Free Schools Or Indocrination ?

[modeller]

Hundreds of Free Faith Based Schools are springing up in the UK.

They are being touted as a new approach to improving education .

Will it have that effect ? Will it have a divisive effect on our society ?

[modeller]

We have a very strict Plymouth Brethren school in a area which was on the BBC news for the way one of its pupils had been treated. You can get details on Google.

[naomi24]

Booldawg & Ummmm, any religious teaching is indoctrination. I was told recently by a four year old pupil of a CofE School that Caesar Augustus (he of the Jesus story) was a bad man. The rot starts early.

Modeller, //There have been applications from some extreme Islamist groups.//

Did you watch the television programme where Richard Dawkins went into an Islamic school and interviewed a science class along with the teacher? He was told the mountains were created to peg down the earth.

[ummmm]

You are probably correct, Naomi. I'm glad that my son made his own mind up regardless of my opinion or the schools.

[modeller]

I found in state schools most teachers were pretty neutral when it came to politics ,religion and history but those with strong convictions e.g
Socialist Workers Party supporters always put a left wing slant on the subjects. The same teachers were usually the union reps.

You can imagine what happens in schools where they all follow a strong ethos.
The strangest case I knew was a Geologist working for an oil company who taught that oil was created over millions of years but privately insisted the world was created 5000 years ago. When challenged
he said God created the world 5000 years ago but made it appear that it took millions of years.
It is this blind obedience to an ethos that will cause ever greater division in our society.

[DaisyNonna]

Modeller. Not RC but taught in RC primary and secondary schools here and abroad. Thoroughly enjoyable experience. Not coerced to teach anything about religion. The teaching nuns were fun, found the job much less stressful than in non faith state schools.

[joko]

when i read that comment 'mountains are to peg down the earth' i noticed all my responses were religious too - oh my god, for christs sake etc ...

[naomi24]

Daosy, //found the job much less stressful than in non faith state schools. //

That's interesting. Why do you think that was?

[naomi24]

Sorry, typo. That's ^^ for DaisyNonna.

[modeller]

daisy #Not coerced to teach anything about religion.#
As a point of interest how was the ethos of the schools reflected in everyday teaching.
I can't understand why a non catholic would teach in so many RC schools.
Could a non believer of any sort have obtained a teaching post in any of your schools. ?

In the Times Ed. Supp. RC teaching posts use to express a preference for RCs and the application forms always had a box for religion.

[FredPuli43]

Not always a bad thing. I know several Jewish women whose parents sent them to RC schools, to be taught by nuns. Either RCs in the Hendon area were very optimistic or they were very pragmatic; take in what's local. The logic of the parents was interesting. One woman said that her father had explained that any school where the teachers saw teaching as a vocation and reward in itself, was the right kind of school for his daughters.

Can't see that such schools create divisiveness .It's the parents who cause that, if they bring their children up to believe, as many Catholic children were brought up to believe, that their religion is the only true one and that non-believers will burn in Hell.

[modeller]

fred #Can't see that such schools create divisiveness #

It isn't just what is taught in school , it is the social separation that takes place outside school. Most/many friendships are initiated in school and if children are separated at an early age that leads to divided peer groups.
The more schools we have the more we are divided. Tens of thousands of children are transported around the country and with all these Free Schools cropping up that will get even worse.

[emmie]

if you have a faith school that only teaches the one faith, how will other children learn about that faith. If you have all Muslims in one, all Christians in another, how do they see the other side of the divide, argument, or how the other half live. Besides which i don't see why religion shouldn't be something the parents, mosque, church do, not the school.

[ummmm]

Very true modeller.

I went to a Catholic school where the majority of pupils were Irish. Even today I can walk into certain pubs and it will be like a school reunion.