The following is a transcript of a section of Rod Liddle’s recent C4 program, The New Fundamentalists (C4 – 6 Mar 06) Here he interviews 2 teachers, 2 former pupils of Emmanuel College & Nigel McQuoid.
Nigel McQuoid in assembly:
Let’s say a prayer to start our reading. Our father, the world is full of injustice but that doesn’t mean we give up. We want to have our society strong & healthy. Some of the good things we just read from the Bible. Please help us to pursue these things in our , , so our society might be all the better for it. We ask these things of you this morning – amen.
Rod Liddle:
Trying to find out what goes on inside Sir Peter’s schools is difficult; people on the inside are reluctant to speak out. But one teacher still serving at the academy (King’s Academy)) did say there was an awful lot of Bible-bashing in school assemblies. Something which wasn’t much in evidence the day we came & filmed.
This teacher did not want to be identified, so her words are being spoken by an actor.
Teacher:
Every Monday they banged away at them about Christianity being literally true. The principal is always very careful to say, “now you may not believe this but I am going to meet my maker & I am going to be judged”. It is the one-sidedness that is troubling & the absolutism. It is a kind of old-fashioned Christianity. It is critical of feminism & homosexuality is an absolute sin you know. You’ve got Christian teachers who have been brought in, not because of their experience, not because of their expertise but because of their religion.
And it is wrong. I believe that education is about opening the kids minds up. I think what they want to do is close them.
Rod Liddle:
I had to travel to Wexford in the Republic of Ireland to find a second teacher who would speak to us. Someone who had spent a term at another of Sir Peter’s schools: Emmanuel College in Gateshead.
Cormack O Duffy was rather surprised by the authoritarian atmosphere he had found at the college & left after disagreements about the ethos of the school.
Cormack O Duffy:
Well, Emmanuel school is for me a very very different school – is not a school like – I have never experienced anything like it anywhere in the world & I have seen schools in at least 3 or 4 different countries. The word totalitarian is strong but that is the type of thing where you don’t really speak. You don’t really say what you think, you accept what you are told to do & to teach. That sort of repressed atmosphere & to me doesn’t tie in at all with how I see Christianity.
Rod Liddle:
This totalitarianism is perhaps the result of an unbending adherence to the Bible. So we dug around a bit on the internet & discovered some interesting information about some of the top teachers there. One of them, Nigel McQuoid was headmaster of King’s Academy. Now he is in charge of all 3 schools run by the ESF. He co-wrote a long treatise, “Christianity & the school curriculum”, which makes the Foundations approach to education absolutely clear. Christianity & Biblical truth he says must find a place across the whole curriculum & must not be confined to the acts of worship & RE.
But its Mr McQuoids insistence on how the ToE should be taught in schools that worries me most. He believes that scientific evolutionary theory & the old testament account of the creation of the world in 6 days should be given similar academic status. Both creation & evolution provide ways of explaining the past, he says, that are beyond direct scientific examination & verification.
He says both creation & evolution are faith positions & science teachers should be given opportunities to demonstrate this.
(Gap – continues)
Evolution a faith position? Well it might not be fact proved beyond dispute but the process that lead us to accepting it was at least entirely rational, rather than grounded in superstition.
I met 2 former pupils of Emmanuel College who both learned about evolution at the school. But the scientific theory was taught to them by teachers who believed in the Biblical account of creation described in Genesis. I found it hard to believe what they told me about the way that they were taught.
Richard Almond:
Most of the teachers being Christians believed in creationism. So what they would say is erm, this is erm curriculum, this is Darwin’s evolutionary theory,ToE. However, we believe that creation, God created the world in 7 days, so.
Rod Liddle (interrupts):
In 7 days?
Richard Almond:
Yes.
Rod Liddle:
Did anyone ever raise a query about this belief?
Richard Almond:
When your young, you just take what your told a lot of the time, so no one stood up & disagreed.
Adam French:
One of my teachers – we were reading from a text book & one of the teachers told us all a story about the big bang & how dinosaurs were born & how man eventually evolved from there. He told us all this & then all of a sudden he whipped out the Bible & read the first passage in the Bible: & in the beginning God created the heaven & the Earth, blab la bla. And he said he believed the Bible version, although he did strictly tell us that in an exam we should write the textbook version & not the Bible version.
Rod Liddle:
When you were told about creationism, did you think that theory then is equal then to the evolutionary approach?
Adam French:
Pretty much that’s how they brought it across. Because they always pushed evolution onto you as just a theory, so you never thought of it as purely a factual scientific thing.
Richard Almond:
They did try to teach creationism as fact.
Adam French:
We were even taught that the err, that the Earth was only 6000 years old.
Rod Liddle:
They taught you that?
Adam French:
I don’t think it was in lessons but we were told…
Richard Almond (interrupts):
Not in terms for an exam but now that I think about it, there was a lot of contradiction in the teaching.
Adam French:
Err, I don’t think it is right what they are doing with contradictory theories in science, it is not a good thing.
Rod Liddle:
These creationists beliefs did prompt OFSTED, the government body that oversees standards in state schools, to ask for an explanation. Sir Peter Vardy responded by sending a fairly detailed letter to the chief inspector of schools, Mike Tomlinson, during which he said, “we are therefore happy to assure you that we do not breach any of the legal requirements relating to the curriculum”.
Nevertheless, if OFSTED had entered into a dialog with the man who runs Sir Peters 3 schools, he might have had cause for concern. Certainly when I spoke to him, I found the conversation a bit disturbing.
(Lead in to an advertising break) Nigel McQuoid:
I am not going to fib to you – I actually believe in something that science says can’t happen.
(Program continues) Rod Liddle:
It took a lot of persuading to get to see Nigel McQuoid, the man who now heads all 3 of Sir Peter’s schools. Eventually they let me in to ask him a few questions. Mr McQuoid is forthright: No, there is no anti-feminism or anti-gay feelings in the schools. No, it is absolute nonsense to say that teachers are chosen because of their faith, rather than their skills. And as for that totalitarian atmosphere, staff would be leaving in droves if that were true. But what about the creationist views that the students have been hearing?
Nigel McQuoid:
The Foundation doesn’t say how old the Earth is, the Foundation doesn’t say how long it took God to make the world.
Rod Liddle:
The Bible does say of course that the world was created in 6 days, doesn’t it?
Nigel McQuoid:
It does.
Rod Liddle:
What about when they come & ask you about that?
Nigel McQuoid:
I would say to the kids, well the Bible says it was created in 6 days, so you either believe that is an allegory or factual or whatever you want to believe.
Rod Liddle:
But hang on a minute, are you saying to them that these 2 ideas are equally valid?
Nigel McQuoid:
The 2 ideas that one says …
Rod Liddle (interrupting)
The 2 ideas that 1 says 6 days, the other (clicks fingers) big bang.
Nigel McQuoid:
No, I say its complicated. If they said to me is it 6/24 hours Mr McQuoid, I would say I can’t prove that but do I believe it – I believe the Bible.
Rod Liddle:
You Believe that the Earth was created in 6 days?
Nigel McQuoid:
I believe that’s what the Bible says, yes I accept that.
Rod Liddle:
And you’re the principal of a state school?
Nigel McQuoid:
Yeees And can I not have a view?
Rod Liddle
Yes, I can also have a view that your made of red Leicester cheese but it would be fatuous.
Nigel McQuoid:
No, I think the nature of faith is that if the Bible says that the world was made in however long, I’ve got a position where I believe that or not.
Rod Liddle (interrupts)
Now come on
Nigel McQuoid (continues):
If you say I’m made of red Leicester cheese …
Rod Liddle (interrupts)
No, no, come on a minute. It is not fine to tell these children that there is an equivalence, that I believe this, he believes that, make your own mind up.
I believe your made of red Leicester cheese, someone else believes your made of flesh & blood. Its an equivalence, make your own mind up – it is an absurdity.
Nigel McQuoid:
But there are millions of people on the planet who believe God made the world.
Rod Liddle:
There’s a few million living in the Appalachians backwoods of Kansas & Tennessee river valley.
Nigel McQuoid:
& me.
Rod Liddle:
And you, yes.
(pause) But you a clever man, a rational clever man.
Nigel McQuoid:
Apparently not.
Rod Liddle:
The head of a huge school, well of course you are. You must know that the Earth was not created in 6 days. You must know that dinosaurs & men were not running around at the same time together. They weren’t, we know that.
Nigel McQuoid:
Okay, you know that.
Rod Liddle:
But you don’t, you think that they were running around together?
Nigel McQuoid:
I don’t know whether they were running around together.
Rod Liddle:
Well if you believe 6 days, then they must have been because if day 4 was the animals or day 5, I forget what it was, then they must have been together by about day 7.
Nigel McQuoid:
But now what we have is the scientists coming along & saying that can’t be scientifically true.
Rod Liddle:
But it isn’t, that’s why they are saying it. Although it could be metaphorically true of course.
Nigel McQuoid:
Again & that would be to say that basically the Bible is a metaphor, I actually believe not.
End Interview.