Religion, home schooling, and State Control

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Ok, the topic this month is about Religion and Ethics and related stuff.

So, how about this-

In the UK, the State has mandated a syllabus - every child should learn literacy and numeracy skills , as well as things like History , geography and science subjects.
If you want to teach your kids at home, there is a minimum standard that you to keep to, or the Government Inspectors will pull you over.

One step up from home schooling , there are the so called ' Faith Schools' - being outside direct government control, they can do things like select pupils on entry. This means that they get to weed out potential troublemakers - a big plus for any teacher or a kid who wants to learn. Middle class people in the UK will start attending church for a bit to get their child into a C of E or other Independent school. Catholic run schools are a bit stricter on entry selection and so the Protestant Independent schools are usually targeted instead by the Laodoceans in our society who simply take up a faith in order to get their kids a better education.

But, this is not a problem for the churches so much as a matter for the State. For although Catholic and Protestant Independent Schools serve as beacons of excellence - drawing high performance staff and pupils out of a mediocre State system into a higher performing environment, there are problems of assimilation if the faith community has a negative view of society as a whole.

Interest is expressed in the UK as to how well Islamic Schools will integrate their pupils into Western Society, for instance. Is there any desire to function in society outside of their own enclave, in some cases?

It is true that in some areas of London's east end, it is the children who speak English, and the parents go to the local shop and will do business with their fellow immigrants in their own language. The entire adult community is insular and inward looking. Having a faith school, even if it taught English to pupils, is not going to help develop the pluralist approach to faith or assist integration into society as the children grow up.

But then, many minority group parents see the Christian Independent schools already operating, and demand the right to teach their children their own Ethics and Standards, as do Protestant and Catholic parents. And yes, even Christian Faith communities do have people who take their principles seriously.

Not so much in the UK, where Fundamentalism has a weaker influence, but in the USA where it does, there is also the problem of the teaching of Evolution in biology classes.

In the UK, many parents have objected to sex education on religious grounds and got their children excluded from classes. Secular society does not really seemed to have got any sort of handle on Ethics in the area of Sexuality and relationships, according to these parents. They see it that children are taught the biology of reproduction, with no real emphasis on moral conduct.

So, how would I handle it, if I were in charge? Well, if governments can give space to faith communities, then it's time for humanists and atheists to take up the baton and be honest. Have they got the bottle to open up a school that teaches their ethics? For there certainly are Ethical Atheists about.

The State School takes everyone and anyone. It admits people who have no real aim in life, and some people just dump their kids on the school to let the teachers parent their kids. And this isn't fair on the kids who go there and want to learn, and isn't fair on teachers who want to do more than just stop their charges from running amok.

State Schools need to have the option of assigning their rejects to a suitable environment where such children that parents neglect can be taught separately, and given the support that they lack at home to become useful and productive members of society.

Rather than simply pointing everyone at a redbrick university or college, schools could maybe liase with local industry to provide apprenticeships for more pupils who have the aptitude to enter skilled trades and other occupations.

But the complaint that parents have that they want to impose their own version of reality on their children is the stickiest one to answer. Do parents have the right to 'indoctrinate their kids'? Has the State the right to assume ' Ownership' of the children and turn them against the faith and traditions they grew up in ?

This is may not be what is actually happening, but this is how it looks when little Johnny goes to school and comes home with text books that promote the view that the earth is millions of years old, and that Dinosaurs became extinct before Mankind ever walked the earth, or Mary comes home with an note inviting parents to talk with teachers about sex education classes that will involve pregnancy and contraception, and it's the way the debate is being framed.

So, can any way forward be found?

I think that parents must be given the right to be wrong if they choose, sometimes.
But the faith communities also need to up their game if they are going to face up to the modern world in a meaningful way.

The genie is not going back in the bottle. The world has been shown to be round, not flat, and the dating techniques that we have today are fr more sophisticated and accurate than anything that Darwin would have dreamed of. Faith communities need to make their own peace with modern science and allow older children to use their critical faculties in examining faith and science in a rational way.

When it comes to sex and moral ethics, though, it may seem that the Secularists are on weaker ground. Of course, the older traditional communities had clearly defined gender roles - but the women in such societies are clearly unhappy with the roles assigned to them and are rightly demanding change.

An examination of gender roles in societies around the world and the role of feminism in shaping our western culture seems appropriate. Again , the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Women are allowed into the workplace and a woman in the west can have economic independence from her husband. And we all have to deal with that reality as much as we have to do with the realities that Galileo and Darwin revealed.

It is also worth bearing in mind though, that just as we want to our children to understand 'the real world', that life is more than just acquiring material possessions and seeking sexual satisfaction. Well, this is something that a wide variety of faiths agree on. Maybe they are onto something? So you say that the world's great faiths have all got it wrong , Mr. Secular Atheist - so what system of Moral Ethics do you want to share, if any?

And the rising standard of living, the better homes and bigger cars have not significantly raised the level of happiness or lowered the rate of divorce among the wealthy, either in Europe or America. Rather than encountering weird cults like Scientology in the shopping malls, perhaps teenage children should be introduced to the ideas enshrined in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as other faiths in the school class room by teachers who specialise in the subject of comparative religion.

The pluralist approach can perhaps interconnect material science with spiritual values, and that would be no bad thing, in my opinion. Rather than taking Richard Dawkin's approach and excluding religion from schools, I would bring it in and treat it with a bit of respect. For mankind does not live on bread alone. Maybe Atheists need to take a less aggressive approach to religion and accept that yes, shared values do bring a society together - and it's time they put their own positive values up for discussion in schools.