In response to AC-1’s interesting and thought provoking post I had written a point by point response, highlighting werethere was agreement and clarifying my position where there was disagreement. Yet as I read over what I had written it occured to me that it was unsatisfactory, that despite a fairly common level of acceptance on certain libertarian principles, there were still one or two axiomatic principles of which neither of us were ever likely to agree. I therefore decided to avoid the circular route and chose instead to write this post here. I have divided it into three sections, in the first I outline what I consider to be a key principled disagreement between AC-1 and myself. In part 2 I present the view that the ‘moderate’ faith school system as it exists in the UK is not worth all the hysteria that some secularists have spent on it, and finally in part 3 I quote extensively from Paul Feyerabend on the problems of education in general.

Freedom of Choice, Freedom of Thinking

In AC-1’s last post he disagreed with my assertion that prohibiting the existence of faith schools is an attack on the principle of freedom of choice, which by extension is an attack on free thinking. He claims that it would be possible into indoctrinating people into making ‘free choices’ by choosing what he would percieve as the not-so-free choice of a faith school.

Yet in a libertarian worldview, and an agenda of open debate where all ideas are free to exist, the notion that freedom to choose a method (no matter how offensive that method may be) could be seperate from the notion of free thinking is incomprehensible. They are in my opinion inseparable, to remove one (the freedom to choose) in order to preserve the other (free thought) is no true freedom at all but is instead a tyranny and a guided debate and contrary to all libertarian ideals.

Ac-1 proposes that Faith schools be abolished on the grounds that they are at worst indoctrinating children or in the least preventing them from having a free-thinking education. Yet his opposition to this is grounded in the idea that a faith ethos is a bad thing, in essence that faith is bad method. Immediately it should be obvious that such an opinion is itself the weapon of an indoctrinaire agenda. In this case the agenda of secular humanism and atheism.

It is in fact an attack on freedom to restrict or remove parental choice as to how they may educate their children. But it is an attack not only on free-choice but crucially on free-thinking. For the opponents of faith schools, with their hysterical accusations of indoctrination are in fact saying that the option to recieve a faith school education must be removed because they do not think the parents are capable of making a free or informed choice in the matter. The opponents of faith schools who defend their position as free-thinkers are in fact demonstrating a remarkably judgemental and patronising attitude to society. “We know whats best for your children, and as you seem incapable of making the right choice, we shall remove the option for you.”

It is ironic, but I can think of no greater an example of the propaganda and indoctrination of one methodic worldview over another, than this one.

What is a Faith School?

As I read over AC-1’s considered attacks on faith schools I noticed that little attention was paid to what it actually means to be a faith school. I shall attempt in brief to rectify this.

Firstly a faith school is affiliated to a ‘faith.’ But in practise this means that a faith institution, such as a Church contributes towards the funding of that school. Such a beneficent act (probably seen as the carrot and stick incentive to those who accuse them of indoctrination) has its roots in the philantropic traditions of each faith, and the cultural identity also. But lets look at the funding, 85% of the funding for a Faith school is paid by the state. A sizeable proportion, in return there are obvious rules and regulations that need to be followed. This brings us to the second fact about faith schools, and that is that they are obliged as are all other schools to teach the curriculum and are assessed and inspected in accordance with same criteria as secular schools. In other words a faith school teaches exactly the same material as a non-faith school. What role then does faith play in the teaching of religious education? In 57% of faith schools the faith that the school adheres to is taught with reference to an anthropology of other faiths where the curriculum deems it to be appropriate. In the remaining 43% of faith schools a non-denomination religious educational curriculum is taught. Across all faith schools its policy of religious education is presented to prospective parents and pupils pre-enrolment. So do faith schools only employ and teach members of that faith community? The answer is no! No school can have a prejudicial employment or enrolment policy, and this is safeguarded in the Race Relations Act and other employment legislation. Although a preference may be shown, a system is devised by school governors and the local education authority to determine what constitutes a fair admissions policy. All schools (faith and non-faith) have to determine an admissions system that favours the local, and which reflects upon the social demographics.

Besides indoctrination (which is the focus of AC-1’s ire) another contentious issue (which he hints uopn) is the suggestion that faith schools promote divisiness and intolerance and that by their very existence damage race-relations and the agenda of multicultural integration. Besides pointing out that the agenda of multiculturalism is accused of being a doctrine by some, and therefore is open to attacks that it is indoctrinaire in nature, I am more willing to accept a conciliatory tone on this matter. In particular I think there have been positive attempts at promoting legislation to make faith schools even more inclusive. This is infact the basis of much recent educational policy.

A final point on faith schools is this. AC-1 is as we should now know opposed to their indoctrination techniques, as though a faith school employs a thought police that weeds out heresy and malpractise. This should be exposed for the utter rot that it is. A faith school like any other school in the land aims to provide a rounded multi-curriculum education. It’s success in doing so is measured (rather glibly) by the academic performance of its students. Therefore a succesful faith school is a school that succeeds in its educational remit. As schools are measured by independently set standards any failure to facilitate the well-rounded education demanded of the curriculum are met with measures imposed by the education authority. Therefore the aim of all schools faith or non-faith is to provide that curriculum to the best of their abilities.

Yet if we were to believe AC-1 for a fraction of a second we should think that the succesful graduation of a pupil from a faith school should depend upon their religious belief, their attendance at religious ceremonies, their ability to recite the holy scriptures of their respective faith, and so on. If AC-1 should choose to step into a faith school (and this can be arranged) he will note that the ‘faith’ element has no bearing upon the material being taught, and the hopes and expectations that teachers and parents have for their pupils. A faith school like any other seeks to churn out succesful students (albeit a standard of success that I disagree with) not soldiers of God.

An analysis of what happens in ‘education’

One area that we both agree with is that education/schooling is in an imperfect state. But I feel we perhaps disagree to what extent or as to how we can rectify this. To this extent I have decided to conclude not with my ‘manifesto’ for education but with a quote from Paul Feyerabend on his views about the matter.

From 1958 to 1990 I was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley. My function was to carry out the educational policies of the State of California which means I had to teach people what a small group of white intellectuals had decided was knowledge. I hardly ever thought about this function and I would not have taken it very seriously had I been informed. I told the students what I had learned, I arranged the material in a way that seemed plausiable and interesting to me – and that was all I did. Of course, I had also some ‘ideas of my own’ – but these ideas moved in a fairly narrow domain (though some of my friends said even then that I was going batty).

IN the years around 1964 Mexicans, blacks, Indians entered the university as a result of new educational policies. There they sat, partyly curious, partly disdainful, partly simply confused hoping to get an ‘education’. What an oppurtunity for a prophet in search of a following! What an oppurtunity, my rationalist friends told me, to contribute to the spreading of reason and the improvement of mankind! What a marvellous opportunity for a new wave of enlightenment! I felt very differntly. For it now dawned on me that the intricate arguments and the wonderful stories I had so far told to my more or less sophisticated audience might just be dreams, reflections of the conceit of a small group who had succeeded in enslaving everyone else with their ideas. Who was I to tell these people what and how to think? I did not know their problems though I knew they had many. I was not familiar with their interests, their feelings, their fears though I knew that they were eager to learn… Was this the right thing to offer to people who had been robbed of their land, their culture, their dignity and who were now supposed first to absorb and then to repeat the anaemic ideas of the mouthpieces of their oh so human captors? …

Now there was much talk of liberation, or racial equality – but what did it mean? Did it mean the equality of these traditions and the traditions of the white man? It did not. Equality meant that the members of different races and cultures now had the wonderful chance to participate in the white man’s manias, they had the chance to participate in his science, his technology, his medicine, his politics. These were the thoughts that went through my head as I looked at my audience and they made me recoil in revulsion and terror from the task I was supposed to perform. For the task- this now became clear to me- was that of a very refined, very sophisticated slavedriver. And a slavedriver I did not want to be…

I wanted to know how intellectuals manage to get away with murder- for it is murder, murder of minds and cultures that is committed year in year out at schools, universities, educational missions in foreign countries… I envisaged a new kind of education that would live from a rich resovoir of different points of view permitting the choice of traditions most advantageous to the individual. The teacher’s task would consist in facilitating the choice, not in replaceing it by some ‘truth’ of his own… I thought that regarding all achievements as transitory, restricted and personal and every truth as created by our love for it and not as ‘found’ would prevent the deterioration of once promising fairy-tales and I also thought that it was necessary to develop a new philosophy or a new religion to give substance to this unsystematic conjecture…

I now realize that these considerations were just another example of intellectualistic conceit and folly. It is conceited to assume that one has solutions for people whose lives one does not share and whose problems one does not know. It is foolish to assume that such an exercise in distant humanitarianism will have effects pleasing to the people concerned…

My own view differed from those just mentioned but it was still a view, an abstract fancy I had invented and now tried to sell without having even shared even an ounce of the lives of the recievers. This I now regard as insufferable conceit. So – what remains?…

I could follow my own advice to address only those people whom I think I understand on a personal basis… Another possibility is a change of subject. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, pp263-267