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The number of faith schools has grown in our education systems but the debate rumbles on as to whether they are an important part of education or a waste of money.
Faith schools, or parochial schools as they often known as in the United States, have a very special position in our society. This doesn’t mean that this position is special in either a definitively good or bad sense, just that they occupy the situation that most other educational establishments would like to be in – namely that of relative educational freedom. Supported by a religious body, which is the Christian Church in the majority of cases, faith schools in Britain are funded by the public purse through taxation, while it’s the students attending the schools, rather than the schools themselves, who are funded in the United States. Started generally as an alternative to a secular-based, sometimes private, education, the faith school has its education based on religious principles of that faith. In Britain the number of faith schools has increased under the current Labour government and now includes faiths other than just Christianity and Islam as there was before 1997. But on both sides of the Atlantic there have been debates about the effectiveness and value of faith schools. In America, their loss of students and their financial difficulties have forced them to seek aid from public sources; while in Britain there has been some concern that faith schools rely too much on the teaching of one particular faith and fosters a 21st century apartheid. Although faith schools are encouraged to teach a broad multi-faith syllabus, in practice this isn’t always the case. It’s the governors of the school who have the power over admissions policy and, as long as it is in line with anti-discrimination policy, can base it on church attendance or proof of baptism if they wish. It is also up the governors if they want to follow an agreed multi-faith syllabus or adapt it more specifically to their own religion, thus making it more single-religion based. It may also be that religions are using the schools to keep alive their minority faith at the expense of secularisation. And with increasing fears about extremism, this last point has come more to peoples’ attention in recent years. But whether making these schools illegal for all religions is also a matter of debate. Is this move in itself discriminatory? And surely the religions have a religious duty to educate their people in the way they see fit. Yet whether one religion should be taught to the exclusion of all others – and financed by the taxpayers – is debatable.
The copyright of the article Faith Schools in Religion in Schools is owned by Ben Hughes. Permission to republish Faith Schools in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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Feb 17, 2007 6:49 AM
Ben Hughes :
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