Would you/have you started going to church to get child into a good church school?!

[Bomper]

My ds should pass his 11+, but I am not 100% confident he will. The comprehensive schools in my area are pretty awful, except one, which is a C of E school. Lots of parents have now started to go to church in order to be able to apply, and I am being urged to do the same. Most of me thinks - 'this is my childs future, I will do whatever it takes', but a small part feels guilty. WWYD?

As may be apparent, I am not a fan of religion, I don't have a specific problem with parents choosing to having it in schools.
But 90% of education is nothing to do with religion, and I don't see why churches should have any input over who gets taught where for this.
So why not bring back Sunday schools ?
Most schools do nothing at weekends, so there's facilities lying idle.

I think we all know why this will never happen.

Sunday schools have become so rare because when it actually requires some effort, parents simply can't be bothered to take their kids.
Not evidence of a strong demand for religious education is it ?

In many cases, the kids strongly resisted Sunday schoools.
Hmmm these are the same kids that are supposed to be Christians, aren't they ?
They're not, are they ?
They are children of parents who sort of believe a few things as long as it's not too much effort.

My biggest problem with religious schools is not religion, but the adults themselves.
Hardly ever do they talk of what is good for the kids. They nakedly push for keeping up the numbers of their sect, not even talking much about the souls of the children.

I might disagree with someone who thought it was good for kids to get religion, but I would respect a different position.
But that's not what we see at all. It's interests of other,s nad I am not impressed with people who screw with kids lives for their own purposes.

The whole "christian children" thing doesn't really hold up when you look at the evidence does it ?

DC the St Johns you are talking is a VC school so you don't have to have religion to get in if you live in the catchment area (they save about half a dozen places for churchgoers from a little further afield). It is set in the middle of some very nice houses perhaps that makes the difference compared with botttom of the hill.

BTW are you thinking ahead for secondary where you have to have ten years church attendance for one of the nearby schools although the alternatives are pretty good.

My DD goes to Sunday School (At church not at a school) and she loves it.I loved Sunday school as a child. Which children hate it?

Well, I was made to go for a bit and I hated it. I'm sure I'm not alone.

my dd loves it too!!

can i ask - do most of the argumenst here also refer to public schools?

with regards to elitism issues and segregation and non entry to non religeons also could be transferred to ppublic schools eh?

I love the fact that my dd goes to a religious school. I don't want her to go to a non religious school.

end of.

There isn't any reason to do away with private (I think you call them public schools) the parents who send their children there pay for it, not the tax payer.

paulapb - are vicars really as good as you say at weeding out the false religious? What sort of things do they look for? (Or are you not at liberty to say, hee-hee?)

It would be funny if people had to continue attending church after getting the school place. Every weekend without fail, till your child leaves. 12 years of church.... I imagine that would put a few people off.

There's church and there's church, of course. The sleepy village church to which my parents dragged me along on Sundays, and at which I was the youngest there by about 20 years, didn't really bother me unduly and I let it all wash over me. But the bouncy, singalong, packed-to-the-rafters evangelical places which friends have occasionally talked me into visiting since.... brrrrrrr. I felt scared. It was very akin to being at a rave and being the only person not on drugs (albeit with better music )

donnie - Tell us what's good about it, rather than just saying "end of" like you are Trisha or something.

I imagine long term attendance, I imagine even long term C&E attendance is preferable to people who start showing up just before their little angel's start school.

I imagine then that you'd all be happy with your local hospital suddenly becoming, say, an CofE hospital that refused to treat Catholics or Muslims (but it's Ok, because there is another one five miles away that only treats Catholics) Or your local bus service making half its buses Catholics only? Or half the trains to the nearest big city being reserved for Muslims? I very much doubt it.
Or suppose your local school only admitted the children of Labour party supporters, because politically minded people wanted their children to imbibe those values at school and felt they had a right to expect the school to back up their political beliefs?

In the States there are loads of Religious Hospitals. They admit everyone of course. Its not really the same thing is it?

I have already said that I would not mind in the least if there were schools that were only for naturist,humanist,vegetarian whatever.

But the schools are supposed to be for the children, not the adults.

And what about if half of all primaries were to become political schools? Would that be a good thing?

yes school is for children

I saw that confusedandignorant, which is why I saw it's problems as the headmaster not religion. It was he who made the point about the "special treatment" of the non-Christian kid.The CoE label used with St. Johns is not relevant, crap headmaster is.

paulaplumbottom, I see your point about even more diverse schools, but again I ask what about the kids ?
How many of us shared the same views on vegetarianism, religion, politics et al with our parents ?
Why is there this idea that kids must share the same ideas as their parents. I'm paying a lot of money to ensure they have better ideas than me. To me that necessarily means different. I don't expect them to adopt hard line liberal views on economics, or my entirely nihilist views on the ultimate fate of us all.
Many of my political view on *for instance) we forged in the 1970s, hard to think they have much use for someone in the 2030s.
I know it's unpopular to say, but parents demonstrate little ability to make good choices for their kids in education.
Some do, but the term "right by accident" comes to mind very quickly.
Most simply have no basis for making any decision through their lack of education. We're in a world where 50% of kids go to university. It was 2.5 when I went, as it was for most parents.

DW and I have gobs of education, but that just makes it worse in a different direction
We can express strong and compelling arguments for all sorts of things. DW is a City lawyer so she's bloody good at this, but that doesn't make us right.

Aloha - I'm with you on those analogous situations. You won't get a decent answer. I've tried!

In answer to the OP no I wouldn't. I would consider sending ds to a faith school if he wanted to go there but I would not pretend that we have a faith.

Its up to parents to show their children the best path in life. You and I probably agree what the best path is. Maybe you are right and one day she won't be religious at all. If thats what she decides thats fine, its her decsion. Yours might be an evangelical pastor. Right now she is only little and I have to be the one to make those sorts of descions for her and I feel that this is the best path.

Sorry I meant to say that we probably disagree

Ah, now the political analogy is a better one I think. With the whole bringing children up in a particular ethos thing. Much better than Sheffield Wednesday . Political beliefs are life-shaping too IMO.

I have no answers, because as I have said before, I don't like the idea of faith schools myself.

Aloha, if faith schools didn't already exist, I accept it would probably not be a good idea to invent them. But they do exist for all sorts of historical reasons, and they can't just be abolished for all the reasons I explained lower down the thread, principally because the land and buildings don't belong to the state and never have.

We're not talking about large numbers of existing secular schools suddenly becoming church schools. Most church schools have only ever existed in their current form, often long before there were any secular alternatives. They are an integral part of the historical development of our education system, and lots of people clearly still value what they provide. They can't just be abolished overnight, just because of the relatively recent developement of a vocal minority who object to the religious aspects of British public life.

To be fair, when this came up before, I was using the "political school" thing as a potential comparison. And I have done here too. I only went with the football thing to be a bit more contentious. But yes, political comparison is excellent. Especially as religion and politics have so much in common! In fact, at times they seem to overlap hugely...