Normblog profile
Typical. I go away and Norm puts up his profile of me! If you’re visiting for the first time, welcome. You may wish to start here. Oh, and although Norm has linked my favourite song to something by a fella called James Blunt (?), it’s actually the song Beautiful written by Linda Perry, and made famous by Christina Aguilera; I prefer the Alex Parks version.
PS, a few days later: seems the fellas over at Laban’s aren’t very keen on me, really. Nor’s someone called Adloyada, either: I’ve ended up in her guest Britblog round-up, and she seems to think I care which type of faith faith schools adhere to. I don’t, not really: scrap the lot of them - if parents want their kids to learn about their faith, as well they might, they can send them to Sunday school / Arabic school / Hebrew school etc after school hours or at the weekend.
It’s a good quasi-interview. I approve wholeheartedly with the ‘His Dark Materials’ endorsement.
I did not think you cared which faith schools. I did understand you were against all of them. But I think your statement referred to children of all faiths being taught together in faith schools. And I was pointing out the problem this posed in terms of Jewish religious thinking (as incidentally does the “solution” of after hours religious schooling. To orthodox Jews and many observant Muslims, their whole way of life is a religious one, rather than religion being an after hours pursuit that can adequately be followed or caught up with after the mainstream business of schooling has done. Interestingly, Jewish parents who in previous generations always sent their children to mainstream schools now choose in substantial numbers to send them to faith schools. Don’t please take disagreement on an issue like this to mean I am one of those who are hostile to you. I noticed the commenters at Laban’s log were getting in a twist. I wasn’t one of them.
I do see your point, Judy, but I don’t see why the state should proselytise any faith (yes, I take your point about Judaism and evangelism, but it still stands as taxpayers’ money is paying for it). Schools should be flexible about religious observance - perhaps observing different hours or holidays depending on the local community, and certainly providing space for religious observance - but they should not be faith-specific zones.
Having said all that, my main concern is for the education of disadvataged kids, not secularism: I don’t see why faith should privilege some children’s education, as it does at the moment.
Well, Jews and Moslems, Catholics and CofE worshippers are taxpayers too, and they choose religious schools in huge numbers. Including disadvantaged parents. It doesn’t privilege their education, it gives a choice to those parents who want it. It is one of the abiding problems of the mainstream Labour party that it can’t seem to get its head round this without seeing it as some sort of unfair or smuggling-in-class ploy. Ultimately I think that comes from secular rationalists having a view of themselves as some sort of objective neutral centre from which others deviate…. It comes through in phrases like…Let parents who want to…..”Let” in this case is a verb used by those who control and command….
Judy - it does privilege the education of middle-class children, whose parents can exercise choice, and do to ensure that their children go to schools with others like them. If it doesn’t privilege those children, is it the case that we are saying that children whose families go to church, synagogue etc are cleverer than those who don’t? Because the results from those schools are better.
I am a school inspector, and I can tell you that it is not because of middle class privilege. The results of faith schools are better regardless of the class make up of the parent bodies, in the overwhelming majority of cases. This is because faith schools offer spiritual and communal solidarity. They genuinely do offer something that non faith schools don’t. You may think I am spouting my own prejudices. One of the first things I learnt from doing school inspections is this: leave your ideological baggage at the door. I do observe that children need spiritual development fostered the same way they need their artistic and literary development fostered. This affects their academic performance too. I have done well over 70 school inspections, and my experience matches the league tables. Middle class parents are just as likely to choose secular schools if they have better results. But you will hardly see a single middle class parent in some of the most outstanding faith schools I know, because one of those is in the heart of the King’s Cross area, and another is in the middle of prime BNP territory in Dagenham. Actually the most outstanding faith school I have ever seen is a Sikh school in Uxbridge. Its faith profile is stunning; it reaches through to every aspect of the school’s life, including its commitment to welcome visitors and respect and welcome every faith’s contribution to their learning. They happen to come near the top of every possible measure the DfES can think of. And it is not true that all Sikhs are middle class.
Hello Judy,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Can you point me to any further work on this subject? I can well believe that spiritual and communal solidarity is important in schools, but I don’t see why faith groups have a monopoly on delivering this effectively. And despite your rebuttal, it is still the case that the better-off intake of faith schools influence their results.
The only really convincing demonstration is to take the track records of schools from inner city areas which consistently score very high on all DfES and OFSTED measures. You can then see that most of them are not particularly skewed by class intake (which you again assert, but it is not true in relation to outstanding schools which do not have a class skewed intake. I referred to specific schools I know, and can send you a list of these).
It is true that non faith schools could theoretically deliver good spiritual and communal solidarity. In practice, they do not do so as well as faith schools. This is because faith schools draw on rituals, liturgy and family-embedded belief systems which are rooted in dozens of generations. This is what the Soviet system found it could not stamp out. The Woodcraft Folk is an example of a secular organization which has tried to develop spiritual and communcal rituals to rival those of Christian-founded organizations, such as the scouts. However, I know of know successful secular communal/spiritual solidarity ritual system which begins to have the impact on children that well done religious ritual does in good Catholic, Jewish, Islamic or Sikh schools (all of which I have had the good fortune to observe in action).
My own initial prejudices before I started inspections were that this would not be the case. Experience, and a readiness to leave all my ideological baggage at the door, have taught me otherwise. As I’ve suggested before, the traditional Labour left seems totally unable to let go of the idea that faith schools=delivering class privilege. It is a good eighty years out of date.
The song is very deep and has a very beutiful meaning. It talks about every situation that someone feels down or hated and can be used to help lots of people in these kind of difficult sittuations coz songs have a very big effect on listeners