Does faith have a place in education?

OK, this is going to be a contentious post so please bear with me. As ever, I am attempting to look at the question without necessarily coming up with an answer.

So, does faith have a place in education? For the sake of this blog, I'm going to lay down a few definitions. First of all, we're talking faith as in major, organised religions, mostly to save me lots of ifs, buts and maybes about the exceptions to the rules that are out there. Secondly, by education, we're talking what the British would call "primary" education, basically until about age 11. That's mostly a figure I've pulled out of my head and a convenient place to draw a line about when children are most influenced in matters of faith and philosophy, but I think it's a pretty reasonable one.

So, a little background firstly. I began pondering on this particular question a little while ago after seeing the (in)famous Mr. Dawking talking about faith schools in the UK. I can't recall if he used the term "child abuse," but frankly the argument he was making seemed tantamount to claiming that raising a child in a religious setting is harmful to them in some fashion, which does not gel well with my personal experiences.

That said, I juxtapose this with the counterargument and you see what happens in Northern Ireland, with the separation of education on sectarian grounds for decades, and the tribalism that results from it, and suddenly it seems like he's making a sensible point.

Do children have a right to grow up without having religion crammed down their impressionable young throats, as the anti-theists would have it? Or do parents have the right to see their children educated in the details of their faith, usually a long, well established system for living one's life in a fashion that is deemed "moral"?

I should confess at this point, I do not have children of my own, so my viewpoint is biased insofar as I have no vested interest in any potential answer to the questions I'm raising. That said, both faith and education are powerful tools, and I feel it is important to wonder about this particular issue. Not for the benefit of those being educated now, but for the benefit of those to be educated in years to come.

It's a curiosity to me. I know that, if I did hypothetically have children, I would probably want them educated in a secular environment. That's largely because I, while not completely what you'd call an atheist, I do not subscribe to any major religion nor do I particularly endorse religious views.

What it seems to boil down to is two inter-related issues, one of rights, and one of access.

To address the latter first, because it is probably the more straightforward of the two. Parents do not always have the choice of exactly how religious the education their children receive is. While that may change in the near future with free schools and the likes, as the situation stands currently parents cannot always get their children into the best school without professing some faith they do not actually hold, or, have to pick between R.C. and C. of E. schools because that is all that is available in their area.

While this isn't so much an issue in larger towns and cities, it is more an issue in smaller communities. How can we ensure that parents have access to schools that have an appropriate ethos or faith for their children? Insofar as I am aware we don't have any "atheist" schools in the UK, and I suspect that we're unlikely to see one in the near future. So what should we do? Have a school for every faith in every area? That is both absurd and expensive, given the limited nature of public finance. It might be the ideal, I suppose, but is unlikely to ever happen.

There is of course, home schooling, but I am intentionally leaving that out for one primary reason, and that is the vast majority of parents do not have the resources to home school their children, be those financial or intellecual resources.

So how do we solve the problem of access? Do some people have to "like it or lump it" or is there some better alternative we haven't yet considered?

Now, to perhaps the more philisophically thorny issue of rights. Whenever this subject is discussed, two phrases seem to pop up again and again. The first is "I [the parent] have the right to see my child educated in whatever faith I so choose." The other is "Children have the right to be brought up in an environment that enables them to make an informed, unbiased choice about their faith."



[Whenever the concept of rights comes up, I hark back to my A level Philosophy tutor's words. He said, and I am inclined to agree, that a right can only be a "right" as we understand it when there is a responsibility to uphold that right for others. That is the broad definition I am using here, insofar as it is useful.]

Now this is a real difficulty. Mostly because our educational setting in early childhood is one of the formative factors for many adult's faith, be that loosely Anglican or devoutly Catholic. (The home setting is just as influential of course, but that is for a different blog.)

To take the second point first, the "anti-theist" view that children should have the right to unbiased and informed choices. I don't think I can find a flaw or fault with this concept. My natural bias is towards this point of view. I encourage anyone to post a counter-argument to the principle, or find a practical example of why this ought not to be the case.

Now to the first, and while I certainly agree in principle, I think the difficulty with the statement is that is assumes the education is about the parent, and not the child. This said, if parents were utterly dispassionate about their children's education, I very much doubt we would see the education system we have today. It is an odd contradiction, that somehow my natural point of view seems to suggest that parents should take an interest in their children's upbringing, but not too much. Actually it's absurd, in so many ways. Asking parents to dispassionately disregard their children's spiritual education seems both impractical and immoral.

I still haven't quite figured out how to reconcile these points of view, hence the blog post. I challenge the webizens out there to answer the arguments presented here. Can you reconcile the rights of all involved in a fashion that doesn't result in conflict, cultural, philsophical or otherwise?