Apathy Sketchpad

Recently, the Government released a document called Faith In The System, which was a good title because it simultaneously describes the problem, the proposed solution, and what I lost whilst reading it. I’ve done a previous entry, more immediately after the document was published, which covered faith schools more generally. I suspect most of it will be covered here, but there’s the link if you want it. This entry is more concerned with a very wordy correspondence on the subject, which is so lengthy that it belongs firmly after what I understand is called “the fold” in blogger jargon. Right, that’s (according to my understanding of internet marketing) 80% of my audience gone, so let’s get down to business. I should say that I’m usually quite prepared to see both sides of an argument, and very often find myself arguing a middle-ground, but I can’t see any good in faith schooling. I see it as a unilaterally Bad Thing, which should be stopped. When the government decide to spend my money making more of it, I am not going to sugar-coat that opinion. I’m not going to pretend that there is another, equally valid side to this argument. There isn’t. Faith schooling is bad and that’s it. It really is that simple. In the interests of fairness, though, I have reproduce, in full, the government’s response to my letter as well, as well as linking to their 20-page rambling publication at the top of the page. I think that’s going above and beyond what’s required of me to maintain my blogging integrity.

Here is, the email I wrote to the Department for Children, Schools and Families (which is a very strange name for a department pushing a policy detrimental to schools and children — and arguably families, especially in the long run) through this contact page:

Sirs,

I have read your latest publication, Faith In The System, and I feel strongly that the policies and ideas laid out in it are fundamentally flawed on several very important levels. I believe it seeks to downplay the differences between faith schools and secular schools and I believe that it unquestioningly treats any and all religious belief as A Good Thing. There are also a number of specific points which I take issue with and I would like to know what the defence for them is.

“we recognise that … it is only fair that pupils … have the opportunity to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents.” (page 3)

This gets pretty close, I think, to the heart of the matter. I believe that a religious upbringing can be very detrimental to a child. I know several people whose lives have been made extremely difficult by a conflict between what they want and an arbitrary and quite baseless belief which they hold as a direct result of being indoctrinated with their parents’ religion. This, I would argue, constitutes bad parenting and is only the thin end of the wedge. I don’t believe that we can stop bad parenting but I do think that providing state funding for it is reprehensible.

I believe that the only person who has any right to decide what religion, if any, a child should follow is the child himself, and your stated ambition to allow children the “opportunity” (in fact a requirement, since at no stage is the child given any say) to be educated by representatives of their parents’ religion goes against that right. A parent may wish that their child is caned in school — they may even have a religious text that advocates this practice — but we should not grant them that wish. The parents’ wishes are irrelevant if they conflict with the rights of the child.

“Whether or not they have a religious character, all maintained schools are required by law … to hold a daily act of collective worship” (pages 9, 10)

This is very similar to the point above. Collective worship, indeed worship of any kind, is an act of indoctrination. I understand that parents have the right to opt their children out of this act of worship, but that right belongs to the child, not the parents. This ludicrous rule also means that while a Muslim group is allowed to set up a Muslim faith school, an atheist group would not be allowed to set up an atheist school, and a secularist group would not be allowed to set up a secular school. This places religions — all religions — above atheism, agnosticism and secularism.

Religious beliefs are often arbitrary (do no work on Saturdays), dangerous (contraception is a sin), needlessly cruel (Halal meat), intolerant (Sharia), ignorant (creationism) or all of the above. Such beliefs, when they cannot be backed up with evidence, are a selfish and irrational basis on which to make any decision which will affect the lives of people who may not themselves share those beliefs, and as such there are some things ought to be treated in a wholly secular way. I believe that all publicly funded ventures, especially education and government, must be made secular if the rights of non-religious people are to be upheld. To make decisions about how to spend my taxes based on the unsupported creation myths of long-dead men from times and cultures far removed from modern Britain is outrageous.

Collective worship, particularly when mandatory, is also bad because a school exists to prepare a child for life. This involves teaching the child many important things about science, mathematics, the world of work, sex, geography, art, music and language. By introducing the child to ideas he is likely to see in later life and showing him the wide variety of religious cultures which exist, RE lessons form an important part of that, helping children learn understanding and tolerance towards people with other faiths. However, all school lessons are ultimately based on facts. As such, the school is an environment where a child learns. Introducing religious ‘teachings’ into that environment has the effect of equivocating them with the teachings in the science or mathematics classroom, and discourages pupils from questioning them. This is not, as your document claims, “exploring … their own beliefs” (page 10): it is teaching them their parents’ beliefs. It is quite wrong for the state to have a hand in that. I personally believe that it’s more than slightly wrong for it to happen at all.

“His Divine Holiness” (page 11)

It may or may not be the case that followers Hindu would consider this man ‘holy’. I do not, and nor, as a department, should you. He is just a man, with the same rights and privileges as any other. I do not feel it is appropriate for a government department to refer to anybody as “His Divine Holiness” or similar, as this implies that the government regards him as somehow better than other people. I consider it mildly offensive. To refer to him simply by his name would not be an act of disrespect against him or against Hindu in general and the government should not be afraid to do so. I feel that a government should treat — and refer to — its citizens as equals.

“Specific statutory provisions exist to enable the governing bodies of schools with a religious character to secure the faith character of the school. Voluntary aided schools are able to have regard to a person’s faith when making a teaching appointment and considering a teacher’s remuneration or promotion; and in the future will also be able to have regard to a person’s faith when making a support staff appointment” (page 12)

I found this statement particularly offensive. This means that there are jobs — and publicly funded jobs at that — which I would not be considered for purely because I am an atheist. That is the worst kind of religious discrimination: I could legally be turned down for a job which I may be perfectly qualified to do, purely on the basis that I do not believe that a carpenter’s son walked on water and rose from the dead. In effect, a delusion can now be made a job requirement. This state of affairs seems to me to be quite indefensible.

“The Government recognises and supports the right of faith schools that are their own admission authority to give priority for some or all of their places to children from the faith concerned when they are oversubscribed.” (page 16)

Similarly, there are now schools which would discriminate on the same way between prospective pupils, only in this case the discrimination is based on the child’s parents’ faith. I can see no possible defence for such a thing. If such basic rights are violated by an idea, in this case faith schools, then that ought to suggest that it is a bad idea. Suspending the usual discrimination laws for special cases is never the correct solution. This statement also perpetuates the quite false idea that “a faith” is somehow hereditary.

In summary, I consider that the current system is far from ideal and I find that the ideas and policies laid out in your latest publication represent a step away from that ideal. The idea that religious “teachings” are wholly or partly publicly funded or sanctioned I find wrong, the idea that they are allows — much less formally required — to exist in schools I find even more worrying, and the idea that parents, not children, have a right to choose which, if any, children receive is tantamount to child cruelty. This document outlines a policy which goes against anti-discrimination laws, against public opinion (see: http://www.learning-together.org.uk/docs/quotesPolls.htm), and against rational though.I would like to know why such policies exist and what, if any, defence can be put forward for them.

Yours,

Andrew Taylor

This is the reply I got, 23 days later (some details have been removed but the body text is unedited):

Dear Mr Taylor

Thank you for your email dated 23 September faith schools and religion. Ministers receive a vast amount of correspondence and cannot always respond personally. On this occasion I have been asked to reply.

I was interested to read your views and suggestions for how you feel education could be improved. Therefore I suspect you will be disappointed to learn that Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights respects the right of parents to ensure education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions. There are no current plans to change the statutory basis of RE. It is a matter for individual schools to determine how they organise the school day, and officials are currently working with the RE community to drive up standards.

I should add that parents are responsible in law for ensuring that their children of compulsory school age (5-16) receive an efficient full-time education. This can either be by regular attendance at school or by education otherwise. The Government wish to increase the choice available to parents and, as long as parents continue to request a faith based education for their children, Ministers wish to enable them to make that choice within the state system.

The Government remain committed to supporting the establishment of new schools by a range of providers – including faith organisations - where local consultation has shown that this is what parents and the community want, and where this greater diversity will help to raise standards. Nonetheless, I can assure you that all maintained schools, including faith schools, must deliver a broad and balanced curriculum. Overall, the national curriculum seeks to provide all young people with the skills to continue to learn throughout life; to be inquisitive, independent thinkers; to be problem solvers; and team workers. For example, the science programmes of study set out the legal requirements of the science national curriculum. These programmes of study focus on the nature of science as a subject discipline, including what constitutes scientific evidence and how this is established. Students learn about scientific theories as established bodies of scientific knowledge with extensive supporting evidence, and how evidence can form the basis for experimentation to test hypotheses.

Furthermore, citizenship education addresses issues surrounding social justice and human rights. Pupils look at the diverse nature of the UK and the need for mutual respect and understanding. It helps young people to develop their critical skills, consider a wide range of political, social, ethical and moral problems, and explore opinions and ideas other than their own. Citizenship is a compulsory part of the secondary curriculum, and part of a non-statutory joint framework at primary level, so all pupils at maintained schools, including maintained faith school, will be taught these concepts. This means that whilst faith schools are permitted to teach according to the tenets of their faith, this is against a backdrop of teaching about respect, tolerance and understanding.

It is the Government’s view that RE in all schools, including faith schools, contributes to developing pupils’ knowledge, understanding and awareness of the major religions represented in the country. This encourages respect for those holding different beliefs and helps promote pupils’ moral, cultural and mental development. The law requires schools to take all practicable steps to ensure that, where political or controversial issues are discussed, pupils are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views. Parents, whether they hold a faith or not, still expect their children to understand the meaning of worship.

Once again thank you for writing.

Yours sincerely

P
Public Communications Unit

Your correspondence has been allocated the reference number 2007/xxxxxxx. To correspond by email with the Department for Children, Schools and Families please contact x@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk

If you have any further queries why not browse our Popular Questions website. This site has been built to allow you to quickly find the answer to your question http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/popularquestions

The first thing that struck me was that, yes, I am disappointed to learn that Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights explicitly denies children their right to a balanced education. Here’s the article in full:

No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religions and philosophical convictions.

That’s an awful law. I’m not at all certain that the mandatory teaching of evolution can be justified if that law is taken as a fundamental human right. (I’m vaguely concerned that it consists of two sentences which arguably contradict each other.) Quite aside from that, there’s really no reason to assume that parents’ religions and philosophical convictions aren’t stupid. Parents aren’t special; they’re just people. Many of those people are only parents specifically because they were too stupid to operate contraception (or more relevantly because they were sufficiently gullible to believe that it’s evil). I was talking to someone the other day who refused to accept the idea that he existed at all.

The second thing that struck me was that there’s no particular evidence that anything I wrote was read. The “Public Communications Unit” (which is a strange name for a unit that doesn’t apparently read the public’s letters) defended RE, which I described as “important”, defended the government against accusations about creationism that I didn’t make, and attacked the idea that faith schools breed intolerance, which I didn’t promote (although perhaps I should have). At the same time, no mention was made of my argument about the selective suspension of discrimination laws, the damage done to people’s lives by their indoctrination into religion, the illegality of secular schooling, or the fact that the child’s parents are the sole arbiters of their child’s religious influences.

Also I noticed that he said “[faith schools] must deliver a broad and balanced curriculum,” which is a noble aim and all, but it’s ridiculous to find a group who are, almost by definition, predisposed to offer unbalanced teaching and let them run a school. Aside from the fact that if they were really forced to offer a balanced curriculum they wouldn’t bother running schools (since there’s nothing much to be gained replicating a service the government provides for free), the curriculum on offer is not the problem: the problem is the acts of indoctrination that occur alongside the curriculum, and the blurring of the lines between the two.

The other worry here is that the reply email didn’t in any way defend faith schooling, except in the vaguest possible way. Similarly, the original document never really said why faith schools were a good thing. It really just repeatedly asserted that they were. It’s a statement of intention rather than one of position, so that’s perhaps fair enough, but I would hope that there is, at least, some justification somewhere for this policy that could be dug out and forwarded to me. I specifically asked for that justification and not only was none provided, but no mention was made of the request.

Instead, a few unspecified straw-man arguments were demolished. Now I don’t think that’s enough — even if I’d made those arguments, a position cannot be defended purely by demolishing opposing arguments. You still have to have some reason to hold the position you do.

I feel like I’ve been fobbed off somewhat here, and I’m also in the unusual position of wanting to know what I have to do to have specific human rights provisions revoked.