Tories propose more faith schools

[RogueTrooper]

Obviously this is the Tories attempts to knock the Labour party's manifesto launch off the top slot.

The Conservatives say they want to see "perhaps thousands" more faith schools.

Education spokesman Tim Collins says a commitment to a major expansion of religious schools "is absolutely at the heart of the Conservative vision".

Mr Collins will lament "decades of departure from faith and family".

He says this has resulted in broken homes, children "without a moral compass", more drug misuse and abortions, and "feral, scavenging youngsters preying on the old and vulnerable".

So it was time "to reassert some simple, commonsense truths" shared by all the major religions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4438453.stm

emphasis is mine.

more abortions! :wtf:

[izzie]

1. Silly but a good to place to put the blame.

since none of this stuff happened in those "Good old days' when we all went to church. Right? How did people like Dickens dream up all those stories?

[RogueTrooper]

2. I know, Make believe right wing history

They are so good at it as well ( not just the Tories ). I guess when so many of your policies turn out to be complete rubbish you get good are re-interpreting history.

I seem to recal that it was under a Tory government that Britain stopped being a nation of churchgoers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. "simple, commonsense truths shared by all the major religions"

and yet somehow, these shared truths are only teachable by splitting the community into separate schools? If it's shared, you can teach it in a secular school!

What faith schools are for is teaching the controversial bits that distinguish each religion from each other, and from the non-religious. And I don't think that's a good idea at all. Scottish football crowds booing the minute's silence for the Pope; Sikhs shutting down a play; Christian extremists threatening TV executives' families - we need more mixing between religious factions, not less.

[D-Notice]

4. I went to a CofE school

All it did was turn me against organised religion!

[ben_packard]

5. Catholic school here,

didn't really see the point.

[RogueTrooper]

6. Nodemoninational School in Glasgow

where there are "faith" schools as well. Growing up in Glasgow where people are indoctrinated with sectarian intolerance when the go to school has given me a life long aversion to faith schools.

[sweetheart]

7. I presume he means buddhism and "the force"

Faith is what one needs to ignore the facts and pretend the torys have
the public's best interests at heart... blind faith.

They look across the atlantic and can only wish for a dogmatic repressive
regime of christian mullah's... and where can one find them without
faith schools?

[Briar]

8. A young friend

complained to me today that her Catholic school is using RE lessons to teach her (there is no pretense of impartiality during these lessons) that contraception and abortion were both wrong.

Fortunately her mother is a nurse, and has already taught her better. But this is definitely not the sort of school our country needs.

[non sociopath skin]

9. Religious education in Saudi etc. ...

... certainly seems to give youth there a sense of purpose and the predominantly "faith-based" schools in Northern Ireland have certainly done wonders for the moral compass there.

The real stinky-poo subtext here is, however, selection. Headteachers of "faith schools" can interview parents behind closed doors, choose the "nice" ones and say it's because they were impressed by their religiosity.

Even City Academies would be a bit more upfront than that!

The Skin

[T_i_B]

10. WARNING: Dissenting opinion

I have to say that I don't think that faith based schools are all that bad. In my experience you do find a lot of people who think that Church Schools are very good and who do pretend to be religious just so they can get their children at those schools.

A lot of my Friends growing up went to the local Catholic School and they all said that it was a good school which just happened to have a bit more RE then the comprehensive I went to.

The Tory proposal will only have any popularity if it can be shown that faith based schools produce better exam results then secular ones, in which case everyone will want to send their children their simply to get better exam results. Mind you, I don't think the scheme proposed would take off even if the Tories did come to power, as the RW press would be up in arms at the prospect of more Islamic Schools.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Should the question be: what makes them good?

Is it that they get some voluntary unpaid work from parish members - could that be done in all schools, with the volunteers getting due acknowledgment? Is there a better ethos in the staff - and they transmit that to the pupils? Or is it that there can be some effective selection, as Skin said?

I still think that concentrating children from certain faiths in their own schools will have a tendency to reinforce barriers between communities.