Jock's Place - Faith based schools - a personal perspective - Comments

I see what you are getting at...

Jock — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:28:36 +0000

...but you know, I think politics is as inherently evil and irredeemable as you seem to think religion is and yet I'm still here working from within. I am a trenchant critic ofmany of the policies and teachings of Rome because I am a living example that they are wrong on some things. It's kind of like being in the EU but wanting to radically reform it. Yes, it's an uphill struggle - all the moreso after 2000 years of corporate corruption of the core message. There again, I do think I am in a far better position than someone who has never been part of that institution to criticize it meaningfully.

At the more general level, the faith versus reason debate, I don't think it is particularly liberal to infer that someone with faith is somehow intellectually or emotionally deficient because they do have faith, which seems to be the tenor of your assertion that it constitutes harm to teach people about faith.

It was quite a divine revelation though - especially in his hunt uniform with the tight white breeches...:)

Hmm.. you wrote, "Anyway, I

Charlotte Gore — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:48:25 +0000

Hmm.. you wrote, "Anyway, I think the point is that I don't think it's done me any harm. In fact it may have made it easier for me to understand what I was doing when avowing myself an atheist to have a grounding in what I was deciding not to believe in."
This really is the basic problem with religions having access to children as far as I'm concerned. It turns it into an 'opt out' rather than an 'opt in' as an adult, and the state is a willing participant.
From my point of view, the fact that they 'got you in the end' does constitute harm - it demonstrates quite clearly how faith schooling normalises and de-sensitises children towards organised religion. What is the likelihood that you would have had your profound religious experience (I'm assuming that you had one of those 'divine revelation' moments or something similar) that caused you to become a Catholic after 10 years of atheism if you'd not had a faith-sponsored education and had heavy exposure to the rituals, customs and dogma as a child - if they'd not been familiar and comforting to you as an adult because of the memories from growing up?
What are the odds that you would have picked that particular religion if it wasn't for the education you had?
Obviously I can't prove causality - I have a reasonable amount of familiarity with Christianity myself just through television and other sources, but on the balance of probabilities it does seem difficult to imagine someone less familiar with Christianity having one of those 'divine revelation' moments that trigger spontaneous conversions or relapses into faith, or at least it's hard to imagine someone interpreting such an experience in the way that you did.
Of course I start from the basis that anything that keeps organised religions recruiting and alive is inherently a bad thing, so my opinion about the rights and wrongs of the state endorsing this practice is very hard. Still, being realistic, I have very little hope that we'll ever achieve separation of state and religion even in the UK.

Faith based schools - a personal perspective

Jock — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:08:59 +0000

There's been lots of discussion about whether Lib Dems should support state funded schooling via institutions that have a religious guiding philosophy, let's put it that way, since Nick Clegg, self-proclaimed atheist, seemed to offer such schooling support recently (see the links at the bottom for the discussion elsewhere).

Some caveats here. I was brought up in quite a religious family. All my grandparents were "Gospel Hall Brethren"; a small Scottish anti-clerical sect. My family were frequently ex-patriates in Africa. The first school I really remember was in Nairobi. I don't remember it being "faith based" but looking at its website now I see it was scarily so - they even quote "spare the rod and spoil the child" and so on! Though I don't remember having chapel or any other kind of worship.

When we returned to the UK I got a scholarship to a Woodard prep school and thence to a Woodard public school. Nathaniel Woodard was a nineteenth century Church of England clergyman who established a network of relatively low cost boarding schools aimed at educating the sons (and daughters to his credit) of other clergy and professional middle classes. They both had a strong religious tradition. I was in the choir at both. Listen to Carols from Kings and I've done every treble and tenor solo on the entire disc (and I was better at it!).

About the time of my O levels I eschewed religion and became an atheist.