their children outside of school hours if they wanted to.

Let's not further segregate our children by religion.

AIBU to think that reducing (rather than increasing) the number of faith schools in the UK would be far better for our children and far better for our society?

I didn't know about the Free Church wanting to create faith schools! I wouldn't send my DC to one but I'd be happy for anyone else who wanted to go

The problem I have with fairly fundamentalist teaching rogue is that their children are learning that their beliefs are superior to others'. 'What the Bible teaches, it accepts and believes. What the Bible does not teach, it rejects and condemns.' These are the children who we hope will participate fully in our society when they grow up.

I would much rather the next generation learnt to respect people of all faith and none.

My very limited experience of faith schools (one was in England) is that they are more caring towards their pupils.

Wouldn't it be possible to encourage that more caring attitude in non-faith schools? Does it depend on religious texts to do so?

Whether you agree with any exact teachings or not it seems to me we still have a lot to learn from them. Human nature doesn't change.

I'd certainly agree that we have a lot to learn from religion. However we should also be allowed to question religion. I would be surprised if Faith schools allow children to do that. Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong on that.

Our secular laws and moral framework exceed that laid out in the majority of religious texts....I wonder how this came to pass if morals outside of religion are tricky

Exactly!

Many/most Christian churches have evolved in line with current thinking.... examples of dubious morality found in religious scriptures

Don't you worry that some people take religious texts literally?

Either God didn't get that child sex was bad, or the people writing the scriptures didn't write down what God asked them too....either way around it doesn't look good for the scriptures being a moral guiding star.

Precisely

Learning from religion in general is about much more than slavishly following the details of a scripture

And yet fundamentalists do try to slavishly follow those details.

Both the bible and koran fumble on the softball question on whether slavery is wrong. A 10 year old knows the answer to these questions, yet our most revered books don't.

Exactly

Yes. And music schools 'discriminate' against children who aren't musically-gifted.

Stop confusing to clearly distinct concepts.

No, you don't discriminate against those musically ungifted. You are using that word in a way that is not done. Schools use their special exemptions for religious discrimination laws to discriminate in ways that are unacceptable everywhere else in society. That simply isn't the case with music.

Choosing children on their ability is entirely different than religious discrimination. How that is confusing is beyond me.

We all pay taxes for lots of services we won't use. How about tee-total muslims having to pay taxes to fund treatment needed as a result of over-indulgence in alcohol?

it's not that we don't use the services of a faith school - it's that we can't.

"Both the bible and koran fumble on the softball question on whether slavery is wrong. A 10 year old knows the answer to these questions, yet our most revered books don't.

Exactly"

Saw this claim earlier and meant to say something, but had other things to do, so glad to have the chance to come back to it.

In the ancient world, the world in which the Bible was written, slavery was the norm. It was widely practised and taken for granted. It is not surprising that no one of the the Bible's many writers says 'slavery is wrong and should be abolished', because slavery was an integral part of those societies.

In that context, the Bible has many interesting things to say. In Exodus, God brings the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. In the Mosaic Law provision is made for those who have sold themselves into slavery to repay debts to be freed in the jubilee year (every seventh year). When Paul addresses the duties of masters and slaves he is writing about a world where slave-owners had no legal obligations towards their property and where (in the Hellenic world where Paul spent most of his life) the word for slave was the same as the word for work - linguistically they were simply units of work, rather than human beings. Finally, one of Paul's companions, whom he regarded as a son, was a freed slave.

It's so easy to read our attitudes now back into history and say 'even a 10 year old knows slavery is wrong.' But a 10 year old in Rome would not have known it was wrong; nor a 10 year old in Britain in 1800; nor a 10 year old in the Confederate states in 1850.

We ourselves probably hold attitudes and regard things as natural that in the future will seem ludicrous. The question to ask of the Bible is not, does it replicate our own current attitudes - and if it doesn't, let's throw it away! - but, what can its stories and wisdom say to us now in our own historical situation.

This is what slaves in the Americas and Caribbean did when they drew inspiration for their own struggles from the book of Exodus. Of course, the Bible was also used to justify slavery. But it should not be forgotten that the repeal of the slave trade was brought about because Christians campaigned against it - convinced by their reading of the Bible, that this was the right thing to do.

In the ancient world, the world in which the Bible was written, slavery was the norm. It was widely practised and taken for granted. It is not surprising that no one of the the Bible's many writers says 'slavery is wrong and should be abolished', because slavery was an integral part of those societies.

You are right - it's not at all surprising that the writers of the bible/koran get this wrong. This is of course entirely compatible with the atheist world view: those books don't have any special insight into morality.

But that's not the religious point of view. Christians and muslims think those books are special, and that's putting it mildly. The surprising thing is not that the slavery isn't rejected in those books. The surprising thing is that those books are revered to the extent they are given they don't reject slavery.

Perhaps you could try reading the whole post?

We ourselves probably hold attitudes and regard things as natural that in the future will seem ludicrous.

of course. We get things wrong all the time, religious people and atheists alike.

The difference is that atheists don't claim any divine inspiration or infallibility of any kind. We have no inerrant holy book. So the fact that David Hume was sometimes wrong is fine with us.

But for followers of a holy book inspired by god, the fact that it gets the morality of slavery wrong should be a pretty big worry. If you think the bible is fallible, riddled with errors, and reflects the morality of bronze age people, you will get full agreement from me.

"Of course, the Bible was also used to justify slavery. But it should not be forgotten that the repeal of the slave trade was brought about because Christians campaigned against it - convinced by their reading of the Bible, that this was the right thing to do."

We have to be very careful with statements like this. It's not long ago that it was impossible to hold a position in public life in this country if you did not declare yourself a Christian. So it's skating on thin ice to claim any reform more than, say, 100 years ago, as specifically Christian inspired.

Of course, the Bible was also used to justify slavery. But it should not be forgotten that the repeal of the slave trade was brought about because Christians campaigned against it - convinced by their reading of the Bible, that this was the right thing to do.

so, what use is the bible then? it's seems like it was useful in arm twisting (positive and negative) those shackled by its confused view of the world.

I don't see why it's not considered a massive liability that a book, where one of its primary purposes is to teach us about morals, can be used to justify slavery as easily as the bible or koran can. The fact that the same book can then be used to justify slavery's abolition doesn't salvage it. it just makes that book morally confused, which is a far cry from what's claimed about these books by religious people.

"We have to be very careful with statements like this. It's not long ago that it was impossible to hold a position in public life in this country if you did not declare yourself a Christian. So it's skating on thin ice to claim any reform more than, say, 100 years ago, as specifically Christian inspired."

Well, except if you happen to have any historical knowledge at all. I refer you to the wiki page on the abolitionist movement in Britain which makes it clear that abolition was overwhelmingly Christian. It's not skating on thin ice at all, it's a claim backed by solid historical evidence. Don't be so absurd.

"reflects the morality of bronze age people"

Who are these bronze age people of whom you speak? The bronze age in the near east finished around 1000 BCE, while the earliest writings of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) date from 700-600 BCE, and the vast majority are much later.

"which is a far cry from what's claimed about these books by religious people"

I would consider that a more telling criticism if I could see any evidence of actually listening to what Christians have to say about the Bible.

"It's not long ago that it was impossible to hold a position in public life in this country if you did not declare yourself a Christian."

If you take a relatively long historical view, then 1890 is fairly recent.

I think you miss the point, niminy. But I don't care to be called "absurd"- so you'll forgive
me if I call it a day.

The trouble is that, if you're looking at the extreme good done by anti-slavery Christians, inspired by the bible, you really can't ignore the pro-slavery Christians, who also used the bible to justify their position, rightly or wrongly. This included slave ownership by some religious missionary societies.

That's the point people are making about the bible - it is sufficiently vague or inconsistent on numerous moral issues to be interpreted differently based on prevailing morality, or based on the goals of the person doing the interpreting. It's not that Christians haven't done good and moral things inspired by biblical teaching. It's that they've also done some really shitty things on the same basis.

As we're all using a law passed in 1944 as a justification for discriminating against five year olds, 1890 doesn't seem unreasonably distant.

Jassy I agree that we shouldn't ignore the bad -and I don't think, honestly, that I have. But that means not minimising the good, or pretending that it is in some way not connected to people's Christian convictions.

Why use the Bible - with all its difficulties and contradictions - as a tool to think about the present? Well if you believe that scripture is one way in which we meet God, then it will go on being relevant. Because God is always relevant. The task is to interpret it - and contrary to what so many atheists seem to think, that doesn't mean taking it literally.

Of course, we have more knowledge than the people who wrote the Bible, but do we have more wisdom? Wisdom isn't simply the shallow reflection of our contemporary nostrums. By looking past our contemporary prejudices we often find a deeper wisdom.

Hominy- I wonder if you would address my point about Jesus and Thomas? Or is that "absurd" too?

Of course - I'd forgotten about that point.

I think it becomes comprehensible when you think that the Gospels were written by people who had witnessed the resurrection (or knew people who had witnessed the resurrection) for people who hadn't. In this scene the writer of John has Jesus reassure those of his followers who had not witnessed the resurrection that they are blessed 'blessed be those who have not seen and have come to believe'. It's about the formation of the Christian community in the years after the ascension, and at a point where those who knew Jesus were beginning to die.

Why use the Bible - with all its difficulties and contradictions - as a tool to think about the present?

That's quite different from 'a source of morality or ethics', though. Which is what others have claimed.

'Is what I want to do and feel is right consistent with at least some bits of the bible?' is quite different from 'I can't figure out the right course of action or values so need to derive them from the bible.'

It's not that members of any religious faith think that their religious beliefs are 'superior' to others. They acknowledge that Christians believe x, muslims believe y etc.

In a faith school there will be a morning prayer to set your mind on a worthwhile intent, grace at lunch time to practice thankfulness, religious images reminding you of your worth as a human and the worth of all humans. There is a huge emphasis on trying to live ethically, a constant message that morality is hugely important.

It seems like a good thing to me.