Worship God -- It's a good thing

Some time ago I signed this e-petition. While I didn't necessarily agree with all of the wording I did and still do agree with the main thrust of it (we should not be forcing the practice of a specific religion in our schools).

Today I've had an email pointing to the government's response to the petition.

The Government remains committed to the provision of collective worship in schools and recognises its valuable contribution to the spiritual and moral development of pupils.

That's nice. How about giving some idea of how it aids children's "moral development"? And, more to the point, what is this business of "spiritual development"? Shouldn't "moral development" be in some sort of philosophy class?

This is a view which is shared by many parents who still expect their children to understand the meaning of worship whether they hold a faith or not.

Why the need to practice a specific form of worship so as to understand the general idea of worship? Why the need to perform a specific instance of something to understand the class of something?

We believe that it is important that collective worship should provide the opportunity for pupils to worship God as well as to consider spiritual and moral issues and to explore their own beliefs.

(Emphasis is mine). Note that pupils should have the opportunity to worship God? Note that there's no place for deciding what god, or gods? Note that there appears to be no place to consider the idea of there being a god that cares about being worshipped or even wants to be worshipped?

Collective worship can play a valuable role in developing community spirit, promoting a common ethos and shared values.

And the worship of God has what to do with "developing community spirit", promoting a "common ethos" and "shared values"? Aren't shared values where sets overlap?

The Government believes there is sufficient flexibility in the law to allow both Christian and other forms of worship.

Way to avoid the point of the petition!

The Government respects the right of parents to raise their children in accordance with their own faith and this is why parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective worship.

Note how they talk about "faith" but don't mention anything about no-faith? Note also that, despite talking about "common ethos" and "shared values" and "developing community spirit", they're really promoting a "follow this or bugger off" approach?

From September 2007, pupils in school sixth forms will also be able to withdraw themselves from collective worship. The Government believes that for younger pupils, it is appropriate and practical for parents to decide on whether to withdraw. The Government believes this strikes the right balance between the requirements of the law and accommodating the wishes of parents.

In other words, we're going to do everything we can to promote faith and, generally, a particular kind of faith, in a way that's very similar to spamming. It's an opt-out list.

Growing up in the Universe

Excellent! Finally! Richard Dawkins' 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture will soon be made available on DVD:

IPU vs FSM

IUP vs FSM. Time to choose a side!

Fear the Pears! Save the Children!

I know it's not nice to laugh at typos, we all make them from time to time (sod's law says I'll make one in this post), but I couldn't help having a giggle at this one:

This puts undue pressure on children to follow pears

found in this petition over at petitions.pm.gov.uk.

Quote of the week

From an article in The Guardian:

Last night, the Royal Society gave a public platform to Steve Jones, the award-winning geneticist and author, to deliver a lecture entitled Why Creationism Is Wrong and Evolution Is Right. Professor Jones said that suggesting that creationism and evolution be given equal weight in education was "to me, rather like starting genetics lectures by discussing the theory that babies are brought by storks."

Daily Mail in Theory Cock-Up Shock

It shouldn't and, to be honest, doesn't surprise me to find out that the hacks over at the Daily Mail don't have the first clue about what a theory actually is when talking about science.

A story there today, Pupils 'confused by science lessons in creationism' gets it very wrong in the wording of a poll associated with the story:

Should creationism be taught as truth or theory?

• It should be truth
• It's all theory

I think that's got to be the most biased set of answers I've ever seen from a poll but, in this case, it would appear that it's more to do with ignorance on the part of the person setting it as opposed to it being down to a deliberate attempt to get the answer they want.

Is it any wonder that the readership of the paper then make comments such as

The fact is nobody knows anything because theories are just thoughts or ideas and nothing more...Monkeys are cute and will never be humans.

Evolution theories change every other week because they haven't a clue really. Remember the big bang?

I really do not see what the Royal Society are getting all steamed up about! They admit that Darwin's theroy is just that - a theory.

And so on, that's just a random sample. Thankfully there are a couple of comments made against that story that actually point out what "theory" actually means.

Thin end of the wedge

From this article on the BBC:

Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.

The subject has been included in a new syllabus for biology produced by the OCR exam board, due out in September.

It would appear that the thin end of the wedge is finally going to find itself in mainstream UK classrooms.

Although there are some sensible points raised in the article it's sad to see it start out with the phrase "creationist theories". I think the author of the article needs to go and learn what a theory is.

Proportional Education

As part of the comment discussion in Tim's weblog post "Disco-dancing with the scientists" a point was made about how religion is taught in UK schools (at least, Tim's experience of it anyway, I'm a little older than he is and I recall things being a little different). The idea is that different types of religion are given differing amounts of time and are taught in differing levels of detail based on how prevalent they are in the UK. Here's what Tim said on the matter:

Abrahamic religions got most of the time, and IIRC something like Hinduism and a few others got a couple of lessons each - sort of bogo-proportional-representation as per UK or something. No harm in giving it a blast in the US - the kids can only end up better-educated about folks they're likely to meet, after all.

The idea being, in the UK you're probably more likely to bump into a Christian than you are, say, a Hindu and so it would appear to make sense to teach Christianity in more detail.

It's not the first time I've seen this said and this approach has bothered me for some time but, oddly, I've never really been able to put my finger on what it was that concerned me. Having given it some thought last night the obvious concern came to me.

Assuming that Religious Education in the UK is about teaching children about religion in general and specific religions in particular it doesn't seem to make much sense to portion out the time and the detail based on number of followers (for want of a better word) that are found in the UK. If the idea is to educate children in the beliefs of the people they'll engage with over their lifetime why would it be that the more common religion requires greater detail? Why would it seem reasonable that a child knows more about the beliefs of someone who is a Christian than, say, someone who is a ­Bahá'í? If the idea is to equip children with details of religious beliefs why wouldn't it make more sense to equally teach them about all of the religions that appear in the UK?

The more I think about it the less I find the "portion out time and detail based on numbers of followers" idea credible. I don't know how RE works in UK schools these days (with a child heading off to school this year I'll be finding out soon enough) but if past experience suggests that one religion got more time than another the motivation can't have been "chances of encountering a follower" or, if it was, it seems like flawed reasoning to me.