Oh I know the title of this piece is a bit Daily Mail! But, while the press & TV concentrate on Theresa May’s announcement promoting grammar schools, a far more important part of the new education bill she proposes gets hardly any air time at all.
May wants to increase both the number, and the selective power, of faith schools, by effectively removing the current 50% non-faith element!
For god’s sake ( 😉 that is today’s only attempt at humour) will all our politicians, and Theresa May in particular, please accept the wisdom of the bleedin’ obvious and do their governing job properly in promoting Britain as a secular society, in which all those ‘of faith’ and those of no faith at all are equal under one legal system.
The chief executive of the British Humanist Association, Andrew Copson, said: “If the government moves to scrap the requirement that religious free schools must keep at least half their places open to local children, regardless of the religion or beliefs of their parents, they will be sending a very damaging message: that an integrated society is not worth striving for.”
I had thought that Theresa May was being surprisingly level headed in her first few weeks as PM and was hoping for a more measured approach to politicking.
But no, instead, she has now made two colossal cock ups that our descendants will have to fund for decades to come:-
- approving Hinckley C
- this education bill
It is bleedin’ obvious, to all but vote hungry politicians, that faith schools are an increasingly divisive force in society. The future cost of policing the inevitable unrest and divisions withing British society are incalculable.
The sheer number of Islamic schools depresses and scares the bedoodle out of me, in equal measure.
The resulting separate, multi cultural ghettos are plain to see in many of Britain’s cities.
In addition, and below the radar is the number of children who are now ‘schooled at home‘. This has increased dramatically in the last 10 years. To explain this by referring to divisive faith schools is, of course, not politically correct.
That they really are schooled “at home” is not checked and we have seen many examples of madrassas teaching the Qur’an as a factual basis to a child’s education.
This politically incorrect view of mine is, never the less, the unpalatable truth.
Faith is nothing more than irrational belief , a vain hope that the invisible, improbable and completely absent deity in question actually exists, and whilst I accept that many people have that need for a deity, faith should never form part of the guiding legislature of this, post Enlightenment, United Kingdom of Great Britain.
At best, faith is a comforting hope that something exists, but based on no evidence what so ever.
At worst, faith is a conscious self delusion based on fear of retribution in a hell that nobody has ever seen.
The promotion of faith as being worthy of praise by a politician is nothing more than insincere manipulation.
Chief Constable Dave Thompson wants to allow officers to wear Burkhas so as to be culturally sensitive, but even the discredited Muslim Council of Britain ( MCB) has pointed out how daft this is. Burkhas are culturally insensitive to the British way of life and no allowance should be made for those who wear them.
Jewish beth din and Muslim Sharia courts have no place in this country wherein religious requirements supersede the one law of the land!
As Nietzsche said “God is dead…” to which I would add, “Now humanity can raise itself from its kneeling position and grow up”.
The phrase “God is dead” does not mean that Nietzsche believed in an actual God who first existed and then died in a literal sense. Rather, it conveys his view that the Christian God is no longer a credible source of absolute moral principles.
Then this from the National Secular Society: We’re working hard to stop the spread of faith schools and oppose the Government’s deeply damaging proposal to increase segregation and discrimination in new faith schools. But we need your help: Write to your MP today to help us oppose this new wave of faith schools.
The Government should be doing absolutely everything it can to promote integration.
The dangers of religious divisions were seen just last weekend when up to 50 Sikh men burst into a gurdwara to disrupt an interfaith marriage, one of many similar attacks in recent years.
We need a cohesive society. We know faith schools are a big part of the problem. But the Government is acting in a deeply counter-productive way.
It is blitheringly obvious to me that all faith schools should be slowly subsumed into a secular system where the philosophy of the European Enlightenment is taught rather than selective fairy stories.
Unless and until that is done, we will create pockets of a non-British society that so many integrated immigrants came here to enjoy.
