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Vexen Crabtree 2015


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Vexen Crabtree 2015

Another voice against faith schools.

Sir Cyril Taylor, who heads the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and is a government adviser, says that schools that are overwhelmingly Muslim should be replaced with schools serving a mixed community and highlighted problems with policing and protecting children in such segregated areas. (Added to "Faith Schools and Social Segregation: Disadvantages of Divisive Religious Behavior" by Vexen Crabtree (2003).)

I don't know if he admits that the same logic applies to all faith schools - hundreds of sociological experiments have proven that raising children in identity-segregated schools (black, female, foreign, ethnic, religious, etc) increases social tension and inter-group crime, undermines social coherence and causes intolerance, aggression and conflict between groups.

Given the present wars between the West and various Muslim states (such as Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan), and the terrorist attacks in our own countries, it is absurd to continue to raise children up as "religious" before they have a chance to think for themselves, and doubly mad to do so where extremists (such as Catholic anti-abortion extremists, or Muslim anti-Western ones) are actively searching for alread-indoctrinated recruits to further bend to more extreme causes.

Faith schools are suicide, divisive and dangerous anachronisms.

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While I can't quote the article I read it in, a bit of digging could probably locate it, but a similar topic of 'muslim schools to be replaced by mixed-community schools' had a sentence saying one particular christian 'teaching' organisation was interested in this. I thought the same way upon hearing this, why is it that muslims should be targeted when it is all relgions that push forward with intolerance?

I'd agree about everything else, but haven't there been studies that same-sex schools produce better pupils? While I believe in truly egalitarian education (and the rest) I haven't heard of prejudice being unduly influenced by not being in a mixed-sex school (every school I went to was mixed, and it didn't stop the boys and girls being sexist...)

I've never read studies on sex-segregated schools, so I don't know. I think there will always be background levels of discrimination, but, ... well, lots of research has shown ... well, the sociologist David Myers says:

“From all this research - 818 studies by one count (Druckman & Bjork, 1994) - what can we conclude? Cooperative learning [between racial groups], said Slavin (1980) is an "effective means of increasing positive race relations and achievement in desegregated schools." Cross-racial friendships also begin to blossom.”
"Social Psychology" by David Myers, p542

It may be that this doesn't apply to sex segregation, but I'll re-post if I find anything on that!

I think that the state cannot legislate on how people raise children at home (in the privacy of the four walls) because the human rights act allows people freedom of religion, religious expression, choices (within reason) on their family life and privacy. However I am against faith schools because for those 40 hours or so a week children need the benefits of mixing with other faiths, people from atheist backgrounds, children of other cultures etc. Their education needs to broad and more so if they are raised in a culture or religion at home. Despite my dad being a pastor my parents always opposed the idea of sending my brother and I to faith schools on those grounds.

Of course it had the advantage of making me a moderate and a liberal which is not what my parents had hoped for - but they love me anyway ;)

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