Are religions unfair to women?

I would approve of a totally secular state system. In my area, faith schools are divisive and seem more like race schools than faith schools. In the wider community, people of all races and faiths live and work together, so why not when they are at school? Leave the job of teaching religion to parents and religious institutions.

I certainly hope so. That's not the same as teaching a certain "faith" or belief system, which is what faith schools want to do.

I was replying to jings. (just to prevent confusion)

I agree with you, vegas.

Except I've no objection to religion being taught "about" as a phenomenon of human society.

I think I have totally lost the gist of this thread now.

And that link's still not working.

As others have said, I think faith schools are divisive. If parents wish their children to be religiously educated, they can do this themselves by taking them to classes at their church, synagogue, temple, mosque, etc.,

Religious Education is the only compulsory subject in English schools according to the 1944 Education Act. The emphasis should be predominantly Christian to reflect the historical culture of the land and there should be a religious assembly every day 51% of which should be Christian. For a variety of reasons only about a quarter of schools fully comply with this legislation.

I think Gorki that most schools now follow the 'Thought For The Day' route and just have a morning assembly with a 'kind thoughts and be nice to each other' bit.

As I have said many, many times - disestablish the C of E, separate religion and state, so that there would be no mandate to teach any religion in any school, and let believers teach and learn in their own time and their own way.

No. Leave things as they are. Remember the word "freedom"? It goes hand in hand with choice.

When we lived in the north west we had to send our children to a C of E school - it was the only school in the vicinity and most of the schools that were some distance away were also faith schools. It wasn't a major issue for us, but where's the freedom of choice in that?

I do agree with ariadne - it seems to me the only way forward. People would still have freedom to bring their children up in whatever faith they choose - and rightly so. But the farce of popping to church to get your child a place in a school would go; and the potential for indoctrination would cease.

Agreed

j08 trouble is one person's freedom can create another's prison!

I'm not sure about that!

In other words, I don't know what the fuck you're on about there.

I think some of you lot would happily bring a police state. Ruled only by you.

Or maybe just the opposite - a state where no-one, especially children was indoctrinated with others' beliefs, but helped to work things out for themselves in the light of history and art and science. And their education would be obtained in an honest way, and not based on the hypocrisy of pretend church-going - a good expample to them in honest loving.

I would not want to live in a state ruled by me - I would be totally hopeless at it!

So anybody that disagrees with you j08 is in favour of a police state? When people are making perfectly valid comments, why do you feel the need to be so unpleasant?

There are a number of posters on GN who object to faith schools and don't have much time for religion in general. They could take heart from the latest news about the decline of Christianity in the UK www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10062745/Christianity-declining-50pc-faster-than-thought-as-one-in-10-under-25s-is-a-Muslim.html. I don't know if the news about the increase in Islam will be equally encouraging to them.

Lilygran What exactly are you getting at?

That proves it - too many faith schools!

I think Christianity gets a bad press and is the target of many ill-founded attacks. It will be interesting to see whether the anti-faith brigade now switch their attentions to Islam and what the reaction will be. I have thought for a long time that secular people imagine Islam is a manifestation of minority culture, rather than a world religion.