Bob

In response to the Comment by Paul (thank you Paul), I will expand on my position that there is at least what we might call “religious affiliation” in the Academies scheme, and perhaps even outright collusion.

I agree with Paul that there’d be more to worry about if an even higher percentage of the Academies were religiously affiliated (or just religiously slanted).

But as a result of Paul’s comments I’ve looked into this further, and now I am in fact more shocked than I was at first.

I will make two main points. First, the number of Academies with religious affiliation is already higher than two out of seventeen; I only mentioned two, but actually half the existing Academies are sponsored by religious groups or individuals with explicit religious motivation. Second, I am indeed more concerned by the religious schools than the commercialised schools. I will take each point in turn.

The percentage of Academies that are Religiously affiliated

On the first point, the number of religiously sponsored Academies among those that are open is (this is from the government website) not two, but eight out of seventeen. (And that eight out of seventeen excludes five on which information is “pending” on that site.)

The currently open religiously sponsored schools are:

● Greig City Academy, Haringey - “is sponsored by The Greig Trust and the Church of England”.

● Manchester Academy, Manchester - “The sponsors are the United Learning Trust (The Church Schools Company) and Manchester Science Park Ltd.” (I like the way “Church Schools Company” is in brackets here!)

● King’s Academy, Middlesborough - “The Academy is sponsored by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, which already sponsors Emmanuel City Technology College in Gateshead, and is developing a further Academy project in Doncaster, Trinity Academy.” (What’s in a name? Lots! The Emmanuel Schools Foundation is an evangelical Christian group linked to the teaching of creationism in its state-funded UK schools. Source.)

● Lambeth Academy, Clapham — “sponsored by the United Learning Trust (The Church Schools Company)” (again!)

● Northampton Academy, Northampton — “The sponsor is the United Learning Trust (The Church Schools Company).” (again, again!)

● Trinity Academy, Doncaster — “The sponsor, Sir Peter Vardy, (through his charitable Emmanuel Schools’ Foundation)[…] Trinity Academy will have a distinctive Christian ethos, reflecting that of the Foundation.” (Sir Peter Vardy is a millionaire evangelist with explicit intentions to build multiple religiously affiliated Academies. Not to be confused with the philosopher and theologian Peter Vardy, whom I have met, and seemed less keen to inflict his religion on small children!)

● Haberdashers Aske’s Knights Academy, Lewisham — “The principal sponsor is the Haberdashers Livery Company. The Worshipful Company of Haberdashers has its origins in medieval times”. (This “Company” now exists solely as a Christian “educational” institution which, as well as raising money for religious causes, exists to found religious schools.)

● Haberdashers Aske’s Hatcham College Academy, Lewisham — “is one of two Academies that form part of Haberdashers Aske’s Federation of Academies. [/] The principal sponsor is the Haberdashers Livery Company.” (again.)

Note that these religious sponsors are not your average Sunday School mums trying to get their children a better education and modelling it on their own beliefs. That wouldn’t be great in my book either, but these groups are much worse. These are evangelical groups, and “born-again” individuals, trying to Create schools in their own image.

According to the Guardian this month, “Four out of the 10 new schools opening this [term] are backed by Christian organisations and almost half of those under development are due to be sponsored by religious groups of some sort.”

This article gives further details of those upcoming religious Academies, including those that will teach creationism at the expense of evolution. It lists “key players” as private born again Christian Bob Edmiston “founder of the evangelical broadcasting organisation Christian Vision”, as well as “the United Learning Trust, a branch of the United Church Schools Trust, which plans a network of 10 academies with three already open” and “The Oasis Trust, a faith-based charity targeting the poor, [which] has four academies and is in talks with a list of local authorities ‘as long as your arm’ according to founder the Rev Steve Chalke.”

It is clear that the percentage of Academies with religious sponsors is at least 40% then (Barry Sheerman, chairman of the Commons Education Select Committee offers this figure), and it is approaching 50% over time.

Not such a minority after all then. Think of all the thousands upon thousands of businesses in the UK. Now think of all the modest little religious groups. For the number of religious Academies to be approaching 50% is grotesquely disproportionate to: the money available to them; the number of religious groups versus the number of businesses; the proportion of people who call themselves active, believing Christians.

The question then is “How come religious groups and religious individuals are sponsoring more Academies than are businesses?” Is it lack of interest from commerce? Possibly, but isn’t marketing supposed to be getting its claws into everything? The only other options are that religious groups are especially keen, or that they got their foot in the door especially early, or that the selection criteria favour them. (In the case of the last two this clearly plays into the ‘conspiracy’ element.)

What’s worse, religion or commerce?

Paul says, “the fact that these schools are open to influence at all is the issue, not some imagined conspiracy.” I agree that in a sense the easily-bought influence is more fundamentally problematic: If you couldn’t buy influence, you couldn’t buy religious influence.

But whether or not there is a genuine “conspiracy” remains to be seen. (I use the word “conspiracy” very carefully. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I share Karl Popper’s deep suspicion of conspiracy theories in general.) But put the ingredients together:

1. The Secretary of Education belongs to Opus Dei (since long before the Da Vinci Code furore, I might add). She’s a real member of this very real conspiratorial sect. (Thus she is probably not a fan of Dan Brown!)
2. There’s a new scheme led by her and Prime Minister, the leadership of which is “evangelical” according to his own MPs (source).
3. And as we have seen above, the number of religiously sponsored Academies is tending towards 50%.

So, is it an overt “trojan” means to religious schooling, intended by Kelly and Blair? Or is it just a coincidence that the door has been left open and the waiting wooden horses are rolling in? Frankly, I don’t know. Of course. But political responsibility is less important than the effect on the ground.

And what is the effect on the ground? The influence of evangelical Christian groups is worse than a corporate logo here and there. Paul says he’s “no less worried about the marketeering focus being placed by, for example, the Reed family on their ‘own’ Academy.” Here I disagree. I am worried, but less worried, about commercially biassed schools. “Marketeering focus” may engender a certain brand allegiance among children, and in the communities surrounding any Academies perceived as sucessful. It may also engender a commercialistic, or capitalistic stance. Advocates would call it “entrepreneurialism”, but I can agree with Paul that it marketeering focus doesn’t feel pleasant to me, while still thinking that religious indoctrination is worse.

Britain is already religiously fractured, with non-Christian faiths (and ethnicities) feeling marginalized, even to the point of feeding into terrorism. The money is in Christian groups; it will go into Christian Academies. So that’s really not going to help matters, is it?

Yet I don’t even need to think about this at a societal level. Teaching children about religion is good, but goading them into it is not. We seriously underestimate its impact on the child and its insidiousness: the closing of the mind; the destruction of rationality; the enforcement of belief; the betrayal of free enquiry; the engendering of us-versus-them labels that rip apart friendships and communities and cultures.

Of course this is emotive ground, but I will push the point. I agree with Richard Dawkins that phrases like “Christian child” or “Jewish girl” should give us a violent shudder of political incorrectness, no less severe than “Conservative child” or “Communist boy” should. And so should “Religious Academy”, so should “Christian school”.

I do not believe that sending your children to a religiously affiliated, state-funded school, is a freedom you should have. This restriction on you as a parent does not amount to an infringement of your freedom of religious belief; rather, to send your children to a religious school amounts to an attempt to destroy the child’s freedom of religious belief.

Religious indoctrination is not mere exposure to religion, it is the teaching of myth as truth, it is encouragement of faith. I regard such religious indoctrination of the young as child abuse. Not verbal abuse, not physical abuse, not sexual abuse, but ideological abuse.

Do not scoff. The numbers speak for themselves. The Academy door is wide open to let in those that will corrupt and decay childrens’ minds with infantile unreason and laughable fantasy.

Two further points

1. Is there support?

The claim keeps being made that pupils are indeed applying for these schools, and that therefore there is “support” for them. But applications are not surprising, and it is certainly not evidence either of popularity or of merit. Many Academies are situated near, or even replace, existing schools that are failing. Therefore many pupils have a choice between a new Academy and an old failing school, or between a new Academy and a new place to live! So citing uptake as evidence of popularity is a gross distortion, perpetuated again and again by the government.

2. The impact of religious sponsorship is disguised.

The government “StandardsSite” from which I got the information on the sponsors omits to mention almost all the religious specialisation (it tells you who the sponsors are, but only in one case admits that this will affect the “ethos” of the school) even though it harps on about sport and technology specialisations. This omission is not limited to this site. And it is not accidental. It is utterly insidious.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Philosophy, News, Ethics, Politics, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.