Faith Schools Menace?

[Bored Of Education]

Dawkins new doc on More 4 now.

The one area where Dawkins and I should concur on a fair amount

[Levin]

Faith Schools Menace?

He appears to be listening more than speaking. He's coming off much better here than in his previous documentaries.

[Bored Of Education]

Faith Schools Menace?

Yes, apart from his letter to his 10 year old which came over as an oddly proscriptive thing to write, nothing jarred greatly.

Indeed, the assembly at the end was lovely and is something I would consider adapting when I am a teacher.

[gt3]

Faith Schools Menace?

Bored of Education wrote:

Yes, apart from his letter to his 10 year old which came over as an oddly proscriptive thing to write, nothing jarred greatly.

Indeed, the assembly at the end was lovely and is something I would consider adapting when I am a teacher.

The point about the letter has been addressed in the comments section of Sam Woolaston's review in the Guardian here:http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/aug/19/faith-schools-menace-tv-review

Nice reposte from Mr. D himself there.

[Ginger Yellow]

Faith Schools Menace?

I thought the letter was fine myself, but then I'm not a parent. It was a pretty good show overall, I thought, though I was a bit disappointed with how he handled the interview with the guy from the NI Catholic schools association. It's a fairly simple point. Rights only extend until you begin infringing others' rights. And for that matter, parents are perfectly free to raise their children in a given religion, but they don't have a right for the state to pay schools to do so.

[Reed John]

Faith Schools Menace?

Is RD saying that he had to write her a letter because he doesn't get to see her? That sucks.

I'm jealous that you all live in a place where a scientist - any proper scientist, let alone an outspoken atheist one like Dawkins - can be on TV a lot. That's remarkable and great.

The state ought not support religious education - one of the handful of things related to religion that America does better than Europe. Even if the school accepts all comers, my understanding is that it greatly helps a kid's admission chances if the parents can show they've "$upported" that church over the years. Even The Friends schools, who generally will let anyone of any faith in their schools, give preference to Quakers, I'm led to believe. That's fine, but the state shouldn't be subsidizing that.

But having said all of that, "menace" is probably a bit strong. I don't think the schools are nearly as successful in indoctrinating the kids as they might hope or we might fear.

I don't have data, but because I studied religion in college and graduate school, I repeatedly had the unfortunate experience of people I just met telling me their opinions on religion. What it showed me is that people's attitude toward religion rarely has anything to do with the sort of consideration of the evidence that Dawkins advocates. It usually comes down to what sort of experience a person has had with religious people, especially during adolescence. It's more often a visceral reaction than an intellectual one. That's why I wish I'd studied psychology of religion rather than philosophy of religion, as I did. To no practical effect whatsoever. Anyway...

Therefore, since school generally sucks, putting religion in school teaches kids that religion generally sucks. A motif that consistently appeared in these awkward conversations was that people who went to a ball-busting religion-affiliated Catholic school usually drifted away from Catholicism. The experience seemed to turn them against all of it. Some became explicitly atheist, while others said they still believed in it all, but their lifestyle and behavior suggested otherwise.

Of course many parents send their kids to those schools simply because the regular academic and athletic programs there are better than the alternatives, not because of the religion. They might even instruct their child to just go through the motions on the religious stuff. In some cases, the school may not even require that the parents pretend to be Catholic. I tend to think that what kids learn from their families or even their peers is usually going to trump what they get from their teachers.

On the other hand, the assorted "Christian" (euphemism for Evangelical Bible-thumping that has some vague nominal association with the stories of Jesus Christ in the Bible) Academies in the US don't seem to take that kind of take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward religion. My understanding is that they drive the bullshit pretty hard there and it's not regarded as remotely optional, so the parents of kids in those schools are probably on board with the whole program, in which case there wasn't much hope for the kid anyway even if they'd gone to public school (there were no shortage of bible-thumpers at either my high school or secular university) However, I do know of examples of people coming out of those schools and those kinds of families either indifferent to or hostile to that kind of religion. So escape is always possible.

Of course, religious schools are likely to be a big problem in places where religion is part of a significant social divide, because it will only serve to reinforce that division, regardless of how much doctrine is preached at the school. But that's not the case in all communities or with all churches, but I can see how it could be.

[Ginger Yellow]

Faith Schools Menace?

I'm jealous that you all live in a place where a scientist - any proper scientist, let alone an outspoken atheist one like Dawkins - can be on TV a lot. That's remarkable and great.

Well, it's only on More 4 (a digital terrestrial spin-off from Channel 4 which is mainly known for showing The Daily Show). So it probably had a couple of hundred thousand viewers at best. Probably much less. Also, don't you get some of the BBC documentaries (eg the Brian Cox or Jim Al-Khalili ones) on Discovery?

[Reed John]

Faith Schools Menace?

We do get some BBC stuff, especially on PBS, but I don't think we've got any of the Dawkins stuff. His only major "appearance" on American TV has been on South Park. And maybe he (the real guy, I mean) was on The Daily Show once or Bill Maher's show (which I don't rate at all, BTW).

[Bored Of Education]

Faith Schools Menace?

Nice reposte from Mr. D himself there

Actually, it's not. If he is going to use stuff from his private life, it is up to Dawkins to provide the full context if he is going to get snippy about people not knowing the full story.

The guy was reviewing the programme, as such all he needed to do as far as research concerned is watch the programme.

A fair few people, myself included, thought that the letter was odd, not only for the reason that he has subsequently explained but for him saying that she should think for herself and question everything in a fairly proscriptive way.

Mind you, as Woolaston points out, for that to be the only jarring part of a Dawkins programme is impressive indeed and it took nothing away from the rest of the doc