State funded faith schools: Should they be allowed to exist?

[Bovril]

I volunteer as a teaching assistant at my local state primary school and like many others in the uk, it is what's called a faith school, meaning it is run according to a specific (in this case Anglican) religious ethos, and the children are lead in 'acts of worship' and given 'religious education' which are dictated by that faith.

My question to you is, should the state fund schools which have a specific religious agenda?

[Eksadiss]

No, they shouldn't of course. I think that would cause problems from the other religious groups trying to get state funded schools of their own maybe? Although that would probably be least of the problem

[Dayman]

Not at all.

[humvee2800]

No

[Admiral Nelson]

All publicly funded faith-based schools should be abolished. Why?

1) Separation of church and state = Religion out of the publicly-funded classroom.

2) Do we really want to sponsor the division of students on religious grounds? It will certainly not help social cohesion.

3) Multiple faith based school boards cost more money than a single public one. Think about the duplication of services and administrative staff necessary.

4) Where will we draw the line? Scientology schools?

5) Some of these schools will give their students skewed views about scientifically-accepted theories like evolution. Secular public schools give kids an opportunity to see things from a more objective point of view, putting aside parental indoctrination.

[Medicus]

No. There is such a thing as separation of church and state.

[Syron]

Of course not but the government gets too much support out of this appeasement for it to realistically change.

No. There is such a thing as separation of church and state.

Not in the UK, which is why there are bishops in the house of lords and the monarch is technically the defender of the faith...

[MaximiIian]

Of course not. The government is secular, and state-funded schools should, likewise, be secular. Anything else would violate the First Amendment, Establishment Clause.

[Rush Limbaugh]

Well seeing that Britain has a national church I dont see why not.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I don't think they should in America, but I don't see any legal reason for them not to exist in the UK. I'm still against them though .

[Cavalier]

Shouldn't and would never exist in Sweden(I sure as hell don't know any). Since a high percentage of the population doesn't even believe in christianity, buddhism, islam and all sorts of religion.
Now if they existed, I believe the kids would be considered outsiders by non-religious people.

[Erax]

No. No more Religion lessons.. ahh, that would be soooo sweet.

[the Black Prince]

no, not in the slightest

[Thanatos]

It's funded by the State, not the Federal Government, so I personally don't care.

[Medicus]

It's funded by the State, not the Federal Government, so I personally don't care.

This isn't the US Thanatos, it's Britain. It's a Constitutional Monarchy not a *cough* Republic. When we refer to the State, we mean the Federal Government. I don't know about the UK, but in Australia, the States have virtually no power.

[Sebdeas]

I don't know about the UK, but in Australia, the States have virtually no power.

I think that in most countries the states have virtually no power.

I go to a catholic school, but it's only in the name(and we get more days off).
Here in the Netherlands there are more christian schools but like my school, mostly in the name.

But very religous schools should be privately funded.

[Bokks]

Well now, Rush and Ferrets (along with a few others) both made the excellent point that the UK has a state religion. While I agree with Sebdeas in the belief that a state (aka country) should not favor a religion exclusively over another, there is nothing against the ability for the UK to have such a school.

And guys, let's keep this in check, the 1st Amendment obviously doesn't apply to other countries! There may be only one world hegemon today, but its laws do not effect other countries.

[Oldgamer]

And guys, let's keep this in check, the 1st Amendment obviously doesn't apply to other countries! There may be only one world hegemon today, but its laws do not effect other countries.

What's the use of having a one world hegemon if you can't make other countries do what you say? Sheesh!!

[chilon]

It's funded by the State, not the Federal Government, so I personally don't care.

Different terminology in the UK.

State funded faith schools *is* the UK equivalent to Fed Government giving money to religious schools.

I'm against all government run schooling whatsoever. Most of the time kids spend at public school is wasted for one, and then another reason:

It could be argued most of the time spent at high school is wasted. I certainly would have dropped out of BOTH public and private high school, taken my GED and started taking community college courses at 16 if I could do it again.


I attended public and private high schools and the quality of education differed so greatly depending on the teacher that any sort of conclusions about the SCHOOLs in general would be misleading, false and dishonest.

Some of the worst teachers I had were at public schools, without a doubt.
My public school trigonometry teacher would quote phrases from the Bible every day and go on rants against the ACLU, in math class no less. Needless to say he was good at providing conservative propaganda but horrible at teaching math.
But the worst English teacher I had by a long margin was at a very high ranked parochial private high school. We read no interesting novels or classic literature and the teacher would have students regularly write burns(insults) about other students on the back of assignments and he would read the burns out loud to the class. (he was a Priest btw, and this was Catholic school so he worked there a long time and also had NO chance of being fired). I think I lost brain cells every day in that class yet that moron won Favorite Teacher because, obviously, high school males like teachers that let them insult other students and not do work.

So ya, there are absolutely atrocious teachers in both private and public schools. Some "bad schools" actually have some excellent teachers working there and some "high ranked schools that provide top education" have some really bad teacher's working there.

This is why punishing entire schools for dubious "standardized tests" is really a stupid policy. Good teachers at bad schools get punished while bad teachers at relatively good schools get free passes. Mechanisms for removing bad teachers need to be in place, but naive one size fits all solutions like NCLB do just as must damage.

[RusskiSoldat]

Yes, yes and more yes.
Regardless of any constitutional challenges posed, faith schools (at least in New York and usually Catholic) do infinitely better than just about every public school out there as far as actual education goes.
I think it's silly to deny children the ability to get a top notch education because of unfounded concerns that it'll somehow brainwash them.
Also, Catholic schools hardly manage to churn out brainwashed Catholics by the dozen, most graduates tend to be no more religious than the general population.