I think the core subjects are pretty much well-established and "safe" in the UK.

But what of school assembly, enforced prayer, school entrance criteria, funding?

They are all parts of education, and there is, at the moment, in my opinion too much religious capriciousness in this area, in especially the areas of funding and school admission - it is not compatible with our modern secular society.

This is an arena where a "rationality quotient" is necessary/useful (though of course it wouldn't be defined as that)- you shouldn't have a situation where families are pretending to be Catholic/Hindu/Zoroastrian to get a into a better-performing school - therefore it's an area, I would argue, that shouldn't include religious ideology on the grounds of capriciousness, lack of rationality, as judged against the views of a modern society.

On the topic of entrance criteria for schools - a more rational, less religiously guided, system, I think, would equate to a fairer system. To achieve equality, to fight discrimination, I think it is important to contain the encroachment of religious ideology on topics such as this. The subject is one of flexible degrees of rationality in my view.

It's a sliding scale. I think some cultural nurturing is of course beneficial, human societies have been based around religion for millennia. Stripping religion out of school altogether would therefore be just as bad as letting the Taliban take over UK primary schools.

I have no direct experience of getting children into schools. But I am inferring from your point that there is a disparity between the selection criteria of parents seeking a school and the schools in selecting their pupils?

If there is a problem of non religious parents trying to embezzle their way into religious schools, it seems unlikely that the existence of religion within the schools is a problem, except possibly in a supply-demand sense. If there is a problem with funding of non religious schools then that is the actual problem and the rational response is to address that. Maybe there is oversupply of Catholic institutions and a shortage of secular schools of equal quality. If so, then that does not provide justification for removing the Catholic option entirely (quite the opposite).

Maybe there is an oversupply of arbitrary labels on kids who should be free to think for themselves and be treated as equals in the eyes of the law.



Did I say remove the Catholic option entirely? No.

Better schools tend to "stay better" and the schools with bad reputations tend to get worse (without a brilliant headteacher at the helm). All because of the simple mechanic of parents wanting to send their kids to the best school in the area, and the well-established schools tend to be those with close connections with religion.

After all organised religion has a very well-established framework of funding - quite immune from political cost-cutting, it's not because Jesus writes the text books.

Therefore it is with my cynicism hat firmly in place when I say that catholic schools should remain - because they tend to be good and well-funded.


That attitude is part of the problem - the kids are not their parents.

All I say is: remove the labels and restrictions placed on kids just because of an arbitrary philosophical alignment of their parents.

What you have stated there sounds like "any excuse for a party" or "any good excuse for a little self reflection/meditation" or "any good excuse to get together with friends" or "any excuse to appreciate the fact we are alive".

All of this seems reasonable.

Now if this "paganism" demands I sacrifice my first-born then it would seem less reasonable to me.

What does that actually mean? Part of the purpose of education is to teach kids to think for themselves by giving them information and skills. Assemblies and kosher lunches rob them of no such opportunities. We're agreed that religion shouldn't be used to undermine the educational value of lessons. So I fail to see what harm the religious schools are doing.


In that case I don't know what you were talking about with that stuff about capricious Zoroastrians. Actually I don't see what the word capricious is even doing in this topic, surely whatever it is you are complaining about is, if nothing else, consistent.


This link is obviously contingent. It doesn't show how religion makes religious schools bad, it just kind of hints that they somehow cause other schools not be good, and that even in this case they are blameless. So the problem appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with the religious aspect of their education. If it's just a general problem, then it will continue after whatever your issue with religious schools is gets fixed. It will just be non religious schools that become oversubscribed. Assuming that doesn't already happen (which sounds highly unlikely).


So if the political problem of education funding is sorted out properly then you have no problem, and this intrusion of the religious debate is a red herring.


That sounds great, but vacant platitudes often do. What are these labels and restrictions really? Don't we inevitably raise our children in accordance with customs and practises of some sort? Is it a defensible goal of education to deliberately drive a wedge between the offspring and their cultural heritage? Aren't you just substituting your choice of which philosophy to ram down children's throats for their parents'? And if you are planning to do that without going to the trouble of demonstrating rational superiority for your world view over their parents', aren't you guilty of overbearing cultural arrogance?

If parents who don't share the schools' religious observations want to put their children there anyway, that religious aspect can't be very scary. So it isn't the problem, something else is. Either address the real problem or abandon this pretence of rationality.

Straw man much? I'm almost championing the merits of religious schools, you seem to have missed my point - arbitrary criteria judging whether a kid is IN or OUT of a school is unfair to some kids, even before they've reached an age of independent thought, and that being an example where rationality and the judgement of society on that issue, comes into play - to fight that unfairness and inequality.



That's quite evident.


I am using English words here, they do make sense, I never said capricious zoroastrians, right now you're basically taking random words from my argument and going "la la la la la la can't hear you", I take it back that your arguments deserved more respect, you don't further debate, you swamp it.


It's OK if you benefit from a school's prejudice, it's ok if you fit in with their image of a pupil - but it's unfair on kids to conform in this way, to have to pretend to be religious or go to a worse school. I'm not saying it's a major world-ending point, it's just an example when at some point, society has to be quite prescriptive in terms of what it judges to be rational/irrational, and here's my example where the boundaries need to be tweaked a little. And example where the boundaries would need to be tweaked A LOT would be a Scientology School that only taught their teachings. THAT would be a bad school; as long as religious schools have the same curriculum as the rest, however, I'm all for them.



The problem with your attitude is you assume that, rather than you not quite getting the gist of an argument, you assume that your "opponent" is a retard.


Again with the straw man, you keep attacking that idiot, that guy is a misguided fool.

However back to what i was saying:
No, it's quite a mild stance to say kids should have equal opportunities, and it's very achievable with a tweak of the law.



You've just said that the problem isn't a problem - ignoring the fact that it's a problem for thousands of parents and a main issue of debate in newspapers and school parent association meetings. Maybe you should explain to them why the issue of their child being denied a chance of a decent education because of, what they deem to be, religious bollocks, isn't a problem.

If you need to look the word up, just do it and stop being pissy about it.

With reference to the actual context of those quotes: you seem to want religious schools to stop preferring members of their religion over other students. Are you saying there should be catholic schools, but their ratios of catholic pupils to other creeds should match the general ratio of all the other schools? If so, in what respect would it still be a catholic school?


Not true. What I assume is that if you put your mind to the task you can do much better. The case you put forward was counter to your own argument. In as far as an argument is discernible. I am asking lots of questions at the moment because the logic of your statements is inconsistent and I want you to firm it up. You simply don't have a coherent set of premises leading to a conclusion yet.


Pause, take another breath before you explode with indignation, and think about the logic of what you have written.
First up, read it again. Can you see how confused your prose is? Take into account please if you don't like my reply that I am having to work hard to decipher your text, sometimes misunderstandings may occur.
Next. Does the above quote actually show how religion in schools is to blame for the problem you are describing?
Does it show how changing the amount or type of religion in schools cures that problem?
If the religion goes away, how does that increase the supply of good schools places?
If there are never enough good school placements to go round, doesn't the real problem persist?
Surely only spending more money as a society will sort out that shortage?
Is there any reason why I might consider your "almost championing" of religious schools to be so grudging and half-hearted that it seems almost as if you don't actually approve of them?
Is it really so unreasonable for me to doubt the sincerity of your pro religious schools statements that everything I say has to be labelled a straw man argument?

The next two direct quotes from seem contradictory. If you don't like being misrepresented, stop it.



The second one agrees with what I said already, but when I alluded to the topics of the first you got angry and said some stuff about straw men. So I will hold fire until you have regrouped and regained your composure.


Actually that's a straw man. What I have said repeatedly is that the religiosity of the school is misidentified as the problem. The problem you have described is to do with funding of non religious schools. This can only be caused by the people who fund those schools, not by the religious education of other schools.

If funding is the issue, then stopping/reducing funding to religious schools is a crap idea. It's typical of the Govt style of thinking. It would be better to increase funding of other schools so that all schools receive comparable levels of funding (though more should go where it is needed).

I edited my post to deal with the bad prose. Let's strip this back down to the basics. I hope you can follow what I'm saying.

First off, capriciousness is a word used in quite a specific sense in legal writing. A trust fund set up for "every person in London with big feet, so they can buy comfy shoes" will fail because of "capriciousness", there's no reasonable rationale behind it.

If someone were to set up a school that only accepted the students of Man City fans, I suggest this would be capricious and wrong. I also suggest that this is a similar idea to a school that accepts only children of Muslim parents.

We wouldn't say that what football team a family supports, would be a fair/rational selection criteria for children.

Notice I'm saying nothing bad about the quality of the school; as it happens the Man City school has all straight A students.

Notice I'm not saying anything bad about Man City; the football club is irrelevant to my point.

Notice, indeed, that I'm not even saying it's wrong that the children watch a re-run of the FA Cup final every morning in assembly, while singing "Blue Moon".

Notice, please, that I'm not saying Man City fans should no longer congregate and mingle in Man City pubs and the Man City stadium, and that parents should stop telling their kids to support a football club.

And notice, that I can say that the school is well funded, without "funding" becoming the focus of my argument...

So here IS my point:

I can say that it's wrong because all of the children of Man City fans can decide to go to the Man City school OR ANY OF THE OTHER SCHOOLS IN THE AREA.

While the children of non-City parents, can only get in to one of THE OTHER SCHOOLS. Thus their choice is limited, thus it's possible, and in this instance likely, that they will have a lower quality of education.

Such a situation would be an example of irrationality making the education system worse.

And you can claim the word "irrationality" as your own Shockwaffle. You can have your own "Shockwaffle Irrationality", which is of a superior quality to normal irrationality.

And that definition of irrationality will only be relevant in your own head.

I say, there's irrationality all around. Judging people by the colour of their skin. Supporting the BNP. Being against gay marriage on the grounds that it is "un-natural".

There's enough to go around without institutionalising it into out education system, and providing yet another excuse to divide and label people.

When in reality, we are all human beings.

We are all the same race.

We are all the same colour.

These last two sentences are used in an artistic sense to make a point. This is the sort of language which, it seems, you won't allow or can't stand. But please. Please don't go off on one of your patronising rants about me not understanding what the terms "race" and "colour" mean, and that I'm not using them in a consistent or precise manner - and implying, therefore, that my argument is wrong or inconsistent.

Language doesn't work like that, it's not a maths equation. I didn't reference Kant or Nietzsche or Pythagoras or Freddie Mercury.

But I'm not an idiot, and I believe I can make salient points, with meaning, that have relevance in the real world, without adopting your rigid philosophical system of argument, which I have a feeling, isn't as useful/infallible/necessary/consistent as you think it is.

It's that feeling that made me drop philosophy after one module. The feeling that it's unnecessary. The feeling that it's just the product of people not being able to accept the fact that language is not precise, it can't be used as a tool, or a mechanism in a machine, to produce consistent "answers" that are better than mere opinion.

They may have gone through more stages of processing, Shockwaffle, but they're still just your opinions.

Surely the reason faith schools exist is because there is a demand for them?

Also, how do single-gender schools fit in with this?

There is a demand to bring back hanging. There is a demand for the BNP. There is a demand for the IRA. Religious demands, for whatever reason, are given more credibility and respect - it's debatable whether they deserve it in every situation.

Single gender schools, for me, are on similarly shaky ground in terms of being able to justify them in our modern society.

Just as single-gender golf clubs would have probably died out over time, anti-discrimination regulations just gave them a little kick to move them into the 21st century - maybe it's time we applied the same to schools?

I was unaware of this special legal definition of the word, but I am ok to work with it as long as it's declared so we can all use the same version of the word. But when I tried to find a specific legal definition of capricious, it looks to me as if even in law the concept relates to whim and and inconsistency as it does outside of law. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictiona ... capricious

It also seems that if you went to a court of law and argued that religious schools should be barred from selection on religious grounds for reasons of capriciousness, you would be laughed out of court. If the legal definition supports your case, the law itself doesn't, so there must be a problem here with this capriciousness issue. This appears to be because the difference between the legal and secular concepts is that in law capriciousness relates to inconsistent application of existing law or arbitrary admission of evidence. If we use a strict legal definition of caprice in this context, are we misusing it at all?

I see the similarity. But the argument you are about to present depends upon the similarity being relevant and dissimilarities being irrelevant. So what are the dissimilarities between Islam and soccer?
Is there any sense in which Man City children (or their parents) might desire different facilities from children of other football clubs?
Perhaps Man City in this analogy eat different foods to other teams, and so their children would have special dietary requirements?
I suspect this analogy works only in as far as the rationale for a Man City school can be shown to equal that of an Islamic school. If we don't do that, then we cannot argue back from the analogy that the reasons why a Man City school should be wrong also apply to an Islamic one.


Quite true.
But this argument won't work if you have different reasons why a Man City school and an Islamic one should be considered capricious.
The fact of parents supporting a particular football team is such an incredibly trivial thing that nobody would normally consider creating a special school for them. But we know that special schools for Islamic pupils already exist, so there is an imbalance here that undermines the relevance of the analogy.

Duly noted.


Two main issues here. Firstly, I don't follow the "in this instance likely" bit. Is that a purely contingent factor that you have thrown into the mix, or is there some reason why the Man City school should become the best school?

Secondly, this is an argument against selective schools in general - as you have acknowledged. But this is a topic about religion. You started this special education issue off with a comment about the irrationality of religion in specific circumstances, but have argued yourself into a general position that has little to do with religion. The bit of this that "IS" your point, is not a relevant point.

Sometimes I use a strict Lockean definition of irrationality (a tool incapable of performing the function for which is used), if I don't state that I am probably ok with the general messy version of the term. I find that when using language-game specific versions of terms, it is generally advisable to flag them, as you have now discovered from your capriciousness escapade.

The point of 'superiority' though is something that I feel deserves comment. This thread contains a huge mish-mash of relatively technical arguments. Sometimes words or phrases are needed within such debates that are not needed outside them. Over time, words coined by scientists, mathematicians philosophers and lawyers enter general conversation. Natural usage then upgrades them over time by making them more general - which is a good for general conversation, but a bad for the original technical conversations they were coined for. So when we are back in their original context, we need sometimes to tighten them up again. I would expect a mathematician or economist to do the same. I would certainly not interpret it as arrogance if they did.


I am not dealing in philosophy specific argument structures here, and we aren't discussing absurdities like intuition pumps*. The basic philosophical argument structures are the same as those in law, and if you are in training for some kind of legal career you might regret not learning them.

It's not that hard, you just have premises and conclusions.
If you have premise a, and premise b and a conclusion derived from them, you have an argument (you don't have to lay them out that way, but the audience should be able to work out what your premises and conclusion are unless your argument is riddled with confusion).
If the truth of the conclusion can be known for certain from the truth of the premises then the argument is valid.
If the premises are true and the reasoning is valid, the argument is sound.
If you can't meet these criteria, then you may or may not be right about whatever you are saying, but you had better not get grumpy and make a fool of yourself when people disagree with you, because you have so far failed to demonstrate that you are right. Yu may be satisfied with your work, but I have every right not to be convinced.

I don't require of anyone that they must master this terminology, nor that they lay out their arguments in premise and conclusion format. But simple rationality requires reasons, and this format mirrors that.
If you are using some esoteric argument that cannot even be converted into that format for analysis it is probably very confused and would benefit from a rethink.
If you sulk when your conclusion is shown not to follow from the premise, you are just getting emotionally attached to your bad argument. Which is illogical (in the Spock sense of the word).


That sounds like the start of fun new thread if you feel like expanding on it.




* so far anyway. I don't know in advance whether you are going to try and rescue the Man City argument or abandon it, so I may have to break my word.

Q) We have catholic / CofE / muslim etc schools, but why don't we have any specific atheist schools?

If you set up a Man City fan school, surely it would have some greater purpose than just for Man City fans? In the same way that religious schools follow religious rules and practices and make time to study that religion (note my knowledge of religious schools is purely based on what i have learnt from the media/internet, which in itself is always a dangerous and foolish thing)?

It follows then that a Man City school needs to offer something more than just being for fans of the club eg a strict diet based on the club's diet, a training regime comparable to club. Sports would consist largely of football with perhaps occasionally other sports eg swimming. The rest of the time would be spent on education eg GCSEs, NVQs etc. You could even call it some kind of academy, maybe a football academy. I reckon kids would want to go there.

Thanks for the reply Shockwaffle.

I can indeed (try) to rebut your criticism of the analogy, I think building, and segregating off an entire school is an overreaction to things like dietary needs when surely it's beneficial to mix cultures and open these kids' minds to the multicultural country they live in.

Do we need vegetarian and lactose intolerant schools? They're not Halal schools, they're faith schools, and the analogy is on that level (also surely football and religion are much closer than you give credit!) I think faith schools exist to protect the faith, first and foremost, non-faith schools could meet the (non-faith) requirements of the children just as well.

Not enough time to do justice to my argument at the moment (and probably not until July, so I'll have to leave it there (exams)).