Category Archives: faith schools

State-funded brain-washing

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BBC: Catholic pupils ‘invited to sign anti-gay marriage petition’
Education Secretary Michael Gove is to examine claims the Catholic Education Service (CES) broke impartiality rules on the topic of gay marriage…

“Schools have a responsibility under law to ensure children are insulated from political activity and campaigning in the classroom,” said a Department for Education spokesperson. “While faith schools, rightly, have the freedom to teach about sexual relations and marriage in the context of their own religion, that should not extend to political campaigning.”

Rightly? Would it be equally right for so-called faith schools to have the freedom to teach the biological sciences, say, ‘in the context of their own religion’?

Balls by name…

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My, this is scary:

BBC: Faith schools set for expansion

The government has pledged its support for the principle of faith schools – with the prospect of many more Muslim schools within the state sector.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls and faith group leaders have formed a partnership – endorsing faith schools as a force to improve social cohesion in England.

Social cohesion? Is that what they’re calling sectarianism these days?

Why not write to your MP and tell them how you feel about this? You might like to cc. the aptly named Ed Balls while you’re at it. (Not that writing to your MP ever made a shite of difference, you understand.)

Personally speaking, I am fucking livid.

Sectarianism

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A nice example of the lunacy of so-called faith schools:

BBC: Sikh girl in Catholic school row

The parents of a Teesside Sikh girl say they will convert her to Catholicism in order to get her into the best school in the area…

The Roman Catholic diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, which oversees admissions policy at the school, said it was following correct procedures.

But Mr Singh said: “At the moment she has not got a religion. She follows Sikhism because we are Sikhs.”

Exactly!

Mr Singh’s daughter is four years old. How in the name of God, Buddha, Allah, Waheguru or Tinkerbell is she supposed to know which ridiculous belief system she might one day adopt? Or not, as I hope the case turns out to be.

What hope is there that kids from different cultural backgrounds will ever get on together if their parents are allowed to keep sending them to sectarian schools?

People’s religious belief, like which soccer team they support, is a highly heritable cultural trait: they tend to inherit it from their parents. To endorse religious sectarian schools makes as much sense as saying that we should have schools for the children of Manchester United fans.

Or special needs schools, as we call them in Liverpool.