Faith Schools

Why in Britain today are faith schools tolerated? Religion/superstition is the very antithesis of education. Schools exist in Britain today that teach, alongside their science curriculum, that the earth is a mere 7000 years old and that everything existing on earth today has always been so and was created by a god all in one go. The established theory of evolution, beautiful in its simplicity and underpinned by solid experimental evidence, is dismissed with the wave of a hand. Many times in the past religious dogma has held up scientific progress by in some cases centuries.

It is my belief that the teaching of well established physical laws firmly underpinned by sound experimental evidence, the fostering of free thinking and the confidence to challenge everything that does not ring true to them, can be the only way forward in a an evolving civilisation. The way civilisation is spiralling downward towards self destruction is clear evidence of the influence of religion greed and self interest in the world today.

At the time of its birth a child has all the brain cells it will ever have. Individual cells will substantially enlarge and masses of support cells/structures form but the total number will gradually decline with age. Within the first year of life about half the nerve cells are pruned away as the brain is literally sculpted into shape. At the same time billions of connections are forged, broken and reformed. Rewiring takes place on a massive scale as information is soaked up from its environment, associated with the learning of complex skills such as object recognition, spacial awareness and language. Around the age of 7, brain cells undergo a process called myelination, which acts to fix nerve pathways in place but in doing so restricts their capacity to change and adapt. Attitudes may have already formed which may be difficult to change throughout the rest of its life. Therefore the first seven years of a child’s life are crucial in determining the person he/she will become.

In general a child in the early years of its life will believe anything it is told by its parents and figures of authority endorsed by its parents. Take Father Christmas and the tooth fairy as cases in point. This is how we are programmed to adapt to the environment we are born into. The mechanism being to pass on prior learning from our parents based on their life experiences together with the knowledge passed on from their parents before them and so on down through the generations, thus short circuiting the process of each individual learning from scratch. If our adaptability were to rely solely on the relatively slow processes of natural selection via our genes, shorter term environmental demands could not be accommodated. To abuse this innate susceptibility to indoctrinate a child has been described by some as child abuse. However, I feel this is a little harsh, we are all guilty to some extent in wanting to shape our children’s views/philosophies in line with our own, but can this be justified? In terms of religious beliefs, the only morally justifiable stance would be to bring up a child as an agnostic and let him/her make up their own minds as they mature into an adult. On this basis faith schools cannot be justified on any grounds.

I cannot comprehend how any thinking individual could be taken in by paranormal/superstitious beliefs in our modern scientific age, where most things can be explained. Further, there is significant justification for the idea that if we were clever enough to carry out the right experiments, all things will in the future, via sound well established evidence based research, be explained.

We no longer worship the sun as a god because we now know it to be a rather mediocre star in a cosmos made up of trillions of such entities and so on. We can appreciate that in the past when this ball of fire rose above the horizon every day bringing light and warmth and delivering energy to grow our food, our ancestors in their ignorance of its true nature would worship it as a god. This situation was exploited in the past as it continues to be today, by an elite priesthood using fear and ignorance to control and manipulate the masses.

Religious beliefs in the past have been used in this way as a vehicle to gain power and wealth by keeping the masses ignorant, the elitist priesthood being the sole interpreters of the word of GOD. For example, discouraging reading and publishing the Bible only in Latin. Their interpretation being heavily weighted to support their own interests. The promotion of these belief systems being propagated via an education system under their absolute control, much as we see today in the many faith systems of the world. The religious indoctrination of the masses by the few, being one of the major causes of religious/cultural conflict and the ensuing wars and social atrocities committed in the name of religion. Each group knowing that it is right, and committed to eradicating all belief systems that do not align with their own. Can this be a sound basis for a progressive education system. Is this a sound basis for cultural tolerance and social integration.

I strongly believe that Superstition/Religion Should not be taught in any education system. Parents have a responsibility to create an environment such that their children are in a position to make up ther own minds. I do not believe that I have the right to murder those not of the same persuasion and I am prepared to accept that I could be wrong.