I've recently been thinking how utterly barbaric a concept it is that such a simple basic human right such as education is somehow a commodity to be bought for the best price. It's disgraceful that somebody is entitled to more learning because their parents can pay the price for it. Education is a right which should not be inhibited in any way at all by the wealth of your parents, quite simply. It's ruthlessly unfair that somebody is unfortunate enough to be less likely to fulfil their learning potential due to the fact that they are born into a poorer family.
Of course, this isn't entirely the case. All humans have a basic right to a GOOD education. If the state can provide this, then that right is fulfilled and really the private sector can be left alone to its own business. Still, it irks me greatly that people are so much more fortunate than others, but as long as the state fulfils its duty to give every child the potential for a good education then it's irrelevant, really.
I don't agree with faith schools. I went to a COE primary school, and I loved it. It was and still is a brilliant school. Faith schools have no place in society, though. I was given a Bible reading every week and combine that with my parents taking me to Church every Sunday from a young age, grew up a Christian. This is all well and good, until I later realised that I couldn't justify the existence of God. I accepted him; I didn't believe in him. Essentially, I was brainwashed. Because God was an idea placed in front of me just like the things I can see with my eyes. He was presented as an empirical idea - a fact. I can entirely understand Christian parents wanting to save their child from eternal damnation, it makes sense. But it removes the concept of free will, thus belittling their own concept of God; we weren't given free will to be programmed as robots to believe in God anyway. God gave us free will to reason his existence, if he wanted us to merely be his robots and believe in him then he would have not bothered to give us free will. So nobody should have this concept removed as a child. Quite simply, as a child the idea of God was put in front of me like 2+2=4 would be put in front of me; I accepted it as such. This is wrong.
Society programmes us, in many senses. Supposedly this is a 'sociological determinist' perspective, but I won't conform entirely to those ideals. We will never have complete free will as our character is built externally - by the society we are brought up in. Faith schools allow God to be a prominent part of this society. Now, the failure here is that society is an entirely empirical concept, and the very idea of God is one that needs to be from priori reasoning. You can't present God as a fact, you need to encourage reasoning from within the mind to try and obtain faith. Faith schools brainwash in many senses because they put God as an empirical concept - part of the whole society a child is raised up in. From either a religious or atheist perspective I disagree with it. School is a huge part of your environment, and your environment is a huge part of the society which builds your character as a child. Faith schools place the idea of God as an empirical fact before a full choice is foreseen. As a 5 year old child, there's no way I was ready to produce an internal dialogue of philosophical debate to reason the existence of a divine being. This talent should be developed, rather than inhibited. The concept of God is priori, and placing him as an empirical concept in a child's environment is belittling to both religion and reason. Of course I'm sure all this is more relevant to the younger years of faith schooling - perhaps I harbour serious cynical reminiscences of my memory of faith school. I disagree with the concept, at any rate. Perhaps this should just apply to faith primary schools rather than secondary schools though; I just don't want to see 5 year olds having their development impinged like that.
Honestly, I had a wonderful time at that school. So it's funny how I can argue faith schools are such a horrible concept. I think it's the fact that I had such a wonderful time that is the bitter punchline to convince myself; I didn't have a wonderful time because of the prominent Christian intrusions, those were something totally unnecessary.
Thus ends my rant.
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