Ah yes, good point!

I would have no qualms against a faith school "offering" their brand of education (with the core curriculum intact of course), if the kids want to go, they want to go! But the faith school should accept anyone who wants to go there, and if too many people apply, I think the football academy has a rational argument for choosing only skilled footballers, whereas I don't respect the argument of the faith school that the religion of the family is a rational means of differentiating between the kids.

I think that's the crux of my argument.

Isn't that like saying the faith schools have a rationale for only taking students who believe more fervently?

How much do you hate the Romans?
A lot.
Right, you're in.

I don't know if I read in this thread or on the interwebs but there is a Hindu faith school that tends to accept the kids of parents who are religious, particularly if they don't smoke. Hence thos who are seen to be "practicising" their religion are more likely to be accepted.

I don't see that rationale for this distinction. Why is the school only accepting skilled footballers?
Why wouldn't they be denied the right to do select on footballing ability, or even forced to accept only the worst footballers?
After all they are there to teach football aren't they, so the kids with most to learn should be preferred over those whose only reason for wanting be at a football academy would be that they like the sport or are already good at it or silly nonsense like that.

Because there's no skill in being religious, so what are you encouraging? Just allegiance to something that requires no special intelligence or aptitude, it suggests no greater "potential" for anything at all. So you can't justify it as a means of "ranking" children.

In fact there's no way of being "more" religious than someone by any quantifiable method I can think of.

As exemplified by their need to have ridiculous "tick box" characteristics such as "non-smokers". Presumably having no tattooed second cousins will give you a better chance of getting into a Christian school?

What if you have an uncle who talks in tongues? Scholarship?

Surely you can differentiate how adherent someone is to their religion? Given that you can have a wide range of religious adherence from someone who knows nothing about their religion to someone who knows every principle and tennet, I'd imagine it's easier than you think. You could, if you wanted, have a religion based entrance exam that asked questions about the religion and religious practices. It turns it into a knowledge exam and certainly means that anyone who reads up about a religion will know the answers, but then you have to ask why they have gone to such lengths to learn about it?

Then for those who passed, you could have some form of interview where you interviewed the child to see whether they understood the principles and not just rote-learnt them. You could then have another interview with the family and get a larger picture of the type of person who were admitting. The admitting team may be members of the local church/mosque etc and hence know who attends regularly or whether they've just started to know up around the time of application etc.

What would that prove? So all an intelligent kids has to do is get the Spark Notes Islam, and then they can get in?

Your test is just a reading, writing and memory test. Suggesting good aptitude for exam-sitting and reading.

Isn't the kid who can't read, but bows before Shiva every day, more religious than the kid who aces an exam because he's good at revising? What are you testing exactly?

Piety? Meekness? Servility? Passivity?

I got 33% in my piety exam but I totally aced my passivity of spirit exam.

Fair enough. It's not as if anything rests on this debate. As I pointed out already, we had descended into a general discussion about selective schooling anyway and the mention of religion had become just a smokescreen. Now your Man City academy is just a football academy in general I don't think it has any relevance whatsoever.

No.

Keep up.

I'm saying a football academy is not like a Man City academy, because to play football takes skill and aptitude. Whereas a Man City academy just asks for allegiance to an idea.

And it's not even the allegiance of the kid, it's the allegiance of the parents. The football academy doesn't take on kids whose parents "love football", whereas the Man City school takes on children whose parents "love Man City".

If you're looking for something that doesn't logically follow on from a premise, look right there.

Oh, ok. So the football academy serves only as an example of the type of school that does rationally restrict intake. The Man City academy is still in play. And the selection process is rational when it is based on a quality the children posses, but irrational when based on qualities their parents possess?


Does that include money? The children of wealthy parents are not in themselves rich, merely well funded. I don't think that makes private schools irrational per se.

Private schools have entrance exams which you have to pass. It's a meritocracy, and they acknowledge the potential unfairness of high entrance fees by allowing poor kids, with good grades, in through bursaries and scholarships.

You don't just wave dolla bills at the school and say "look I qualify" - you have to be intelligent, and one of the aims of our education system is to separate the intelligent and say look! employ these people! Religious allegiance doesn't flow from that aim, so it isn't legitimised by it.

Please provide an aim that does necessitate the creation of a faith school that can accept only children whose parents are of that faith.

Different diets? Packed lunches. Kosher chicken.
Different clothes? I think schools should represent the real world and accept all forms of religious dress, so if that's the problem, then just get rid of the restrictions in non-faith schools.

The only aim I can see that "one faith" schools achieve is the protection of that faith itself from outside influences, ie kids not of that faith diluting the teaching and disillusioning the kids. I don't think it's so bad to have one faith assemblies, or to specialise in one religion - but to enforce a monoculture? I don't think that's a legitimate aim, or fair on other kids (it if happens to be a good school).

I don't think encouraging a monoculture in classrooms is a legitimate aim of our education system.
I think schools should acknowledge the common faith of the area, yeah sure, no problem, it would be strange to ignore it. But to isolate it from the rest of society it's a part of? hmmm, I don't think that's necessary or healthy.

If we're preparing kids for the real world, then perhaps it should be an aim to encourage the variety of cultures/ideas/colours/accents in schools! - education, if it's a good one, should be like the real world. Or should we have Faith Universities and Faith Cities as well? So the kids will fit in when they leave the "one faith" school.

Ah no, soddit, let's have Labour Schools, Lib Dem Schools and Green Party Schools (only vegan food)...while we're at it.

Really? They seem to be overwhelmingly attended by the offspring of the wealthy. Having a small number of places available for an exceptional minority does not change that. And unless the dim offspring of royalty and billionaires it is embarrassingly ridiculous to pretend that private schools are meritocratic.


I haven't got one. There might be a really great one or there may not. I am mostly interested in whether, in principle, one can exist.

If I were to quickly construct an abstract that might meet your objection, I would first change the perspective.
We have been assuming that children outside the religion are barred on grounds that they are undesirable, which implies a certain degree of disregard to the needs of the outsiders. But why does it have to be that way round, the school can be assessing candidates on the basis of whether they are likely to thrive at that establishment.

The school in this instance meets all the criteria of a standard school in terms of curriculum and so on. In addition it has aspects designed to facilitate learning within and of a given faith. These include:
Language studies appropriate to the texts in which important books were written.
Dining, bathing and toilet facilities appropriate to the majority cultures in the countries in which this religion is mostly practiced (which naturally meet or exceed all relevant UK standards).
After school study groups that cover interesting theological debates, encourage participation and critical analysis of religious texts.
A foreign exchange program so that kids can visit other countries and see how their culture interacts with others in exotic locations. All the while being sure that appropriate food and crapping facilities will be available.
Add more as you wish. The important thing is that there are lots of the arrangements that are nice-to-have's for a certain group of people, but irrelevant to the majority.
For my purposes it is less practical for all these children to spread out among 7 other state schools in their area - and have the same services supplied for their needs - than it is for them to come together within one school.

Such a school would provide a range of services relevant and useful to a particular social group who are members of the same culture and religion. The only entry criteria I am accepting is whether the child is likely to do well socially and academically in that environment.

If one or both parents are of the relevant culture, and wish their child to be educated within a compatible and nurturing environment, I see no problem with that. Children with no cultural links are invited to apply, but surely it would be a challenge for them to get the most out of what this school has to offer?

The school may be of a particular faith, but it is unjust to assume that this is all it is for. My religious school is not a brainwashing factory designed to churn out a series of identikit ideologues who want to smash the West. Nor is its purpose to drive a wedge between cultures. It is just a school which supplies a range of add-on services that are suited for a culturally and religiously distinct group within a multicultural society.

As for the awful injustice of the parents choosing to send their children there rather than the children making that choice.... Well that's what parents do, they are duty bound to make choices for their children, we tend to say bad stuff whenever we hear of parents who don't control their offspring.

That's because you have created an Intuition Pump. You've basically concealed a fascist tendency within the concept of the faith school (I was surprised you used Man City and not the EDL for your analogy tbh) which will incline any liberal multiculturalist like us to dislike the idea. But there's no particular reason why a special school must be viewed as a fortress of hate and exclusion. If the EDL were creating the Islamic schools and choosing which children to dispatch there, that would be a more serious problem.

*ignore list*

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