Faith in schools? An inappropriate platform

Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education, 2010 –

The question of faith schools – Good or bad? Desirable or not? – is very much in the air now (as indeed it often is). Well, I (we) do not have any children of our own, and I may be insufficiently in touch to make relevant comment. However, I was for many years a ‘consumer’ – largely unwilling – of general education, so perhaps my credentials for a viewpoint are sufficient after all.

The question of faith schools was not one that seemed to arise very much in the 1940s and 50s when I was at school. The choice in Sussex, as far as I know, only existed really between C of E and Catholic. Broadly, most children went to schools that were – either nominally or actually – C of E. And that was me, a ‘nominal’ in receipt of a Christianity so watered down that the disciples simply would not have recognised it . . . True, the moral threads of this ‘school–version’ Christianity blended seamlessly enough with the broad moral code of the society within which we lived (and in which there were far more humanists and agnostics than might have been thought). So would I say that the religious aspect of my schooling was a force for the good in terms of my moral development? No: it all washed over me like rain over Gore–tex (and to this day, I cannot abide All things bright and beautiful . . . nor forget the utter boredom of re lessons with Mr Batt–Rawden, who – one day when we were all playing up – banged his desk and informed us that we were “all going to go to Hell”; and even at the age of thirteen I knew that this loss of self–possession indicated deep frustration, and that Mr Batt–Rawden was living in his own small hell). Moreover, these intimations of hellfire and damnation that reached our ears from time to time tended to promote a certain fearfulness and strain which was quite inimical to the nourishing of the kind of courage that we needed. And as for any teaching that might have even begun to reveal to us, for example, the true freedom of the Good Samaritan, we simply did not get it.

However, my aversion to faith schools – and to the teaching of faith in any schools is not solely due to my own experiences. Principally, I am against them because of their apparent tendency to be divisive in the wider society. It is bad enough that ethnic minorities are so often ‘ghettoised’ in terms of housing areas; but when children are not meeting and mixing at school either, is it surprising that prejudice, mutual suspicion and hatred tend to flourish? Then in addition, why should children be denied the opportunity of enrichment through friendship with those from radically different cultures to their own? That mixed schools have their own problems I do not doubt, but unless these prove to be insurmountable, that is no argument against them: every solution has its associated problems.

Agreed there is the very difficult problem of how to conduct assemblies in multi–faith schools. But then, do assemblies have to be religious? I see no reason why they should be. I see no particular reason why they should be (regularly) held at all Moreover, any attempt to give due weight to all the faiths represented in the school is bound to fail. The possible alternatives of either being excused assembly or sitting through in silence are not good. what, after all, must pupils think: “My faith wrong; their faith right?”

Morality can be taught without recourse to any of the religious faiths of the world; and if the disapprobation of your parents and absence of any sense of shame or guilt on your part after you have done something disgraceful or even criminal has no effect on you, then there is no help for you. Immediately, at least, because people should be ‘written off’ entirely; and redemption (for individual failings) may come from the most diverse of sources: from a boxing instructor to a priest – there is absolutely no telling (though for the Anders Breiviks of this world there can of course be no redemption). And while we are on the subject of ‘redemption’, let no one knock at my door and tell me that I need to be redeemed tout court! The pernicious notion that we were born ‘fallen’ simply wants to make me ask why we were born at all. The very notion is flawed, and could be regarded as farcical were it not for the deep psychological damage that it has done to so many over so many centuries. Who, after all, wants to spend their entire life as a ‘flawed’ being? – always, effectively, a child trying to make up for what he or she never did in the first place.

Quite probably I have digressed too much; but it has, I think, bearing enough on my subject. And I have to ask too, what exactly is meant by ‘faith’? I have faith in certain people, in the structure of my house, in what reputable scientists tell me about the structure of molecules, and so on. But the word holds no other meaning for me. The same holds, as far as I am concerned with ‘belief’. But if you think I’m going a little too far, I remember what a friend said to me in Paris in 1968: “They [Catholic priests] say that we do not believe, but we do really.” I understood exactly what he meant: it was an affirmation of life from a complete atheist whose eyes were wide open to the horrors that men inflict on one another. And I grant you that this too was like a religious belief, in that it cannot draw on certain knowledge, and is ever susceptible to doubt. However, I draw the line in regarding this experience as numinous in the religious sense of that word.     

I think that we should wake up to the realisation that religion has nothing to do with children. It is a concept for grownups. The interests of children are so quick in so many directions that they can well be spared what is — or used to be — called ‘religious instruction’. I would be inclined to go even further, and say that only exceptionally mature and balanced teenagers are able to think clearly enough to make a faith–based choice. The desire to play safe and embrace a creed that maps out you life for you remains an ever–present threat; and the university years can in this respect — for the most vulnerable students — have fatal results.
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A question remains: What do you tell your children when they begin to ask fundamental questions about life? I can see no easy answer to that, and I have had no experience of having to deal with it. However, I can remember as a young teenager asking my parents such 'eschatological' questions, and discovering that they had no answers. Such is the uncomfortable truth. But perhaps parents should be more forthright: 

“Stop gazing at your navel: go out and join the Sea Scouts; learn to dance; find yourself a girlfriend. When you're fully engaged in these things you won't be asking yourself what it's all about. Look lively, now: contact the Sea Scouts – and ask that daredevil Rachel out; and if she doesn't want to go out with you, then just keep on asking other girls until one says to you “Great, where are we going?”!

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