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?

I went to a C of E school, because it was the best school in the area. My parents lied that they were church goers and attended church only to secure me a place. I would do the same if in that situation.

There was none of this, 'filling my head' with religion. We had RE lessons, as normal and sang hymns in assembley. That's as far as it went.

no - it's just wrong and dishonest

Oh god I hope not. I'm already lying about being married

haha, just caught up with this thread!

DC, I though you didn't trust statistics from the BBC?

And pmsl at Motherinferior's posts

(sorry Bomper, you were asking a serious question ).

I trust explicit numbers from the BBC, and given their bias, I use their figure since no one is going to accuse the BBC of making religion seem unimportant. The real figure is presumably smaller, inevitably since even with their superstition-friendly spin, the gap between the counting and the reporting means it has declined yet more before publication.

Ummm DC ... let me get this straight ... Because you're not "selfish and self-centred" you won't deprive your children of an education which will teach them to be like the other "mentally ill" religious people they will become friends with, while alienating them from you, their "evil" parents ...

Do you think it's perhaps you changed schools?

Choosing a school requires trade offs, and yes that means exposing DCs to superstition.
It's pretty mild at the school, and DSs are both very smart and self possessed. Hard to see them losing their free will. I've seen the opposition, and fear it not.
I don't think you build a good adult by wrapping the child in cotton wool. DS1 understands wishful thinking, and the ?horrible histories? have given an inkling of what the endgame of what happens when you give people like that power. He sussed out Bush all by himself.

Well, I wouldn't. Admittedly it's a long way off for me with DS being only 2, but I despise religion and disapprove of faith schools because they are discriminatory and divisive. If, when DS gets to the changing schools age, there isn't anywhere reasonable to get him into, then I'll home school him. Have no idea, incidentally, if the church schools round here are better or worse than the non-church schools. BUt home schooling sounds better than having him taught creationism, or abstinence-led sex education, or social discrimination, or homophobia...

DC, do you think that sending them to a church school is better or worse than an ordinary state school? And if so in which ways? Because if you're not into 'wrapping in cotton wool' then wouldn't it be better to let them tough it out in the ordinary state school system? Your posts leave me curious.

If I were a more-or-less-believer, sort-of churchgoer then I would probably be prepared to up my keenness quotient and attendance levels to get my DCs into the "right" school. Mind you, under those circumstances I'd probably be trying to keep it up anyway because one thing I do like about organised religion is the sense of community that can spring up around a good church.

As an active unbeliever, though, I wouldn't. But I don't object to other active unbelievers doing it if they feel it's right.

Don't know about C of E schools but catholic schools do not wrap the children up in cotton wool. Subjects such as death aren't hidden from them and as many have further to travel to school get used to using public transport at a fairly early age.

Regular churchgoers recognise when it is coming up to school application time as the church is packed with families of three year olds and ten year olds who will then sit at the front. The priests/vicars aren't daft they can see it coming as well.

Maybe I am wrong but could the faith schools be succeeding because the parents have actively chosen to send a child there and therefore are fully supportive of the school and its staff - the same probably applies to selective and independent schools

I went to a Catholic primary and a Catholic conven t school (because at the time my parents were practicing Catholics) and I was very happy at both - especially the primary school - but because I am lapsed and dh doesn't believe in any God or religion I didn't feel it was right to push ds towards a Catholic school. People pretending to be religious in order to get their child into a faith school might also think about how they may be depriving a bona fide Catholic child of a place.

The "cotton wool" thing doesn't apply just to playground fights, it's about how their thought processes grow. It's not enough to teach them the truth, they must be exposed to lies, wishful thinking and spun versions of events.

One thing I did in history was the "big lie", theory of propaganda. This worked for the European dictators of the mid 20th century. They of course got it from their Christian heritage.
An obvious parallel is the existence of Christ.
Even non-religious people have swallowed this, in spite of the quite striking lack of evidence. The Romans who were really into record keeping seemed to have missed him, and there exists not one single document of the time which mentions him. (unless you count the recently discovered grave of Christ...).
I'm dot saying he didn't exist, but there is no evidence either way.
The Old Testament is quite striking in that if anything there is a negative correlation between events and it's records. OK, the flood is a fairy story caused by ignorance of geology, but the huge events that best the Egyptians left no mark, no records or even the sort of discontinuity you'd expect.

Though like the grave of Christ, occasionally some Americans "find" the Noahs Ark. I recall about a dozen so far...

Thus religion will give my kids an insight intro how crap many people's thinking is, and how even quite smart people go along with the flow. That used to be out of fear of what superstitious mobs would do to you, but now, it's the long grind of politics.

Thus Christianity serves as examples how of

I would certainly go back to the fold but dh has banned me from doing so! also our local state school (primary) is good. I know loads of people who have done just that though - lots and lots. My s used a rental property as her home address just to get dc into good primary. I think it sucks but all ethics seem to go out the window when it comes to education - witness the present government - the PM, Ruth Kelly, even D Cameron is down for a church school.
Instead of Education, Education, Education. He should have said: Selection Selection Selection!

My children both go to a catholic school, none of us are catholic. When we applied I stated that we were not catholic on the form and left it at that. As a family we have never been to church, but of course the children do when at school, they rather like going in fact.

Regular attendance for 10 years(either weekly or fortnightly) is required for the local C of E secondary.

10 years rather gives the lie to the idea that there are "Christian children" doesn't it ?

In all these threads and in the news, I have never read of the kids themselves being asked if they were Christians.
Some kids decide they are Christian, others merely accept the label given to them by their parents. I had quite strong religious views at 11, most kids don't, and a few have distinctly non-christian views, but that is apparently irrelevant.
What we have here is a process quite divorced from the spiritual needs of children.

Seems to me that children with non-Christian parents should be actively solicited so they might be saved, but they aren't because what we have here is our taxes being used to bribe parents to go through the rituals of Christianity.

Nobody is forcing Christianity on anyone. Nobody has to attend.

Depends what you mean by forced, doesn't it ?
It seems to me that blackmailing parents by saying "attend church or your kids don't get to a good school" is hardly a free choice is it ?

Its perfectly reasonable for them to want children who go to their church to get first dibs.

Perfectly reasonable for them to want that, yes. But when a school is publicly funded I'm not sure that the wants of the church should be the be-all and end-all of the matter.

they are also quite heavily church-funded. 50% of the income of our church funds the local catholic primary school.

why is it they are so good anyway then?

You don't get faith hospital beds.
You don't get faith buses.
You don't get faith trains.

So please explain why we have to put up with the anachronism of faith schools.

But the percentage of the total costs of a school that is paid for by the church is relatively low (as opposed to percentage of the money raised by the church that goes to the school, which as you point out may be quite high).

No idea why they are so good (and they aren't always, of course). I could hypothesise that the really troublesome families are unlikely to be regular churchgoers, and the church schools therefore don't have to offer places to them, while the non-religious schools don't have the luxury of deciding who they want. But that's just an idea and I have no evidence for it one way or another.

UnquietDad, that's not the point. There are all kinds of different schools which have different requirements to get into them. It's not the same as a public bus service.

There are faith schools UD because some people want their children to learn religious education and because they have religious faith. Not everyone does so the schools are set up for people who want religion as part of their child's education.

The bigger question is why are these schools generally thought to be better and why do they seem to do so much better in league tables etc.?

DC, what the heck are you going to do if your kids like the school and the education so much that they take the opposite attitude to yours and think that people with no faith are the 'mentally ill'? I'm so puzzled as to why you sent your kids there. It can't just be so that they can learn that people have 'deluded' ideas?!