Is the Volume of Ding Dongs Merrily Less High at Faith Schools than at Others?
nick cowen, 23 December 2008
Two facts about schools have recently been reported in the press. The first is the disturbingly high rate of violent altercations that go on in them. The second is how much better faith schools generally do in examinations than their non-denominational counterparts.
I doubt that statistics are publicly available anywhere to permit the relevant comparisons, but were they to be so, then I am willing to bet that faith schools would be found to have fewer fights between pupils as well as better examination results.
If so, that would be an additional reason besides their better exam results why parents would want to send their children to faith schools than those misleadingly described as community schools.
Should my surmise be correct, doubtless opponents of faith schools, like the inveterate Polly Toynbee, would be as quick to attribute their being less violent to their allegedly more middle-class intakes than to their religious ethos, just as they invariably do their generally better exam results.
For such opponents of faith schools continue to explain away their better exam results in this way even when many outperforming faith schools have just as many pupils on free school meals as the less well-performing community schools do. As was reported at the week-end:
‘Faith schools also outperform the rest based on the Government’s favoured “value-added” measure, which… [weights] scores… to take account of the number of pupils speaking English as a second language and on free meals, ensuring schools with large numbers of middle-class children do not gain unfair advantage.’
Should similar attempts be made, therefore, to explain away the lesser violence that occurs in faith schools, assuming less does, supporters of them would still be able to know that all such proferred explanations were equally mere Balls-speak, to coin a phrase.
Merry Xmas!
In schools as in wider society, the law is gradually losing all its teeth. Indeed, scholastic authority has been deprived of its last fangs, now that expulsion is no longer permitted. Together with the vile “comprehensive” idea and the Warnock inspired decision to lump in the delinquent and the backward, can it be any surprise that state schools are abysmal dumps? What do the violent have to fear? A talking to which they would despise even more if they could understand it? A few hours messing about among lost property or the dustbins – unsupervised, most likely – and told to regard it as “community service”?
As to faith – yes, a faith tradition is – among many other things – a form of discipline. There are grounds for supposing that religion forms the very heart of culture, too – although we must beware of those fanatical and misguided forms of religion which merely indoctrinate. This is why the popularity of third rate little parables such as “The Wave” are so annoying. They offer a caricature of discipline – such as may be provided in fact by certain over-zealous religious establishments – in order to promote satisfaction with our contemporary anarchy.
The best forms of discipline – gentle but relentless and deeply self-confident, arise from long tradition. That is what we have to revive. That is the task we must set ourselves – the revival of our culture.