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Free Schools & Religion 
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Doubts grow over the success of Sweden's free schools experiment

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/se ... experiment

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All over the Swedish port city of Malmö last week there were gaggles of students clutching brand-new laptops given to them on loan for the start of the school year. As schools fight over what, due to a demographic blip, is a declining number of students, the device you get has become a keen area of competition.

"I've just got a mini-HP, but you can pay a bit more and get a Mac or an iPad," says Mua Stanbery, 16, who has just started at ProCivitas, the most popular of the town's profit-making free schools.

Students arriving at the Thoren Business School have to make do with a Dell. But Pauli Gymnasium, the biggest municipal-run school, this year decided to give MacBooks to all its students to stave off private competition.

What few of the students know is that the ultimate cause of their good fortune – the competitive system of free schools Sweden pioneered in the early 1990s – is under assault.

SNS, a prominent business-funded thinktank, issued a report last Wednesday that sharply reversed its normal pro-market stance. The entry of private operators into state-funded education, it argued, had increased segregation and may not have improved educational standards at all.

"The empirical evidence showing that competition is good is not really credible, because they can't distinguish between grade inflation and real gains," Dr Jonas Vlachos, who wrote the report on education, told the Observer.

The report had a huge impact. It was a top story on Swedish television, and was hotly debated the next day in the newspapers. How the debate plays out will be watched carefully by education experts in the UK, where 24 free schools, built on the Swedish model, opened this year.

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Sun Sep 11, 2011 2:11 pm
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Linux_User wrote:
TBH I find it disgraceful that children are fed any sort of collective worship [LIFTED] from the state education system.

I see no valid reason, at all, for state schools and state money being used to promote "worship".

+1
In a faith school, fine.
But in a normal state school it's just wrong, especially if the the child comes from an atheist family.

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Mon Sep 12, 2011 5:40 am
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l3v1ck wrote:
Linux_User wrote:
TBH I find it disgraceful that children are fed any sort of collective worship [LIFTED] from the state education system.

I see no valid reason, at all, for state schools and state money being used to promote "worship".

+1
In a faith school, fine.
But in a normal state school it's just wrong, especially if the the child comes from an atheist family.


I think it's okay for some form of religious education in schools. I had to sit through compulsory Religious Instruction (as my school called it), and it made me think and read more about it. I ended up an atheist because of religious learning in my education.

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Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:24 am
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Religious eduaction yes, worship no.

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Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:27 am
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belchingmatt wrote:
Religious eduaction yes, worship no.


As long as that education is presented from a neutral stand point. Learn about religions, yes. Such classes are not a platform for indoctrination.

Our RE classes were done by a vicar, You can imagine that there was a fair amount of bias. He also did sex and moral education from the third year up. Let’s just say that his classes were, well, entertaining for quite the wrong reasons.

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Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:42 am
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HeatherKay wrote:
l3v1ck wrote:
Linux_User wrote:
TBH I find it disgraceful that children are fed any sort of collective worship [LIFTED] from the state education system.

I see no valid reason, at all, for state schools and state money being used to promote "worship".

+1
In a faith school, fine.
But in a normal state school it's just wrong, especially if the the child comes from an atheist family.


I think it's okay for some form of religious education in schools. I had to sit through compulsory Religious Instruction (as my school called it), and it made me think and read more about it. I ended up an atheist because of religious learning in my education.

I'm not talking about religious education, I'm talking about religious worship in assemblies etc.

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Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:50 am
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l3v1ck wrote:
I'm not talking about religious education, I'm talking about religious worship in assemblies etc.


True. Even so, it was pretty innocuous in my day. The Lord's Prayer, a hymn or two, notices, and then off to the first class of the day. Most of the kids were bored by it. In fact, it was probably the only religious "worship" any of us actually had.

I do agree it really ought to be dropped these days. Religion is something families should provide for if it's important to them.

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Tue Sep 13, 2011 8:01 am
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HeatherKay wrote:
I do agree it really ought to be dropped these days. Religion is something families should provide for if it's important to them.

Most people would probably agree. I am not in favour of practising religion as opposed to being taught RE at some point. Knowing about a religion and following are very different.

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Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:12 am
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HeatherKay wrote:
I ended up an atheist because of religious learning in my education.

This.

I was kicked out of RE class on more than one occasion, for challenging the teacher on the bible. I wasn't being bloody minded (well, not the first time), I was just an inquisitive thirteen year old - the manner in which she responded only drove me to challenge further.

My son asked me if I believed in God, a couple of years ago. When I said that I didn't, he asked if he shouldn't believe either. I told him that nobody has the right to tell him what to believe, me included, and that he should learn more and reach his own conclusions.

Unsurprisingly, he is heading down the atheist path, although he is showing more tact than I did, at a similar age, when discussing the matter with others.

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Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:26 am
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My RE mock GCSE paper:
Q) Can you name eight of the ten commandments?
My A) No.
I got a bollocking for that one.

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Tue Sep 13, 2011 1:24 pm
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l3v1ck wrote:
My RE mock GCSE paper:
Q) Can you name eight of the ten commandments?
My A) No.
I got a bollocking for that one.


We had to write about Jesus and why he came back from the dead. I said something along the lines that he was an alien and that what looked like death to us wasn’t really death.

The response written in red on my work was “do your ideas fit the facts?”. I felt like writing “show me some facts then,” but I thought better of it. Perhaps I should have done so. I’d have probably been kept after school and made to copy a page of the bible out or something.

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Tue Sep 13, 2011 3:57 pm
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paulzolo wrote:
The response written in red on my work was “do your ideas fit the facts?”. I felt like writing “show me some facts then,” but I thought better of it. Perhaps I should have done so. I’d have probably been kept after school and made to copy a page of the bible out or something.

This was the problem when I was at school. RE wasn't religious education, it was basically christian indoctrination.

At no point were we taught about varied religions. We were, pretty much, force-fed the bible as a statement of fact.

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Tue Sep 13, 2011 4:32 pm
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RE at our school was very different from what some of you describe. It was basically a course in Judaic tradition and history. I remember drawing a picture of Moses wearing welly boots and learning about passover, bar mitzvah etc.. I think I dropped it before we got to the bit about Jesus.

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I think School is the one part of British culture I really don't understand.
... and Religion not being separated from the government.


Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:22 pm
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Spreadie wrote:
paulzolo wrote:
The response written in red on my work was “do your ideas fit the facts?”. I felt like writing “show me some facts then,” but I thought better of it. Perhaps I should have done so. I’d have probably been kept after school and made to copy a page of the bible out or something.

This was the problem when I was at school. RE wasn't religious education, it was basically christian indoctrination.

At no point were we taught about varied religions. We were, pretty much, force-fed the bible as a statement of fact.


Same here. We got other religions mentioned, but really they were for the fuzzy-wuzzies and other ignorants. The problem of having a fully paid of member of the CofE delivering lessons. RE should be taught by atheists, or at least by agnostics. That way they all get the same level of coverage.

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