The War on Reason (the fight back begins)

More on "faith schools"

On the Government's Teachernet site, we find the following:

Faith schools: working for cohesion
Examples of how faith schools' contribute to community cohesion through their inclusive admissions

The trust deed for Nottingham Emmanuel, a secondary school with a Church of England religious character, explicitly states that 33% of places are for local community children plus places for other faiths. As a result, of the published admission number of 180 places, 60 places are for the local community, 15 places for world faiths and 30 for Church of England primary schools. The remaining places are general places under the school's admission criteria.

Sir John Cass School, a secondary school with a Church of England religious character in Tower Hamlets, offers 20% of its places under its religious admission criteria; 10% as 'language' places; and the remaining 70% as 'open' places. As a result around 80% of pupils at the school are of Muslim faith.

Church of England schools in Norwich have the proximity of the pupil to the school as the first criteria for admissions rather than the faith of the pupil.

The admission policies for the Guru Nanak Sikh Primary and Guru Nanak Sikh Secondary Schools in Hayes give some priority to children of any faith, who attend worship regularly with their parents/carers. The schools' (sic) also gives (sic) priority to pupils with a sibling at the school, regardless of faith, and to children with acute medical needs. Currently the schools' student community consists of Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh students.

Further information on school admissions.

Return to Faith schools: working for cohesion

Published 15 February 2005

Now leaving aside the curious use of the apostrophe in the title, what are we to make of the logic here? Let's try replacing "faith" with "race":

Racially segregated schools: working for cohesion

Examples of how racially segregated schools contribute to community cohesion through their inclusive admissions

The trust deed for Nottingham Whites, a secondary school with an ethnic European character, explicitly states that 33% of places are for local community children plus places for other races. As a result, of the published admission number of 180 places, 60 places are for the local community, 15 places for coloured children and 30 for white children. The remaining places are general places under the school's admission criteria.

John Bull School, a secondary school with an ethnic European character in Tower Hamlets, offers 20% of its places under its racial admission criteria; 10% as 'language' places; and the remaining 70% as 'open' places. As a result around 80% of pupils at the school are coloured.

Black schools in Norwich have the proximity of the pupil to the school as the first criteria for admissions rather than the race of the pupil.

The admission policies for the whites only Primary and Secondary Schools in Hayes give some priority to children of any race, who attend Aryan meetings regularly with their parents/carers. The schools also give priority to pupils with a sibling at the school, regardless of race, and to children with acute medical needs. Currently the schools' student community consists of whites, coloureds, and black students.

Further information on school admissions.

Return to Racially segregated schools: working for cohesion

Published 15 February 2005

The Government, promoting sense through nonsense.

(I look forward to a Government report on how criminality promotes social morality because some crooks sometimes give back some of what they have stolen…… actually, thinking about it, that’s exactly what Ofcom & PhonepayPlus do say when it comes to premium rate crooks..hmmm)

Faith in Schools - a dialogue

This began with my filling in some kind of comment or feedback form on the Department for Children, Schools and Families website expressing my dismay at the current Government's policy of encouraging the segregation of school children in accordance with their parents' religious beliefs.

I received the following reply:

Dear Dr Ward

Thank you for your email of 31 March about faith schools.
I acknowledge that some people may have concerns about the contribution of faith schools to community cohesion, but we know that the faith school providers are fully committed to a diverse school system and take the various requirements of maintained status very seriously.
I believe that all schools – whether they have a religious character or not – play a key role in fostering understanding, appreciation and shared values amongst their pupils. That is why section 38 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 places the governing bodies of all maintained schools under a duty to promote community cohesion, with this element of what they do to be inspected by Ofsted from September 2008.
A key component of schools' work on community cohesion should be to provide reasonable opportunities for children, young people, their friends and families to interact with people from different backgrounds and build positive relations. One way schools can provide these broader experiences to their pupils is through developing links with other schools in the UK. The DCSF is supporting schools to make these links by providing £2m to roll out the work of the Schools Linking Network into a national school linking programme with pilot projects in local authorities.
It is not right to draw comparisons with Northern Ireland, because the histories of our two countries have been shaped by very different circumstances. Ministers do not accept that the existence of faith schools inevitably leads to segregation by race or that faith schools are any less committed to inclusion and community cohesion than other schools.
Schools that are more than 75% of one race are generally no more likely to be faith schools than schools without a religious character.
Taxpayers’ money does not fund religious indoctrination. All maintained schools, including faith schools, must deliver a broad and balanced curriculum, including the National Curriculum, and are inspected by Ofsted accordingly.
All maintained schools must provide Religious Education for all their pupils, and some categories of faith school have additional freedoms around the teaching of RE, as RE does not form part of the National Curriculum.
RE encourages respect for those holding different beliefs and helps promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. In partnership with national faith organisations and the British Humanist Association, we have introduced a non-statutory framework for RE.
The Framework places inclusion, tolerance, diversity and interfaith dialogue at the heart of children's learning. These principles are shared both by the Department and faith communities.
In February 2006, the faith communities renewed their support for the framework in a joint statement making it clear that all children should be given the opportunity to receive inclusive religious education, and that they are committed to making sure the framework is used in the development of religious education in all their schools and colleges. This is an essential part of enabling young people to develop their own informed views on moral and ethical issues.
In maintained faith schools, as in any maintained school, parents have the right to withdraw their children from all or any part of RE. They do not have to give a reason for withdrawal and the schools is expected to comply with the request.

Yours sincerely
XXXX
Public Communications Unit

I replied:

Dear Ms XXXX

Thank you for your email.

To summarize: you argue that the negative effects of segregating children in accordance with their parents' religions are nowhere near as bad as people like me think; and you assure me that the government is putting all sorts of measures in place to mitigate these effects.

What is missing from your email, however, is any argument whatsoever in favour of the proposition that segregating children in accordance with their parents' religions is a good thing in itself. It does not really surprise me that such arguments are missing from your email, since you are clearly a reasonable person and it is impossible to imagine how any reasonable person could argue that it is a good thing to segregate children in accordance with their parents' religions.

By the way, I did not say that segregation along religious line leads to segregation along ethnic lines (though, pace your carefully chosen statistic, it very often does). I simply pointed out that the suggestion that segregation along religious lines leads to community cohesion is as coherent as the suggestion that segregation along ethnic lines leads to racial harmony. Or put it a different way: Why is religious segregation in education considered to be a good thing whereas racial segregation in education is considered to be a bad thing?

I find both types of segregation equally distasteful - as, according to the opinion polls I have seen, do most of the population of this country.

I hope that, sooner or later, reason will prevail in government and I look forward to a day when all schools (at least all state funded schools) will open their doors to all children, teach understanding of and tolerance towards all religious traditions, and leave the question of whether any particular set of supernatural beliefs is true to bodies outside the education system.

Yours sincerely

Dr M A Ward

the correspondence continued:

Dear Dr Ward,
Thank you for your email dated 17 April about faith schools.

I note your comments.

Further to my colleague's, Ms XXXXX, response I would add that faith schools are a long-established part of the school system with the involvement of the Church in education predating that of the state, and with a focus on the most disadvantaged. The dual system of voluntary schools supported by faith organisations and schools without a religious character is at the heart of the school system in England.

The Government will continue to develop a diverse system in which institutions work together, learn from each other and thereby drive up quality across the board. Faith schools make an important contribution to this diverse system and in Faith in the System, the Government and faith school providers have confirmed their commitment to continue to work together.

As explained previously, the Government recognise that people do have concerns about the contribution faith schools make to community cohesion and Ministers expect all maintained schools with and without a religious character to improve the life chances of children, to build bridges to greater mutual trust and understanding and to contribute to a just and cohesive society with all schools being inspected by Ofsted from September this year on the duty to promote community cohesion.

Yours sincerely,
YYYY
School Commissioning and Supply Division

and continued:

Dear Ms YYYYY

I realize that the segregation of children in accordance with their parents' religions is a long-established part of the school system. The same could be also said of bullying, sexual and physical abuse, racial discrimination, the illicit consumption of nicotine and any number of other practices. The fact that these practices are long established has never been considered a "knock-down argument" in favour of the notion that the government of the day should support and encourage such things. If fact, a series of governments has had considerable success is tackling or even eliminating the practices I have listed.

If the government wishes to justify its policy of promoting and increasing the segregation of children along religious lines, it really needs to come up with some convincing reasons why this policy, despite all the indications to the contrary, might be seen as a "good thing". I am afraid that the arguments you have presented thus far: "It's not as bad as you think" and "It's been going on for years" really do not do the trick.

And I am sorry, but I think you would struggle to get your proposition - that the segregation of children along religious lines can contribute to community cohesion - past the population of Salt Lake City let alone the population of the UK.

Yours sincerely

Dr M A Ward

and continued:

Dear Dr Ward,

Thank you for your email dated 01 May 2008 about maintained faith schools.

Ministers do not share your view that faith schools foster racial and cultural divisions and tensions in our society. Schools are well placed to become a focal point for the local community and to foster better relationships between diverse communities. Many Church of England schools have a high proportion of Muslim pupils and are very popular with Muslim parents.
The Commission on Integration and Cohesion’s report ‘Our Shared Future’ recognised that there are faith schools which have pupils from many different backgrounds and faiths, as well as largely single background schools which are not faith schools. Ministers believe that all schools – whether they have a religious character or not – play a key role in fostering understanding, appreciation and shared values amongst their pupils, thereby helping to promote community cohesion and equipping them to be active, responsible citizens in an increasingly diverse UK society. That is why, as mentioned in previous correspondence, section 38 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 places the governing bodies of all maintained schools- faith and non-faith schools alike- under a duty to promote community cohesion, with this element of what they do to be inspected by Ofsted from September 2008.

I acknowledge that some people may have concerns about the contribution of faith schools to community cohesion and about whether faith schools' admissions policies may sometimes contribute to selection or covert selection, but I must reiterate that the faith organisations are fully committed to the school system and take the various requirements of maintained status very seriously.

Yours sincerely,

YYYYY
School Commissioning and Supply Division

and continued:

Dear Ms YYYYYY

You wrote:

"Many Church of England schools have a high proportion of Muslim pupils and are very popular with Muslim parents."

You obviously think this is a good thing. So presumably you also think it would also be a good thing if many Christian parents sent their children to Muslim schools; and you think it would be even more of a good thing if more Christian and Muslim parents sent their children to the "wrong" schools.

Carry this argument to its logical conclusion, and you end up with desegregated schools.

So now in addition to the two arguments:

1) Religious segregation is schools is a good thing because, in England and Wales, its negative effects are unlikely to be as severe as we have seen in Northern Ireland and other divided communities around the world.

and

2) Religious segregation is schools is a good thing because, it has been going on a long time.

you have added a third:

3) Religious segregation is schools is a good thing because, it does not always result in complete segregation.

As for the "views of Ministers", I do not say that faith schools foster racial and cultural division; I say that faith schools are a racial and cultural division. Whether this will lead to greater tensions, is a matter not for anyone's views but for empirical research. All the evidence of history and from around the world points to what the results of such research are likely to to be. Why, given that you don't have a single coherent argument in favour of religious segregation, take the risk?

Dr M A Ward

and then finished:

Dear Dr Ward,

Thank you for your email and observations about faith schools.
I cannot add anything further but I note the points you have made.

Yours sincerely,

YYYYY
School Commissioning and Supply Division

I think I won all the arguments, but the Government carried on segregating kids anyway.

Nick Cohen on Chiroquacktic

Excellent article on the #singhbca case here; and Nick is a splendid journalist whose articles I always enjoy reading; but why oh why oh why does he insist on inserting his view - that anyone who questions the wisdom of the Iraq war or expresses any concern for the plight of the Christian and Muslim (and other?) "Semites" living in Israel or the occupied (or encircled) territories is a raving Islamo-fascist anti-Semitic leftist Nazi - into each and every piece he writes?

(Okay, Nick does not quite put it like this, but if you read his stuff often enough, you come to realize that this is what he thinks.)

If you are reading this Nick (and I don't suppose you ever will) please note that, for some of us at least, exactly the some sentiments that tell us that we would never ever wish to live in a country controlled by Hamas also underlie our concerns about the notion of a state whose criteria for citizenship and equal rights derive from ethnic and religious considerations.

What if alternative medicine really worked?

Generally speaking, fans and purveyors of so called “alternative” medicine insist it works. Rationalists and scientists generally insist that it doesn’t, or - more circumspectly – that there is no real evidence that it works. But just suppose it were found that a particular unorthodox treatment did work. Would this really strengthen the case for the notion of an “alternative” approach to healing?

Rather than take a real example, let’s take a fictional one. I don’t want to get bogged down in claims and counter-claims over the facts of any particular “treatment”, and I certainly don’t want anyone suing me.

Lets us pretend that there is an alternative therapy called “chrysanthemum therapy” or “CT” and that, it is claimed, CT (having a bunch of chrysanthemums in a vase in your bedroom) helps to treat the dreaded lurgi. Let us further suppose that CT has been ridiculed for many years by the medical profession who have their own orthodox treatment for the dreaded lurgi called “Lurgidium”.

Now finding out whether a treatment like Lurgidium really works is not as straightforward as many people believe. You can’t just try something out and say “oh yes I feel better now” and let that clinch the matter. Very few, if any, treatments work for everyone who tries them and you have to exclude the placebo effect and the nocebo effect and sampling errors and statistical artefacts. You have to make sure that you test a large enough sample of patients and that you test them for long enough and consider all sorts of other things you might not think of at first. This is all explained in terms any intelligent person can easily understand in @bengolding’s excellent book “Bad Science”. Scientists and clinicians have been working out whether stuff really works for a long time and have got the testing of medical treatments down to a fine art. Even so it sometimes goes wrong. One study provides one result; another study provides exactly the opposite result. Scientist then have to try and figure out why one study might be flawed and may have to come up with an even bigger and better study to clinch the matter.

Even if a treatment is shown to be effective, it might turn out to have unacceptable side effects (think of Thalidomide and – more recently – Vioxx). Scientists have to do a lot of testing before they can safely allow a drug onto the market.

Let us now suppose that some scientists decide to investigate chrysanthemums and find that these flowers release a gas comprising molecules that are a close analogue of the Lurgidium molecule and that inhaling small quantities of this gas really does help to treat the dreaded lurgi.

First of all, does this development vindicate the proponents of CT? Well that depends. If the proponents of CT have been simply saying something of along the lines of “CT has been used for many centuries in folk medicine and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests it works and is safe”, then fine. One could argue that the proponents of CT have been vindicated.

If, however, the proponents of CT have been saying all along that “CT works because it aligns the energy channels in your auras with the rings of Saturn” then I think we have to conclude that the CT people have just managed to hit it lucky.

And what would happen following the discovery that CT really works? (Let us suppose that CT proves to be even more effective in dreaded lurgi patients than Lurgidium and turns out to be safer. ) The big pharmaceutical companies would immediately start to produce chrysanthemum extracts in the form of tablets and sprays and creams and sell them to lurgi patients and/or their doctors. Okay, there might be some resistance at first. The big pharmaceutical companies might have patents for Lurgidium and put a lot of money into Lurgidium’s development and testing. But, given a competitive market, if a better, cheaper alternatives came along they would be forced to start marketing products based on that alternative (at least until they could develop and patent something even better). It should be borne in mind that, as Ben Goldacre points out, many of the biggest purveyors of questionable “health supplements” are the big pharmaceutical companies, and many of CEOs of these firms would gladly sell their own grandmothers if they could make a few bob from it.

So where would that leave CT? Could it any longer be called “alternative”? It comes from a plant, but so do many orthodox medicines. It has a history of use going back a long way before modern medicine, but so does the use of opiates as analgesics.
The supposed dichotomy between “alternative” and “orthodox medicine” does not exist. The only real dichotomy is between treatments that have been shown (scientifically) to work and those that have not.

Perhaps some treatments that are currently considered to be alternative really do work and will be shown to work once they have been investigated thoroughly enough (though, surveying the “alternative” treatments on offer, it is hard to imagine that many of them will ever get over this hurdle and many of them, e.g. homoeopathy, have been conclusively refuted) . But if and when this happens, those treatments will immediately cease to be, in any meaningful sense, “alternative”.

In short, the very notion of “alternative” medicine is simply incoherent.

Can religion be a source for morality and ethics?

My parents were both atheists, but, like all state school kids in those days, I had religion rammed down my throat from an early age – and certainly whenever I put anything down my throat. My primary school was not a faith school, but we had to pray when we arrived in the morning, before and after milk break, before and after lunch, and before we went home in the evening. There were times when I wondered whether there might really be a God, but as soon as I became capable of some degree of independent thought I began to judge that religion was about as plausible as the Easter Bunny story.

Although, since childhood, I have never wavered from this position, I have, as a rational “atheist”, to concede that I am really a flying-teapot-agnostic sort of atheist (If you have no idea what I’m talking about here, you need to read Bertrand Russell . or listen to Gong). I have to admit, therefore, that, when I die, it is just about possible (sort of) that I shall be confronted by a man with a long white beard who will announce:

“See! Jerry Falwell, Cliff Richard, Ian Paisley, and that Bin Liner chap were all right. I really do exist.”

If this happens, I shall be forced to eat my hat and concede that I have been wrong all my life.

But let’s suppose the chap in the white beard continues as follows:

“And not only do I really exist, I really do hold the view the protecting yourself from getting AIDs by using a condom is a sin; and I really do think that a woman should only ever walk about outside with a bag over her head, and that all homosexuals should be drowned at birth; oh and that it is immoral to use electric toothbrushes on Tuesdays – though I note that none of my followers down there on earth seem to have picked up on that last one.”

Shall I be forced to concede that I have been wrong all my life on these points too? Of course not! I shall say:

“Well I’m sorry God, but I disagree with all your views; moreover, you seem like a complete fruitcake to me.”
(Actually, I shan’t say this because he will then cast me straight into the fiery pits of Hell and I’m quite a coward when it comes to the choice between enduring extreme pain and standing up for what’s right; but I shall think this.)

In other words, while the mere existence of a deity is irreconcilable with my ontological viewpoint and forces me to change my views; the existence of a deity with different ethical opinions does not force me to change my views at all.

Belief in a deity is, therefore, neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for ethical beliefs. And I should go even further, ethical beliefs - views not about what is the case but about what ought to be the case – are not at all like a set of rules that someone (or some deity) has commanded us to observe. Ethical beliefs are beliefs we hold dear in spite of whatever the laws (of whatever type) force us to do or not do.

The so called “morality” that religions impose is not morality at all.

Bogus science and bogus law

For the avoidance of doubt, when I use the word "bogus" I do not (like Humpty Dumpty and Judge Eady employ it to mean what I want it to mean) I employ the OED definition:

• adj. not genuine or true

I do not say (or believe) that most chiropractors intend to deceive.
I do say (and believe) that most chiropractors genuinely believe in the treatments they offer.
I even say (and believe) that chiropractic can help some patients sometimes with some conditions - though like all treatments that (cf say homeopathy) actually include some real treatment, chiropractic is not risk free.

(You can read all about chiropractic here)

I do however say (and believe) that most of the theories of chiropractic and most of the claims made by chiropractors are unsupported by scientific evidence.

For this reason, I stand shoulder to shoulder with Simon Singh and declare:

"Chiropractic is bogus!"