The debate about what we now call faith schools is becoming muddled by the grouping together of schools which may be teaching insurrection and disobedience to the law with schools which teach adherence to a particular creed which may be contrary to mainstream, modern, secular thought.
David Bell’s speech, delivered to the Hansard Society on Monday, attracted headlines for claiming that the growing number of independent faith schools is threatening the cohesion of society. There are now over 300 fee-paying religious schools, including 50 Jewish schools, 100 Muslim schools and over 100 evangelical Christian schools. David Bell acknowledges that, in a free society, parents have the right to educate their children in their own beliefs, but that ‘faith should not be blind. I worry that many young people are being educated in faith-based schools with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society.’
His particular complaint is against the teaching of citizenship, not only in faith schools but throughout the system. Many classes are unsatisfactory, and he claims that ‘scepticism, cynicism and even fear’ surround the subject.
The government was keen to add citizenship to the national curriculum because of problems caused by the rise in anti-social behaviour amongst young people, and their unwillingness to engage with the institutions of a democratic society. However, the expectation that such fundamental problems of failure of socialisation could be cured by a couple of half-hour classes a week were always unrealistic. Teachers, already oppressed by government demands that they compensate for many things going wrong in the wider society, are understandably unenthusiastic about citizenship, and schools, for the most part, do not allocate significant resources to it.
But surely faith schools are more likely to produce good citizens than schools in which children find no over-arching framework of values? If children are taught within a world-view which encompasses transcendental values, they are less likely to engage in crime and anti-social behaviour, and more likely to play their part in society.
If there is any evidence that schools are undermining our democracy by their teaching, then there would be a case for intervention. It should also go without saying that if there were any evidence of encouraging illegal activity, this should be a matter for the police. But we must not allow ourselves to be panicked into thinking that, because people hold strongly to their religious perspectives, that there are grounds for state intervention. Believing that the world was created in seven days may offend many people’s sense of scientific reality, but children can make up their own minds about the evidence as they grow up. The important thing is that these children are, for the most part, growing up in loving and supportive families, who don’t need the government to interfere with their parental rights.
The state would do well to concentrate its resources where they are needed - on those children, who are now numerous, who are growing up without any sense of values at all. It is their behaviour that the government - and the rest of us - should be worrying about.
Comments (2)
Very well argued - but I do have a problem with the notion that teaching Creationism merely offends people's "sense of scientific reality". If strict Creationism causes offence, it is because (unlike the theory of evolution) it is demonstrably false, and to my mind children should not be taught bad science. I agree, of course, that teaching Creationism is unlikely to create problems for British society - but the presentation of other bogus theories can indeed wreak havoc. The crucial difference, I think, is between religious claims that are empirically unverifiable, and therefore (in my opinion, anyway) do not threaten the intellectual foundations of our society, and teachings that amount to a claim that black is white: for example, that the earth was created 6,000 years ago, which is nonsense. If the Catholic Church still believed that the sun revolved around the earth, would it be acceptable for Catholic schools to teach that as science? Not in my book.
Posted by Damian Thompson | January 20, 2005 12:13 AM
Posted on January 20, 2005 00:13
I am surprised at the view expressed that people from all these disparate groups share a responsibility to the wider society. If they disagree fundamentally with that society and have ends that differ from that society, why would they have a responsibility to it?
Posted by David Hamilton | January 19, 2005 3:24 PM
Posted on January 19, 2005 15:24