Some claim faith schools are socially divisive. They want them replaced by mixed community schools where children of all different faiths will be schooled together. That way, so the argument goes, all will be forced to mix and thereby become friends. By so becoming, the theory continues, they will be freed from the prejudices and negative stereotypes about each other caused by their lack of familiarity.
Theory does not always work out in practice, as the mother of a fifteen year old pupil at a community school in Swindon tragically learned a year ago last January.
Her ginger-haired son sustained brain damage after being set upon with a claw hammer by a sixteen-strong gang of ‘Asians’ following a minor altercation he had with a fellow ‘Asian’ pupil at his school in his same year.
After agreeing with him to a one-on-one fight at the end of the day in the school tennis courts, he was set upon by the gang of older teenagers who had been summoned to the school by 59 mobile phone-calls that had been made in the space of just one hour.
According to a report about the case in last week’s Sunday Times, eight months before this attack police had been called to a similar incident at the school in which the very same gang had attacked another white pupil and broken his jaw. No one had been prosecuted after this earlier attack.
The later attack was carried out before 250 pupils of whom some heard the boy’s assailants yell: ‘That’s what you call Paki-bashing.’
Thirteen of these assailants were convicted last week of various forms of assault. None was charged or therefore convicted of a racially aggravated attack. This is despite the principal assailant who wielded the hammer having had as a screensaver on his mobile phone a picture of the collapse of the New York Trade Towers. It was also despite his having been described by the chief police officer investigating the case as ‘a wannabe militant’.
The victim of the attack had apparently been altogether innocent himself of harbouring any anti-‘Asian’ animus. But just possibly the ‘Asian’ gang carried out the attack on him in retaliation for some earlier real or believed instance of ‘Paki-bashing’ as they put it. Whether or not they had been subject to any genuine provocation, this would not of course have warranted their attack on the boy.
What this tragic case shows, however, is that community schools are no more guaranteed to produce good race relations than are faith schools to produce bad relations. Indeed, one has to wonder whether any of these attacks would ever have occurred had the different ethnic groups involved been schooled in separate faith schools appropriate for their groups.
Some might think that even to advocate such educational apartheid is a counsel of despair. Yet, quite possibly, the ethos of faith schools might nurture in their pupils better than community schools ever can a form of self-esteem that would serve to immunise their pupils from the need to gain respect from others by the aggressive bravado displayed by the gang of ‘Asians’ who carried out the attack.
Of course, faith schools that teach their pupils to look down on those not of their faith should not be allowed to operate. And there is all too much evidence that some do.
Faith schools would certainly seem better able than mixed community schools to provide their pupils with protection from bullying by gangs belonging to other faiths. This indeed might well be part of the reason why they are so popular with parents.
The day must surely not be long in coming when the current slogan that invites us to celebrate diversity is consigned to the same lumber-room to which all other discarded utopian slogans have been. This day will surely be that which follows the one on which those who consider faith schools inherently more divisive than community schools receive just one too many muggings from reality any longer to be able to deny two obvious truths. One is the need for a proper religious education to civilise the savages children otherwise all too often become and remain. The other is that such a proper form of education is something that only faith schools are able to provide adequately.
Comments (2)
How can you condemn the concept of multiculturalism, and in the same breath endorse faith schools? These schools are by their very nature entrenched in their own dogmas, and do nothing but exacerbate the lack of social interaction between communities. Education that is based on discipline, respect, and exposure to different perspectives will not produce savages, but well rounded and civilized individuals.
Posted by Thomas Woods | April 16, 2008 7:27 PM
Posted on April 16, 2008 19:27
This kind of attack could just as easily have occurred on a housing estate between boys attending different schools, faith or community. The school setting is not particularly pertinent.
Community schools with a mixed intake can improve or make inter-faith relations worse. A lot depends on the school and its community.
There again 'faith schools' is an expression which covers a lot of institutions. Church schools are part of the fabric of our society. Indeed without the initiative of the churches we'd all be a lot less educated. No one but the secular humanists really thinks they are religiously divisive. The attack on them is mixed up with the anti-middle class and mildly anti-semitic socialists such as Balls.
The real question mark hangs over Muslims schools because they will probably be like the King Fahad academy or worse. I think this is inevitable because Muslim culture today is predominantly anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-western and very paranoid.
So I think we need to make these kinds of distinctions in the debate and not put all faith schools under the same umbrella. The different religious communities in this country have different histories and should be treated differently. When the Muslims have been here in large numbers for 200 years and fought in the British army against all and sundry then they might deserve to be treated with more respect. But they will never be on a par with the C of E anymore than the RCs ever will be. Numbers in services is a superficial measurement.
That the police didn't include racial aggravation should be highlighted and investigated.
Posted by william | April 15, 2008 11:06 AM
Posted on April 15, 2008 11:06