Richard Dawkins on Faith Schools

I watched this a few days ago. I especially loved the part with the former Muslim man who points out that he was discriminated against, and now after people worked so hard to stop the discrimination, religious groups are voluntarily segregating themselves from the rest of society. The part with the Muslim school was especially distressing.

I feel badly for the non-religious parents who have to pretend to be religious in order to get their kids into a school near their home.

Hi,
this is interesting, and I wasn’t aware of this system in England. but this doesn’t really apply in the US. Not supposed to have any faith based education in our public schools. in my experience for the most part this is true.

@Erin Kohlenberg: You’d be surprised at just how much this program actually does apply to the US. True, we’re not supposed to have any faith-based education in our public schools, but it slips in pretty often, especially here in the Bible Belt.

I had no idea that the UK had devoted an entire channel to Dawkins. Nice. If only America could steal those show ideas rather than tripe like Weakest Link, American Idol, America’s Got Talent, et al.

Dawkins makes a solid case, unfortunately it will be misunderstood and misconstrued.

The problem is of course that the idea is not to give lip service to teaching evolution. The idea is to teach well founded material and critical thinking.

So to teach evolution as an option to then totally counter it by the faith view is wrong on so many levels. In fact a caring parent of faith should oppose what’s going on.

A society that intentionally feeds on ignorance and misinformation cannot function. Democracy relies on the citizens being able to engage with things critically and forming sound opinions. Comprehensive education is key to this, not comprehensive miseducation.

I quite enjoyed it and think that the points emphasized in the Northern Ireland segment are key. It’s not merely that children have a right to not be forced into a given faith and it’s not just that these religious schools can give distorted views of reality (anybody else wonder what those Muslim girls are being taught about their intrinsic value with respect to men?). If you segregate children while they are still toddlers you end up with people who have no contact with people of other faiths or no faith. It’s really easy to see someone as the “other” and threatening if none of your friends or family belongs to the group. Religious segregation breeds religious bigotry, in the exact same way as racial segregation bred racial bigotry.

Yeah, Dawkins is starting to let the facts speak for themselves, eh?!

Tony Blair – what a disaster … I’ve been saying this for YEARS … good to see this subject on telly .. about time.

@PrimeNumbers: Some parents don’t have the time, resources or knowledge/ability to teach their own children, or send them to a private school. So since they lack these things, they’re condemned to sending their kids to a school that basically throws religion at them? I think I can see where you’re coming from, the whole please the group not the individual, but still. That doesn’t seem right. I guess it could be said about both sides, though.

I don’t know whether we just didn’t have time or what, but my Biology class in my Freshman High School class didn’t go over evolution at all. On the other hand, my best friend who is in AP Biology says that the teacher says a lot about evolution, almost to the point where she wants to leave the class.
I really wish that my elementary, or middle school would have done what Richard Dawkins did. That is just a great idea, though the age group seemed a little too young for what he was teaching.

Randomly, I was really impressed with the way Richard Dawkins handled all the stuff people were saying. A really big difference from Bill Maher’s ‘Religulous’. He was so mean, and made sure his point was heard, even if he had to talk over the other person.

We have the same problem in Ontario. Our school system is split in two, with two distinct school boards, both running on public funds. One is secular, the other is Catholic (no other religions allowed, sorry).