The drive-in cinema last night was great, but unfortunately marred by one massive mistake on their part.

I’d decided not to go. It was a two hour drive each way, and I knew nobody else who could afford to stay up until 0100 (at the earliest) on a Sunday night. There were also unfortunate resonances with my ex-girlfriend: Moulin Rouge was always a special film for us, and it was two years to the day since we broke up (sometimes you just can’t help remembering these things). I hadn’t watched the film since. At some point, though, I decided that it was worth the risk of getting upset for the chance to go to a drive-in cinema, which I’ve always wanted to do. Plus, the tickets were free, and I’d feel bad about booking a place and not turning up. So off I went.

The roads were clear and I found the venue in plenty of time. I drove into the staff car park after ambiguous gestures from the stewards, and it’s not often I’ve received a look of such obvious contempt After a shamefaced reverse I was put onto the correct track. There were probably 80 cars in neat rows, up to 200 by the end, plus people washing windscreens, which I thought was a nice touch.

I wandered around the food stalls for a while. There was an oddly hushed atmosphere that I didn’t understand. I felt the need to talk quietly, and it seemed that whenever I looked around somebody would catch my eye as if to accuse me of staring. I grabbed a crepe and headed back to the car. At this point the woman in the car next to me told me off for parking too closely. I’d been guided in and there was roughly equal space on either side of me, but she was a relatively large lady so the space was indeed inadequate. It wasn’t like I could point this out, however. I mumbled something apologetic. Later she had some problems with tuning the radio as well as moving her car seat backwards; I think the on-site mechanic became slightly irritated, and in the end they were moved to the ‘VIP area’ - a row of Renault Meganes at the front.

I tuned the radio to the given frequency to find endless easy-listening Stevie Wonder. After a few songs mild irritation turned into active dislike, which is quite impressive for background music that most people apparently enjoy. I’m a philistine, I know. I turned it down to a vaguely tolerable level, grabbed my reading material and waited for the film to begin.

The film started half an hour late, which I guess was due to light levels. Although still watchable the screen was a little washed-out for the first twenty minutes, but once the sky darkened it became much clearer. A few spots of rain threatened to turn into a downpour, but happily didn’t.

Watching a film from the car is bloody great, frankly. You’re not disturbed by people around you and you can have the volume as loud as you like. It’s certainly as comfortable as your average cinema seating, too. I liked it a lot.

I was entertained by the similarities to standard cinemas. Plenty of people wandered around throughout, and numerous cars drove away at random points - the person next to me left after ten minutes. But the most striking similarity was when the film ended. Moulin Rouge has perhaps a minute of wrapping up between the climactic finale and the credits, and the Pumpkin People went insane. ‘Pumpkin People’ is my name for those who feel the need to jump up and flee the area as soon as credits begin rolling. You know the ones. Even when there’s something interesting still happening on screen, the Pumpkin People need to get the hell away before the spell wears off and they turn back into their vegetable selves. People who go to the cinema to watch the film, rather than watch the film. The Pumpkin People at Moulin Rouge simply couldn’t contain themselves. The little guy began singing his sad song, and the engines came on and suddenly everything was moving. By the time the credits actually hit the screen there were cars everywhere.

I didn’t get this. Me, I was still engaged in wiping away tears and watching the beautifully designed credits. Not to mention moving the car seat back into a reasonable driving position, putting my shoes on, setting up music for the drive home…It took me a few minutes to get ready to leave, and by this time I was feeling under pressure to hurry. I can only imagine that everyone else was sitting at the wheel, itching to rush away as soon as they could.

That was what I thought then.

The thing is, towards the end of the film there were a couple of moments that didn’t make sense. At one point Satine arrived in tears for no apparent reason, at another Christian declared he would visit the Moulin Rouge one last time, then went again the next day. I didn’t remember these problems, but then I hadn’t seen the film for a while. Then came a scene change that was incredibly jarring. I remember it really yanking me out of the film, because it didn’t seem to make sense. Surely I’d have remembered this? It had come after an obvious reel change, too.

I just checked my copy of the DVD, and it seems that they showed the reels in the wrong order. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know it goes Roxanne: The Show Must Go On: Opening Night and Finale. Except they showed The Show Must Go On: Roxanne: Opening Night and Finale, which due to the timing of reel changes resulted in the Opening Night Indian dance being directly followed by the Roxanne sequence, which ended in the Duke’s bedchamber and then directly cut back into Opening Night. It just made no sense. The wrong reel order explains why Satine was so upset over nothing - that scene was meant to come after the bedchamber scene - and why there were two Opening Nights / visits by Christian, as well as other odd bits of dialogue. I roughly knew the plot and was confused - anybody seeing it for the first time would have had no clue what was going on.

Really dumb mistake. It’s entirely possible that everybody was leaving so quickly because they’d realised and were cross.

I can see the problems with drive-in cinemas: in summer the films have to be shown late because of the light, and other seasons would have problems with rain. But I think the ability to sit in splendid isolation more than makes up for this, and it’d be great if somebody found a way around the problems. A admittedly large canopy would do it, as long as the carbon monoxide could dissipate ok.

I arrived home at 0140 after an easy drive. Despite the major flaw, it was definitely worth the trip. It was part of the Megane Summer Movies festival, by the way, which carries on for the next few weeks.

I’m at Arley Hall, just south of Manchester, for a drive-in cinema screening of Moulin Rouge. Thus far I have been directed the wrong way by lacksadaisical marshalls, and told off by the car next to me for parking too close, despite us all being guided in by said marshalls. Is funny. There are maybe 80 cars here atm. It’s an odd atmosphere - everything’s very subdued. Film starts at 2100. I have skittles

I saw Catwoman last night. I like to watch films that popular opinion says are terrible, and it’s rare that I don’t find something to enjoy¹. Ok, I didn’t think it was all that great, but it was funny Halle Berry sparkled throughout and delivered some truly awful lines remarkably well; I think the film could have really worked if the script had been, um, re-written.

For me the most bewildering part was the costume change. Her initial outing as Catwoman was in a perfectly reasonable, as costumes go, leather outfit - not quite so sadomasochistic as Tim Burton’s version, but something that looked vaguely practical for fighting crime. Then, for no apparent reason, it morphed into this. It was like somebody realised that here was an excuse to show off Ms Berry’s cleavage, and that became the primary aim. I didn’t even find it particularly sexy, but that’s obviously subjective.

Still, plot points ranging from the waiting-for-it-to-happen to the completely bizarre result in an interesting ride. Halle Berry’s performance alone makes it worth a look, imho, and it’s certainly good for a laugh

1. the only real exception to this being Battlefield Earth, in which I could find nothing redeeming whatsoever [↩]

Despite having the vast reaches of the Internet at my disposal, I yesterday failed to find any pictures of Cousin It from The Addams Family. Turns out that’s because his name is Cousin Itt.

You have to concede the coolness of Cousin Itt.

Whatever happened to BBC2 showing cool stuff at 1800 on weekdays? The Addams Family was always fun, at least when I was a kid, and there was ST:TNG, Buck Rogers, Buffy, the Gerry Anderson shows and sometimes old sci-fi films like The Time Machine or War of the Worlds¹. All this was far more entertaining than the always-depressing news, too.

1. I’m sure I remember seeing this in colour, weirdly [↩]

I was walking across the recreation ground earlier this week and saw what looked like a very low-level cloud, hanging a few metres above the ground. It was a little dark for a decent photo from my phone’s camera, but you can just about make it out:

I’d never seen anything like it before. I’m told it’s mist that’s moved across from the river.

The new version of Google Talk supports file transfers and voicemail messages to both GT users and non-users (it sends the latter an email with the voicemail as an attachment). They’re rolling it out slowly, but if you want to try it out now there’s a direct link. The only available version is US English, so if you’re anal bothered about seeing the word ‘color’ or whatever within the interface you may want to give it a miss.

File transfer is a feature I’ve needed in Google Talk from time-to-time, so this is a good addition imho. The only outstanding feature I’m bothered about is multiple-person chat windows; then it’ll be a worthy MSN replacement. Via Digg.

My website hits went through the roof on Tuesday:

I have no idea why this happened. Technorati isn’t suggesting I was linked to by anybody with major traffic, all the hits were to the front page rather than any specific article, and I didn’t actually post anything during the day. Given that hits on my feed went up by a similar percentage I’m guessing it was some kind of insane bot, although the disparity between unique and total visitors doesn’t really tie up with that. Dunno.

Just to make it easier for Googlers, and me
#1 - Introduction
#2 - The main argument against
#3 - Why are they unsuitable for religious education?
#4 - Other problems
#5 - An alternative approach
#6 - Conclusion

Having examined the case for faith schools, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are very likely to be counter to individual rights, and very possibly harmful to both the individual and greater society:

• The autonomy of the child is of primary importance. The Humanist Philosophers’ Group sums it up with: “in a free and open society, beliefs about fundamental religious and value commitments should be adopted autonomously and voluntarily.”
• It is highly unlikely that faith schools would be capable of providing a balanced environment in which children of all faiths, or none, can make their own decisions based on full information.
• Segregation of children based upon religious belief is extremely undesirable.
• There are alternative methods of education, which should be acceptable to people both religious and non-religious, that protect the autonomy of the child and do not involve segregation of religious groups.

I have tried to read widely on the different viewpoints regarding faith schools, but admit that many of my arguments are pretty much directly those of the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society. This is because I actually agree with them, and I have tried to question assumptions and to check sources. Obviously I have pre-existing biases - I’m a paid-up member of both organisations - but I have tried to understand all the viewpoints. In fact, when I first read the BHA’s proposals for an alternative education system I was quite taken aback, and it took me a while to understand why it was reasonable.

The BHA website, and their A Better Way Forward in particular, has far more detailed analysis of other issues and objections, including the ‘rights of the community’, the selection bias of current Church schools, the current state of religious education policy and the role of the state in religious activity. I also recommend the Education Bill itself and the unfortunately not-available-online Humanist Philosopher’s Group pamphlet on religious schools in general.

#6 of 6

The British Humanist Association has put forward an alternative to the Government’s current policy on trust schools. I’m not claiming that it is perfect, and I’ve heard objections to a couple of points that I think are worthy of discussion, but overall I think it makes a great deal of sense. It’s certainly a practical and implement-able response that I feel deal with most of the inherent problems of segregated faith schools.

The basic premise is that all state schools should be ‘community schools’, with religious beliefs catered for on an optional basis. The National Curriculum would provide religious education of a greater standard than is currently available - the current system is unfairly biased in favour of six major religions and declines to mention non-religious ideas such as atheism or humanism - and optional, extra-curricular religious instruction would be available for those that want it. Religious instruction is here defined as the teaching of religious beliefs as true, with the intention that children come to believe them as true. Religious beliefs are catered for whenever and wherever possible.

Full details and discussion of each point are available in the full document. The main recommendations are:

• Inclusive school assemblies suitable for all, thus ending the need for any child to be withdrawn or feel excluded from ‘collective worship’, plus time and designated places for optional worship, prayers, or reflection.
• Reformed religious education with impartial, fair and balanced teaching about all major worldviews, including non-religious ones, to give all children an understanding of the range of beliefs found in a pluralist society. Provision for additional optional faith-based classes on school premises.
• More public holidays, recognising a wider range of religious festivals, in workplaces as well as schools. Public examinations should be timetabled to avoid religious holidays.
• More respect for and flexibility on other cultural and religious requirements, for example in matters such as uniform, food, and Sex and Relationships Education.
• Better training for teachers on dealing with diversity.
• Better complaints procedures to deal with unfair discrimination.
• Better sharing of good practice.
• The involvement of local people in consultations about accommodations.
• Reform of the law, where needed, and improved guidance for schools.
• The phasing out of religious schools, unless they too can be persuaded to become inclusive and accommodating institutions.

When I read over the proposals I had concerns over some of the single-sex education suggestions, but my loudest objection was to the allowing of religious dress such as hijabs. The document makes no statement as to the far more restrictive, and arguably unsafe, jilbab, or the frankly repulsive burqa. It is difficult to see how a place of education could permit what amounts to misogyny. However, I can see that accommodations must be made in order to satisfy (at least the vast majority of) different faiths, and keeping schools a place for free and open discussion of religion is of paramount importance. A well-crafted religious education framework should allow no reason for pupils to be excluded, and I consider it of great importance that women in Muslim communities are at least exposed to the viewpoint that they are being treated badly. I can see how this policy is reasonable, given the world we live in, even if it does stick in the throat.

I worry about the definition of faith, and how it is decided which demands should be met. Scientology has very, very few adherents in the UK, but there will undoubtedly be parents who would wish for such beliefs to be taught in religious education classes. What of Christian Science, which rejects the germ theory of disease? What if I declare my children wongaBlogists, and they can only eat if there’s a monkey in the same room? I suppose this is a problem for another level of government, but I wouldn’t like to be on that committee.

There will undoubtedly be some religious demands that are unacceptable in a common environment. I imagine there are also those which directly conflict. The BHA admit this in their conclusion:

There will always remain a few minority groups whose requirements cannot be satisfied within the mainstream without detriment to the educational entitlements of the majority. Schools cannot be required to give up IT or dance or to accommodate ‘creationist science’. Objections to some aspects of the National Curriculum may have to continue to be satisfied through case by case negotiation and withdrawal from classes. This is not ideal for the pupil, but more accommodating schools would make it far less frequently necessary.

There is, I admit, a part of me that says this whole thing is ridiculous, and that education should be kept completely secular and be done with it. I don’t really see how the impartial teaching of opposing views of religious faith is different from teaching impartially about UFOs or ghosts. But, I guess that’s exactly the point, and balancing what I see as obviously true with as-strongly-held alternative viewpoints is the problem the BHA (and, to be fair, the government) are trying to solve. I recognise that rational people do disagree, and the BHA’s solution is practical and reasonable in today’s world. The proposals are by no means perfect, and are still vulnerable to parental manipulation of children, but I think that they make far more sense than current education policy. This is a solution that should satisfy all reasonable people of religious or non-religious beliefs, and I’d be interested to hear objections to it. The final post is a quick conclusion.

#5 of 6

Even if faith schools profess to be inclusive, there will still be large numbers of religious parents who choose a school that reflects their own religious beliefs. Faith schools are allowed to reserve a certain number of places for children of a particular faith (as much as children are capable of being of a particular faith - this is really the important question). It seems inevitable that faith schools will result in segregation of children (possibly just with parents of) different faiths. This already happens in Northern Ireland, where there are schoolchildren who have literally never spoken to children of ‘the other religion’, and that’s just between competing branches of Christianity. Is this really a situation we want to encourage?

I find it hard to think of any possible positive outcomes of religious segregation, unless you look from the perspective of the specific Church which ‘loses’ fewer children to other religions. Less disruption for pupils? Less bullying of outsiders? Maybe, but these are hardly justification for the kind of separation that would ensue. Bullying is a problem at any school, and something that can be decreased with effective policies. Disruption seems to imply that the role of education is simply to teach the National Curriculum, ignoring the role of schools in providing an environment in which pupils experience viewpoints different from their own. It’s obvious, I think, that growing up surrounded by people different from yourself results in more fully-rounded adults who are more tolerant of alternative ideas and world-views.

It’s been known for decades that applying even completely arbitrary labels to groups of people will foster hostility between the two. It is not at all unreasonable to say that Muslim-only schools would be easy targets for fundamentalists - you need just convince somebody that other people are the enemy, and in this case the separation from any other viewpoint has made this far easier.

Some claim that this kind of religious segregation happens anyway, and I’m sure there are places in which it does, but the role of education should not be to add to the problem. Quite the opposite, surely. The BHA has a large collection of quotes from people across the political and religious spectra who are concerned about the problems of segregating children in this way, including priests, ministers, MPs and people involved in race relations.

What of the argument that Church schools produce better results? Even if true, I don’t think this comes close to outweighing the other objections, but the evidence doesn’t support the claim. In A Better Way Forward, the BHA says [the full article contains the sources, which I’ve removed here for the sake of clarity]:

In every example of “better Church schools” that we have been confronted with (for example the London Oratory School, Catholic schools in Newham, St Christopher’s high school, Accrington), the schools turn out to have a better than average intake. Any selective school can achieve better than average results, and Church schools are often selective. On average, they take less than their share of deprived children and more than their share of the children of ambitious and choosy parents. This covert selection goes a long way towards explaining their apparent academic success. “Selection, even on religious grounds, is likely to attract well-behaved children from stable backgrounds,” said a spokesperson for Ofsted.

A study by think tank Iris (November 2005) found that many primary schools in England take in pupils whose family circumstances are very different from the neighbourhoods they serve. One school with only 10% of pupils on free meals was in a postcode with over 45%. Overall, non-religious community schools tended to have slightly more poorer pupils than expected. Church schools had fewer. Catholic schools, in particular, had almost 9% fewer poor pupils than in their neighbourhoods. Non-religious maintained primary schools have 20.1% of their pupils eligible for free school meals; Church of England schools have 11.3%, Roman Catholic have 15.6%, other Christian schools have 13.95%, and other religious schools 13.5% There is a similar pattern in maintained secondary schools, where nonreligious schools have 15.4% of pupils eligible for free school meals, while Church of England schools have 11.6%, Roman Catholic schools have 14.6%, other Christian schools have 6.8%, and other religious schools 18.5%

The Statistical Directorate of the National Assembly for Wales, faced with similar figures in 2001, concluded: “Analysis of levels of examination performance in comparison with levels of free school meal entitlement shows that once the different levels of free school meal entitlement are taken into account, the differences in GCSE/GNVQ examination performance and absenteeism [between Church and other schools] were not statistically significant.”

Simply put, if you control for free school meal entitlement, the difference goes away.

The current proliferation of Church of England schools is without doubt unfair to other religions. Even if you invoke the dubious ‘national religion’ argument, the statistics are still way out of proportion to actual churchgoers. Minority groups are currently justified in demanding they get publicly-funded schools, but the Church of England’s approach to education is positively benign compared to the idea of schools run by the more fundamentalist or evangelical religions such as Scientology, Seventh-Day Adventists, the Salvation Army or even the Roman Catholic Church. Faith schools would provide an easy opportunity for these religions to preach their message to far more (much more impressionable) people than would otherwise hear it - it would be very difficult to keep school numbers in proportion to believers, if that’s even something that makes sense. There is also reason to believe that some religions would actively discriminate by race as well as religion. This is not an argument for the expansion of faith schools - it simply shows the problems that will be faced if the current policies continue.

My intention over the last three posts has been to argue that faith schools are contrary to the rights of the individual, as well as impractical and potentially the source of many future problems. It seems very negative to argue without providing any alternative. I’ll try to provide one in the next post.

#4 of 6

There are good reasons to think that any faith school, be it Christian, Muslim or even humanist (if such a thing existed), would fail to provide a suitable environment for children to make informed and fair decisions about religious belief. Some existing Foundation schools make no pretense at impartial religious education. The Emmanuel Schools Foundation, set up by millionaire evangelist Peter Vardy, goes so far as to teach creationism. I think everybody reasonable can agree this is clearly wrong. The objections must be aimed at the concept of a faith school which claims to be impartial and open to the idea of other faiths.

Faith schools would only employ teachers of the school’s particular faith. It is not disputed that teachers are powerful role-models, and children surrounded by teachers with identical beliefs would undoubtedly be influenced in that direction. While it is unreasonable to expect teachers to have no beliefs, a non-specific-faith school would offer teachers with differing viewpoints, so the influence would clearly be much reduced. As much as we may wish otherwise, there will also be strong influence from parents who have sent their children to a particular faith school because of their own convictions, and this would create a massive peer-pressure amongst the children hardly conducive to informed thought.

Some claim that it is healthy to teach children a viewpoint and then allow them to become critical of it. This seems to be very much counter to child psychology. Evolution has resulted in children believing and trusting what they are told, at least to a certain extent. Such information was and is necessary for survival - it’s not evolutionarily sound for a child to test for him/herself whether the cliff-edge is a dangerous place to walk. The ideas we pick up in childhood are powerful and difficult to reject. A common argument I’ve read is that that people can and have changed faiths after leaving faith schools, so what’s the problem with faith schools? But leaving a religion in such circumstances is hardly an easy process. Deciding to disagree with everybody around you is not something done lightly, and in many cases results in strong feelings of guilt and self-loathing. There are atheists who, despite having rejected the notions of any religion, still shudder at the concept of hell, so great is the influence of childhood indoctrination. It is also argued that many children will be subject to religious instruction at home, and this is undoubtedly true, but the purpose of state-funded education is not to simply obey parental wishes. The Humanist Philosophers again: “it should not be the task of educational institutions to make it more difficult for people to make up their own minds about the truth or falsity of religious beliefs.”

Even though the concept of an inclusive faith school has its problems, there are serious reasons to be concerned as to whether such inclusive schools would ever practically exist.

The 2001 Archbishops’ Council report remit was “to review the achievements of Church of England schools and to make proposals for their future development”.

The Church today still wishes to offer education for its own sake as a reflection of God’s love for humanity. But the justification for retaining and aspiring to extend its provision, as recommended in this report, cannot be simply this, when the state is willing to provide as never before and when there are so many calls on the Church’s limited resources. It is, and must be, because that engagement with children and young people in schools will, in the words of the late Lord Runcie when he was Archbishop of Canterbury, enable the Church to:

Nourish those of the faith;

Encourage those of other faiths;

Challenge those who have no faith.

As well as being ambiguous - ‘nourish’, ‘encourage’ and ‘challenge’ are all extremely broad terms - there is a clear imbalance in the list. If the Church wishes to provide for the autonomy of children it cannot be so skewed toward faith. The report also recommends, as a minimum ethos, that schools should:

• ensure that the school is led by a headteacher who is committed, with the help of staff, to establish and maintain the Christian character of the school in its day to day activities and in the curriculum;
• engage meaningfully in a real act of Christian worship every day;
• offer a school life that incorporates the values of the Christian faith…[this refers to:
  

  In particular, it will be reflected in the everyday life of the school, quietly respectful of the beliefs of others and of other faiths, but confident in its own faith. Church schools will not actively seek to convert children from the faith of their parents, but pupils will experience what it is to live in a community that celebrates the Christian faith; to work within a framework of discipline and yet to be confident of forgiveness; to begin to share the Christian’s hope and the Christian experience that the greatest power in life and beyond it is selfless love.

• ensure that religious education is given at least 5 per cent of school time and that the character and quality of religious education are a particular concern of the headteacher and the governing body;
• observe the major Christian festivals and in schools in which other faiths are present ensure that those faiths are able and encouraged to mark their major festivals with integrity;
• maintain and develop an active and affirming relationship with a parish church;
• proclaim that it is a Church of England school on its external signboard and on its stationery and make appropriate use of Christian symbols
  inside and outside the school.

Even though it is claimed there will be no direct attempt to convert, the ‘values of the Christian faith’ statement suggests that pupils will come to Christianity as a result of being in a Christian environment. While not overtly evangelical, expressing it as an aim in this way suggests that open and informed education is not the primary goal of the school.

Church of England Bishops recently tabled an amendment to the Education Bill asking for the removal of the ban on discrimination in employment of non-teaching staff by reason of the staff’s “religious opinions or of [their] attending or omitting to attend religious worship”. If the school will not even hire non-Christians as staff, is it reasonable to expect fair treatment to non-Christian students? The General Secretary of the Church of England Board of Education said: “the Church intends that its schools offer distinctively Christian education and are open and inclusive of all who seek such education”. That’s very different from being inclusive of all.

While a benign interpretation of all these statements is possible, it’s something of a stretch. It’s easy to see why a Christian school would want to specify the above, but it would take heroic effort for it not to turn into indoctrination, especially if all of the staff genuinely believe that all the children should be Christian. There is no suggestion that non-Christians would have the option to abstain from prayer, for example. The report even suggests that Church schools be ‘quietly respectful of the beliefs of others and of other faiths, but confident in its own faith’. It is far from clear what form this would take. It is easy to get the impression that the Church is eager to take a privileged position when it comes to influencing the beliefs of students. While not necessarily typical, there have been examples of Church schools overtly discriminating against non-Christian pupils, one justifying its stance with the above report’s recommendation that “all Church schools must be distinctively and recognizably Christian
institutions”.

I’m not suggesting any insidious plot amongst the religious to indoctrinate children; the vast majority of the time, the intentions are honourable. But is it reasonable to expect people utterly convinced of one viewpoint to provide a truly balanced environment in which children can be autonomous? The Christian report provides a good insight into the ‘ethos’ behind church schools, and there is no reason to suspect that other religions would be any more likely to provide an impartial, fair environment.

Furthermore, there are strong arguments against the very concept of separating people of different faiths or non-faiths: next post.

#3 of 6

The primary argument against faith schools is that of the autonomy of the child. Here’s how the BHA puts it:

The main educational argument against faith-based schools is a simple matter of principle: the proper role of publicly-funded schools should be to prepare children for adult life as citizens of a complex, pluralist society. Schools should take care to be impartial, fair and balanced when controversial subjects are discussed, and it is as wrong for publicly funded schools to promote particular religious faiths, making claims for their truth that are heavily disputed, as it would be for them to promote particular political viewpoints. Schools should respect the autonomy and rights of their pupils, preparing them in due course to make their own mature decisions about their beliefs and values. We recognise that parents generally wish their children to adopt their own values and beliefs and, sharing that attitude ourselves, we respect their wishes. However, we also respect the autonomy of the individual, even when young, and we deplore the way that some parents seek to close rather than open options for their children, and to keep them in ignorance of, rather than to inform them about and help them appraise, alternatives.

There are, in the UK, a wide variety of faiths and non-faiths. While adherents to any particular viewpoint, myself included, may well be convinced of the inherent veracity of their own ideas, the fact remains that there are strong disagreements. We can all agree, however, that nobody should be indoctrinated: in a free and open society, religious or non-religious belief should be adopted autonomously and voluntarily. Children are in no position to make that decision before they have full information on the wide range of faiths and non-faiths available. Children are not mentally equipped to reject indoctrination of any form, and to take advantage of this is clearly immoral, by any standards. I would argue that the right of the child to be educated in a fair and open manner as to the complexities of the world trumps by far the so-called ‘rights’ of parents to indoctrinate their children, but even if you disagree, it is clearly not the role of the state to assist parents in this endeavour.

I’m sure that there are strong evangelists who would claim it doesn’t matter how the person comes to see ‘the truth’, simply that they do. This is clearly a violation of individual rights, and I suspect most religious people are far too reasonable to think this way. As well as being a fundamental human right, individual choice based on full information is surely the only reasonable way to approach the situation in which we find ourselves - that of a multi-faith, and no-faith, country and world, with strong disagreements on all sides.

To be clear, this is very different from the ‘teach all sides’ argument often applied to the teaching of creationism/evolution. Creationism is demonstrably wrong. The Humanist Philosopher’s Group draws a distinction between the idea of evidence as it relates to science, the arts and religion. Science is the process of the scientific method, and the strong evidence-based claims that requires. The arts are entirely subjective - you cannot teach the rights or wrongs of, say, literary interpretation. Although religious believers and non-believers claim arguments and evidence above that of the subjective, the fact remains that there is no consensus, the evidence does not match that required by the scientific method, and a multitude of faiths have incompatible beliefs. Rational people disagree, with no side able to provide acceptable proof one way or another. Children must be shown that the questions of faiths and non-faiths - whether there is an afterlife, god etc. - are open and heavily disputed. They can in this way make an informed decision.

The obvious objection is that faith schools are not necessarily incompatible with this view. They could strive to be objective and to teach about all religious faiths and non-faiths, and in this way can educate children to become autonomous. This is unlikely, and is the subject of the next post.

#2 of 6

The Education and Inspections Bill 2006 establishes the concept of ‘trust schools’. These are entirely publicly-funded and run by an external governing body which controls admissions, owns the assets and has freedoms to innovate in the National Curriculum. Where the school is deemed to have a ‘religious character’, government admissions policy grants schools the right to give preference to pupils of a particular faith. There already exist a relatively small number of Foundation and ‘Volutary Aided’ schools, which differ on minor details but are very similar to the proposed trust schools. These are collectively known as ‘faith schools’ as the governing body is invariably religious in nature.

This topic was recently discussed on Paul’s blog and generated much discussion in the comments, generally all in favour. I knew little of faith schools and didn’t want to wade in, so have spent the last few days reading up on the concept and the various arguments for and against. I came out firmly against them, but not for reasons I expected. I’m going to split the arguments into various posts, and in the next I’ll discuss what seems to be the primary argument against the establishment of such schools.

The most interesting conclusion is that I see no reason for the religious and non-religious to disagree on this.

#1 of 6

I heard that somebody, somewhere in the world is thinking of putting medical data onto chips and implanting them into volunteers, so that if/when they need to go into hospital they need only be scanned for their full medical history to be available.

Sign me up.

I want chips in me. I want to be able to pay for things by walking past a sensor (ok, maybe paying for things should be linked to a fingerprint, or a whitelist of registered shops or something). I want a GPS chip in my head so that I, and other people, can track my movements. I want this to eventually link to a semi-transparent Google Map permanently in the top-left-hand corner of my vision. I want a mobile phone built into my head, with a microphone on my vocal chords so I can speak without actually speaking. I want to be a wireless receiver, so I can install bodymods that link to the Internet. Bring it on.

I’m fully aware that any kind of encryption will almost undoubtedly be broken at some point. Don’t care. I don’t mind people knowing my medical history. Don’t mind them knowing pretty much anything. Paying for stuff is the only time I can see there being a problem.

Privacy fetishists would go mental at the first sign of such technology, of course. I suspect that these people would, if they could, transfer their consciousness into a peanut, be placed into a generic bag - evil multinational corporations would find something evil to do with a peanut - then left in a bunker somewhere. However, I would find them and eat them, and then they would have their own private digestive juices.

I want all kinds of body enhancements. I want better hearing, metallic joints, 20:10 eyesight. Thinking about it just now, it’d be quite cool if I could be upgraded to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Probably a little optimistic. Maybe leap over people in a single bound. Yeah, that’d be better. It’d be called the Gummi Bear Mod.

I have no objection to tattoos, either, except I’ve never seen one I really liked. The colours aren’t bright enough for me. I want a skin-mod that’s linked to the aforementioned wirelessness so I can have the latest news right there on the back of my hand. No, that’d just be depressing. An RSS feed of my choosing. Yes. That’ll do. Also, I think these are far cooler than tattoos: