Apathy Sketchpad

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.

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 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.