A safe haven for all our crackpot beliefs

FIRST DAY at big school and the teacher was going through the register before assembly. When he got to my name, he hesitated slightly. “Samuel? Oh, he won’t be here.” I raised my hand. “Yes, I am,” I said. “I’m not Jewish.” What a mug. I was free. I was off the hook. I was a non-person. The school, presuming Semitism, was not expecting me in the big hall. Yet thanks to ancestors that deserted Judaism for West Ham United five generations ago, I had no reason to join the classroom of Jewish students that were excused prayers. I could have formed a lone cult of bone-idle humanists, dedicated to an extra hour in bed and breezing in for double maths around 9.30am. I blew it.

The funny thing is that this failure of imagination is also the last I remember of religion at my school. For no good reason, I can recall the prefab biology lab in the car park and I know our German teacher supported Ipswich Town but not one thing about our religious gathering (other than the day the deputy head said “Croost Christified” when he meant “Christ crucified”) has survived. As such, I left perfectly prepared for life in modern Britain, a country in which little more than 7 per cent of the population attend church on Sunday. I had no concept of religious differences or why it is hard for us all to get along and this staunch lack of belief has hardened over the years and served me well.

Until now. We are turning the clock backwards, to a time of blind faith, intolerance and superstition; crosses on BA flights, veils in the high street, creationism on the curriculum. I want someone to take that roll call again. “Samuel? Oh, he won’t be here. He’s gone back to bed, he says wake him when we’ve embraced the 21st century again.”

In the 1920s, one in ten Jewish children attended faith schools. Now it is more than 50 per cent. The Church Times is reporting the greatest rise in numbers of Church of England schools since 2001. By September 2009, it predicts there will be 17 new Anglican comprehensives. We used to look across at Northern Ireland with a sense of appalled bemusement. This is the Eighties and they’re still arguing about religion? Good God, haven’t they got cars to wash?

These days the mainland has 7,000 faith schools, many publicly funded. Of course, if you wish to inflict your half-baked creationist views upon your offspring in private, that is your concern. If, however, you wish to receive £6.8 million of public money to teach young people that the world is 6,000 years old and dinosaur bones are a test of belief put there by some practical-joker God to see who is really on his side, then we have issues. Most specifically, that it is not up to the State to provide safe havens for all crackpot beliefs and philosophies, or even just the mainstream ones. Certainly, it is not for the State to endorse a system of education that divides a population increasingly fractured by a misjudged mantra of multiculturalism. Common humanity is our only way forward and, by their very nature, faith schools encourage separatism.

There are four church secondary schools in Tower Hamlets in which the number of pupils of Bangladeshi origins stands at 3 per cent. In surrounding schools the figure rises to 90 per cent. So how is faith aiding integration in that corner of the capital?

In a speech two years ago, the Chief Inspector of Schools, David Bell, suggested that a traditional Islamic education was not entirely suitable for young Muslims growing up in modern Britain. As usual, his ideas were used to close down the debate rather than open it up and Bell was falsely accused of Islamophobia, but two years on it would appear he had a point. Alan Johnson, the Eduction Secretary, now wants all faith schools to offer 25 per cent of places to non-believers or pupils from other religions. “We cannot ignore segregation any longer; people must have a greater understanding of one another,” said Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury, not sounding a whole lot different to Bell in 2005. “We must not allow our recognition of diversity to become apathy in the face of any challenge to our coherence as a nation.” Maybe Mr Malik is an Islamophobe, too.

Part of the problem is that there is little monitoring of the education faith schools provide. At English Martyrs Roman Catholic School in Leicester, for instance, the anti-abortion charity Life is invited to speak to classes on the subject of sex education, which is a bit like getting your take on Ptolemy from the Flat Earth Society. The Emmanuel Schools Foundation run by the millionaire car dealer Sir Peter Vardy, which includes Emmanuel College in Gateshead, set up with £1,722,000 of Sir Peter’s money and £6,887,000 of yours, teaches creationism and regards Darwin’s evolutionary theories as unproven. Another of Sir Peter’s schools, King’s in Middlesbrough, has an exclusion rate ten times the national average.

A Muslim school in Scotland, now closed, was found to be giving female students a different education to males. Indeed, as so many religions promote a conservative role in society for women, it is hard to imagine that an upturn in faith schools will promote a similar increase in academic achievement and ambition among 50 per cent of the population.

The convention on the right of the child was adopted by the United Nations 17 years ago. Article 13 states: “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds.” Alternatively, endorsed by our Government, some nut can now feed you a tale that even the Pope finds far-fetched, and suspend you if you question it. And this will produce a nation of well-adjusted, tolerant young Britons? No faith, some people.

I support this artucle 100%, it hits the nail on the head, like the idea of faith schools should be. The meaning of faith, seems to totally exclude fact and truth and in my experience all that religion does is to preach very dodgy ideas which are not fact and not true. It was heresy not long ago to believe the earth was not flat, and others believe the earth was created in 7 days only 6000 years ago. Loony!!!

campbell0255, Bidache, France

This country should be SECULAR. There should be no menor women in frocks with dodgy headgear allowed in politics or government.All state funded schools should be totally secular. Well said Martin Samuel, for a southerner you speak a lot of sense.

Bill, Stubbins, Lancashire

Well I certainly hope that youthful rebellion, independent thinking & the premium of open minds include the liberty not to subscribe to an anti-faith hysteria; along with being allowed to bring critical thinking skills to bear on the (dis?) -merits of secular humanism, the legacy of Darwin & a strident metaphysical naturalism. Aaah diversity.....

Simon John Ferguson, Llanelli,

Mr Samuels and other like-minded commentators: you might stand a better chance of persuading religious people to give up their faith schools if you didn't make your contempt for their faith quite so obvious.

Mr Grumpy, Berlin, Germany

Hooray!! Good to know I am not the only person who thinks this. State religious schools which perform well do not perform well because they are religious but because a complex range of factors including intake, leadership and area. We do not need more religious schools- we need less. We simply need more good schools for everyone. It is at school where children do most of their socialising and make their friends. We really are sleep walking into segregation. How on earth can it be a good idea to separate different religious groups and expect them to then become part of a cohesive national community when they will have spent a great part of the lives in families, communities and schools where everyone is of the same religion?
The 25% of places for non-believers is a distraction- to start off with, it is not mandatory. Secondly, it is not enough. Thirdly, very few parents will go for it

Stephen Jones, London,, UK

Trevor Brooking's head notwithstanding, this disciple of Wengerism (previously a Grahamite, reluctantly a Neillian before that and originally raised as a devout Meeist) would like to thank Mr Samuel for another splendid article by a splendid writer. Now, about these veils: make them compulsory for all I say, or at least, for Diet Labour ministers. It's bad enough listening to their insufferably smug, self-righteous tones; we might at least be spared the fake-tan sincerity they smear on whenever a public appearance beckons.

Stephen Powers, London, GB

Dead right Mr Samuel. Mr Blair pretends to support secular values but tries to promote his religious beliefs at every opportunity, albeit through the back door. Poll after poll opposes the expansion of religious schools, Ruth Kelly talks about promoting integration, but they still push through these ridiculous policies which separate children according to their parents' beliefs.

Martin, York, England

I am, again, tired of people referring to the Northen Ireland situation. The NI situation arises out of the partition of Ireland. It so happens that the 6 county State in NI became a sectarian state which opprssed Catholics. But the NI situation (or indeed State) need never have happened. Many of the great Irish nationalists were Protestants, from Wolfe Tone to Henry Joy McCracken, they spoke about breaking the connection with England, not religion. That is still the NI issue. It is artificial to quote the exception that is NI as the rule. I was educated in a Catholic school in Dublin which taught me to love my fellow man regardless of religion. I was never told I was superior to anyone (anything but!). Some people here believe more myths than those they accuse of believing in myths.

J. Conway, Brussels, Belgium

I come from N.Ireland, was taught in an intensely religious Catholic school and rarely met any children from the Protestant faiths, never mind other world faiths. However, when I went to university my horizons expanded and I think my understanding and knowledge of my own religion was often a basis for striking up interesting discussions and conversations with people from different faiths. Now I am married to a Muslim Arab man and I have many Muslim friends (and family, of course). I have found religion to be a source of mutual understanding between me and my husband and other Muslims, although I recognise the differences too. I do not practice my religion any more, I have to say, but it has given me a good grounding in ethics and in understanding faith and how important it is to some people.

Maria, London, UK

Humanist views and evolutionary theory still rely upon belief, and as such they have no intrinsic merit above other unproven beliefs. In fact, I consider the faith required to believe in the automatic development of a complex life system at least equal to the faith required to believe in some form of external force. In schools, such theories should be taught, alongside other commonly held beliefs regarding the origins of the world and us; it would be wrong for schools to endorse one belief at the expense of another, even if that is evolution.

Richard Jack, New York, USA

Colin MacKinnon,
Faith schools do well statistically because they are effectively back-door selective, not because they are religious. This is either blatant in the form of interview (now banned) or passive in terms of physical location away from sink estates. The religious ethos thing is hogwash. The type of parent willing to fight, lie, cheat or move house to get in a good school is exactly the sort of parent who'll take more interest in the child's education at home as well as at school. A secular school can have just as strong a discipline and rigourously enforeced uniform etc. The few remaining grammar schools in Britain are not necessarily religious and still come out best in the state sector.

Peter B, Plymouth, UK

The trouble with mixing church and state is that both are diminished by the attempt. There are a lot of calls here for putting faith-based schools under more government control, which might defeat the point of having them even as it creates political controversy. There are fewer calls for ending government funding entirely, which is my preferred approach. The US has thousands of faith-based schools, all funded privately, and the system seems to work tolerably well. But even in a private arrangement, there's the question of quality control. What does a faith-based school have to include in its curriculum to qualify as a legitimate substitute for government schools? I have no problem with a Catholic school inviting anti-abortion speakers, but I have serious doubts about whether a fundamentalist Christian school should be allowed to exclude evolution. That's a huge part of the life sciences, and biology class is just a bunch of disconnected observations without it.

Marie, Washington DC, USA

Studies constantly show that religiously observant married couples have far more children than other couples do. Demographic trends being what they are, and children tending to subscrbe to their parents' beliefs being assumed, it will not be long before most children come from religious homes that prefer religious schools. Mr. Samuel should campaign for agnostic breeding.

M.F. Lamond, Stony Brook, NY, USA

What a remarkable article. It expresses my views and fears to the letter. 'Faith' schools must be banned immediately!

Ric Morris, Powys, UK

A school is supposed to be the place that opens up young minds to the endless possibilities of human endevour through reason, logic and scientific deduction. Faith schools by their very name contradict this idea. They ask you to have faith, i.e suspend reason. The only faith I want my child to have is the faith in her own abilities. All other moral/religious/ethical anchors in my opinion can be provided very well at home without any help from modern organised religion.

R KAUL, Welwyn, UK

Very well said. The only way forward is to ban faith schools altogether, and while we're at it, disestablish the Church of England. As it stands, if we allow one lot to retain their privileged status within society, we can't deny other religions the same status. The fact that in the 21st-century we are still expected to 'respect' the numerous collective delusions that call themselves religions, while more rational worldviews are deliberately excluded from our classrooms, is a disgrace.

Pauline Brown, London,

Given the generally secular nature of indigenous society, co-existing with so-called multiculturalism, the only sensible course is for British state schools to be for learning, not for indoctrination. Publicly funded schools should be strictly secular, as they are in France, with no religious badges allowed. Religious upbringing should be the responsibility of parents. If religions want to pay for schools for the children of their own adherents, that should be their prerogative, subject to inspection and to their devoting (say) five hours a day to core national curriculum subjects.

David, Bristol, UK

Once, when a slightly stroppy sixth-former at my violently Roman Catholic school in Liverpool, I asked my head teacher a question. Is it valid to teach young people, making their way in life, the following two statements as facts of equivalent value: "Jesus turned water into wine" "2+2=4" The head said of course. I said I thought it was not only invalid, it was morally reprehensible, a view I hold to this day. I was given a detention and made to read some of the usual nonsense from SPUC. Get these fantasists out of state schools immediately.

David, London,

Faith schools are selective thus creaming off the best and leaving the rest to the mercy of the comprehensive system. Parents will go to extreme levels to obtain the best education they can afford for their children. Faith schools expect good standards of behaviour and parents are threatened with losing their child's place if s/he behaves badly. Parental pressure to perform and behave oblige children to make their faith schools better places. If comprehensive schools could inspire the same dedication from both parents and pupils there would be a lot less need for whacko religious schools. Whatever the situation, if faith schools receive public money they should follow government guidelines as the education they dish out. If they don't want to, they relinquish all rights to public funding.

Sarah Hague, Montpellier, France

Mr Samuel caricatures creationist beliefs. They do not believe that dinosaur bones were placed as a "practical joke" and test of faith. In writing such things Mr Samuel is failing to engage the creationist arguments objectively and reveals his own need of education. Please can we have rather more intelligent essays in the Times written by people in a sensible frame of mind?

Peter Cotton, Lincoln, UK

I am church-going Christian who chose to send four of his children to a primary C of E school. Nevertheless, having witnessed during my life, through the news media, the problems created by such segregation in the then almost 100% Christian mix of Northern Ireland, and now viewing the much more complex segregation problems brewing on these islands as a whole, I personally would prefer to see the back of all faith schools to enable a healthy mix in school of children from all faith backgrounds. The educators should have a reasonable knowledge of all major religions, to educate the children, and the rest should be left to the family environment back at home.

Ken Miller, Benfleet, England

I agree with Mr McLean from Bradford that the reference to an anti-abortion organisation addressing a Catholic school is not analagous to a flat eartb society teaching geography. It's a bizarre comparison. So the organisation, LIFE, probably (I bet!) told the children that abortion is morally wrong and that if they get pregnant they should have the child. Not sure what is flat earth about that. Mr Adamson from Belfast must know that it is not only the Catholic church in NI, but the Protestant churches too, which defend separate schooling. Northern Ireland is in any event a very lazy example. I grew up in Dublin, went to a Catholic shool, had Protestant neighbours as good friends, played for an ex-Church of Ireland school football team for 3 years before someone mentioned that most of the team I was playing with were Protestants. I (nor they) cared not a hoot for someone's religion, despite having all gone to faith schools. We were just mates (and only 100 miles from Belfast).

S. Conway, Brussels, Belgium

Perhaps there is a little hope for the West. It is high time that Britain's cringing, slavish desperation to accomodate any form of medieval, dogmatic nonsense was replaced by some healthy scepticism. It isn't necessary to restate the obvious, that religion has no place in the classroom or in goverment, and that fundamentallist dross of any sort ought not to be given any legitimacy or credance but it feels good to be able to say it without being shouted down...

Jack, ,

What a load of hysterical nonsense. I attended a CE girls school where science grades were well above the average and the sensible view was taken that evolution/creationism was a matter of free personal belief. There was also no religious apartheid with girls from Muslim and Catholic backgrounds being valued members of the school community. Perhaps Mr Samuel should address his own problems with religion rather self-righteously waffling on about what other people should be believe in.

Jane Cronin, Lampeter, Wales

Ah, here's a good way to win an argument: invent an opinion not held by your opponent and attack it. It'll work every time. Talk about crackpots! And while microevolution may be "proven", macroevolution certainly isn't. True scientists, from Darwin onward, realise this. What a good job we have journalists to boldly go where scientists fear to tread!

David Vickery, Croydon, UK

If they are talking about percentages of non-religious pupils being allowed into a religious school then why not make the percentage 100%? Go the whole hog and ban any religious teaching in schools. Leave religion in the church/mosque/synagogues/whatever and leave schools to teach everything else.

Bry Barnes, Somerset, Uk

This reminds me of the Cult of Double Helpings of Pudding that we set up at school. As you can imagine, it was very popular and we all wore sacred badges, which we had to wear always in public or else face the wrath of the Pudding God. At the time it was just a bit of fun and the dinner ladies always respected our rites. Of course, we all eventually grew out of our cult; it’s a shame that the religious devout of today still haven’t grown out of theirs. It’s way past a joke now.

Eric Blair, London,

Agree 100% with this article. At my Gateshead Girls' Grammar School in the 60s, Catholic & Jewish girls missed 20 mins of morning service and the single weekly RE lesson; on Fridays during the winter, the Jewish girls were allowed to leave earlier. That was the limit of our differences. All these faith schools are having an appalling effect both on society and on the education of our children. It's high time that all education is "desecularised".

P.Humphrey, Athens, Greece

Yes, BUT, "common humanity" as it is called in this article, in reality equals an education based on secular humanism. This teaches that things are as they are by chance, that the highest court of appeal in all matters is the human mind, and, that all religions are basically the same. To a religious parent these principles are as unappealing as religious ones are to the unbelieving. In one sense, therefore, all schools are "faith" establishments, because they are all underpinned by beliefs. The more secular the society the more desireable to faith parents is the school that will not drip feed humanism into the mind of a much loved child.

John, Birmingham, UK

At a time of when youth crime is rife, when children carry knives and some kill, when morality is a meaningless concept to some, when we top the league tables for teenage pregnancies and drug use, thank Heaven for faith schools with a good ethos, a good standard of education and a good social and ethnic mix for such schools promote social cohesion and the Judeo Christian values of many in this country. And whatever happens, don't let secular scientism (the atheist equivalent of sexism or racism) result in throwing out of the baby with the bathwater.

Margaret, Crouch End, UK

But all schools have an overriding view of Life, the Universe and Everything with which they try to imbue their pupils. It might be secular, religious, atheist, left wing, right wing, liberal, conservative, artistic, scientific, nationalistic, anything you like. There is no value-free education. We have to decide which of various 'offical lines' is right. This suggests that we ought to value diversity (different types of school) and openness (schools will give pupils a 'background' world view but teach them to be open-minded and critical).

Frank Upton, Solihull,

This misses a big point. The increasing popularity of faith schools is at least partly due to their generally higher quality education than comprehensives. The column also assumes that the state should decide what children are told: that begs the question. Why shouldn't parents decide? After all, the state has allowed (encouraged?) state schools to peddal the neo-Marxist view of capitalism and the evils of big business for decades now, and even private schools are force-feeding our little darling the latest eco-rubbish and anti-salt/fat/fun propoganda. Religious faith, Greeny faith, Socialist faith - they're all the same!

Tim, London, UK

Absolutely correct Mr Samuel. However, "multiculturalism", either the overt British version or the covert French version, was/is unavoidable, since complex, exclusive, European cultures are so fiendishly difficult to penetrate for immigrants. Compare with simple and open (we would probably say "superficial"), US culture.

P Stewart, ,

Having been educated in faith (Catholic) schools, I am very worried about this trend. My Catholic education involved not only learning about why Catholicism was the one and only true religion, but also learning about the "stupid" things that other religions do and believe in. ("Hindus? They worship cows, you know!") By the age of 13 I was a staunch athiest, with an ability to look at religious beliefs and teachings from a distance. Had I still had a religious frame of mind, I would have taken it all in. And maybe regurgitated religious hate in the future. In my opinion, religion should not be taught at school. If your family want you to believe in a god, they can teach you all about it, surely? How can we ever expect to integrate when we are taught that other people are wrong?

Marcus, , UK

Is it really the case that the Education Secretary wants 'all' schools to offer 25% of their places to non-believers, or just new schools? Is it really the case that there is little monitoring of education at faith schools? As I understand it Christian faith schools tend to perform well and that is why they are popular with parents. I also understand that many Catholic schools have an excellent class and ethnic mix. Please, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I was perplexed listening to a radio interview at lunch-time yesterday that the interviewer was querying the fairness of expecting Muslim schools to attract 25% of their intake from non-Muslims in predominantly Muslim areas. It seems to me that this is not an issue of parental choice, but of the balance of provision in predominantly Muslim areas. What would there be to prevent a Muslim area opting for 100% state funded Muslim faith schools, and what would be the effect of this on a local authority's existing provision?

, ,

Spot on. Integration is the key. I spent too many long years in Northern Ireland watching as separation tore the population apart. I witnessed a similar happening in Bosnia. Read Richard Dawkins and understand what it means to subject children to this level of pyshcological abuse and infantile reasoning. We need to allow children to grow up as you did, in an environment of choice and open understanding of all the facts of history, without burdening them with 'crackpot' beliefs. We are on a slippery slope, and the trend needs urgently reversing. Love life, not the afterlife.

Ian Fielding, National Secular Society member, Liverpool,

The Government in 2001 conspired with the Church of England, announcing the moment the Dearing report came out that they agreed its plans for many more church schools. The hostile reaction led the Church to deny (& drop?) the Dearing recommendation to use school evangelism to bolster the failing church. But the Government got tangled in its equality agenda & had to offer the same privileges to other faiths. The Humanists warned of the consequences but few listened. Will people listen now when we warn that 25% quotas are an irrelevance? What is needed is to phase out the privileges of faith schools - they are already virtually 100% paid for by the Government so why should it not call the tune? If eventually the faiths decide the game is not worth the candle, so be it. There should be more demanding inspection of educational standards in private religious schools. And mainstream schools should cease their sub-Anglican acts of worship and offer unbiased Beliefs & Values Education.

David J F Pollock, London, UK

Thanks for pointing out that faith schools exist for other religions as well. Somehow the argument is always pointing out that Islamic faith schools exist. Church of England, Roman Catholic and Jewish faith schools have been around for much longer than the Islamic schools in this country. Although a Muslim, I attended a Roman Catholic school for part of my school years, although not in this country. I actually had quite a good time and made a lot of friends. I have to agree with the minister that all faith schools should be opened up to children of other faiths as well. Otherwise its blatant discrimination. And the figure of 25% is too low, it should be around 50%. Once children grow up together in such schools, they will learn about and respect each others faiths. This will do more to promote integration than idiotic government policy from the concerned ministry for community relations.

A. Khan, ,

Well said! Religion has proved to be the most divisive and destructive influence ever devised. It has been the cause of more wars, destruction, killing and hate and the loss of more lives than all our weapons. And all in the name of God. Someone, somewhere is having a huge joke at our expense.

Adrian Ryan, Donegal, Ireland

What Martin fails to address is that the values-free approach (comprehensive education has one guiding tenet: all equal, all stupid)) has totally failed. Why are faith schools expanding? Why, when the C of E is in decline in all other areas, are C of E schools so unquenchably popular? Perhaps it is because they deliver a first-rate state education (would their exam results be so good if the teachers taught nothing but anti-scientific gobbledegook?) and the religious ideas which underpin the organisation provide a moral cornerstone without which children grow up without ideas of right and wrong. Martin's article is nasty, hysterical and wrong. He should stick to football, that most modern of false religions.

Colin MacKinnon, Oxford, UK

Good article, if we are to continue to have faith schools, they must be rigorously regulated and monitored.

SM, London, UK

I live in Northern Ireland and have seen at first hand the disastrous effects of long term religious segregation in our children's education. The Catholic Church is adamant that its children should not attend state schools and must be educated separately. Even worse, HMG hands out hundreds of millions of pounds on a continuing basis to finance this institutionalised apartheid, to the detriment of our society as a whole. It's time that that the concept of faith schools - all faiths - was abandoned. They bring few benefits and many troubles to the wider community.

Charles Thompson, Belfast, UK

" At English Martyrs Roman Catholic School in Leicester, for instance, the anti-abortion charity Life is invited to speak to classes on the subject of sex education, which is a bit like getting your take on Ptolemy from the Flat Earth Society." Of course Life, arguing that abortion is immoral, and creationists, arguing that Darwin was wrong, are wholly different kettles of fish. The comment illustrates the dangers of an aggressive secularism in schools, in which liberal values may not be questioned. A school is either Christian, or it quickly becomes anti-Christian.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

To Martin Samuel's article I say "Amen"; and my use of that word is an example of the way in which religion is still affecting the language of all of us in the twenty-first century. Twenty-first century, did I say? Only if you measure from the supposed birth date of a man whose name is used in the word Christianity. Should our PC state now be looking for a culture-fair way of defining the date?

Dafydd Price Jones, Pwllglas, Sir Ddinbych

Religion has no place in education or government. Education should be about fostering enquiring minds. Faith schools want to teach acceptance of their own particular religious ideas.

Keith, , UK

I have seldom read anything with which I agree more. Surely it is time to abandon 'faith' and recognise it for what it it is - organised supertstition. A religous 'education' - filling the minds of the young with irratioanl rubbish from the Middle Ages - is really no more than psychological child abuse. It is fortunate that most young people survive this tax payer funded idiocy - perhaps youthful rebellion has its place after all.

Anthony Price, TRURO, UK

The root problem is the example of Church of England and Catholic schools. We pay for them: we must, before it is too late, move them from the control of the Church, and make them schools for all.

Allan Hayes, Leicester, Leicestershire

Hear, Hear, well said! Churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, the Moonies, even West Ham FC - they can all start schools if they want to, but why should taxpayers in a modern, rational, secular country be forced to support them?

withheld, Gallatin Gateway, USA

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It is mad to expand faith schools, which encourage separateness. Common humanity is the only way forward