The position taken on this website is that state schools in the UK should be secular, remaining neutral on the issue of religion.

This is not unreasonable; for example, it is the norm in American state schools, where it is considered wrong to discriminate between religious views (or the lack of them) by showing favouritism to privileged religious groups. This is one of their main weapons used to keep creationism out of state schools. Because obviously, it is easy to show that scientific creationism & intelligent design are forms of religious belief.

Therefore, by arguing that religion should be kept out of schools this website is doing no more than adopting the position taken by one of the most religious nations on Earth.

In the UK, by contrast to America, not only does the state discriminate between & show favouritism to privileged religious groups, it allows & even actively encourages them to control state schools. As a result, large numbers of British schoolchildren are forced to endure prolonged exposure to someone else’s religious views: whether they or their parents agree with these views or not, whether they or their parents like it or not.

Worse still, the state insists that children should be forced to sing the songs & talk to the imaginary God of one particular religious group – whether they or their parents like it or not.

Here there is one tiny concession to common sense: the child, with its parent’s permission can legally withdraw from this activity. In theory at least, in practice most children & parents find the process to be too intimidating - not that they should be put in this position in the first place. Children particularly, do not like being singled out for attention as it exposes them to ridicule & bullying.

Moreover, staff may attempt to discourage withdrawal as any withdrawn child has to be supervised, which can place strain on staff resources. Members of staff with strong or fanatical religious beliefs may also attempt to block a withdrawal & there is evidence of this happening at one of the schools run by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation in Middlesbrough. see.

As a result children attempting to withdraw from assemblies or RE, or their families, could even end up finding themselves labelled as troublesome.

Of course all of these problems can be resolved by simply making the school educational system secular like it is in America.

Things would not be so bad if these archaic practices were slowly dying out, however they are not. On the contrary, they are becoming worse as under the influence of a pious & dictatorial government, the last vestiges of secular neutrality are slowly but surely squeezed from the educational system.

There has been very little debate or discussion about the desirability, fairness or rationality of such a course of action. It is almost as if the politicians that are implementing these policies are blind to the injustice of it all; they are forcing *their* religious views on the population & seem to think they have some, “God given” right to do so.

It is often argued (by those who should no better) that these practices can be justified on the basis of tradition. They say for example, that the Church was responsible for the formation of the first schools. However, why should tradition be any basis for deciding the particular merits of a given situation? We do not use similar reasoning elsewhere; for example, had the Church formed the first insurance company, would that be sufficient reason to give them a privileged position within the insurance industry – would people be forced to buy their car & house insurance from them?

By allowing religious groups to run & control schools, the government is also allowing access to these schools by their more extreme fringes, such as the creationists who form an integral part of these groups. It doesn’t matter very much if the curriculum makes no mention of creationism if on a day to day basis, the children in these schools are exposed to teachers who do believe in creationism & other extreme religious views that they then preach at every opportunity.

Furthermore, the creationists who are attempting to infiltrate the UK’s educational system are very careful to play down their extreme views in public & instead promote their policies using the same arguments that other moderate religious groups, (e.g. Church of England) are using to promote faith schools. For example, they play on the so-called strong ethos of the school or its good exam results as justification for pushing their religious beliefs onto other people’s children. It therefore becomes impossible to argue effectively against creationism in the UK’s educational system without arguing for the secularisation of that system.