CaiWingfield.com

As the title suggests, this short article is about faith schools, and why they’re a really bad idea.

To begin with, I’m going to have to make some assumptions.  I don’t want to have to argue everything through from first principles, so let me first detail my starting point.  I think I’ll need just three ideological presuppositions to argue my case.  First, pluralism is good.  By this I mean that we should have some respect and tolerance for other cultures and opinions.  Notice here that I don’t mean that all cultures and opinions are equally valid.  In fact, this is my second assumption — cultural relativism is bad.  By this I mean that no matter how strongly a person or group of people believe something, that doesn’t make it true.  Some things really are universally and objectively wrong.  I’m sure we can all agree that genital mutilation and smacking children are not only wrong, but that people who disagree with us are actually incorrect, by some objective metric.  If we don’t submit this point, then right from the start anything goes.  Rape, murder, anything.  If rape is wrong, it’s wrong objectively.  This second assumption may seem to be in tension with the first, but I don’t think it has to be.  We can find the point of agreement by saying that everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but that we don’t have to take them all seriously; though we certainly shouldn’t be dogmatic about which ones we do and don’t.  Finally, I’m going to assume that needless human suffering should be avoided.  Hopefully this maxim won’t require me to defend it.  I should also point out that I’m speaking as a British citizen here, so my knowledge and analysis relate to faith schools as governed by UK law.

I’m basically going to address three things in this essay.  I’m going to detail what I think’s wrong with faith schools; outline some criticisms.  I’m going to try to look at arguments put forward in defence of faith schools, and dismantle them.  Then I’ll try and come up with some suggestions about what should happen.

What’s wrong with faith schools?

The first thing that’s wrong is that kids don’t have a religion.  Richard Dawkins goes on about this (ad nauseam), but he’s not the only one, and I think he’s right.  The key to this point is that to say of an eight year old “Alice is a Pentecostal” makes no more sense than to say “Alice is a Marxist-Leninist” or “Alice is a structural realist, epistemologically speaking”.  All three are complex and extremely specific sociopolitical concepts and one cannot be said to adhere to one of them unless one has spent a significant amount of time understanding their premises and inner-workings.  It seems unlikely that almost any children, particularly young children of a primary school age, have the capacity to do this, let alone having actually tried.

Society doesn’t view children as full people (and this is a good thing).  They aren’t expected to think for themselves in many capacities.  They can’t vote or hold political office, (told you it was a good thing).  They can’t live alone, because they’re considered incapable of taking care of themselves physically.  They can’t have sex, because they’ve not considered capable of taking care of themselves emotionally.  They can’t be tried for a crime as an adult, as they’re not considered able to take full responsibility for their own actions.  They’re required by law to attend an educational institution of one form or another, because they’re not considered capable of finding things out by themselves or of turning themselves into knowledgeable and able citizens.

Another manifestations of this personal irresponsibility is that they shouldn’t be expected to criticise doctrine told to them as fact.  In fact, kids below a certain age are biologically programmed to accept uncritically things told to them by their parents.  It’s a survival mechanism — if mummy says “don’t play in fire”, a non-experimental approach to following parental advice is obviously an evolutionarily fit behaviour.  By extension, kids will uncritically believe things told to them by other adults in positions of authority and power, to whom parents direct kids’ respect.

It might be the case that children of Muslim parents (for example) end up being Muslim themselves, and this is indeed what we observe; but rather than hinting at responsible parenting, this shows that the children don’t have a choice in the matter.  If children could decide for themselves which theological propositions to accept, we’d surely expect to see a random distribution of faiths amongst children; which is of course exactly what we don’t see.

The above argument notwithstanding, the labelling of kids with one faith-tag or another is still unfair, because it segregates them.  If you say to a child “you are a Catholic, but that child is a Protestant”, then you’re automatically separating those children.  The message is communicated that these children are different in some apparently important way.  If it ends up being that children see past this indirect segregation based in superficial differences, it is despite the labelling, not because of it.

This is a problem only tangentially-related to faith schools, but it leads to the more broad point that faith schools are socially divisive.

School may well be a child’s first experience of wider society, and because of this they should be taught to assume that everyone is equal in dignity and worth of equal respect.  Because they obviously are.

Although lip-service is paid to this sentiment by religious leaders, it seems that the very nature of monotheistic religions is exclusivist, and this doesn’t fit with this egalitarian ideal.  Kids at faith schools may be taught to “respect and tolerate” other faiths, but this basically means “we’re right, they’re wrong, this offends god almighty, but let’s not bother them about it in this world”.  This kind of idea must really enforce notions of “other-ness” — we are of a particular faith, we’re special, and everyone else is different to us.  This is an extremely divisive way to talk to children.

Similarly, faith schools connect faith and community in an inappropriate way.  Certainly communities may be built out of faith (or lack of it), but this is also certainly not necessary, and it should never be told to a child that you can’t have real community without a binding faith.

Instead of these things, young children should be taught that imposed divisions in society are always bad (this is obvious), and that people who try impose such divisions are people who shouldn’t be listened to.  We should teach that everyone is essentially the same.  And most importantly, that there’s nothing wrong with people who don’t agree with you.  This is not what one would expect to learn in a faith school.

At this point, I want to digress from faith schools as institutions, and consider the laws the currently stand to require “secular” schools to implement sessions of collective worship.  The following may be found on teachernet.gov.uk:

All maintained schools must provide daily collective worship for all registered pupils (apart from those who have been withdrawn from this by their parents). This is may be provided within daily assembly but the distinction should be made clear.

The head teacher is responsible for arranging the daily collective worship after consulting with the governing body. Daily collective worship must be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. The precise nature will depend on the family background, ages and abilities of the pupils. It is acceptable for schools to split the collective worship sessions over the school year to be 51 per cent Christian and 49 per cent other faiths or interests.

Is there any way in which this is not divisive?  A child must be specifically marked-out as non-Christian in order not to attend a Christian worship-session.  This designates such a child as automatically “other”, and different to (in most cases) the majority of the school.

Those who defend the above are (unsurprisingly) usually Christian, and have feeble arguments.  They might claim that collective worship gives a sense of something greater, that it builds a sense of community inside the school (I’ve even heard it rebranded as collective “worth-ship”, as if that had any bearing on reality), or that it helps build moral values.  While these effects are good, they can be produced (and in fact enhanced) using secular teaching methods.  Instead of collective worship, collective reflection of, for example, less-fortunate members of society, or veneration of community members who work to better the lives of others are surely things which would have a real and positive effect.  These are concrete things on which senses of community may be based.  Ethical questions can also be discussed, even with very young children.  For example, even adages such as the golden rule (“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) are good and helpful methods for young kids to approach moral dilemmas.

Let me now return to the main argument involving faith schools.

Faith schools teach distorted moral values.  I’m going to take it as read that morality don’t (and can’t) come from religion.  This question seems to be one of the central theses for each of the “new atheist” books released in the last few years, and I think the arguments are fairly clear and watertight.  Ideas of divine moral arbitration are simply incoherent.  But one of the conclusions that I want to reiterate is that morals shouldn’t come from religion.  Just take a look at scripture, and you’ll see that this is the case.

Some religiously-derived ethical rules may be good, but many aren’t, and we can only recognise the good ones through other (non-faith-based) means.  Those that aren’t are also often especially harmful to teach to children.  For example, pupils at a faith school may be taught such things (in accordance with the corresponding holy texts) as:

• Thought-crime exists.
• There are things which don’t really hurt anybody, but still hurt God.  (Search for “crackergate”.)
• Friends who don’t believe in [insert deity name] go to hell and burn forever.
• God doesn’t reward goodness, only true belief.
• You are a fundamentally damaged person, with no hope of salvation except through [insert deity name].
• Men are better and more important than women.
• The world exists for our benefit, and we are incapable of doing harm to it.

Which basically can be included in the realisation that faith schools teach kids to think badly.  Fundamental to religious teachings is the idea that there are places where scepticism and critical enquiry aren’t appropriate, and these places can include matters of fact, and matters of ethics.  This is not the case.

In addition to learning this, they may be told that God is never wrong, so that if you spot a mistake or flaw in his reasoning, it’s your mistake, not his.  They will doubtless be told that things can be irrefutable true, even if they don’t make sense.  They will learn that not only is belief somehow its own justification, but that in many important cases, it’s actually better to have faith in something for no reason than to have actual justification for thinking it.  (Of course, they may be also taught straight-up factual untruths like intelligent design, but this is obviously crazy.)

Not only are these methods of thinking bogus, they’re really hard to break free from.  If you’ve read some memetic theory you’ll understand how a self-reinforcing idea like “it’s evil to think in certain ways, and even the act of reasoning which things aren’t evil to think is itself evil” becomes a nightmare when trying to escape from it, especially if it’s instilled at a young age.

So what’s right with faith schools? Are there any things which only faith schools can give to children?

Funnily enough, there weren’t actually that many good arguments which I could find in favour of faith schools.  Such arguments would not only need to show that something was good about faith schools, but that such things couldn’t be at least reproduced in a secular environment.  I’ll put down here the non-crazy arguments I could find (e.g., not “but it’s Sharia” or “but the queen is the head of the church”).

There’s a long and honourable tradition of faith-based eduacation in England.

This is usually the first defence of faith schools, but it’s pretty stupid.  There’s a “long and honourable tradition” of xenophobia in England, but this doesn’t give it any credence.

Faith schools teach kids about their own culture.

This argument is used especially in association with religions where the religion and culture are quite closely linked, such as Judaism and Islam.  But this point seems disingenuous, as this learning about culture would be better done in secular community schools, where all aspects of culture may be discussed and explored in a free and open environment.  It also conspicuously ignores the fact that they’re called “faith schools” for a reason: they teach doctrine as fact to kids — they literally indoctrinate children into a particular faith.  And faith and doctrine are totally distinct from culture and community, as I noted earlier.  This argument is usually quickly replaced by

Faith schools are better for teaching kids about their own religions.

I nearly consigned this one to the “crazy” bin and didn’t mention it, but it’s basically the main defence put forward by proponents of faith schools, so I feel compelled to address it.  First off, it assumes that pupils at a faith school actually have a religion which, as I discussed earlier, doesn’t really make sense.  Also, it seems obvious that teaching a child that Hinduism is true is not the same thing as teaching that child about Hinduism in a social context.  Similarly, teaching a child that Hinduism is true would seem to reduce the likelihood that the child will learn about other religions in a fair and balanced way.  Again, this is socially divisive.

It’s a parent’s right to bring up a child in whatever religion they want.

This is the first difficult one to counter.  Whilst I have my own reasonably strong personal views on this, I don’t feel that I can put forward a rigourous and non-emotional argument for them.  I would like to point out that under the law, parents don’t have the right to ultimate control of their offspring.  For example, neglect or abuse of kids is highly illegal.  I’m not equating faith-based education with child abuse here, but merely establishing that parents can’t just do “whatever they want” under the law.  On the other hand, parents are perfectly entitled to withdraw children form school and educate them at home.

But should the taxpayer be funding it, and should the government be institutionalising it?  On this point, it’s worth noting that the real question is almost “should the government be institutionalising Christian education with taxpayers’ money?”, since roughly 99% of faith schools in England are of a Christian denomination.  Whilst interesting, however, this is not relevant to the core issue.

To attack this argument of parental preference, allow me to quote the Humanist Philosophers’ Group’s 2001 BHA publication “Religious Schools: the case against”:

… it is one thing for parents in private to bring up their children to believe what they, the parents, think true and important. It is quite another for parents to expect that the state should undertake the role of transmitting such a belief.  The state has its own interest in ensuring that children grow up to be responsible and capable citizens.  It must design a system of education that serves that end, as well as promoting the interests of children.

It is the State’s role to aid the raising of responsible citizens, not to subsidise the indoctrination of children.  And it is this indoctrination which is the main difference between faith-based and secular education.

So what’s the answer?

According to OFSTED’s report on religion in schools between 1993 and 1997, only about 20% of secondary schools routinely implemented organised worship, though around 90% of primary schools did (or, at least, did on the day of inspection).  The other 80% and 10% respectively are actually defying the law in their omissions.  Is this wrong?  Would we prefer that they all followed this law?  Definitely not.  It’s a rubbish law.

So first we should remove mandatory (and in fact all) organised worship from schools.  There’s just no good defence for it.  There’s nothing to be gained from organised worship which can’t be gained by other means except for proselytisation.  Secondly, we shouldn’t shy away from criticism of religion itself for the part it plays in the debate.  If religion wasn’t espousing such bad methods of thinking and such twisted moral codes, it wouldn’t be such a problem to have it associate with education (although it would still be a problem).  This all basically means that we shouldn’t let the government spend public money on funding faith schools.

Instead, what we should be doing is teaching all kids about all different faiths — we should have religious education, meaning education about all religions fairly, equally, and impartially.  We should teach philosophy and critical thinking, so that kids can be allowed to make informed decisions about their religious feelings.  Finally, or course, we should disestablish the Church of England, and get a secular constitution.

To summarise my view of the debate, I will ask the following question:  If we were starting again from scratch, would we really decide to require most schools build communities outside of faiths, to educate all children fairly and equally, and to foster functional members of society; but to create a few schools, which everyone would pay for, which would indoctrinate its pupils into just one particular religion, and teach non-universal facts and values?  Or would we just like the first kind?