David Cameron is looking right at the problem, but choosing to ignore it. Photo credit: The Prime Minister’s Office/Creative Commons license.
The Prime Minister’s speech on extremism on Monday has received a mixed reaction; unsurprising given the sensitivity and complexity of the issue. However, as is so often the case, the mixed reaction was also at least in part a result of mixed messages. Specifically, the praise that should have been provoked by Cameron’s admirable emphasis on the need to tackle segregation in our education system was tempered by his contradictory reaffirmation of support for ‘faith’ schools.
The response of successive Governments to the increasing religious and ethnic diversity of the UK has been to provide more ‘faith’ schools, of more kinds, to cater for these different groups. In 1998 there were 24 state-funded Jewish schools, and no Muslim, Sikh or Hindu schools. In 2015, there are now 48 Jewish, 21 Muslim, 10 Sikh and 5 Hindu state schools, and growing. More children of all religions are being educated in ‘faith’ schools now than ever before.
There are many, the British Humanist Association among them, who are absolutely convinced that this approach to building a multicultural society will be remembered as one of the most ruinous and damaging to the fabric of our communities and our society that has ever been pursued. It is an approach which is impossible to fathom.
Presented with the challenge of integrating a complex mix of religions, beliefs, ethnicities, and social backgrounds into one cohesive society, we have two options. The first option is to continue with an education system which divides children in almost all imaginable ways. ‘Faith’ schools segregate along religious lines, along socio-economic lines, and along ethnic lines – the evidence for this is clear. This first option therefore involves accepting this sorry starting point and then working round the clock to think of ways to get these different groups to interact with and understand one another (Shared facilities and integrated teaching being the Government’s latest proposals).
The second option is simple. We make all schools inclusive, we bring all children together, we ensure that it is their similarities that are celebrated and which become ingrained in them, rather than their differences, and then we sit back and watch while all our work is done for us.
Regrettably, this is not the option that has been taken.
In his speech, the Prime Minister referred to the policy introduced under the Coalition Government of only allowing new ‘faith’ academies and free schools to allocate half their places on the basis of faith. That development was to be welcomed, but it didn’t go nearly far enough. More than a third of state-funded schools in England and Wales – over 7,000 schools – are religious schools and only a small proportion of these are free schools. Clearly no religious selection at all would be preferable, but it is equally important to remember that discussions about religious selection should not detract from the fact that whether religiously selective or not, ’faith’ schools are inherently exclusive.
That is why Cameron’s expression of hope that ‘our young people can be the key to bringing our country together’, immediately preceded by a promise that he will not seek to ‘dismantle faith schools’, was so disheartening.
One has to ask, how we can expect our children to create the inclusive, integrated and cohesive society that we have thus far been unable to achieve, if we continue to define them and divide them by the religions and beliefs of their parents?
When it comes to tackling segregation and promoting integration, there is clearly no silver bullet. The process is difficult and there’s a long way to go. You can be absolutely sure, though, that an end to ‘faith’ schools and an end to the division they foster, is the closest thing to that silver bullet we have. If only our Prime Minister wasn’t so gun shy.
Totally agree. I have long felt that an obvious way to help understanding and respect between beliefs is for children to be educated together and not divided by religious belief.
As a professional involved in promoting awareness and understanding of sexual health issues in secondary schools, I can testify to the deep seated reluctance and outright refusal of nearly all faith schools in and around my home city to use SRE programmes of evidenced worth. My frustration is multiplied many times by the deep seated reluctance of governmental agencies to question, let alone challenge, these state funded faith schools intent on perpetuating attitudes to sexuality more in keeping with the 19th than the 21st century. The increase in faith schools in this country is the single most significant contribution to the perpetuation of harmful attitudes and behaviours to sex and relationships amongst children – done with the approval and financial support of successive governments. Words fail!
I’ve always felt that religion is family-based and has no place in education, other than within perhaps history lessons.
I do, however, believe that schools should teach/explain the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights which states that all men should be able to live in peace according to their beliefs. Of course, that means that one man’s belief cannot override the beliefs of another, and this is where it always falls apart. Catholic-Protestant, Sunni-Shia, Jew-Muslim, Christian-Jew, etc., etc., etc. Perhaps the long and still on-going reluctance to adhere to this is why the world is no better at respecting the rights of others than they were in 1948, but refusing to address it will only encourage us to continue to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Why does ‘faith’teaching need to be school based when it is the parents choice of life stance.
Why not have politics, or green and environmental issues taught – very valid life stancrs.
Segregation also affects the adult community – parents of the children will have no opportunity to meet, and share in the children development either.
Surely the Universal declaration of human rights are the core .big ideas. area. It allowes discussion at so much levels It can incorporate history goegraphy legal systems freedom of speech and democracy.
All very well,but, in practice high performing faith schools will get dragged down to the lowest common denominator and the education system will get worse not better. Get all schools functioning as well as faith schools as the first step, then it might be worth considering..
“High performing faith schools” do so because of the class (no pun intended) of parent, pupil, staff and management established over a long period. None of these factors are necessarily ‘faith’ based, and can equally well be maintained in its absence.
The idea that a school will deteriorate because it no longer identifies with some specific culture derived from oriental superstition is just unfounded fear-mongering by vested interests.
I would say it’s not fear mongering, it’s a combination of experience and cynicism. When have a government ever successfully made a change such as this without dragging things down? Yes there are perfectly valid arguments that faith schools (and I am thinking predominantly about catholic schools in the uk) perform better because of the parents and type of people who commit to the school, the point I am trying to get across is that the first step to breaking faith schools that a government takes is likely to remove that grouping of parents and also to force entry of children with less enthusiastic parents. Net result a worse performing school.
Having lived in a Northern Ireland, where most schools were, at one time, ‘faith’ based, I know well how they can serve to fuel sectarianism. The integration of education in more recent years has promoted more tolerance and understanding among the young.
A diverse population must reflect that diversity.
Faith schools are essential to do this.
All tax payers must have the right to have an appropriate amount of that tax money spent on their faith school.
Secularists, assuming they are tax payers, also have a right to secularist schools, assuming they want them of course.
This really doesn’t make sense – most developed, diverse countries do not justify segregation in education using this sort of torturous logic.
All too often the arrival of a new ‘faith’ school displaces an existing community school due to spatial capacity issues, meaning that young people who once had a school which accepted them openly later find themselves at the bottom of the religious preferences list.
We must simply move on from dividing people up according to what they believe; your argument can also be made for ‘faith’ hospitals or ‘faith’ airports – it’s absurd.
I disagree strongly that faith schools are essential. Religion can be practised within the family and outside of school. This would give us a much fairer and less divisive society. Schools should be for education not indoctrination and should be a level playing field so that all children have equal opportunities.
How very generous and liberal of you.
I suspect you are the sort of person Freud had in mind when he spoke of religion being analogous to obsessional neurosis
In response to Jacobi’s suggestion that faith schools are essential to the maintenance of diversity we need to remember why we have state funded faith schools in this country at al. It is absolutely not because someone thought it would be a good idea. It was because way back in the early/middle part of the last century, very many of the church run schools we failing in terms of teaching and facilities standards. The 1944 Education Act effectively nationalised these schools and if the foundation behind each school (C of E, Catholic Church etc) was able to continue to provide 50% capital funding, they could also maintain their religiously selective admissions policies. They were also relieved of the burden of having to pay their staff. If they couldn’t commit to that level of capital funding they would not be allowed a faith base admissions policy. The structure we have now simply reflects this basic system. The difference is that the 50% is now 10% and this is almost always paid by now parents and not by the foundation. That was a really, really good deal for the churches and we are now dealing with the mess. What is really scandalous is that no one in government is prepared to hold the church’s feet to the fire and tell them to pay up on their capital dues or lose their privileges. .
Faith schools are the incubators of intolerance. The pious know that they can only ensnare people into their belief systems if they can catch them when they are young, gullible, vulnerable and impressionable. Hence the idea of “Give me the child and I will give you he man”. Or more crudely “Give a cleric the child and that cleric will give you the unthinking bigot or suicide bomber or cartoonist murderer or beheader of journalists.” If children are not brought up together then we will continue the spread and expansion of monoculture ghettos, intolerance, hate and suspicion. Faith schools are dangerous and must be eradicated now.
Many of the children who attend faith schools have parents who ‘pretend’ to have a faith and go through the appropriate motions in order to get them in. Finding a good school can be a choice between “pay or pray” if you cannot afford to pay then play the game to get your child into a faith school, funded by the tax payer on the basis of a selection system which has nothing to do with your child’s ability but the parents’ ability to lie. Religions claim demand for faith schools as evidence of the number of people with faith, they are happy to go along with this con’ as it inflates the number of believers.
Richard Dawkins (now THERE’S someone in whom you can have ‘faith’!), makes the point there is no such thing as ‘a Muslim child’, or ‘a Christian child’, etc., only children of parents of those faiths. Seems to me, as someone who went to a CofE cathedral school, that ‘faiths’ need their schools as plants need seed beds. Question is, do we, as tax payers, want to go on subsidising them?