Andrew Copson asks rhetorically in the pages of the Guardian, “Should we allow faith schools at all?” The general opinion in the comments is that “we” should not.
To be fair to Mr Copson, he probably did not write the subheading and his article talks about state funded faith schools. A proposal to ban state funded faith schools, though clearly intended to ensure that pupils are not exposed to opinions Mr Copson does not like, is less illiberal than a proposal to ban faith schools tout court. (In fact I am in favour of such a ban myself, though my ban would be accompanied by a ban on state funding of all other types of school, and preferably all other types of anything.) Many of the Guardian commenters reject such quibbles and are simply totalitarians. For instance, the second comment by “whitesteps”, recommended by 123 people at the time of writing, says,
Of course there shouldn’t be faith schools, though such a ban wouldn’t go anywhere near far enough.
Religion should be treated as a controlled substance only accessible after a certain age, with the religious indoctrination of small children treated as a form of mental abuse.
I always find the sublime confidence of such people that they will always be the ones to allow or forbid very strange. Given the course of events over my lifetime, perhaps such confidence on the part of “progressives” and tranzis is justified – however there are many still alive who remember a time in Britain when certain religious prohibitions were backed both by force of law, and by the sort of public opinion that leaves offenders with fewer teeth. I used to think that the lesson had been learned by all sides. I used to think that nowadays the principle that freedom of belief must apply to all to protect all was accepted by all. How naive I was.
Think the answer is all in the blog title.
I too take a dim view of faith-based schools, those
based upon the faith called “environmentalism”
are particularly worrying.
I wonder if “whitesteps” would be quite so keen about extending that principle to the Muslim community.
In general I agree, however in the case of schools, you’re talking about kids who don’t get to choose their school. The parent forces their beliefs onto the child by putting them into the school in the first place.
How far does the freedom of belief of the parent go, when choosing the child’s school, when compared to the freedom of the child to be protected from harmful indoctrination?
What if instead of the schools being one of the big religions, that it was a scientology school, or an even worse cult? What level of harm is allowed before the welfare of the child is put before the right of the parents to force their beliefs on the child?
Gib, parents always “indoctrinate” their children into their belief systems. Indeed, that’s a parent’s job. And it’s none of your (or my) business what that belief system is, unless and to the extent that its manifestation results in actual physical harm to the child (as with certain types of Chistian Scientist beliefs which forbid medical intervention). Furthermore, I would posit that indoctrination into a socialist/statist belief system, or an environmentalism/greenism belief system, is every bit as harmful as Scientology, and you’re not going to eliminate that, at least certainly not in the near term.
Anyone who is responsible for raising and educating children is necessarily going to inculcate his own belief systems; it’s inevitable and unavoidable. So the only question is who makes that choice: the parents or the state? To me, the correct answer is obvious. I hold no brief for Scientology (or any other religion; I’m an atheist), but I’d far rather have parents bringing up their children in their own beliefs than for the state (or some majority of voters) to determine what is a “proper” belief system.
Laird, I think religions are usually pushed down the throat of children much more forcefully, and with greater success in indoctrination than the belief systems you mention.
I’d rather no belief system be indoctrinated into kids personally. My major beef with religious schools is that in some degree they stifle the inquisitiveness of the students. I agree that “physical harm” is probably a reasonable point at which the state should intervene in such things though.
And would you like to use the coercive power of the state to indoctrinate
baby goatschildren in the belief that they must not indoctrinated by their parents?Or is it ok provided parents indoctrinate them with secular conjectural objective moral theories? Or would it be safer to just raise them in state run youth barracks so they can be free from any risk of parental indoctrination because we all know states can be trusted not to indoctrinate anyone 🙂
I never said the state could be trusted too much, but they can be involved in preventing excessive physical harm. Just trying to figure out where the line is as to what type of indoctrination they should be involved in stopping.
I ended up agreeing that physical harm is probably around the right place, and unfortunately kids will continue to be indoctrinated into religion as a side effect.
At what age the child should be able to refuse the school the parents have chosen for them is another question…
Should parents be allowed to indoctrinate their children with belief systems that call for violence against other races or creeds?
Should parents be able to deny their female children education because of their religion?
George: yes. Because, offensive and irrational as that may be, it’s preferable to the state (or any external party) making the decision of what to indoctrinate instead.
Should parents be allowed to indoctrinate their children with belief systems that call for violence against other races or creeds?
Should parents be able to deny their female children education because of their religion?
Yes, and no, in that order:
Firstly, yes, because
a) you can’t stop that, oddly enough (oh, you could probably stop it from happening openly at a formal school, but you can’t stop it from happening at home or in secret, which is exactly what any sincere holder of such beliefs, religious or political* in basis, will do), and
b) it’s too easy to claim that such a thing is happening when it isn’t, as an excuse to exercise the power of “stopping it” against a conveniently disfavored group, which all too plausibly will be actually doing nothing of the sort.
Secondly, no, because some sort of education is something you can’t go back and add after adulthood; thanks to biology, we learn many things most aptly when young. (And the answer has no relation to the posited sex – it’s true for any reason given for refusing a child education, though the practical reasons for its stipulation are acknowledged.)
[A longer, more detailed, and more compelling explanation of why would take up an entire blog post of its own; the summary might boil down to “inculcating values is inevitable and we can’t stop bad ones OR good ones, so we’d best not even try, as the power to try is too easily misused” vs. “religious freedom, while it allows for inculcating values we rabidly dislike, does not allow for stifling a person’s set of options so strictly as prohibiting education does”.
In other words, someone raised with some religious or quasi-religious beliefs can reject them as an adult; it’s almost commonplace. But someone raised without education has a far, far, far harder job to catch up.
Another objection is, “if we allow that, what reason do we have to disallow raising children in a Skinner Box”?, and we find little logical room to say no to it – after all, it doesn’t physically harm them, just limits their mental space irrevocably. In fact, that might be the best analogy…]
(* The original example you had in mind was presumably radical Islamism, from context, but – regardless of my inference being correct or not – it applies just as well to the pseudo-religion of Communism, or Neo-Naziism, say.
All of those are going to call for violence against those who oppose The One Way. And you can’t stop anyone from raising their kids believing them, without – effectively – giving the State power to raise everyone’s kids the way the State wants.
I’ll take my chances with liberty, myself.)
Laird: You seem to be taking the position that it is always preferable to allow parents to teach their children whatever they wish, no matter how likely it is that these teachings will cause harm to others or the child itself.
Why is the state interfering always the worst option? That view seems very dogmatic.
And if you belong to one of the groups against which violence is being advocated I would say your right to self defence overrides the parents right to educate their children as they wish.
Also, why do a parents rights to educate as they wish have more value than the right of a child to be educated, why is it worse that the state should interfere in the case of parents who do not want their female children educated?
Where does this right of a parent to educate as they wish that you are arguing for come from if not from the state that you are so opposed to.
Would you expect the state to enforce the parents right to educate as they wish if other members of society decided to intervene forcibly?
We home-school our children because (amongst other things) kids at the local school are already being indoctrinated into a particularly vicious form of secular humanism. Essentially forcing children to parrot the line that all belief systems are morally and empirically equivalent is not a neutral position, regardless of what the state says. It is an extremely value-laden position.
Fortunately we are not quite at the stage where parents are legally forbidden from acting in accord with their own conscience, although we are close. If you send your child to state school you will need the department of education’s permission to remove them again – a permission they can and do deny. If you homeschool or private school them, the “responsibility to educate” continues to rest with you, the parent. I wonder if parents knew they were signing over their rights if so many would use state education?
I wouldn’t be so adverse to state schooling if there wasn’t so much “the state as surrogate parent” crap. Just teach the kids to read and count for crying out loud! I know of a state school teacher was hounded out of his job by the headteacher because he was a Christian and he, and I quote, “didn’t want to teach 12 year olds how to have anal sex”. This did not go down well with the powers that be.
As a side note, if you divide the education budget in my county by the number of school pupils you get £5,000. You any idea how far a homeschooling parent could make a 5 grand per child annual budget stretch?
I don’t suppose they’ll give me a council tax refund for not using their education system though……
Certainly not from the state. It comes from societal norms, freely and mutually accepted by members of society – the state is there merely to to protect that freedom. Ideally, the state is the mere proxy of said society, with an extremely limited mandate.
Smited. A verse for the occasion, Laird?
“I don’t suppose they’ll give me a council tax refund for not using their education system though……”.
Of course not. My father paid for my education, my brother’s and, through domestic and business Rates, several of my friends’, whose parents could therefore afford new cars, foreign holidays, and home improvements, while we had to make do with a rusty 1975 Vauxhall, North Berwick, and holes in the carpets.
According to our betters in Pariliament, we were “privileged” to have all this, and paid for our neighbour’s gewgaws in the name of “fairness”. Our neighbours, of course, were mostly socialists, and those I remain in touch with still won’t believe my parents were, and are, worse off than them. My dad was a lawyer, and sent his kids to “private” school. He must be rolling in it. Well, he might be, if they hadn’t already done so.
When I come to think of it, is it any wonder I’m here at Samizdata?
I just want to say once more that many of society’s complex moral disputes could be avoided if only we took a more relaxed view of justifiable homicide.
Isn’t one man’s ‘truth’ another man’s ‘indoctrination’?
Other than that, I’m with Laird on this one – children are the parents responsibility not wards of state.
Gib:
You think that happens just in religious schools? I assure you that religious schools are generally far more attentive to scientific critical method at least in the US, than government funded schools are. In government schools, thinking is not taught, information is imprinted. Since analytical thinking is critical and requires comparison and exercising judgment, it is strongly discouraged and publicly funded education is confined to imprinting approved ‘facts’.
Sigivald:
Precisely why many non-religious, even non-believer, parents send their children to parochial schools instead of state funded, union staffed, sock puppet factories. Speaking for myself, I encountered an amazing amount of anti-inquisitive dogma in taxpayer funded schools. Think hard about this distinction. Which is worse; “not teaching children to think” or “teaching them to not think”?
George, others here have responded to at least some of your points, so I’ll confine myself to this one: “Why is the state interfering always the worst option? That view seems very dogmatic.”
Yes, I suppose it is dogmatic. But it’s based on bitter experience: simply put, the state always screws it up. Maybe it starts out well, with the best of intentions, but show me one instance where eventually governmental interference hasn’t metastasized into at best a sub-optimal result, if not an outright evil one.
Almost all parents want what’s best for their children (and just because your definition of “best” differs from theirs doesn’t mean they’re wrong). There may be a few who don’t. But that number is vanishingly small, and frankly the possible psychological damage to those few which you posit (and ignorance can be overcome, your protestations to the contrary notwithstanding) doesn’t outweigh the overall societal benefit of allowing everyone else the freedom to raise their children as they deem best. That may sound like a utilitarian argument, but in this instance it also happens to be a libertarian one.
Quite simply, I don’t trust you or anyone else to make those judgments, and I absolutely oppose giving the state such power. It will be abused. Power always is, sooner or later.
No nemesis – truth is the basis of reality and must be discovered for oneself… everything else must be sifted to discover truth… being taught to seek and distinguish basic “TRUTH” is something that indoctrination never does!!
This last Sunday, my second grandson was born to my oldest son. When we went to visit, he held me and said I was right in what I had told him when he was younger—When you hold your first born child in your arms for the first time, you will know that everything has changed in your life.
I don’t understand, and never will, the way some people raise their children. But, until there is verifiable abuse, it is their business, just as my family is mine.
The opinions of various commenters above, who somehow have developed the belief that they have something to say about it, are utterly meaningless.
And, further, if they attempted in any way to obstruct my wife and I in doing what we thought was best, they would encounter resistence at a very basic level indeed.
I will say one thing about the specific opinions expressed in opposition to parents—the idea that it is possible, or desireable, to raise a child without inculcating a system of belief is so detached from reality as to be delusional.
Our children were raised very carefully, educated in the best schools we could find and afford, and taught in our home to behave as decent and responsible people.
I told them many times that if they thought I was too strict, it was because I was not raising a kid, but trying to develop an educated, responsible adult who would live a productive life, and care for his or her own family as best they could.
My children are much better people than I ever was, and I hope they have learned from my many mistakes and missteps to be better parents.
Anyone who watched my daughter with her son, or who looked into the adoring face of my eldest as he held the child he had been dreaming of and praying for for many years, would know beyond any doubt that there was no one else who could replace that depth of love and concern.
So, the next time you are at a bar with friends, or in some study hall debate at college, and you want to say that parents shouldn’t be allowed this or that, go ahead, shoot the breeze all you want.
Just don’t come around my family with it. We don’t shoot breeze…
Smited. A verse for the occasion, Laird?
I can’t speak for Laird, but how about,
“There once was a smite-bot from Nantucket….”
That amazes me, too. But I suspect that a lot of people assume that taking and maintaining control is, essentially, all that politics is and can ever be. Government, for them, is like gravity: you ignore it at your peril and seek always to turn it to your advantage, and against your enemies. The idea that lower gravity might be a good idea is outside their mindset.
Mazal Tov, VR:-)
One of the key liberties is the ability to bring your own children up as you see fit. For the “left” it is one of the most hated elements of freedom preciesly because it prevents them from providing your children with their values first.
The advent of television and the impact of the National Curriculum in our schools is such that it is pretty challenging to bring a child up to have your values if they differ from the P.C./enviro/socailism of the new left.
If we have to have socialised education then lets have a voucher system and let parents spend them as they see fit.
It is easy to forget that it was religious groups and friendly societies that provided the structure that allowed a functioning free country before the state destroyed them.
Without faith schools, who would educate the poor in our libertarian paradise?
I hereby nominate this for SQOTD. :0)
Laird: “show me one instance where eventually governmental interference hasn’t metastasized into at best a sub-optimal result, if not an outright evil one.”
I would suggest the provision of services that require a large infrastructure especially where that infrastructure is so expensive that competing infrastructures are not practical. Examples would be water, electricity or gas.
I struggle to find evidence of metastasizing evil in the state provision of water.
So you don’t consider a governmental monopoly on utilities to be a bad thing, huh? The high prices (and the overbuilding in order to justify the high prices) in the absence of competition are positive goods in your eyes? My water company arbitrarily raises water (and sewer) prices and there’s nothing I can do about it, but because it’s run (and regulated) by pure-hearted public servants I guess it’s the best of all possible worlds. My town annoints a single cable TV provider (thanks to the miracle of political payoffs), so we get minimal choice (you have to take “packages” regardless of what you actually watch), unreasonably high prices, poor quality and abysmal customer service, but I guess that’s not “evil”. Well, can I at least sell you on “sub-optimal”?
Funny how a “natural monopoly” like telephone service (land-lines, not cell) somehow managed to find ways for competing carriers to share the same lines, bring down costs and improve service once they were deregulated. But that could never happen with electricity, could it?
Right. I stand by my premise. There is nothing humans do which can’t be made worse by the intervention of government.
Natalie – you have done a service.
Many free market people (including me) do not often look at the Guardian – so it is easy to fall into the error of thinking that the writers and readers (commentors) of such publications are just stupid, or radically misguided.
Your post shows that the real problem is that they are evil.