The Sockmonster

When I first heard about faith schools I thought that eventually people would realize how stupid they were, and they would disappear. But they haven’t. Why not? Why are faith schools still operating in the UK? What was the government thinking when they decided the best way to secure community cohesion was to start separating youngsters based on the one thing that has, in history, led to violent and bloody conflicts. If you want people to start hating each other the best thing to do is start separating them, preferably by something that gets them very worked up, and making their differences as visible as possible. Good work Labour! Just when we need to bring communities together you drive an enormous wedge of ignorance between them. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up!

I know what people are going to say, “faith schools don’t just take on students of their own faith, but enroll pupils of other faiths as well”. That’s all well and good, but do you really think many Jewish or Muslim parents will willingly send their child to a Christian school if they had the choice of sending them to a school backed by their own faith? It’s no surprise that faith schools are mostly populated by students of the faith that the school is backed by. Why are religious groups getting into the education business? What is being taught differently in a Muslim school to say, a Christian or Jewish school? I can’t imagine that any subject, other than religious studies, would differ in these two schools. In fact not even religious studies should differ between schools backed by different faiths, if we want communities to join together then we need to allow children to experience each others cultures and beliefs. We should teach children about all religions and also we should teach about religions as cultural phenomena and let the child decide if they want to believe in one or not.

The other thing that annoys me is that some of these faith schools are actually teaching bare faced lies to children. Creationism has found a small safe haven in some of these schools, the students are being taught utter rubbish like the Earth and the Moon are somewhere between six and ten thousand years old! Check this video out it features an excerpt from a Dispatches documentary called “In Gods Name” which shows an independent school in the UK lying to children about the age of the Earth and the Moon. There’s a reason the text books say the Earth is 4 billion years old; many people studying many different disciplines have gathered lots of evidence which all indicate the Earth is 4 billion years old. I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit in with some peoples faith but unless it can be demonstrated that the book of Genesis is accurate, then we have an obligation to teach our children the most up-to-date scientific knowledge. If we allow creationism to be taught in schools then there is no reason to stop someone pulling any old theory out of their arse and demanding we teach it in schools. What worries me most is that this particular school, the one teaching creationism, is Ofsted inspected and registered with the government. The government know exactly whats going on in that school and aren’t getting involved.

When is the UK going to realize that faith schools are in principle a bad idea? Over the past few years our society has become more and more divided when you only have to look in the newspapers to find many examples of this. With the continuation of faith schools I can only imagine this will get worse.