But there are times when it is wise and necessary for the whole of society to take a view about the decisions that individuals are making even when those decisions concern a child’s upbringing. That is exactly what we should be doing about segregated religious education that denies a child access to scientific knowledge and alternative visions of the world and simply exposes that child to whatever beliefs the parents hold. Propaganda is dangerous regardless of whether it comes from the state or from your own parents.
It is therefore deeply disturbing that Ofsted has reported a surge in the number of unlicensed religious schools in the UK. More and more parents are choosing to take their children away from any risk of being exposed to views that differ from their own and instead are putting them into establishments that are firmly instructing them in the orthodoxy of their choice. This applies to some Muslim schools, some Jewish ones, and to some extreme Christian sects.
The damage that this type of schooling can do to the individual is considerable as they are brought up to view the world as us and them. Either you sign up to the whole package of beliefs favoured by your parents and their religious community or you face complete ostracization from everyone in your family, your religious leaders and every friend you ever made at school. That is not exactly providing a child with a free choice or a proper education. Especially when some of the beliefs being propagated are as bizarre as the idea that the world is only a few thousand years old – a view which appears nowhere in the bible or any other major religious text and is simply a flawed calculation made by one biblical scholar a couple of centuries ago.
The damage to society is every bit as significant. In a complex and rapidly changing world in which people have to live alongside others with very different views it does immense harm to social cohesion to have whole groups of children brought up to believe that their own views are the religiously established truth and all other views are dangerously flawed. A multicultural society needs better mutual understanding not propaganda being fed to the youngest and most vulnerable.
It is, of course, illegal to withdraw a child from the school system and impose a programme of organised religious propaganda onto that child. Home education for an individual is meant to be supervised to ensure that it provides that child with a reasonable and balanced education and it is illegal to set up a school that isn’t subject to proper checks and inspections. That law has been in place for over a hundred years and is there to protect the safety of the child in every regard. It is there to protect from child abuse, physical cruelty, poor and insanitary conditions and also deliberate bias.
Unfortunately the law is not being applied and it was written before Ofsted was invented. The school inspectors therefore find themselves in the ludicrous position of knowing that dodgy schools exist but not being able to close them down. We badly need a change in the law to ensure that Ofsted can go into any establishment without notice and check what is being done to the country’s children.
Yet, incredibly, the risk of religious intolerance being inflicted on our children doesn’t end with illegal schools set up with the deliberate intention of flouting the law. Across the country new Free Schools are being set up and some of these have a very determined focus on religion and have been set up by groups of parents with the prime purpose of ensuring the children from “their” community are brought up to be good Muslims, good Jews, or good evangelicals. There is also large network of long established faith schools. Many of these establishments provide an excellent and well-rounded education where children are made aware of a variety of different views and scientific knowledge is respected. Some of the others don’t.
Northern Ireland has suffered for decades from a system of education that makes it very clear from an early age which community you belong to. The divisions may be less violent at the moment but the boundaries between the two communities are very clear because of divisions that are strongly re-enforced by an education system that defines a child as being Catholic or Protestant rather than part of a single mixed community.
Is that the kind of direction that we want education to go in across the whole of the UK? Do we want to strengthen and re-enforce divisions or do we wish to move beyond them and promote understanding? Do we want to only view some children as part of “The” community or all children as part of our communities?
Those of us who believe in the open minded pursuit of knowledge and an education based on tolerance and understanding have a battle on our hands. Gradually that tolerant society is being worn away by a increase in tribalist determination to avoid children mixing outside their normal social groups. That is something which needs to be fiercely resisted. Sometimes a tolerant society has to be very intolerant of intolerance.