Why should religion have any influence on our lives?

[Michael B]

That does make it clearer, thanks. It just seems a bit unwieldy and overcomplicated to me, but that might be my dumb American talking~

Actually it's much 'lighter' to maintain than our previous system of local bodies that governed education. It's also much more 'hands-off' from a government perspective. It gives much more power and control to schools and to parents. Some like that. Some don't (as you can see!). Most parents like it.

The shift in the ways allocations to schools is controlled has also had other interesting effects. Before our current system (which is getting on for 20-25 years old now, I think), you generally went to your local school without any choice (that's what I did). There were strict catchment areas and clear dividing lines of which school you went to depending on where you lived. But what happened was that good schools drove high house prices in their catchment area. The way parents 'chose' a good school for their children was to buy a house in that school's catchment area. The size of the school depended on the catchment, not on how many people wanted to go there. It really was a big consideration of where to buy a house, and so it was a key driver of house prices. There will always be a link between neighbourhood and schools, but that clear ability to 'buy' your way into the best local schools has now been broken, and I think that's good. As I mentioned the schools our kids went to were brilliant. There are no statistics on average family income, but free school dinners are given to those on low incomes, so you can roughly gauge the intake of the school by the proportion of children on free school dinners (and those stats are available). The main Catholic school our kids went to had the best results in a very wide area, but also had one of the highest proportions of kids on free school dinners. Great school, not a wealthy intake. And that school got larger when our kids were there, and maintained that high standard. You just wouldn't have got that under the catchment system I went to school under. For whatever reason (and it's probably a variety of reasons), faith schools are generally very successful and popular, and our current system gives the power back to parents and schools. I, for one, am a very satisfied parent.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Yes Michael, some people don't like legalised segregation and some do.
Any word on how many non-Catholics were allowed to attend your children's school?

[Michael B]

Certainly we'll all analyse things differently from our different perspectives. I think that's something that just has to be accepted, but also be aware of. The atheist is as biased as the Catholic, when it comes to looking at Hinduism. Or the Catholic is as biased as the atheist, if you prefer.

I think a sign of mature thinking is when we can recognise and acknowledge our own presuppositions. When I was younger I tended to think only other people had bias

Of course. When I was younger I tended to think all biases were equal.

Ha ha

Touché

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Faith schools create more inequality and lower overall educational standards thanks to all the people that are effectively segregated out of those schools that choose to ban children who are not indoctrinated into a given faith.

There's nothing fair about them, and the so called 'choice' for parents would still be around if the state stopped funding them as there's nothing to prevent parents setting them up themselves with their church, especially considering the fact that the government now allows this through it's academy/free school reforms.

Using the illusion of 'choice' (is it really a choice if the options available are a well funded and great performing faith school vis an under performing and underfunded state comprehensive?) as a reason and justification for segregation is just awful. And that's what faith schools promote and endorse. Segregation. And on beliefs that are often not the child's own but those of the parents (what 4 year old knows about God or religion??)

[Michael B]

Fidel. Faith schools are slightly under-funded compared with the 'under-funded state comprehensive' (in your words). The faith school must find 10% of capital costs itself. There is simply no preferential funding of faith schools.

Maybe it's worth thinking why those comprehensives (that you probably want everybody to go to) are failing to attract people? The answer surely is not to force people to go to poor schools just to prop them up, but to look at how they can be improved so that they can compete in an open market place of education. Or let them close if they can't compete. If they are suffering from poor funding it's simply because they are not meeting people's needs and so few people want to go there. The faith schools are in the same areas, 'competing' for the same pupils (and associated funding) and winning in an open and fair market.

The answer to dealing with poor failing schools is not to close the successful popular ones! You'll just equalise things by dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator, and that's a very poor way to run society. If your preferred schools are failing and unpopular then I think you need to reflect on that, and not simply try to force people to use them: that's the worst kind of social engineering.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I'm not 'forcing' anyone to use anything, I'm stating that the public should not and must not fund the religious vanity projects that are faith schools, especially when the majority disagree. Their main purpose is to indoctrinate people into religion before teaching. If it wasn't then why don't, for example, the RCC simply give money to other non faith based schools to boost their budgets?

If all the resources that went into faith schools went into comps then those schools would perform much, much better. People do not send their children to faith schools because of the religion they do so because of the grades, pure and simple.

And we cannot gloss over the fact that faith schools have a right to practice legal segregation. This is illegal in most other public bodies but yet faith schools have been granted an exemption. Not only that but they can teach whatever they want in RE!

It's shocking to me that you automatically dismiss these other schools as 'lowest comment denominator' but are quite happy to let them stay there (or not) so long as the lucky, segregated select few get their better education. If they're suffering from poor funding, see how many over subscribed discriminating and segregating faith schools are in the area and analyse who recieved what.

And I still have no idea how many non-Catholics went to your children's school. My school, as I said, must have had around 25ish% percent who were Muslims because it didn't discriminate based on belief.

What faith schools effectively say is, if you want there best education, the best opportunities and the best jobs, helps to be a [catholic]. And that's the message we, in 21st century UK want to send out is it?

[Anomalocaris]

I made basically this same thread before, and I feel like I could have basically summed up what I wanted to ask in this one sentence. I want to know why in my sociology class I keep hearing that religion plays a role in shaping our lives. Of course it SHOULDN'T HAVE TO, but it's a widely accepted facet of our culture. Is there really any necessity to it? I think it's absolutely unnecessary, and I wish that religion as a whole would be completely abolished.

Sorry if this is a duplicate thread, I just feel like making it would get better results than the last ones I made.

The necessity is imposed by the fact that it exists.

"Is" trumps "Ought to"

[Michael B]

Fidel. I think you're labouring under a gross misunderstanding about funding of faith schools.(For people jumping into this thread, Fidel and I are talking about schooling in the UK). The Catholic Church isn't giving them money (if we're talking about Catholic Schools). They are funded just like the comprehensive school down the road, except parents will help contribute to any funds required to pay the 10% of capital required for new builds. The comprehensive schools aren't failing because they are at a funding disadvanatge; they actually have a small advantage over the faith schools. They are failing because they aren't providing a good enough education, and so fewer people want to send their children there. Something is different about the ethos of faith schools which allows them to succeed on the same (or slightly lower) funding basis. So again, it's daft to think that closing what is successful and in demand is the way forward. Rather why not be prepared to learn from what works in, and what attracts people to, faith schools. It's so much better to aim to lift the poor schools than to try and achieve equality by closing the good schools. I suspect the academies will be the end of the old-fashioned comprehensive school, and having been to a dreadful one, I won't mourn their passing (my education was 'redeemed' by a brilliant sixth form college, which was a radical idea at the time but it was set up outside of the control of the Local Education Authority, and it flourished, and I flourished because if it).

As for public funding, I might as well ask why I should fund non-faith schools. You see, it cuts both ways. There is no impersonal 'public funding'. I am the public funding, along with other tax payers. Why should I pay for the type of schools you want? You can go and start your own private schools with your preferred ethos (but I bet they would still be as poor as the state-funded secular comps that you so want everyone to go to).

No, it would be dreadful to turn the clock back to the bad old days of Local Education Authorities trying to tell us parents what schools we want, and controllling intake by catchment. It's so much beter now that teachers, head-teachers, and parents have much more control over their schools. No government is going to turn the clock back now.

Like it or not, the Churches know how to run good schools (from our experience largely simply by freeing them of the political control of the LEAs and letting teachers and parents control their own schools, and from creating a culture that expects high standards, and gives the pupils the credit of believing that they can achieve high standards). That's why the government asked the CofE to take on possibly thousands more schools in the longer term.

As for the Catholic make-up of the schools our children went to, it ranged from about 50% to about 90% (depending on the school and the year). Personally I'm very happy with the suggestion that a certain number of places should be reserved for people outside of the faith comunity (obviously so long as they accept the ethos of the faith school as it is).

I think you're on a hiding to nothing wanting to turn the clock back to heavy state control of schools, trying to make all schools the same. It didn't work. No political party is going to go there again. The direction of travel is quite the opposite - we're seeing more and more freedom for our schools, but poor schools will not survive.

We should always look to improve schooling for all, but the trend to more, rather than less, freedom for schools, and more diversity of choice for parents, has been a successful and popular one. Long may it continue. I hope you, when you have children, are able to chose a school that reflects the values you hold dear.

Anyway, I'll leave it there, as I've had plenty of say on this thread.

Thanks for the discussion - it's been a good one.

[Minimalist]

Why not ask about the negative impacts of religion? The bigotry is obvious and the siphoning of wealth from people who need it to live in order to prop up their bullshit churches? ( You might want to leave out the term 'bullshit' in class.) The constant lobbying by backwards religious assholes to have their bible-based opinions enacted into law.

Seems that you should grant the point that it has influence and concentrate on how awful that influence is.

[MusicLovingAtheist]

Shit. Replies exploded since I saw this thread this morning. I can't even keep up