Labour Deputy Leadership candidates' views on faith (Blears arrgh)

[Borboski]

Very interesting survey carried out by the Labour Humanists:
http://www.labourhumanists.org.uk/

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions, other than rest assured Blears does her usual stiche.  How can this woman be in such a position of power???

In answer to the question:
What do you say to; (a) parents who can't send their children to a their nearest school because that school discriminates against them on the basis of their religion or belief; (b) to teachers who are discriminated against and barred from thousands of teaching jobs on the basis of their religion or belief?

Blears says:
I support faith schools. I have encouraged a new Jewish faith school in my constituency. Faith schools should encourage relations with other schools in their neighbourhoods, and pupils at faith schools should be experience other faiths and points of view.

Why doesn't she answer the question, aarrrghghhgh!!!

Harriet Harman, meanwhile, comes across very well, as does Peter Hain.  Harriet Harman is now my favourite.

[Blumf]

Blears really thought those question were beneath her didn't she. I doubt she even read half of them properly and with the ones she apparently did her answers are, at best, unpleasant.

Harriet Harman gets my vote too.

[Artemis]

Blears is from the school of Blair, though. She's always had a quite impressive ability to answer a different question from the one she's asked, with a kind of wide eyed grin about her. I can't imagine Brown is going to get on with her very well and I'm hoping for her swift decline as soon as she loses the deputy battle.

[Mr. Analytical]

Faith schools are repulsive things.

I know a woman who sends her kids to a faith school and the catholic priest not only gets her to clean the church but his house too on the grounds that "you do want a good report for secondary school don't you?".  I once called up the LEA and asked what the guidelines were for this kind of thing and I was told that there weren't any... it's left up to the schools.

So in effect, the schools themselves get to determine who is a member of their faith and they can make parents and kids jump through as many hoops as they want.

[Mr. Analytical]

It's not exactly a lively blog is it?  no comments whatsoever.

[Artemis]

Faith should nave no place in education anyway, surely. It's a thing that parents can instil into their children if they choose to be so cruel, but to discriminate against non-faith or different-faith kids, and then to warp the minds of the children you educate into believing that an article of faith is as worthy of education as an article of reason is quite wrong.

Faith is what's left when there are no textbooks; "we have absolutely nothing else to go on, so we've decided to believe in this instead". It still has no place in schools, but as long as these faith schools are around, that's what they should be saying. To create a textbook on an article of faith is akin to saying that the faith itself stands as an equal alternative theory to that which is subject to the scientific method, which of course is absolute nonsense.

[Sheldon Finklestein]

This is one of the political issues that is guaranteed to leave me genuinely seething with rage. So faith schools get good results for their students? I don't give a fuck. That's not even a factor. The case against faith schools are that they are founded on superstition, bigotry and exclusion. Getting a few extra GCSEs is not a valid defence. To say that they get results implies that the alternative doesn't.

It really does bother me. I have sat through so many vapid hymns, homilies and sermons in my education - my wholly comprehensive education - and only one of my three schools was actually meant to be Christian. Being from a little North-East town, it's sort of assumed that everyone's Christian deep down. I remember the teacher coming round our class one day, choosing who should go to the School Celebration Service (i.e. Christian propaganda, in church, with a few references to education thrown in). When she came to me, I objected that I couldn't go on religious grounds, as I'm an atheist. She laughingly dismissed this out of hand. Then, literally seconds later, she approached the girl next to me, one of the school's maybe two muslims, and said "of course, we won't make you go."

The smugness with which religious groups assume they have a right to children's minds is sickening. Whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, whatever, their superstitions should have no bearing on education. It just saddens me so few of those candidates think along the same lines.

Ah, thanks for that... I think it helped.

[Mr. Analytical]

Didn't Armando Ianucci do a joke once about parents trying to get their children into a school run by holocaust deniers on the grounds that they got really good results?

[The Mumbler]

For some reason The JEREMY VINE STOP SHOUTING SHOW ON RADIO 2 just had five minutes of John "McHorse" McCririck weighing up the odds of who should become the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Oh, I see. Wankers.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

I'd fully support the offical secularisation of this country, I mean church attendance is about 5% isn't it?

I also went to a CofE comprehensive, and true to form it gets excellent results. I'd say, however, that the "CofE" aspect of my schooling had exactly fuck all bearing on my schooling.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

What a surprise that schools that don't have a state operating 'come one come all' policy in terms of selection might get better results. What a surprise that they might be able to entice some of the best teachers away from borderline poverty state salary.

We should be supporting the best aspects of living in a secular society such as equality for everyone with no discrimination, and support of contraception, abortion and to an extent euthanasia.

One of the major problems with many religious people is that they are unable to see why they should keep their beliefs to themselves. There's always this creeping desire to spread the word, and it's especially sinister when it's done via the back door through horrible institutions like trust schools rather than out in the open.

[Blumf]

Aren't faith schools just grammar schools in disguise with even more specious selection criteria?

[Mr. Analytical]

Aren't faith schools just grammar schools in disguise with even more specious selection criteria?

  No, they're worse.  Grammar schools at least allowed for the idea that it was for the brightest children and ultimately if your kid didn't pass the 11 plus there's not much that can be done.  However, faith schools are given a free hand in what their selection criteria are.

  So in effect you have a sliding scale.  If you come from a wealthy middle class family who are likely to take an active interest in your child's schooling then you can get in if you claim to be of that faither.  But if you're poor then you have to prove that you're of the faith by donating to the church, turning up every week and "playing an active role in the local community".

[George Oscar Bluth II]

In my case, it's a genuine "we have to take anyone who lives in the catchment area" comprehensive school. It just so happens that the catchment area is an expensive place to live by Lincolnshire standards, devoid of council housing, or housing affordable to anyone earning an average wage has nothing to do with the excellent results though, I'm sure.

[Mr. Analytical]

I suspect I went to the only secular school in the country as I went to a French state school in London.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I wonder if the French would be so kind as to use our trust schools system to establish more of those over here. :-)

[Blumf]

No, they're worse.  Grammar schools at least allowed for the idea that it was for the brightest children and ultimately if your kid didn't pass the 11 plus there's not much that can be done.  However, faith schools are given a free hand in what their selection criteria are.

Well yeah, that's what I was suggesting, grammar schools with even more middle class bias.

[Mr. Analytical]

Given that I still occasionally wake up in a sweat thinking I'm still at school, French schools aren't all rainbows and puppies (they're big on humiliation and conformity) but it did result in me having a remarkably cosmopolitan up-bringing surrounded by kids from all over the world, preferable to the way things are nowadays when kids of difficult cultures and religions are treated as "other".

Blumf : My point was that grammar schools have selection criteria that are at least grounded in objectivity (can you pass an 11-plus?) but faith schools have a completely free hand and can and DO select on the basis of class, but do so under the cloak of selecting people based on their "faith".

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

they're big on humiliation and conformity

Still struggling to differentiate. Didn't go to a faith school but I imagine their more disciplinarian approach is fully booked in the humiliation and conformity departure loungue.

[Blumf]

Mr A: I follow you point there, but I'm looking at the whole Grammar vs Comprehensive debate, in particular the general Labour party position on grammar schools in conflict with Blair's closet Tory leanings.