Faith School Menace? Page #3

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I worry that religions like

getting to children young

precisely because that's when they

are at their most impressionable.

I'm going to show you

what it's going to make next.

It's going to be a box.

Are you ready for the box?

Yes!

OK. There.

There's a box.

Do you see its lids there?

I can make a hat out of it.

What, like that?

LAUGHTER:

No! Put it on me!

Thank you.

'Some sixty years on from

my childhood, I can still remember

'how to fold a piece of paper

into a Chinese-style boat.

'It was a craze at my school. '

This is going to be...

This is the difficult bit now.

Pulling that out, pulling that out,

and pulling up the sails,

and it's a boat!

Windmill Primary School in Oxford

is no faith school,

but I've come here to demonstrate

children's natural propensity

to absorb new information.

A sailor

went to sea, sea, sea...

'I've reminded one pupil of

a well-known clapping game. '

Within minutes, others pick up

the game, pass it on to friends,

make connections

and adapt it with variations.

Children love to imitate,

they love to join in.

There's something compelling

about ideas

and the way they spread through

minds that are a bit like sponges.

What children absorb at a young age

can last a lifetime.

Should it really be the dogma

and daily rituals of religion?

And faith schools do much more,

of course, than hymns and prayers.

The hard edge of the indoctrination

goes on in RE, religious education,

for which many faith schools

teach their own syllabus,

and often parents contribute

money for the lessons.

We weren't granted access to film

any RE or faith studies

at a Jewish or Catholic school.

So I turned to someone who has

systematically collected information

for years on what actually goes on.

The problem is

that it is totally deregulated.

The governing bodies

of state-funded faith schools

have control over their

religious education curriculum.

Ofsted inspects the religious

education in other state-funded schools,

but state-funded religious schools have their

own religious inspectorates to inspect lessons.

And that really compounds

problems in other subjects.

So a lot of faith schools,

particularly Catholic schools,

will teach their sex and relations

education in their RE.

Lots of faith schools do the same with

citizenship education. So those subjects become

seen through a religious filter.

How much time do they actually spend

on faith

as opposed to ordinary education?

Well, we have an example here of

a state-funded Jewish faith school,

where in Year Seven, that's

the first form in secondary school,

pupils have eight hours

of religious instruction

every fortnight, which compares with

six hours per fortnight for science

and far outweighs any subject

in the secular curriculum.

One faith was brave enough

to open its doors to filming.

Right, come on, girls.

Right, now, we know what

we're going to do this lesson.

We're going to do some drama.

I'm just thinking to myself,

how universal is this story?

Back then, everything was according to

the family. You've got to obey them...

This is Madani High School, an

all-Muslim secondary school in Leicester

and one of 11 Muslim faithschools

now in the state system.

I've come to see first hand

how faith and education mix.

This school gets good results,

and many of the girls here hope

to become the next generation

of lawyers, doctors and teachers.

Faith schools are sometimes accused

of closing children's minds down

by teaching them this is the one

true faith and you get your truth

from Holy Scripture rather than

from opening your mind to the world.

That's slightly a misunderstanding

from those who think that.

If you come to our school

and look at our lessons,

we're very much open minds,

thinking critically,

understanding the world

in a very critical fashion.

Like all state schools, they teach

national curriculum science here.

But, like many faith schools,

they supplement this

with religious lessons

that they control

and which are not subject

to Ofsted inspection.

In our school, when our teachers

tell us stuff, like,

teach us stuff, it's up to us

whether we believe it or not.

The teachers do not

disrespect our decision.

Everybody has a right to their own

decision, at the end of the day.

Suppose we take a fact like,

are we and chimpanzees cousins?

Do you believe that

we're cousins of chimpanzees?

Or monkeys?

I wouldn't think so.

Perhaps we have

a science teacher here.

What do you teach about that?

We learn in the curriculum,

because that's what we follow,

we teach them

the theory of evolution,

but then I do tell them

we in Islam,

our opinion about it, and the girls

will also have their own opinion

and ask questions, "So, Miss,

do we really come from chimpanzees?"

But they all have their own opinions

for that, and they'll

come to their own decision, which

every single one of them realise

that actually we didn't,

because we believe differently.

Every single one of them comes to

the conclusion that we did not evolve?

Yes.

Everybody in your science class,

everybody in the school

comes to that conclusion?

Well, in my class, yes, they did.

How many is that?

Well, I teach 60 Year Ten students,

so 60 of them.

And all 60 of them

end up rejecting evolution?

Yes, because, obviously, they have

their beliefs, which is Islam.

Yeah, about evolution.

Evolution is that

human evolved from apes and stuff,

but if there are still apes here,

then how did humans evolve from apes?

This is the commonest question I get. What's

the answer of your science teacher to that?

I wanted to know your opinion.

I'm going to give you the answer, but we've

been told that your science teacher teaches

the theory of evolution.

I'm interested to know...

That's exactly what we teach them,

that humans evolved from apes

and through natural selection

we became humans.

But her question is

why are there still apes?

Mm. Erm...

I'll tell you why

there are still apes.

Firstly, we are not just

evolved from apes, weareapes.

And when animals evolve from

other animals,

it's not that they supersede them.

It's not that we've evolved

from chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees and we have evolved

from a shared ancestor

who lived about

six million years ago

and who was neither a human

nor a chimpanzee.

'There's a bigger point at stake

here than evolution, of course.

'What's worrying is that a school that says

it wants its pupils to be open-minded is,

'through its religious training, also

guiding them to reject factual evidence

'at the very core of science

and rational thought.

'Where does that lead?'

The school's job is to

provide all the information,

but it's up to individuals to see what

they believe and what they don't believe,

so I'd like to leave the choices

to these young people.

So you think that

matters of scientific fact

are a matter of personal choice,

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