Time for some “militant secularism”; another shredding of faith schools, I feel. Observe the latest obscurantist wail from their defenders:

Selective, divisive, a law unto themselves: faith schools have been depicted by Ed Balls, secretary of state for schools, families and children, as a danger to Britain’s 9.8 million school-age children. Balls made his allegations last March, and has commissioned Sir Philip Hunter, the chief schools adjudicator, to investigate the 7000 faith schools in England and Wales. Hunter’s report is scheduled to reach ministers in September – and will, once again, stir up the row over faith schools.

Ball’s charges against faith schools can be dismissed one by one.

Really? They seem justified to me. Faith schools ground pupils in a seperate religious community, and so are divisive; they virtually require pupils to hold that faith, and so are selective; and raise hell (hah…) whenever the state which funds them imposes the same controls as it does on other schools it funds. Selective, divisive and a law unto themselves? Just a bit.

But, let’s hear what Ms. Odone has to say:

The schools do not select middle-class pupils or reject troubled ones. The intake of Christian schools reflects a broader ethnic range than comprehensive schools in the same area.

Class and race are synonymous? Look, we all enjoy a decent non-sequitur now and then, but to cite one phenomena and cite evidence (strangely without validated statistics) from another defeats itself. Balls’ point isn’t even addressed, save with unsupported assertion - so it isn’t addressed.

Moving on:

The schools are not divisive. Fully 76 of the 77 British citizens convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a secular state school; the exception was home-schooled.

And this is meant to be serious journalism? When an author manages two complete non-sequiturs in 6 sentences, they need to be denied the oxygen of publicity. It doesn’t matter how many citizens arrested under the Terrorism Act attended secular schools; that’s simply not the point.

Faith schools are inherently divisive. They encourage pupils to conform to the tenets of a certain religion and inculcate a sense of community with others of that religion; they thus perpetuate faith communities. These faith communities are seperate and frequently opposed to each other. In a word, they’re divided - and faith schools perpetuate this. So, actually, it’s got nothing to do with arrests under the Terrorism Act of 2000 and more to do with the socio-cultural implications of telling a child they’re different to other children because of what’s written in an ancient tome.

But there’s more:

Faith schools do not charge parents for places. Although some schools did ask for voluntary contributions from parents even before admission, these pay for extra teaching for religious studies and, in the case of Jewish schools, for protection.

So, what you’re saying is that they do charge parents money and so exclude low-income families? A “voluntary contribution” before admissions sounds suspiciously like one on which admission could hang. Nothing would need said; the very fact that the charge comes before admission would simply worry parents, who then pay out just in case something goes wrong with the application goes through.

Not that those charges would be necessary in a secular school anyway; surely, “protection” money is required because of the school’s very insularity? The group seperates itself off from the community; that community is left in ignorance of that group’s traditions and finds it harder to challenge prejudices; the prejudiced, meanwhile, have an easy target in the isolated group. They’re not asking for it - but they’re hardly making the problem better.

Ed Balls’s attack fed, and amplified, the strident secularist stereotyping of faith schools as ghettoes that teach a backward mentality.

Let’s check a popular definition of the term, “Ghetto”: “a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group.” Substitute, “education system,” for, “city, especially a slum area,” and, actually, that’s about right. A faith school sets itself up as a seperate entity within the state education system justifying its existence by its religious status - an educational ghetto.

In fact, Labour’s own Commission on Integration and Cohesion found that faith schools support local communities in terms of sharing their resources, and generating social capital.

Note the strange jargon to confuse the uninitiated; “social capital,” is an evasive non-phrase straight out of a sociology textbook. The author again misses the point; the schools might support their own, local communities, but their perpetuation of an insular, religious mentality seperates them from the national community (such as it is) and so is divisive.

Moreover, faith schools are crucial in the emancipation of Muslim girls: those who attend Muslim schools are more than twice as likely to go on to higher education than those who attend secular state or independent schools.

Perhaps more importantly, they’re more than twice as likely to have the doctrines of a religion elements of which treat women as second-class citizens forced on them. As they would do with a Christian or Jewish school; the patriarchal elements of Abrahamic faiths are inescapable.

Very emancipating.

As for the urban myth that faith schools teach creationism in science classes, this is precisely indeed a myth.

Now this just needs editting; “precisely indeed”? Ugh…

Faith schools have an excellent academic record, serve their local communities, and ground their students in a religious as well as national identity. Why squander this force for good?

Because they ground their students in a religious identity, and because that grounding is tax-funded. Parents have the right to educate their children as they wish, so long as that doesn’t harm the child; but they don’t have the right to do so on other taxpayers. All parents fund the education system. That system should thus be open to the children of any parent at any point, regardless of faith. That requires universally secular state schools; that requires an end to state funding for faith schools. Simple, really.

Oh - and since when was a religious and national identity a force for good? Division is the word she’s looking for.

For Ed Balls – and Gordon Brown – the answer is obvious: to woo the “old Labour” rump of the party, equally committed to secularism and comprehensive education.

Or maybe it’s because they believe in an open and fair education for all children?

With an eye to the No 10 succession, Balls is setting himself up as the old Labour candidate by bashing faith schools.

This is just laughable. Balls is setting himself up as Old Labour - by bashing faith schools? Odone could at least do the scaremongering properly and realise that the Labour left aren’t very well disposed to Balls because of City Academies and more. They care about socialism as well as secularism.

He deserves to fail.

Oh, look, another unsubstantiated point. Typical, no?

Ed Balls has managed to get something right for once. Well, sort of, anyway.

This is an excellent suggestion. Being able to cook is an essential life skill. What are you supposed to eat if you can’t cook a basic meal? Expensive, unhealthy, foul ready-meals are really the only option beyond beans on toast - neither of which are the foundation for a healthy diet. Or, indeed, a healthy wallet.

Now, I think the emphasis is wrong. Balls wants to introduce compulsory lessons in 8 healthy dishes to combat obesity. This strikes me as a poor way to approach the matter. What use is teaching children to cook certain, specific dishes if they don’t understand the fundamental mechanics of cookery? The preparation of food is generally based in a number of universal, essential techniques. Surely it would be better to teach teenagers these techniques rather than specific meals? That would allow them to cook any number of meals, and give them a degree of choice in what they ate.

So, the measure is very much half-arsed. But it’s a step in the right direction. Cooking is as essential a skill as basic mathematics, and should be taught as much as it.

In the same Op-Ed The Times continued in its degeneration into a neo-liberal tool by making the bizarre claim that Faith Schools “Create competition which, by and large, is a healthy.” A perpetual, prevalant, interminable error of the free-marketeers is their assumption that, since the market works brilliantly for the economy, it must work equally well when applied to just about anything else.

This has lead to the aforesaid absurdities in response to “Targets” and although Ofsted has been a good deal less irrational this suggestion is downright odd. Schools are effectively dependent upon the quality of their “Resources” {that’s young human beings, to you or me} to get the “Product” {an education} to levels which are observable by those who measure {league tables, that is, not the remarkably efficient Ofsted inspectors} and although that could, plausibly, be considered similar to the standard capitalist model how exactly does this comparison work out who the “Consumer” is. Would it be the parent, who chooses? The child, who is the one which actually receives the benefit? Or is the child’s mind truly seen merely as a resource and the parent’s contentment what the school must provide.

This is a suitably dismal view of education for a philosophy reliant upon economists to provide, as well as perhaps the only one that they ever possibly could. It is also entirely untrue: the faith school approach to “Competition” is simply to siphon away the most academically talented students, using an advantage which the secular state schools do not have at their disposal. To present this as a contest is rather like saying that a sprint where one conducts the race freely and the other with his legs bound is entirely fair and open.

Besides, a school is a poor one if it places the desires of its student body, or worse still the parents of this body, above their intellectual lives and as such is entirely an anathema to the ideal of “Customer satisfaction” that neo-libs rely upon. It must pursue their greater and long-term pleasures and interests as well as more short concerns, rather than being a solely a means of satisfying the immediate will. If it honoured the doctrine of “Supply and demand” that is neo-liberal dogma then it would flounder and sink, as it is only an occasional child that desires more homework but the inverse proportion, if not greater, that benefit from it.

In short what is suitable for economic revival and pleasing the customer is not appropriate at all for the education system. Competition may well have its place, perhaps even a prominent one, in such a system but it is firstly unwise to apply political theory based around economics to the education of children and secondly doubly unwise to imagine that a school with a selection process will ever be able to “Compete” with one without and win by any other means than a positive catchment area.

To summarise further: given that this preposterous piece sat alongside a piece where a journalist sharing Hillary Clinton’s genital format claimed that her vagina should be considered before her political acumen, her character and the wisdom of her policy {or at least disregarded all three latter to focus upon the former} is there truly any worth left in The Times at all?

On the front page of The Times today there is an article stating that the Labour MPs have taken a break from worrying about their leader to instead focus upon the faith schooling system. About time too, I say.

Apparently Balls announced recently that the Brown administration was not ideologically tied to the daft idea of using taxpayer’s money to indoctrinate children, which is rather a relief, really. Unfortunately mixed signals seem to be being emitted as he also suggested later om that they were planning to dramatically expand their number.

So why exactly is this? If there is no “Idealogical” {whatever their understanding that is} affiliation in the Brownite Cabinet what is causing them to promote the idea of the state effectively funding a Church outfit focusing solely upon children? Simple: figures.

Like all the rest of the New Labour project the Browns are blind without statistics and numbers, which is not necessarily a poor state to be in but proves unquestionably hazardous if you have no idea what you are looking at.

Which is the case here: you could look at the stats showing that state schools without faith do worse than those with it and say “Aha, it is the religion that makes the schools do better!” And be wrong. The most likely explanation is not the one nebulously connected to religion {which is a curious argument at best, are we to understand that God’s blessings upon these institutions has a tangible effect? That someone the closeness to organised religion creates organised children?} but rather something which has been demonstrated thoroughly: selection.

If you allow a school to choose the pupils it receives the outcome is remarkably predictable. They will choose the best and will thrive. It would be remarkable if they did anything else. Wonderful for that school, isn’t it? Not so wonderful for the school which has had all the talent siphoned away and is left with children who range from severely deprived to mediocre.

This is an old argument that only the Tories are bothering to continue, the Comprehensive system is supposed to dominate now. But faith schools are allowed to continue this grand cherry-pick.

This is the point where advocates complain that this is a grotesque misrepresentation: that the schools are indeed permitted selection {to maintain identity} but that this is strictly limited to the faith of the children.

The most obvious response to this is the Dawkinsian one: to automatically assign children the faith of their parents is absurd. They are not extensions of parental belief but instead autonomous, if immature, beings. To attempt to classify their religion by whether they have had water splashed on their forehead, had their foreskin sliced and ripped off or been dragged off regularly to the church/mosque/synagogue is simply preposterous. This shows nothing but how the parents have treated them.

But, pragmatically speaking, the statistics remain, do they not? There is an objectively distinguishable difference, one with copious exceptions but still a fair rule. Faith schools do better. But then, so did Grammar Schools.

Of course, the situation is more nuanced than then: the selection process of grammatics allowed them to choose their girls and boys on purely academic acumen, while faith schools, as we have found, have to make choices on parenting styles.

Although it pains me to have to say this, seeing as how positive my view of humanity generally is and how I do my best to ward off the corrosive cynicism that gnaws into most pursuers of matters political, the problem with this argument is this: parents lie.

The phenomenon of the “Year Five Epiphany” is a phenomenon that only the most naive could try to explain away. The fact that the Church ignored it altogether in their response to the article is telling. Effectively parents leave out the baptism when it is performed usually and suddenly experience a miraculous change of faith just in time for the baby to be deemed eligible for admittance into the high-powered academic institution of their choice.

Or at least that is the kindest explanation. The one which is more likely is a good deal more harsh and revolves around the phrase “Rampant opportunism”, so I shall refrain from making it explicit.

Various institutions have cottoned on to this method and have introduced more draconian methods: some have forced parents to make the ceremony occur within the first year of life, while in the London Oratory {guess which former Prime Minister and recent convert sent his child there? Despite living on entirely the other side of London…?} the Catholic “Ethos” is so strictly enforced that an interview is required for both the child and the parents to ensure that they are theologically suitable. both demands the baptism have occurred within six weeks of birth {in adherence with the same “Magisterium” that declares every drop of semen spilt outside of a vagina belonging to somebody both married to you and wishing to procreate with you sinfully spilt} , but also formerly had a long-standing policy that required an interview of both child and parent. This absurd measure {harsher even than that of highly selective private schools} was reverted only last year when outlawed by the government. Other schools have been less rigidly draconian but all have made efforts to deny access to those children that have parents of inappropriate beliefs.

This, however, is not enough to stem the tide. What is an hour or so on a Sunday in exchange for avoiding a hefty bill for sending your children private? What is lying through your teeth to a polite headmaster for a few minutes if your child is spared the strife of secular state schooling? What is outright deception, dishonesty and dishonour if you need not buy a £2.3m house on sale in an affluent catchment area?

Not nearly enough to reconsider.

Parents want the very best for their children, this is something that is inevitable and that the government could never hope and should never desire to change. But as long as that remains unaltered the system will be filled by the offspring of agnostic, atheist and long-timed lapsed parents who are in the know about such matters. And these, conveniently, are the ones which sociologists identify as those most likely to pass on the cultural capital required for scholastic success.

Which makes this the academic equivalent of the nurses who redefined a trolley as a bed to transform patients waiting in hospital corridors into patients placed where they belong simply by taking of the wheels. Middle-class parents infiltrate these institutions, send there children who will achieve and inflate their Ofsted ratings. What else would you expect?

Now that the alleged faith-based superiority of these institutions has been refuted there are two matters left: the alternative and the harm that they cause.

The latter is clear: the claim made by today’s Times leader that faith schools encourage “Diversity” is nothing other than a mockery of reality. They instead serve to isolate “Communities” and segregate our youth.

This matters less for Christians, especially due to the aforesaid infiltrators, but for smaller groups the results can be disastrous: a child of Muslim parents can be insulated from the decadent kuffar by those “Of his own kind” and overseen by an Imam, while a Jew of religious parentage driven to the school gates need never so much as encounter a goy for his entire childhood.

What hope is there for true, total integration when this is the state that people are raised in? When you have rarely, if ever, encountered children of other backgrounds and certainly not enjoyed them as your peers then what will the consequences be to your connection with mainstream society? What hope have we of quelling bigotry when a substantial proportion of minority of the young are forced to capitulate to some grotesque extension of the “Birds of a feather” maxim?

These questions have not been asked, let alone answered, by the high-rankers yet. That the lower-league players are kicking up a fuss and showing a desire to shout them to the rafters is promising and I certainly hope that the “Debate” suggested manages to materialise, unlike the plethora of other occasions such an event has been suggested and then never occured.

As there is an alternative, one which would be seen as radical by some but truly supports the entirely moderate proposition of secularism: the state should give its money to institutions devoid of religious background and them only. Those that wish to continue existence and previously relied upon the taxpayer may switch to Private and become like the school which I attend {at which, hilariously, there are around five-seven actual genuine Catholics with a basic understanding of Church teaching which they mostly accept in my year. At most.} or else will cease to exist.

This is no tragedy as any arrangement which required the money of the public to subsidy a religious institution is inherently illegitimate, especially so if its intention was to preserve itself through influencing the developing minds of children.

If this was to occur it is likely that the state schools would improve immensely: the intelligent children which they have been deprived of would be returned to them and their standards would rise accordingly.

Alternatively parents would continue to attempt exploitation of the catchment area instead and house prices would sky-rocket and our economy at very least stablise, or quite possibly expand.

Either way the move would be entirely beneficial and prove immensely helpful to our nation’s children, by bringing them together rather than enclosing them apart. This is, largely, what already happens in Scandinavian nations and the results have been superb. The alternative is keeping them apart and thus segregating on the grounds of parental religious practice, as was practiced extensively and thoroughly in Northern Ireland.

The preferable course should be instantaneously obvious.