Dawkins on the faith School menace

[Terrywoodenpic]

IMO using Taxpayers money to subsidize a single faith School is tantermount to abuse whether its Christian or Islamic,to indoctrinate Children this way by running it alongside the national curriculum is disgusting IMO as it gives that religion a chance to gain some credibility that it does'nt have as a stand alone institution.

There was a time in the UK when all schools were faith schools in one form or another.

When the state system was introduced, new un-attached town and county schools were established. These were all required by law to have daily Prayers during assembly.

All the "free" schools were then state funded, both religious and secular.
The privately funded schools still had to follow the law as to daily prayers and religious education ( which till quite recently meant Christianity)

As You can see it has always been the norm in the UK to have a religious element.
Excellent Privately funded and world famous schools based on Christian foundations have existed here for Hundreds of years. including Church of England, Catholic methodist and Presbyterian. There were also a number of excellent masonic schools.
Today this has now been extended to Jewish, Muslim and other faiths.

Provided that religious schools are open to "anyone" and free, they can be state funded.

There is no separation of Church and State in the UK, they have separate roles in society but they, and Justice, are equal parts of the State under the Crown.
(edit)
I missed out the considerable number of Guild schools set up by the various ancient trade guilds. These were all Very "Christian" Some are still private, and some are now in the State system.

In the19th century a numer of Company schools were set up by factory owners. these were controlled by various board of trade and education departments, but had the same religious requirements.

 

[England my lionheart]

I went to a Church of England School and prayers were said at assembly,before this happened the Head Master would say in a grave voice "those that leave us during prayers may leave us" so all of us who perhaps followed a different religion or non belief would get up in front of the whole School and walk out of assembly which straight away set some divisions.

IMO education should be totally secular,there is provision for religious education where you learn about different world religions but thats different yet in some faith based schools there is no provision for Evolution for example,if we want to give our Children an even break then religious based Schools should go.

 

[Noaidi]

IMO education should be totally secular,there is provision for religious education where you learn about different world religions but thats different ...

I agree. Isn't it odd that in a physics class they can learn about the surface tension of water, yet in another class, learn that a human walked on water 2000 years ago...

Religion should be kept out of schools for the simple reason that there are other places where they are free to learn this stuff - churches, mosques etc. Teachers don't insist that evolution be part of sunday school or bible study classes, so why should the religious influence what is taught in our schools?

 

[England my lionheart]

Quote:Noaidi

I agree. Isn't it odd that in a physics class they can learn about the surface tension of water, yet in another class, learn that a human walked on water 2000 years ago...

Or Adam was 90 feet tall,its worrying that thhese kind of things are taught to Children as young as 5 years old.