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The war for children’s minds : Comments
By Stephen Law, published 21/8/2007If authoritarian political schools are utterly beyond the pale, why are so many of us prepared to tolerate the religious equivalents?
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That said, there is no doubt that some Catholic schools have exceeded their educational charter in the past by drubbing catholicism into students. I went to a Catholic convent school for music instruction and while I am the first to applaud the standards of music excellence of that Order of nuns and I was a good music student, the amount of religious instruction and observance and the discipline enforced with it were excessive and harsh. In think that many of the nuns were kind inside, but the rules and leaders they obeyed forced them into cruelty. Many nuns were lesbians and their ways were feared by their colleagues and students alike.
I do not decry all modern Catholic schools, but like their Islamic equivalents, intolerance of other beliefs and interference in politics are never far below the surface.
I see nothing wrong with most 'religious' schools, for example the Lutheran private schools, because their spirituality and moral code is inclusive, not exclusive and they are about developing good citizens and sound ethics, not religious obedience.
Dawkins (The God Delusion) and atheists like him prove to be just as bigoted and prone to logical fallacy and 'brainwashing' as the organised religions they decry.
Governments are not going to step up to the mat to build enough public schools.
But who says that the State can always be trusted? Governments of all political persuasions have proved that they will re-write history and all put political imperatives first. So independent schools are welcome as one of the bulwarks of democracy and religious schools are welcome too as long as they do not teach bigotry or forget that this is a secular state.