The Centre For Social Cohesion

It is reported in today’s Times that, despite music being a compulsory subject in school until age 14, less than an hour a week is devoted to it in most primary schools and that only 13 per cent of primary pupils learn an instrument. Apparently, a major contributing factor behind the current dearth of music teaching in our primary schools is the fact that student primary teachers receive no training in the teaching of music.

You may well be wondering, sad though the dearth of music is in our primary schools, what the early learning of music has to do with social cohesion. Well, Plato and Aristotle certainly both thought it has a great deal to with it.

Last Thursday, as at the time I commented upon here in a posting, the Times newspaper applied generous coats of whitewash to London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone in an effort to give the left-leaning trouble-maker a brand makeover that would transform him into a paragon of responsibility and moderation. Today, it is the turn of that city’s Muslim population to receive the same treatment from this same newspaper.

In a news report in today’s issue entitled ‘Poll of Muslims in London shows hidden face of a model citizenry’, Michael Binyon reports that a Gallup opinion poll of Londoners to be published tomorrow has discovered the Muslim ones to be more patriotic and moderate in their opinions than their non-Muslim counterparts.

Elsewhere, the newspaper gives over to Mr Binyon further column inches to drive home his message. In a Thunderer column entitled ‘Muslim, British and just like the rest of us’, Mr Binyon exuberantly declares that ‘here at last are the figures to… prove… most Muslims are honest, moderate, loyal citizens’.

Why do I remain unpersuaded by what Mr Binyon claims here?

Inter-faith dialogue; compulsory mixing of schoolchildren to promote better race relations ….

There seems currently no end to the number of straws to which Labour ministers and prime ministers are not unwilling to cling in a desperate bid to salvage the country from the parlous state into which ten years of their hopelessly misguided immigration and multicultural policies have brought it.

We should not feel afraid, however, of saying that, at present, only one recently settled minority is proving hard to integrate adequately in Britain -- its Muslim one. The reasons why this is so are many and complex and not to be addressed fully here.

What can and should be said, however, is that neither the compulsory mixing of all the country’s school children by twinning schools, nor inter-faith dialogue between the members of its different faith communities, either on their own or together, are at all likely to solve the most acute problem the country currently faces regarding social cohesion. This is that of preventing its young Muslim citizens becoming so alienated from mainstream British society and life as to be susceptibile to radicalisation by extremists intent on turning them into terrorists.

Education has, I believe, a crucial role to play here in promoting social cohesion, but only if educational policy takes a very different course from what is currently being proposed for it by the government.

Being desperate to stop the radicalisation of British-born Muslims, the government turned for expert advice on how best they may be taught about Islam so that they would learn that only moderate versions of their religion were, if not authentic, then at least palatable.

To be their adviser, the government chose Dr Ataullah Siddiqui of the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. Well, however conversant Dr Siddiqui might be with moderate versions of Islam, he certainly should know his stuff about the other forms of that religion, given the institution at which he works.

There is a bizarre story in today’s Times. Apparently, Education Secretary Ed Balls will announce today that all secondary schools must include compulsory lessons in ‘happiness, well-being and good manners’.

They are being introduced reportedly on the basis of the apparent improvement in behaviour and academic performance of primary pupils who had received such lessons as part of an extensive pilot programme named ‘Seal’ which stands for ‘Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning’.

In quest of Muslim votes, David Cameron has turned for policy advice to a group of Muslim party members known as the Conservative Muslim Forum (CMF).

Last week, that group gave David Cameron the benefit of its collective wisdom on what policies his party should adopt to make itself of greater appeal to Muslim voters.

Parents with children in their final year at primary school will today learn how successful they have been in securing for their children a place this coming September at a secondary school of their choice.

Those who have been through this process will know what a trying time it is.

With the life chances of today’s generation of children being so dependent on the level of their educational attainment and that in turn depending so much on the quality of their schooling, the demand for places at schools achieving good examination results far exceeds supply.

At present, approximately a third of all schools in England and Wales are denominational, a status that permits them, when oversubscribed, to select pupils whose parents avow the same faith as these schools.

The overwhelming majority of Britain’s state-funded denominational schools are Anglican. There are, however, also very large numbers of Roman Catholic and Jewish schools relative to the respective sizes of their numbers. By the same token, there are currently very few voluntary-aided Muslim schools relative to the number of Muslims in Britain who are increasingly calling for parity of treatment.

Cambridge and Edinburgh universities today announced plans to open new research centres for Islamic studies.

The centres are being funded to the tune of £16 million by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, chairman of the Kingdom Foundation.

Who can fail but to be deeply moved, if not humbled, by the magnanimous words of compassion spoken by the mother of sixteen year old Jimmy Mizen, London’s latest teenage murder victim?

They were directed at the family of her son’s suspected killer, another local teenager for whom the police are searching and whose family the victim’s own are believed to know.