The always interesting Uncle Johann on the subject of faith schools.
Key quote:
"[...] the Government believes faith schools achieve better results. At first glance, this seems true: look at a league table of the highest GCSE and A-Level scores in the state sector and you'll overdose on Saint this and Holy that. So, Blair says, would you really have me dismantle some of the best state schools in Britain?
But look again. The right-wing think tank Civitas - expected to back faith schools with table-thumping vigour - decided to study the figures, and found something surprising. Faith schools get better results for one simple reason: they use selection to cream off middle-class children - all kids bright and beautiful - and to weed out difficult, poor or unmotivated students who would require more work. They gave the game away last year when the Government suggested church schools educate more children who are in care, and they recoiled in horror. John Hicks, governor of St Barnabas' Church of England school in Pimlico, snapped: "We know children in care must be educated but it can be detrimental in schools that are oversubscribed." Or, not on our league tables, baby.
Civitas found that actually - once you factor in the fact they take brighter kids with far fewer problems - it turns out faith schools underperform compared to other schools. This is hardly surprising since they dedicate hours of school time to non-academic religious pursuits. The Welsh National Assembly commissioned a study that found the same thing. So the sole credible argument for faith schools is as mythical as the Christian belief that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and burped out, alive and well, a month later."
5 comments:
Anyone catch Richard Dawkins' pro-atheism show 'Root of all Evil?' on Channel 4 the other night? It's far from perfect (not the most rigorous examination of the issues imaginable) - Jonathan Miller's brief History of Disbelief (BBC4) was better - but it's worh catching the next couple of episodes anyway (Channel 4, Monday 8pm).
Quibbles aside, I feel that a programme like this in a decent evening time slot is a Good Thing.
Here's Uncle Johann giving the show a spiritied endorsement.
In praise of Richard Dawkins
Militant atheist and hero
In the interests of balance here's la Bunting offering a robust response (to Dawkins, not Johann.)
No wonder atheists are angry: they seem ready to believe anything
Richard Dawkins's latest attack on religion is an intellectually lazy polemic not worthy of a great scientist
And some comments from the letters page:
Science v religion - time for a truce
Personally, I'm with Dawkins / Hari on this one.
Earlier secularism thread here.
Wow, that first paragraph claim of Hari's checks out. Unbelievable.
the Catholic Church systematically tells Africans that condoms contain invisible, tiny holes that make them “useless” in preventing AIDS, condemning tens of thousands of innocent people to a slow death from ignorance.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3176982.stm
Vatican in HIV condom row
BBC
Thursday, 9 October, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,1402951,00.html
Cardinal says condoms could help to stop Aids
The Guardian
February 1, 2005
Just for fun, here's The Guardian's Charlie Brooker's fairly accurate description of the Dawkins show:
So the other day I'm flopping about in my pants watching The Root of All Evil, Richard Dawkins' new Channel 4 series about religion, and it's alternating between terrifying and hilarious. Terrifying because it feels like a report detailing the final seconds before the world slides into an all-out holy fistfight, and hilarious because every time Dawkins meets a religious spokesman, which he does at regular intervals throughout the programme, he quickly becomes far too angry to conduct a civil conversation with them - visibly fumes, in fact, and adopts the expression of an outraged Victorian gentleman who's just been mooned by a cackling street urchin while escorting a lady across Bloomsbury Square. It doesn't exactly move the debate forward.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1685609,00.html
More faith fun here.
They Sikh him here...they Sikh him there...
Interesting(ish) article about religious identity.
Losing my religion
Religion is no longer a guide to a peaceful and enlightened way of life - it has become part of an identity turf war.
Sunny Hundal
To be honest the main reason I posted it was because I tckled myself with the heading.
Here's the best bit:
The problem with our current state of affairs is that religion has become part of an identity turf war. It has gone past being a guide to a peaceful and enlightened way of life to being a proxy for political ambitions. On that Muslims are definitely not alone. My refusal to visibly identify myself as a Sikh is entirely based on the knowledge that it will lead people (especially Sikhs) to make assumptions on my ideas before I say anything.
Even on comment is free, intelligent writers who happen to be Muslim or Jewish are castigated by people who have barely bothered to read the articles. Their religious identity is enough reason to be a source of abuse or support.
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