Apathy Sketchpad

I’ve just read two articles on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website. One is by AC Grayling, who likes secularism, and the other is a response by Soumaya Ghannoushi, who doesn’t, or more accurately, doesn’t like what she terms “militant secularists”:

This brand of puritanical secularism is little more than inverted religion. It substitutes reason for god, science for theology, relentless progress for original sin and human fall. Its followers see secularism not as mere separation of religion and politics, or as state neutrality vis a vis matters of faith and belief. To them, it is a set of dogmas to be embraced willingly or imposed coercively by the force of the state.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of the “militant secularism” I know, but I shall ignore that. I think the major problem stems from a disagreement about what the new headscarf reforms in Turkey mean: Grayling says that “Turkish Islamists are encouraging more women to hide that automatic trigger of unbridled male lust, the tresses on the female head”, whereas Ghannoushi says “those genuinely committed to civil liberties and individual freedoms would applaud the relaxing of an oppressive law that denies women their basic right to decide their dress”. Personally, I’m not going to comment on who is right — pretty clearly the ideal is that women should be allowed to wear whatever they like, but there’s every chance that without the headscarf ban 95% of wearers would be wearing them against their will, and in that situation I think a ban can be justified easily.

Grayling’s thesis was really much more wide-reaching than that:

If the Brian-sandalistas cannot succeed by direct assault, they will do it by constant nibbling and encroachments: prayers in American publicly-funded schools, headscarves in Turkish publicly-funded universities, a little bit of anti-evolutionary biology there, a little alcohol ban there – and if that doesn’t work, they try more robust means. So it goes: creep creep, whisper, soothe, murmur a prayer with the kids in assembly, ecumenicalise, interfaith-schmooze, infiltrate, subvert, complain, campaign, scream, threaten, explode.

And that’s the point. It’s all well and good Ghannoushi saying

This crude interventionism practised in the name of secularism in Turkey and France, and religion in Iran and Saudi Arabia can only be described as despotic. Individuals’ minds and bodies are not part of the state’s jurisdiction. The state is only the manager of citizens’ public affairs, not a judge of their consciences, appearances, habits, and preferences.

but in a society like Turkey, with a 99% Islamic population, if you have completely open democracy then there’s a very real possibility that people are going to vote for an alcohol ban, the death penalty for apostasy, a ban on dogs as pets, legalisation of forced marriage, and yes, a mandate to women about what they can wear on their heads, because what unites the people is their irrational conviction that a load of nonsense in a rather silly book, as well as a lot of other nonsense that even Mohammed never thought of, handed down by word of mouth, is How You Absolutely Should Live. And before you know what’s happening, you’re living under Sharia law in an Islamic state in all but name. And then they’ll vote to change the name. Because that’s what Islam is:

“Islam is not like Christianity. It doesn’t just aim to be practised in the realm of belief but also to regulate and rule the state,” — Omer Faruk Eminagaoglu, “chairman of the association of judges and prosecutors (Yarsav) and deputy to Turkey’s chief prosecutor”

The aim of a secular democracy then, cannot be to do what the people want, but to do what the general underlying values of the people dictate — just as in this country I don’t want the Chancellor of the Exchequer to do what the people think he should do; I want him to do what the people would think he should do if we were smarter and in possession of all the information and a good working knowledge of economics. Otherwise there’s no point in having anyone remotely qualified doing the job. You end up with lowest-common-denominator politics and the country’s de facto run by the editor of the Sun. (Frankly “tabloidism” can be treated as a religion for all practical purposes.)

The problem is, though, that if you have a large majority of one religion, it stands to reason that any candidate for government office would do well to make a big deal of subscribing to that faith. If they say things like “my religion guides my values and my values guide my politics” then he’ll do well in an election because he’s playing to something that’s seen as very important by the majority of the electorate — lowest-common-denominator again — but he’s just promised to act totally unsecularly. (That’s a word. Don’t say it isn’t.) And you end up living in a theocracy, no matter how secular the values enshrined in your law may be. You only have to look to America to see how strong this effect is. That Ghannoushi refers to this as “the neutral soft secularism of the United States” baffles me.

But what can you do? You can’t simply not tell the electorate what religion the candidates are; that would never even nearly work, and in any case it wouldn’t stop a candidate championing the teachings of their religion explicitly. You can’t demand that only atheists stand for office (or only atheists vote); again it’s unenforceable (unless perhaps you make the ballot out of ham) and it’s not exactly liberal. You can’t expect religious people, either government or voters, to set their faiths aside when making decisions, because it’s too big a part of who they are.

The problem isn’t secularism; the problem is that the religion exists in the first place. You can’t justly govern lunatics without recourse to the sane, and in a population 99% Islamic, you really have no baseline level of sanity to refer back to. Don’t get me wrong, in a pluralistic, multi-cultural society like Britain religion is mostly harmless and I think any attempt to stamp it out would fail and end up doing far more harm than good. The issue, though, is that if one of the many religions present in a society is somehow ‘fitter’ than the others, it will prosper. It’s easy to imagine a large majority of Muslims or Evangelical Christians establishing itself in such a society, feeding off the good-will towards faith that the other religions have fostered.

I believe that the only solution to this problem is to make sure that children are not indoctrinated with dogma. By all means they can be taught the various customs and traditions of their parents’ religion. But threats of eternal damnation or literal Earthly punishment, for breaking stupid and arbitrary rules are not okay. Of course we can’t legislate how parents raise children. (I have no particular ethical problem with that — it just wouldn’t work.) But we can grant them all the fundamental human right to an objective, neutral and secular education. With that in place, there’s not much parents can do to stop their children becoming tolerant and balanced members of society.

Religious parents will object to this, of course. Some non-religious ones will as well. They will say that they have a fundamental human right to raise their child any way they like. I say no. I say they don’t have the right to fuck up a child’s mind any more than they have the right to fuck up the child’s body. You can very easily totally ruin someone’s life before it’s even begun if you teach them to live in an imaginary version of the real world. They grow up and experience agonising dilemmas caused by a conflict between what they want and care about and some made-up rule implanted by their parents when they were small. I’ve seen it happen. But I think that children’s rights must always trump parents’ rights because they are in every way more vulnerable (although since parents can vote and children can’t this isn’t perhaps a view shared by everyone in government). So give them a decent secular education and I think they will, in the vast majority of cases, grow up to be balanced, liberal, tolerant people — even if they do still pay mostly-harmless lip-service to their faith. They’ll be a people who can be justly governed by democracy without religion taking over. Is that “crude interventionism”? Maybe. But I think it’s a good goal and a practical and fair means by which to achieve it.

See, Odone? I’ll see your choice of “faith schools or terrorism”, and I’ll raise you a choice of “secular education or Sharia law”. They’re both false dilemmas, of course, but I’d rather live in a secular democracy that gets bombed periodically than the peace that comes with the brutality of Sharia.

Almost exactly a month ago (yeah, yeah), the Centre for Policy Studies published “In Bad Faith”, rallying against… well, let’s let the author, Christina Odone, explain…

The witch hunt is on. A Government obsessed with phoney egalitarianism and control freakery is aligning itself with the strident secularist lobby to threaten the future of faith schools in Britain.

I shall defer responding to this to the rather brilliantly ranty article published by Andrew Copson in the Guardian:

Few apart from than Odone can have noticed this dangerous development. Under Labour governments since 1997 more new state-funded faith schools have opened than under any other government, and there is no sign that this increase is being stemmed or about to be. Certainly no evidence for such a change of direction is presented in today’s pamphlet, a mish-mash of anecdote, selective factoids and non-sequiturs (”The schools are not divisive. Not one of the 72 British citizens convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a faith school.”).

So what’s the problem?

[Faith schools] are out with Gordon Brown.

The Prime Minister may acknowledge that his faith is important to him. But so is his standing with the Labour party – all the more so given his record-low popularity with the voters. Gordon Brown knows that for the ‘Old Labour’ rump of the party, equally committed to secularism and comprehensive education, faith schools are anathema. Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’ were ready to ignore this constituency, but Gordon Brown cannot afford to.

It occurs to me that what people voted for in the last election was not faith schools, not Blair, nor Brown, but it was Labour. If Labour are largely against faith schools then surely Odone is accusing Brown of nothing more than keeping the promise Blair reneged on?

Here is her example of a faith school that’s good:

In contrast to the graffiti that covers the neighbouring buildings, and the litter on the streets and pavements, the Sir John Cass complex is impressively tidy and clean. Youngsters (the school is co-ed) in navy blue uniforms walk briskly but quietly in the corridors, greeting teachers with ‘Hello Sir’ or ‘Hello Miss’. When they spot the head, Haydn Evans, they fall silent to attention. It is easy to understand their awe: when one boy arrives with his tie askew, Evans, eyebrow raised, picks him up on it: ‘Where’s your uniform?’

He sounds like a dick who rules by fear to me. I mean, I’d hate to generalise just from that, but it’s hardly convincing me that faith schools are worth the rampant discrimination and segregation required to sustain them. In any case, this is a Church of England school with 60% Muslim students (just like most faith schools, I’m unwilling to bet), and yet they persist in the pointless and rather silly charade of having a little prayer that most of the students don’t believe in. If this school, with students from a broad mix of (parents’) faiths, is the best example in favour of faith schools you can find, surely that’s an argument against them? At least it’s an argument against the aribtrary suspension of discrimination laws for their special case?

After this she bangs on for a while about the good results faith schools get in league tables. Now I don’t know a lot about schools, but I do know a bit about science. I know that you can’t just say they’re good because “they account for a third of all primary schools but make up almost two-thirds of the top 209 primaries”. That could mean anything. It could mean that selection works. It could mean they’re largely in areas where people get good results. You have to compare them with a matched control group, not just every other school. That’s a meaningless comparison.

In any case, to be frank I’d not be at all surprised if faith schools gave good exam results. I just think that those good exam results will be on the CVs of fucked up children. That, to me, isn’t progress. I for one would rather my children, should I ever have any, grew up to be well-balanced people with poor grades than unlikeable conservative nerds. Obviously I’m exaggerating, but it’s the children of ultra-religious people who need secular education most, and saying “if you don’t like it, pick another school” is like saying “let’s legalise murder, and if you don’t like it, don’t kill anyone”: it very much misses the point. Faith schools are a Catch-22: the people who want them are the people it is most important shouldn’t get them.

She also makes an appeal to populatity, saying

Among Christian parents, faith schools are so popular that they are allegedly pushing their children into late baptisms to secure places at these schools. Meanwhile, parents who were turned away from over-subscribed faith schools refuse to accept the alternative: about 70,000 appeals are launched each year.

But this is also misleading: the public in general are against faith schools. Parents want their kids to go to good schools. They don’t care what religion that school is.

In chapter two, Odone makes a poor attempt to address the idea that selection may be responsible for the better results:

Critics maintain that faith schools use the admissions procedure to usher in a better-off intake. As evidence, they point to the schools’ under-representation of children on Free School Meals (FSM)…

But the National Audit Office warns that FSM do not necessarily serve as the best proxy for poor income. Its reservations were corroborated by research carried out last year for the Centre for the Economics of Education.

Fair enough perhaps, but let’s not forget you’re happy to use league tables against a hopelessly unmatched control as a proxy for efficacy. Besides, she’s in favour of selection:

To the Government, as Ed Balls’s attack revealed, a request for a marriage certificate as part of an application form is an ignominious attempt to flush out single mothers. To the Orthodox Jewish school, it is the only way to verify that both parents are born Jews.

Yes, but here in Britain we don’t stand for that kind of shit. Born Jews? That’s not “maintaining the religious ethos of the school”, that’s racism. I’d think Jews, of all people, would know better than that. She lists other, similar examples, which yes, do ensure that the school’s religious makeup is controlled, but plainly also act as proxies for performance selection.

Chapter four (chapter three saying nothing of any consequence) again opens with what Odone wrongly considers a lovely story about what she hopefully-wrongly perceives to be one of the better faith schools. Since the schools featured are her choice from the minority of ones that responded, from the minority of ones she contacted, I dismissed it out of hand. After that she starts explaining the idea that Muslim students or their parents might be offended by many aspects of what she quite wrongly describes as our “secular” state school system. These include “gym where their modesty is affronted” — believe me, at secondary school I would have liked little more than a decent affront to modesty in gym class and it really doesn’t happen — and “the school trip to a farm where they might come into contact with a pig” — which did happen. It was a Gloucester Old Spot. It wasn’t scary or offensive in the least. Of course, I’m not a Muslim, but screw them; if they want to complain about the prospect of their child maybe meeting a pig then they should have a better reason than “oh, we just don’t like pigs”. But Odone says that “feeling misunderstood or rejected by their peers at school, and frustrated in their ambitions beyond it, these youngsters are likely to be receptive to radical messages.” People will blow up trains because they met a pig? Are you serious?

Next is her observation, if you can call it that, that “not one of the 77 convicted on terrorism charges since the Terrorism Act 2000 attended a Muslim school”. What the Guardian article didn’t tell me was the comedy gem hiding after the semicolon: “one, Ader Ahmed, was home-schooled.” So basically he went to a really small faith school? I’m against home-schooling too. That plays right into my existing prejudice. (I realise the pamphlet isn’t aimed just at me, but then, I tend to think that people who share one opinion with me probably share other related ones too.)

Next, she starts implying that the alternative to proper Muslim schooling is little girls being packaged off to Pakistan to marry close relatives:

“The Drugs sex and rock and roll scene is not an option for Muslim girls,” Humeira Khan points out, “or if it is, it sparks huge conflict. So suddenly marrying them early or sending them home [to Pakistan or Bangladesh] becomes a huge pressure.”

Trust me, it’s not an option for anyone at school. Did you never even watch The Inbetweeners? Unless you’ve been sitting up all night watching Skins, which frankly raises even more worrying questions, there’s no reason to be afraid of what happens in the average British school. I’d be far more concerned about the effects of a Muslim education on a young girl. If that results in some people sending their children to more illiberal countries, I think we have to accept that as a consequence of being ahead of the rest of the world. Lead by example. You know or “liberate” Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The fifth chapter (by which point I was skipping the “example” schools entirely) points out that far from “educational ghettos where Christian children learn about Creationism and Muslim children about jihad, while Jewish children are taught they alone are Chosen People” (an accusation I would never make — they’re not educational! Ho ho!), “faith schools in the state system must follow the National Curriculum, including Citizenship education.” Well that’s swell and all, but — and again I don’t know a lot about schools so this may be totally wrong — surely a school which actually is pluralistic, multicultural and inclusive is going to be more effective than a school which is monoreligious, monocultural and exclusive, with a lesson (eating up an hour a week of expensive teaching time) in place to teach students tolerance as if it’s something that can be examined? Odone points out that “all maintained schools are under an ‘obligation’ to promote community cohesion,” but that doesn’t mean they actually do it. The government could mandate that all bank clerks must fly to work on jetpacks, it wouldn’t make it so.

Chapter six, ‘Smears’, mentions creationism. Odone claims that creationism in Britain is basically a myth:

Creationism, then, is not a wild fire sweeping the country’s schools; it is not taught in science classes in place of, or as an alternative to, evolution. Instead, Creationism is taught, in a handful of schools, as part of their study of the Bible in RE. Those Christian students who subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible will believe that God made the world, and man, in seven days; but thanks to the National Curriculum they will also know that science has proved otherwise. In this way their Christianity has to accommodate their learning.

Channel 4 say otherwise. And so does the scary Jewish headmaster in their film.

After that there is a summary saying “as we have seen, the charges against faith schools can be
dismissed one by one” which as I think we have seen, she didn’t actually do with any kind of success.

And that’s why she’s awarded this month’s Crackpot title.

A few days ago, a reader sent me a link to this Channel Four report. It’s a five minute video, so here it is:

There are some scary quotes in there, but the stats are worse. From their own survey, 80% of 50 Muslim, Jewish and ‘accelerated Christian education’ schools taught Creationism as fact and ignore evolution. Of those, five were state-funded schools. That’s 74% of 19 Jewish schools, 100% of 21 Evangelical schools and 50% of 10 Islamic schools. None of these schools is breaking a law*, although of course Paul Kelley would have been had he been reckless enough to educate in a secular way. The law, as has been mentioned, is an ass.

Personally, I think the best argument for teaching evolution in schools is that it’s the only way I know that you can make biology into a passably interesting subject. I for one always found it crushingly dull — because it was mostly a list of information presented in a “here’s what happens; don’t ask why, just learn it” kind of a way. Throw in evolution and you can explain why these things happen. You can talk about DNA and all the weird ways genes try to get copied. You can tie biology in to all kinds of other subjects much more effectively. I’m sure you can teach vast tracts of biology without mentioning genes or evolution, but I defy you to make it interesting.

That aside, the best reason I know of not to teach Creationism is simply that it’s patently false. Of course, Creationists won’t accept that, so a better argument is that there is no evidence to support it (because it’s so false). The only argument in favour is the whole stupid “parents’ rights” thing. And I do accept that parents have a right to educate their children in whatever way they want — but I think they should be made to look up the word “educate” before they start paying someone to preach at them, because filling impressionable young minds with damaging lies to promote an ideology is nothing more or less than exploitation — and it’s not even for personal gain: we’re talking about exploitation for the sake of an abstract concept. And I think it’s utterly abhorrent that the government would fund this.

I blame the parents for this. They should be outraged if their kids are being taught such bullshit, and they should get something done. The government are also in the wrong, of course, but you can hardly expect the government to act if the people don’t care. (You know, because the government only ever does what the people want.) People listen to parents. God knows why.

I’m not against the ides of schools being different and parents having choice. I’m not against the idea that some of those differences might be based on a religion — a school aimed at Muslims that makes sure the textbooks don’t have illustrations in articles about Mohammed, or a school aimed at Jews that only serves kosher food, that’s fine. And hopefully the genuine followers of those religions would be able to get places in those schools, because since all schools would be required to teach the same curriculum non-religious parents presumably would just pick the nearest school, or the one the kid’s friends were going to. The moment you let them teach different things then the idea of “choice” becomes an illusion: when you’re presented with one good school and one bad school, you don’t have a choice. Everyone with a brain will try to get into the good school and then you’re back to pot luck (or selection, if it’s a faith school). It’s just the same as the ridiculous claim made by the Department of Health the other day, that “operation success rates help patients choose treatment”. Their theory is that by publishing statistics on survival rates at different hospitals, they give patients a choice. No, you don’t. You just make life difficult for everyone, and worry people who can’t get into the best one. The stats should be public, certainly, but not for that reason. I think that all schools and hospitals should be good enough that you don’t care which one you use, and I think that if they’re not then you should fix it rather than shifting the onus onto patients and parents to find an acceptable one.

More to the point, if it’s legal to teach Creationism, that must mean there is no requirement for schools to teach facts that are true.

But of course, I don’t get a say. Because I don’t live in Normanton. If I did, I’d be allowed to vote against Ed Balls’ continuing reign of lunacy over the Department of Children, Schools, Families and Kittens, or whatever they’re calling Education now. (Honestly, the system of government we have here is utterly mad if you look into it for any length of time.)

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* According to the video, anyway. My understanding is that the teaching of evolution is compulsory in publicly funded schools, but I don’t know where I can find an authoritative source of information.

Tony Blair, recently succeeded by Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and Theos as Religious Crackpot of the Month, thinks that religion is important even if you subscribe to one of the wrong (i.e., not his) ones. This, to me, seems perverse, but apparently there are others who share this slightly obtuse idea. I read about this case earlier today. It’s from the Scarborough Evening News, which fairly obviously I don’t read myself. I saw it via. the National Secular Society’s press feed.

A former nun, whose son was turned away from Scarborough’s only faith secondary school, will appeal against the ruling next month.

 

Caroline Brookes… applied for her 10-year-old son Soony, who is a Buddhist, to attend St Augustine’s Roman Catholic School… However the local authority told her he will be starting at Raincliffe School…, instead.

…

St Augustine’s School was heavily oversubscribed this year, with 155 children applying for the 86 places available. Mrs Brookes will appeal against the decision on June 13. She will have to convince an independent panel that St Augustine’s School is the right school for her son. Soony currently attends St martin’s Church of England School…

Mrs Brookes said: “St Augustine’s School is the only faith secondary school in this area so it would provide the right environment for Soony. What is the point in having a local faith school if only catholics can attend?”

I’ve stripped out a lot of the pointless paragraph breaks that all news websites seem to insert between every sentence regardless of whether or not they make any sense (presumably to create the illusion of impact and length). I’ve left in the dodgy punctuation and apparently random capitalisation, though. I presume the Scarborough Evening News isn’t a very impressive publication. I also stripped out all the addresses, since I figured you probably don’t know the area. Anyway. I guess the part I can’t get my head around is this quote:

What is the point in having a local faith school if only Catholics can attend?

It’s a Catholic school! Why do you want your non-Catholic son going to a Catholic school? Soony says

At Raincliffe there is nowhere I can sit and pray. At St Augustine’s there is a special prayer room, which is really nice. Also all my friends are going to St Augustine’s. No-one I know is going to Raincliffe so it would be really hard for me there.

And that’s fair enough, but you know what? Schools aren’t actually shit. If you want to go aside somewhere and pray for a bit I’m sure they’ll find you somewhere — I’m sure there’ll be someone marking somewhere who won’t mind you sitting quietly for a few minutes — and you just can’t avoid making friends at secondary school, unless you spend all your breaks holed up praying, anyway. I can see that it’s better to go where your friends go, and I can see that it’d be ideal to go somewhere with dedicated facilities for prayer (if that’s important to you — which frankly I doubt it is in this case considering the kid would rather drop his religion and become a Catholic than go to the non-faith school). That’s unfortunate, but it’s not news, even locally.

There’s also a clear case to be made that the rule allowing oversubscribed faith-schools to select students based on religion is discriminating against this child unfairly. (Although it seems to have let in the entire output of the local CofE school, which is also not Catholic.) But that’s not what this story is about, at least from the mother’s point of view, because we also have this quote:

This is becoming a nightmare for us. If the appeal does not work then I don’t know what we will do. I have thought about home tuition but it is expensive and it will mean he will not be with his friends. We are just praying the appeal will be successful.

What?! So let me get this straight, so I’m not misunderstanding anything: the prospect of your child attending what passes in this country for a secular school is “a nightmare”, for some unspecified reason that either you or the newspaper thought unimportant or self-evident enough to omit, and are theoretically willing to home-school him as an alternative, but what would be okay is for him to go to a school run by a mad cult who think that they can turn wine into blood (which they then drink), run by a bigot in a frock who is held to be automatically right whatever he might choose to say because they have some old paper which says so. And you think this would be okay because they, like you, have faith — albeit in something which flatly contradicts the thing that you have faith in.

How the hell am I supposed to respect religious people when I can’t understand them? And how am I supposed to understand them when they don’t make any sense?

The first Religious Crackpot Of The Month this year goes to Patrick O’Donoghue. There are those who would prefer I call him “the Right Reverence Patrick O’Donoghue”, but I won’t be doing that. I think that people’s relative reverence and honourability is something they earn by their actions and not something they’re granted by their job titles. And, since this doesn’t appear to be 1992, I won’t be using the word “right” as an intensifier. Patrick O’Donoghue is shockingly ignorant, not least of the rules of chess: despite being Bishop of Lancaster, he is moving decidedly backwards.

He has earned this dubious honour by sending what the Guardian called “a 66-page document” to all the Catholic schools in his diocese, though I’ve found it and it is in fact a 68-page document with two blank pages at the end. (It’s a PDF; they recommend Foxit to read it. I don’t know what’s wrong with Acrobat Reader; possibly Adobe refuse to condemn abortion or something.)

He is by no means the only crackpot mentioned in the article — the Vatican body who endorsed his document must be at least as stupid as its author — but he is the most vocally insane of them all. So let’s be explicit about why he in particular is getting this award. (It is perhaps worth noting that if I had my way, this letter would never have existed as there would be no faith schools to receive it, although if I really had my way there would be no bishop to send it either.)

Normally I’d be saying that he, like most other winners of the prize, is placing religious teachings above basic safety advice, but in this case that would be being far, far too kind. The teachings he’s advocating are barely even religious — there’s not a single word in the Bible about condoms. This isn’t religion. Religion is when someone writes a book which, centuries later, is found and taken far, far too seriously. What we have here is a large organisation deciding that something is bad and dictating that all their followers will believe it too. This isn’t religion: this is cult behaviour (though there’s less difference than most people would care to admit).

Worse still, he doesn’t consider that he is putting it above basic safety advice because he disputes that condoms can prevent AIDS.

Parents must insist on continence outside marriage and fidelity in marriage as the only true and secure education for the prevention of AIDS. Parents, schools, and colleges must also reject the promotion of so-called “safe sex” or “safer sex”, a dangerous and immoral policy based on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against AIDS.

Exactly why he thinks this is unclear. At no point does he bother to explain how a 120 nanometre wide retrovirus can penetrate seventy thousand nanometres of rubber in only a few minutes. This paragraph cites a book called The Truth And Meaning Of Human Sexuality as its only source, so I did a quick Google search and discovered that the book in question was published by The Catholic Library, and its full text is available on their website. To save you the bother of looking, the paragraph is a direct quote from the book (paragraph 139; as we know, Catholics believe that any sentence with a number is true) and the book doesn’t justify it any further either. Presumably they just believe unquestioningly whatever would best serve their agenda if it were true. (That, one might argue, is very much the idea of religion in any case.)

He also repeats the Vatican’s anti-Amnesty International stance:

Schools and colleges must not support charities or groups that promote or fund anti-life policies, such as Red Nose Day and Amnesty International, which now advocates abortion.

To be fair to him, he also suggests some non-abortion-condoning alternative organisations, but I can’t imagine any of them have the resources Amnesty do, and in any case, Amnesty International do not advocate abortion! He goes further, though (and I should mention for the sake of integrity that the ellipsis below represents a 38-page break, much of which I didn’t read):

Anything that evokes wonder and reflection about the fundamental questions of human existence in Science, English, or Art, for example, is an opportunity to teach the truths of the faith.

…

Under no circumstances should any outside authority or agency that is not fully qualified to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church ever be allowed to speak to pupils or individuals on sexual or any other matter involving faith and morals. Nor should a Catholic school or college ever refer a pupil to an outside agency for advice or counselling; such is the prerogative only of the parent.

That’s nothing more or less than indoctrination: under his system, a pupil in a Catholic school is not allowed to talk to anybody except Catholic representatives about any aspect of religion or emotion (or, probably anything except mathematics, and even then the distinction between the numbers three and one is probably taboo). This will lead to them being effectively brainwashed, exposed to only one ideology every day for 15 of their most formative years. He says in the Guardian that this is “absolute rubbish”, but then he would say that, because apparently he’s a total bastard who will say anything if he thinks it will get people on his side.

Like most religious crackpots, O’Donoghue utterly fails to understand the meaning of the word “secular”. Like the current incumbent Specifically Mormon Crackpot of The Year, he seems to think that it is itself a religion. He demonstrates this very neatly when he says “the secular view … may not be presented as neutral information”. The whole point of secularism is that it is completely neutral. It considers all ideas purely on their own merits, affording none any special treatment regardless of what various religions may say about them. O’Donoghue would presumably prefer the “woo” version of neutrality, where all ideas are given equal credit regardless of their relative merit. This system is in reality as neutral as giving poorer entrants in a competition a proportional head start so that all players have an equal chance of winning: clearly it benefits the worst and removes any incentive to improve, and only a really stupid sport would do that.

In fact, he appears to be falling into another brain-trap more commonly associated with quacks than crackpots: he’s adopted an Us And Them mentality. Creationists do this, by describing anything that contradicts creationism as “evolutionist”, including the Big Bang theory, geology and abiogenesis, which have nothing at all to do with evolution. Homeopaths call anything that contradicts homeopathy “allopathic”, including vaccines, chemistry, epidemiology and basic scientific methodology. Here, O’Donoghue would appear to be saying that anything which contradicts the Vatican’s random assertions is part of some “secular” conspiracy. Let me let you in on a little secret: there is no secular conspiracy. It just wouldn’t work. It’d be like herding cats. There is no “secular view”: secularism is not a religion, or an ideology or a political affiliation; it’s just a single idea (that religious teachings should be ignored wherever possible) with a name. Most secularists agree on other things too, but that’s largely because great — or at least, non-awful — minds are known to think alike.

He wants teachers to discuss “the ’sacrament of marriage’” and to “insist that contraception [is] wrong”, all while criticising secularism for being insufficiently “neutral”.

I’ve not read the whole thing. I don’t think I could do that to myself. Luckily, the document (called “Fit For Mission? A Guide”) ends with a summarised list of “actions” for schools. Here are a few of them (word for word):

• Create/enhance respect for the doctrinal and moral truth safeguarded by the Pope and the Bishops
• Challenge TV broadcasts, films and books … that are disrespectful, suspicious and scornful of Christ and His Church.

It should be noted at this point that Jesus, being long dead by the time it was established, has never publicly endorsed the Catholic church and would in all probability loathe it as much as I do.

• Promote films and books that build up trust and enthusiasm for the faith.
• Ensure support is given to Chaplains so they can complete their role, including evangelisation and catechesis through proclamation of the Word.
• Provide opportunity for the governing body to discuss and pray about this document.

What the fuck? How will that help? Does he think God is going to personally reply and say “yeah, it’s not a bad document but I didn’t like the font”?

• Teach the Trinity
• Use the Core Curriculum of the Catholic Church

…whatever that is; Google doesn’t know.

• Teaching and Learning for the profession of faith
• Ensure active participation in the Liturgy is encourage [sic]

He actually considers liturgy a basic human need, presumably alongside oxygen and nutrition (assuming he doesn’t think those are “deluded theories” too.

• Teach the real presence from a Young Age [sic]
• Promote our call to holiness
• Ensure [not 'encourage'] regular prayers for vocations
• Ensure that no outside authority or agency … is allowed to speak to pupils … on … any matter involving faith and morals
• Ensure that pupils are never referred to an outside agency for advice or counselling
• Carefully scrutinise Year Planners to ensure they do not promote the services of organisations incompatible with the Church’s moral teaching
• Teach meditation on the Word of God
• Teach Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
• Arrange weekly adoration of the Blesses Sacrament [sic]
• Teach Devotion to Our Lady and the Rosary

(It’s not mentioned whether this devotion should be weekly or not.)

• Ensure [not 'encourage'] meaningful memorisation of basic prayers
• Teach Devotion to the Saints

Honestly, those last dozen read like some kind of scary cult handbook. Because that is precisely what this document is. It is a guide to how to effectively hijack a child’s state-funded education and use it to brainwash them into your religion, thus ensuring a nice supply of minds (and money) in the future. That people would do such a thing is still shocking to me, and that they would then be widely thought of as good people is almost as bad.

You can email the team behind the report at Mission.Review@LancasterRcDiocese.org.uk. I intend to. (I will of course blog any and all relevant correspondence.)

Edit:

They also have something they call a “blog”, but is in fact just a boring newsletter powered by WordPress. The skin they’ve chosen for it was designed by a girl who “at an early age [decided for herself] that there are no gods or supernatural forces”. Presumably they will take more care than this when “scrutinising” those Year Planners.

Apparently, a BBC show that nobody watches (hence the interviews ending up in the news in advance of the broadcast) will include an interview in which Tony Blair admitted that religious faith was “profound about [him]“, but that he’d tried to underplay it because otherwise “people do think you’re a nutter”. Well, yes. Turns out, in a shocking revelation, that people like to think you have actual reasons for doing things beyond an irrational belief that an invisible wizard who lives in the sky would like you to do them. When those things are limited to where you spend your Sunday mornings, nobody much cares, but when they’re decisions like whether or not to start a war, people tend to think motives are important.

Essentially, what we have here is a man who knew his beliefs would be unpopular, so he acted normal until he got out of power and now he’s converting to Catholicism, which is by any reasonable definition joining a cult. He knew that people would object to having someone running the country from a religious standpoint so he pretended not to have one. The “we don’t do God” quote has been swimming around the Internet a lot again this week. Essentially he lied about something that he knew people would consider important in order to get himself elected to a position of great power. Surely we have a system to punish people who do that?

Why is it so hard for politicians to think clearly about religion? Blair knew that people wanted secular politics or else he wouldn’t have covered up his faith in the way that he did, and yet he still insisted on advocating faith schools, without doing anything about the mandatory Christian worship in all other schools, the Establishment of the church, or the fact that the Prime Minister was a closet nutter. All the while, public opinion, and that of his own education secretary, was firmly against him. He knew that people disliked the influence of religion on politics, and yet as far as I can see he did everything in his power to increase it.

Make no wonder he thought people might call him a nutter — he is a fucking nutter. (If you doubt that, check out the scary grin.)

I am once again forced to return to the topic of “collective worship”, which I first covered when I awarded Religious Crackpot Of The Month to five government cronies. For those who aren’t up to speed on this, despite any amount of human rights legislation people may have passed, despite protests, and despite all common sense, it is a legal requirement for British schools to hold an act of collective worship every day — Christian for preference.

Rather reasonably, hundreds of people recently signed a petition asking for this ridiculous rule to be scrapped.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remove the statutory obligation in schools to provide a ‘broadly Christian’ daily assembly.

Religious observance in schools is divisive, especially when the obligation is exclusively to the Christian faith. The link between state education and religious observance should be removed completely allowing atheists and those of other faiths to participate in school life on an equal basis. Allowing an individual to “opt out” is not sufficient as this categorises and potentially stigmatises children. Furthermore in rural areas often ONLY faith schools are available locally. This discriminates against non-religious children and teachers (who often can’t be employed without religious hypocrisy) and those of other faiths.

I honestly can’t imagine there’s a single word of that that any reasonable person could object to. Therefore I can only assume that the government does not contain any reasonable people, as this was their response:

The Government believes that Collective Worship stimulates thinking–

I promise this is real. Look, here’s a link. It even has a .gov.uk TLD — you can’t just buy those. I swear they really said that. How scary is that? The country’s being run by total fucking morons!

The Government believes that Collective Worship stimulates thinking and encourages pupils to learn about Christianity as well other religions and belief systems, nurturing respect and tolerance. It also offers schools a unique opportunity to develop their particular ethos and set of shared values.

All maintained schools are required to carry out a daily act of Collective Worship of a broadly Christian nature for all pupils. This reflects the religious tradition of this country. For schools where this is not appropriate the head teacher can apply to the local authority to have it lifted so that the Collective Worship in that school does not have to be of a Christian nature.

Every parent has the right to withdraw their child from Collective Worship and we believe this is important. In addition, from 1 September 2007, a new clause in the 2006 Education and Inspections Act came into force which gives students over the age of 16 the right to opt out of collective worship, without parental consent.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families will be updating their guidance for schools on Collective Worship to ensure that schools are aware of these issues.

In rural areas, Church of England schools have traditionally seen their role as catering for all the children in an area and admission arrangements for church primary schools in rural areas make no distinction amongst pupils.

There’s really nothing I can say to that, is there? It’s bullshit, from start to finish. There’s not a single word of it that any reasonable person would endorse. I mean, the third paragraph is vaguely laudable, but I don’t see how excluding children from assemblies based on their faith can ever be the correct solution.

I don’t mean to be obscene, but sometimes there’s really no other way to express an emotion, is there? Especially when you have nobody to blaspheme against.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

I surprised one or two people the other day when I mentioned that this country’s laws require schools to have “collective worship” every day. Of course many of them don’t, which is about the only reason I think this law doesn’t actually cause riots, but that’s the rule. I’ve just read an Observer article about a man called Dr Paul Kelley, author of a book about how to fix education and headmaster of a school in Tyneside. He’s also fresh from his last adventure, championing the cause of a good student rejected from Oxford University supposedly because she was a northerner from a comprehensive school, who later cooled off changed her mind anyway. His school is one of the government’s fancy new “trust schools“, and he’d like to make it secular, because he is not a complete moron.

But he can’t, because apparently that would be “politically impossible”, whatever that might mean. Apparently the government, then led by Blair, “accepted it would be popular but said it was politically impossible.” I don’t understand what that means. It would seem to me that if something would be popular then that would, by definition, make it politically very, very easy. I thought that was the whole point.

One senior figure at the then Department for Education and Skills, told Kelley that bishops in the House of Lords and ministers would block the plans. Religion, they added, was ‘technically embedded’ in many aspects of education.

I can only infer from this (as of course the Observer would never be caught actually explaining things fully) that, due to the way the law is set up at the moment, it would be impossible to create secular schools in this system. But practically it’s very easy: what you do is you stop having a daily act of collective worship. That’s easy: a monkey could do that. Monkeys are very good at that; they almost never hold religious services of any kind. If the system doesn’t allow you to implement simple plans which would be popular and benefit society then the system is broken and needs fixing.

If a company screws me over and then says that because of some matter of policy or bureaucracy they can’t offer me a refund I won’t just say “oh, fair enough then” and go away; I’ll pester them until they cough up. I refuse to give up stuff that I’m entitled to because someone else has an arbitrary rule saying I’m not allowed to — why do you think religion annoys me so much in the first place? Luckily, Kelley seems to feel much the same way, and he’s hoping other schools will start to demand secularity as well.

More power to him.

Update: Here are a couple more blogs which have covered this topic in the last couple of days: Why Don’t You, “Ghetto Religion In The UK”, and Pharyngula, “Two Countries Separated By A Common Idiocy”.

I recently read in The Times that the government plans to make more faith schools in an effort to integrate minorities better. This is a clearly stupid idea. It’s a bit like trying to put out a fire by pouring napalm on it. Like most newspaper articles, it refers to a document that nobody could read. In science articles these are unpublished research, and in politics stories they’re documents that haven’t been published yet. In this case, the document was published a few days after the article, and here it is. I’ve skimmed it, and I think I can safely summarise that it’s a lot of emotional but empty sentiment and nothing very much of any substance. What substance it contains is almost entirely aimed at downplaying the differences between faith schools and what it calls “schools without a religious character”.

In one way, this is a very bad thing, because including any kind of religious “service” (forgive me if I think “service” is a rather grand term for “indoctrination”) in a context where science, mathematics and history are taught is effectively teaching religious beliefs as facts, which is not fair on children, who have a right to be taught objectively about the world. Any blurring of the line between religious beliefs and facts is a very dangerous thing. Children must be taught to question beliefs — all beliefs — or else they will grow up vulnerable to exploitation by fundamentalists, con artists, and fraudulent and deluded “alternative” therapists. Faith schools also segregate children, which reduces their contact with people of other backgrounds, which causes more segregation and intolerance in the future. Both of these things will have serious repercussions when these (comparatively) indoctrinated, ignorant and intolerant children grow up and adopt positions of power.

In another way, though, this is a good thing: the difference, according to British law, between a faith school and a “school without a religious character” is very small. The document, Faith In The System, reminds us that “all maintained schools [including non-faith schools] are required to have a daily act of collective worship”. If the school has no other faith then Christian worship must be practised. That makes them Christian faith schools in all but name, and this is a big problem which shouldn’t be ignored. The school is required by law to teach children that two thousand years ago a man, whose father was an omnipotent but invisible being, raised the dead, turned water into wine, walked on water, then died and went to Hell at the request of his supposedly benevolent father and rose again, before ascending bodily into a paradise world. The government claims that this plays a vital role in “exploring social and moral issues and [children's] own beliefs”, despite the fact that this worship is mandatory — parents can withdraw their children from it but the children themselves have no say in what, or how much, religious dogma they are exposed to. That is not “exploring their own beliefs”. That is indoctrinating them with their parents’ and the state’s preferred beliefs. RE lessons, which I certainly do approve of, show children a wide variety of beliefs and explores them sensibly. “Collective worship” just shows them one of the available options and teaches them to believe it unquestioningly. That is clearly detrimental to a child’s psychological development.

The rather patronisingly named Department for Children, Schools and Families would appear to think that if we have a load of faith schools anyway then we might as well make some for other religions as well. Whereas actual common sense, and indeed teachers and large sections of the public*, would say that we must remove all influence of religion on education. Neither parents nor the state have the right to dictate what children believe, either directly, by simply telling them what to think, or indirectly, by controlling what influences they are exposed to. Instead, children must be given the right to be educated without also having religious beliefs forced upon them, and to make up their own minds after hearing what everyone has to say.

So this month I’m awarding Religious Crackpot Of The Month jointly to these five crackpots (who all have suitably ridiculous job titles): the “Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families” Ed Balls, the “Minister of State for Schools and Learners” Jim Knight, the “Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools and Learners” Andrew Adonis, the “Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families” Beverley Hughes, and the “Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children, Young People and Families” Kevin Brennan. These publicly elected ministers run a department which has publicly endorsed a document suggesting — and repeatedly made it a matter of policy to — back faith schools and increase their numbers. If one of them is your MP then you can write to them, and if they’re not then you can write to them anyway. Or more simply you can just sit back, wait for a snap election and vote them out of office. Well assuming someone can muster up some less ignorant opposition.

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*The public is, as it is wont to be, split on the issue, but here’s a few samples. This petition against faith schools gained 3,191 signatures and this response from the PM’s office, which really misses the point on every possible level. This petition, in favour of faith schools and more alarmingly, in favour of creationism, got 18,699 rather depressing signatures from 18,699 rather depressing signatories, and this response from the PM, which is bang on about creationism but rather vacuous on faith schools. This anti-faith school petition has only 33 signatories. It’s new. Sign it. Similarly this one, with 19. This one’s been going longer, and has 17,401 signatories, but there’s still time to sign it if you want. (It’s been in the links panel for ages now so you may even have signed it already, I don’t know.) At present this means there are more people who have signed a pro-creationism petition than any anti-faith school one. But it’s close so let’s push it over. Petitions aside, it seems that the general public are mostly against faith schools. Good old general public.