Can it be right to learn apart? (Jewish Chronicle)

The Education Secretary Alan Johnson thinks that Lord Baker speaks some sense when he talks about faith schools. The sense that Lord Baker is speaking concerns his view that faith schools can be socially divisive, and this view is the reason for his amendment to the Education Bill to the effect that new mono-faith establishments - where they are oversubscribed - may be required to allow up to a quarter of their intake to be made up of children of a different or of no faith. Lord Baker specifically made reference to Muslim schools where the selection criteria makes it clear, “that they want to create a total Muslim personality, and at the age of 11 pupils are asked if they've read the Koran, or are they fluent in Arabic, have they learnt the prayers. That means that children of other faiths will not apply. And I think that further divides society."

Whatever else you think about this move (and the Church of England have already decided to adopt the policy voluntarily) it seems illogical to limit it to new schools. If you think that its bad that children should be automatically excluded from a particular school either because they are of the wrong faith or because the school’s practices are effectively exclusionary, then it makes ense - over time - to extend the policy to all faith schools.

So what do the Jews say? Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was quoted by the BBC as saying that non-Jewish children were welcome at Jewish schools. "It does happen,” he said, “in places where the demographics don't support a completely Jewish school - and that is a matter of parental choice.”

This translates as: non-Jewish kids are welcome where there aren’t enough Jews to fill a school. We let them make up the numbers, and - good for us - that’s parental choice. Then Mr Benjamin goes on, “But I think it would be nonsensical, where the demand exceeds the supply of places at Jewish schools, for Jewish children to not have the opportunity to go to Jewish schools because of a quota system". This translates as: but if we do have enough Jews, then the gentiles can go bugger off somewhere else, and who cares about their parental choice. Where the demographics do support a 100% Jewish school, it is down not to the parents’ choice, but their halachic status as determined by the powers that be.

In fact “nonsensical” is almost exactly the wrong word to apply to the proposal, given Lord Baker’s objective, whereas “hypocritical” is just about the right word to apply to Mr Benjamin’s response. In Jon Benjamin’s ideal world, I imagine, all Jews would attend Jewish schools. In Lord Baker‘s ideal world, none would.

My instinct is to agree with Lord Baker. Just regarding the question of the Jewish communities and British society, I think that far too many Jews are being separated off into these ghetto schools. As I have written here before I believe that the Jewish experience is disappearing from mainstream schools, and the mutual incomprehension that Jewish students say that they encounter at university is the consequence of this enforced ignorance. I have never heard this point sufficiently addressed by the separate school zealots.

Jewish schools are also mildly abusive in that they set out to indoctrinate children religiously and politically. JFS - an excellent school by all accounts - promises several times to “give the students a positive view and experience of Israel”. This is no more the function of a school than to give a positive view of Iran or Pakistan or the United States or the Vatican. Children should be encouraged to make up their own minds what view to take of another country.

JFS also undertakes to inculcate in its students “a strong sense of Jewish identity”. But why? Don’t they get that at home? At synagogue? At Jewish Youth Group? How constantly Jewish do you need the children to be, for heaven’s sake? Do we really want schools demanding of the young that they experience exclusive senses of religious and communal identity? As opposed to, say, understanding the idea of the identity of others? We can all go off into our corners and celebrate our identities, Muslims in Muslim schools, Catholics in Catholic schools, and Sikhs in Sikh schools.

Please don’t accuse me of wanting to get rid of parental choice, because I don’t. It’s just that some choices are bad for the wider community, and separate schooling is probably one of them. So I would like Jewish parents to choose something else. And also don’t accuse me of being anti-choice unless you are prepared to allow non-Jewish parents to choose Jewish schools.

And that brings me to my great suspicion. It could of course be that the main motivation for collecting Jewish children under one roof is the desire to be together - huddling together for spiritual warmth. But isn’t there also an element of the desire to be apart, to be uncorrupted by the inferior or brutish other?

Comments

[Frank Schnittger]

There is an element of elitism in all sectarianism - "our religion/sect/ideology is the correct and best way to live and to order society" and we don't want our children to be sullied by the general run-of-the-mill riff raff who don’t share that superior moral order.

At a time when Britain was run by the CofE, CofE schools might have been seen as less sectarian, because “Society” was defined by the CoE, and to be a member was to be a member of the ruling class, not a local ghetto. Religion in that case was often just a surrogate for division on class grounds.

Now, however, as society becomes more ethnically diverse, “Faith” schools of all kinds will just contribute to a ghettoisation of society. It is no accident that the USA has managed to achieve some degree of social cohesion despite a huge ethnic diversity because it has a near universal, secular, public school system. If we allow Jewish schools to promote a positive view and experience of Israel, why should Islamic schools not promote a positive view and experience of Iran or the Palestinian cause?

School are there, in part, to promote national identity and civic pride. If schools want to promote foreign countries or cultures – let them relocate there. The British taxpayer should be paying for British schools. Anything else should be provided privately, if at all.

[Anon.]

Oh, please!

Stop this tyrannical desire to erase national and cultural boundaries.
Human beings have the natural right to national and any other boundaries they wish to impose on themselves.

The State's interest is to educate its children whether by private or public funds. There's no need to forcibly mix people up at the school level if those schools are private. National schools should educate those children found within their neighborhood boundaries.

All else is social engineering best left to Stalin and Hitler.

[Nick (South Africa)]

Personally I think that no school should be allowed any religious selection criteria - any more than any university should.

Religiously exclusive education is about indoctrination, not education; it is divisive and runs contrary to harmonious community relations.

The UK policy with regards religious schools is a recipe for sectarian strife...The problem lies especially, but not entirely, with Islam which predisposes adherents to develop and hold a particularly intolerant, arrogant World view. 40% plus of UK Muslims are apparently already prepared to tell pollsters that they want Sharia law in Britain. Will the planned 150 Islamic schools funded by the state really help mattes?

I posit not.

[Silverbrow]

Brilliantly cogent piece. Pleased to see it's on the blog, hopefully it will get wider readership than just the JC minyans.

[John Phillips]

How is exclusion based on a particular believers brand of fairies at the bottom of the garden any different to exclusion based on race. Both ultimately only promote segregation and bigotry as, unfortunately, can be witnessed globally everyday.

[Inna]

David,

I think the larger issue you are not addressing is: are religious schools "good" or "bad"? In other words, does a student "get something" at a religious school (a Catholic, Church of England, Jewish, or Muslim) school that they may not get in a public, non-religious school. And can that "something" be ustained if that school has to spend an inordinate amount of its time trying to find children who are of a different faith (or none at all) to fill a government-prescribed quota?

I don't pretend to know the answer to that question in the British context. (In the US context, I would say that yes children do get something from a religious school experience they might not be able to get in this world of 2-working parent families, constant Internet and TV) and that something just might be the "sense of identity" which might ground them and make it easier for them to interact with other members of society for the simple reason they will know who and what they are. And be proud of it.

Of course I am speaking about the US. The UK may be totally different.

Regards,

Inna

[Al]

We should be educating our children at school, not encouraging them to be superstitious. There are enough natural things in this world to divide us and cause strife without inventing unnatural ones. We should get rid of all "Faith" schools, they are divisive. And how do parents know that their kids want to be Christians or Muslims etc.? Did anybody ask them before we started the brainwashing process? I think somebody should call in the RSPCC.

[Maurice]

Hey Davey - think Parris nailed you today. Any response other than the usual self-serving bilge?

[Frank Schnittger]

Wow Al, that's pretty radical! Get rid of all the Public Schools that made Britain Great? Next you'll be calling for the abolition of all "Faith" nations like Islamic states or Israel which discriminate against Christians, Jews and non-Moslems, etc. Goes a bit against the grain of Building a wall through Palestine to keep different ethnic/religious groups in separate "faith" colonies? Now that's what I call truly "divisive"!

[davidka]

'If we allow Jewish schools to promote a positive view and experience of Israel, why should Islamic schools not promote a positive view and experience of Iran or the Palestinian cause'
What rubbish!
Surely you know full well what is being taught to the young in Palestinian and Arab Muslim state schools. if not ask Nonie Darwish.
How can you equate this with what is taught in Jewish schools?

[Keith Downer]

With particular reference to a Christian faith school in Brentwood that I have some knowledge of, the standard of education is extremely high, reflected in exceptional ratings. In the main, this is true of many faith schools and a basic reason why parents move heaven and earth to gain a place for their child in such an environment.
Why such success? This particular school has a strong Christian ethos based on respect, discipline and hard-work coupled with teachers that are highly motivated and fully committed to that ethos. The children are happy, normal kids who have a clear understanding of what the boundaries and expectations are. They are given every opportunity and encouragement to excel in their studies and in activities such as the arts and sport.
Take away the Christian ethos and such an establishment will quickly fall back into the mess that many of the schools in our public education system have deteriorated into. Force that school to admit children whose parents are of faiths other than Christianity and it will have the same effect. The same would be true of an Islamic school force to take Christian children.
What a stupid policy!

[Sipu]

Until the Catholic Emancipation 200 years ago, parents who wanted their children to receive a catholic education, had to send them abroad. In a country where multiple faiths are practised, faith schools are by definition divisive. The cry of "No popery" by Lord Gordon and his fellow rioters was indicative of the huge differences perceived between the Catholic and Protestant faiths. These days the differences are not perceived to be so great. They are lumped together as Christian faiths. Judaism and to a greater extent Islam have less in common with the predominantly Christian society that is Britain today. Even if most Britons are not prctising Christians, they follow a Christian ethic. If faith schools are to continue to be allowed in Britain, they should be made to preach a doctrine that is acceptable to the majority of people who live there. As an atheist, I do not practise any religion myself, but I do see the benefit of religion in society; as long as there is only one. Where there is more than one, it leads to strife, and that is presumably what everybody is trying to avoid.

[Kate]

One question: would this debate be taking place if one (recent) immigrant community was not colonising large swathes of Britain and demanding rights and privileges over and above that of other faiths and none?

Traditional faith schools, CofE, RC, Methodist, Jewish, Quaker, do not teach segregation, domination, superiority or 'radical' politics. All follow the national curriculum and all lessons are in the English language. Muslim schools, on the other hand, preach indoctrination, separateness and are free to teach in a language that cannot be appropriately monitored by inspections.

Traditional faith schools cater for pupils whose parents, grandparents, and other family members are taxpayers, while Muslim enclaves in Britain number the highest percentage of unemployed males and dependent women who have never learned to speak English. This translates into a community living on state benefits.

It is therefore absurd to expect the taxpaying majority to (happily) fund 157 Islamic schools where most 'suspect' extremist religiosity and radical politics to be the primary subjects.

An investigation by the New York Daily News in 2003 found that books used in the city's Muslim schools "are rife with inaccuracies, sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians, and triumphalist declarations of Islam's supremacy."

In 2001 The Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation donated 300 Korans to the city school district; these had to be pulled from school libraries because of anti-Semitic commentaries.

In 2004 it was found that a textbook, used at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Alexandria, Va., authored and published by the Saudi Ministry of Education, teaches first that "all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews [and] Christians. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a former student, was recently indicted for plotting to assassinate President Bush.

Investigation in Canada found that The Institute of Islamic Learning, Ajax, Ontario, focuses exclusively on religious topics, has students memorize the Koran, demands total segregation from the Canadian milieu, and requires complete gender separation.

A recent study found a parallel problem of venomous anti-Jewish and anti-Christian materials in U.S. mosques. That the most prominent American Muslim organizations, spew antisemitism and host a neo-Nazi. The same in Canada, where the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohamed Elmasry, publicly endorsed the murder of all Israelis over the age of eighteen.

This is not a matter of they are 'ours' David. They don't want to be ours. The notion of Islamic schools supported by British taxpayers falls into the category of 'turkeys voting for Christmas'.

[Guy Smith]

School is a place for learning and allowing schools to exist where everyone shares the same faith is to restrict that learning. People believe in lots of different things for lots of different reasons, and no one group has a monopoly on truth. The best way to give children the chance of understanding what life is all about, is to encourage them to think for themselves and to explore the myriad of beliefs the world is wonderful enough to offer. Any legislation that restricts the narrow mindedness of one-faith education is therefore a good thing.

[vincent]

We should not be trying to change things which have worked for a long time because we are trying to make things fit into a "multicultural mindset" which is now defunct anyway. The main point in this is that people elect to send their children to particular faith schools and they support them. This present government has been given no mandate to change faith schools. If they want a fight about it; then bring it on!!!!

[S Joy]

What's a JC minyan? Does this refer to Christian minions? I'm a Christian and I dislike faith schools but would tolerate them if they included children of other faiths or with no faith. My preference is for secular schools whether private or state which would offer religious education on the major religions to all students. It should be the responsibility of the religion concerned to teach the fundamentals of their particular faith to their adherents. After all education in any religion is a life long endeavour and is not limited to school years.

[Al]

Hi Frank. I thought I was agreeing with your "Now, however, as society becomes more ethnically diverse, “Faith” schools of all kinds will just contribute to a ghettoisation of society". Maybe you are just putting words in my mouth to be flippant - but look out, if you are not careful you will have MichaelG, Vigilante of the Internet, on your case for not being a "serious heavy lifter"! But I thought you were still on your treck through the Middle East looking for Mohamed Mandela?

[Susan]

I would agree that the state should NOT fund religious schools. The money for religious schools should come from private sources. However, I disagree that religious schooling is automatically bad.

"Sectarian schools" need not breed an atomosphere of superioriry, moral or otherwise. I personally know people who are thoughtful and open-minded who attended religious schools. It is possible to be exposed to other viewpoints and other religions while attending a religious school.

We live at a time when most Jewish parents do not know enough about the Judaism to pass Judaism on to the next generation. They are ignorant of Jewish history, culture, languages and religion. Indeed most adult Jews are in need of adult Jewish education.

Joy, minyan is a Hebrew word that means a quorum of ten that is needed to recite certain prayers.

[Susan]

"...School are there, in part, to promote national identity and civic pride. If schools want to promote foreign countries or cultures.."

One of the reasons why there is such a large system of Catholic schools in America is that the schools which were supposed to be secular were promoting a Protestant viewpoint. Yes, the governemnt funded school system in the US is secular, there are large numbers of people who send their children to all kinds of religious schools raning from Quaker to Greek Orthodox.

Frank, you seem to be saying that Jews and Judaism are "foreign cultures". How long do Jews have to live in the UK to not be considered foreign? It's been 350 years since Jews were allowed to be publicly Jewish in the UK.

[Inna]

The problem with promoting a secular school as a neutral place of learning is that in a Nation-state (please note the word non-neutral word nation), a secular school promotes a specific sense of nation-hood: including religion. Here is how Ben Franklin (one of the pioneers of public education in the US) described the reasons for his enterprise: "This [Pennsylvania] will in a few years become a German Colony; Instead of their learning our language, we must learn their or live as in a foreign country." Benjamin Rush (another founder of public education in America) echoed this fear: "The education of our youth in the country be particularly necessary in Pennsylvania, while our citizens are composed of natives of so many different kingdoms of Europe. Our schools of learning, by producing one general uniform education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous, and therefore fir more easily for uniform and peaceful government."

Or to summarize: good education churns out good White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans.

Regards,

Inna