In the UK the Inspector of Schools “has been criticizing Islamic schools for failing to prepare their pupils adequately for life in a modern society”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/faithschools/story/0,13882,1392833,00.html . The message that has been foregrounded by the press has to do with “our coherence as a nation”, which I don’t think of as an appropriate educational goal, and to that extent some of his remarks are regrettable. But when he makes the point that such schools may be reducing the opportunities available to their charges, that’s a concern that all liberals ought to agree with. So there are real issues here, which those schools have to address if they are to be permitted to continue operating. How depressing, then, that various figures have popped up to accuse him of “Islamophobia”, which, in this context, is just a way of trying to wriggle out of answering some tough and legitimate questions about the education that they’re providing.
{ 19 comments }
Vance Maverick 01.18.05 at 9:10 am
I don’t see where he “makes the point” that “such schools may be reducing the opportunities available to their charges”. Indeed, there’s not much here except for the concern about “wider responsibilities and obligations”. Is there any substantive message here, other than the slightly offensive handwringing?
Scott Martens 01.18.05 at 9:15 am
I’ve never found citizenship classes to be a particularly compelling notion. In America, they get awfully close to indoctrination and are ineffective even at that goal. Teaching tolerance doesn’t usually work any better. On the other hand, I can’t see that any community has the right to shield its children from knowledge of the world they live in. That is what is so irksome about the fights over creationism: Schools can’t compel children to agree to scientific ideas, but they can and should compel them to know what they are and why they exist.
The Guardian article is pretty thin on the details of what Islamic schools in Britain are reputed not to be teaching. If it’s a course on the structure of British government and the legal status and rights of person under its jurisdiction, I certainly don’t think it is unreasonable to expect schools to teach that. But this Bell guy seems to want to go further, teaching “an awareness of our common heritage as British citizens, equal under the law, should enable us to assert with confidence that we are intolerant of intolerance, illiberalism and attitudes and values that demean the place of certain sections of our community, be they women or people living in non-traditional relationships.” To teach children that many or even most of their fellow citizens hold certain values about women, gay relationships and racial equality is certainly legitimate. In the same sense, a Westerner living in Saudi Arabia ought to be aware of the values Saudis hold towards women and homosexuals. In both cases, people’s actions should be informed (although not necessarily controlled) by the expectations of people around them. But the Saudi government certainly has no right to tell its children to be intolerant, neither should the Britsh government tell its children what to think. I take a dim view of schools as an exercise in propaganda, including propaganda for liberal values.
As for “an awareness of our common heritage as British citizens” – that sounds strikingly like “Nos ancêtres, les Gaulois.” I suppose it could be handled more sensitively than the French school system used to, but I’m naturally suspicious of this sort of thing.
abb1 01.18.05 at 10:24 am
Well, no Western (or, probably, any other) society can survive without proper indoctrination. Forget gays, what about ‘usury’ being strictly forbidden by Muhammed? I say – get rid of the religious schools, all of them. We should be tolerant towards other faiths, of course, but all children should be indoctrinated to be secular humanists first; that’s our western religion and it should be as mandatory as Islam in Saudi Arabia.
des von bladet 01.18.05 at 11:19 am
This is odd. The version I read at the BBC site yesterday didn’t single out Islamic schools, as I recall:
But now it does. None of the quotes from Bell in the article justify this emphasis, which appears to have been retrofitted for the benefit of persons being outraged by this outrageous outrage.
The full speech does mention Muslim schools by name and says, amongst other things,
(Mmmm… primary sources.)
harry 01.18.05 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for the link, Chris, which I’d otherwise have missed. Bell’s critics are being silly to claim Islamophobia. They are probably being clever in asking him to come up with real evidence; evidence on these things is very hard to produce. Also, let’s grant that everything he says is right: this would not constitute a reason to reject funding of Islamic schools, indeed it counts in favour of increased funding, because schools we fund are, on the whole, much more likely to be malleable into schools which take seriously the public mission of education. He’s not saying that it counts against funding, but many opponents of funding are likely to use his comments to their ends.
jet 01.18.05 at 1:25 pm
This issue really deserves attention.
http://www.cia.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2020_s3.html#page83
But who’s responsibility is it for the indoctrination of a child? In a republic, I would posit it was the parents responsibility and the Inspector was over-reaching. In a liberal democracy I’d say the Inspector was just doing his job in helping give the children the correct type of social capital to thrive in the UK.
mc 01.18.05 at 1:31 pm
Having just read the full speech [on the Guardian website] I agree that Bell has been a bit hard done by – including by the Guardian’s choice of headline [“Anger at Muslim Schools Attack – Claims by Education Chief ‘Derogatory’â€]
Perhaps a couple of words and phrases were unwise – for example, if he had talked about ‘our coherence as a society’ rather than ‘our coherence as a nation’ that might have been less inflammatory; also he probably shouldn’t have used the phrase ‘our common heritage’ – even though the fact that he was talking about ‘our common heritage as citizens’ should have alerted careful listeners/readers to what he was on about. (As is clear from the speech, ‘our common heritage as citizens’ was meant to link back to earlier remarks about equal rights under the law etc, not to any cultural or still less ethnic ‘heritage’ – he explicitly welcomes, for example, the fact that more and more people think ethnic origin is irrelevant to being british, being a british citizen etc.)
But these are pretty minor slips, and most of the speech was about citizenship education in general, not faith schools, and was sensible enough. I suspect few of us (of any or no faith) would object, for example, to his central claim that ‘the very purpose of citizenship education is to equip people to become involved, make choices and take action based on their knowledge and understanding.’
The one thing I would be slightly more critical of is his decision, in this admittedly small section of the overall speech, to highlight Muslim schools in particular rather than just keeping the discussion to faith schools in general. It is regrettable, as Chris says, that any criticism of Islamic institutions prompts the all-purpose response of crying ‘islamophobia’ which then drown out the serious debate; but it is also entirely predictable. I’m not saying Bell is to blame for the row (clearly more blame lies with those who cry ‘islamophobia’ and those who choose to present that as the story); just that perhaps he should be a bit more savvy. You can never guarantee that people will engage with the serious bits of what you say, but you can avoid the obvious pitfalls – and perhaps someone in his position should be up to that. i.e., should keep his remarks about faiths generic unless they really do only apply to one faith.
For example, one of the concerns about faith schools which certainly applies to all faiths is the concern picked out by Scott, that faith schools might not be doing a very good job of exposing their pupils to the variety of beliefs and lifestyles their fellow citizens hold (though I suspect this applies to the more exclusive fee-paying schools as well). Another concern which also applies to all faith schools to some extent is the one picked out by Chris, about restricted opportunities – though this one raises a difficulty. We liberals might think it obvious that faith schools are bad for you because they restrict your opportunities. But the problem is that one of the ways they restrict your opportunities is by giving you a certain conception of which opportunities are worthwhile or appropriate – with the result that you are then bound to disagree about whether this is a bad thing. Of course this doesn’t defeat the liberal criticism – but it does suggest that this argument is going to be a stand-off, with little prospect of common ground (perhaps even less than on the argument about exposure to the variety of beliefs and lifestyles).
dsquared 01.18.05 at 1:33 pm
Des is right; this “criticism” is one that was never made, and the whole “Islamophobia” response is telling us more about the UK’s oversupply of rent-a-gob self appointed spokespeople for the Muslim community, and the lazy journalists who make use of them. Of course, it is possible that there is spin going on there; it might be that the author of the speech has encouraged journos present to interpret it as saying things that he wouldn’t want to have put in black and white in the transcript. But on the face of it, there’s no evidence that he’s done what the story says he done.
I would note that many of the other points he makes in the speech are supported by what looks like at the very least anecdotal evidence (“my inspectors have found …”), but the remarks about faith schools are presented as unsupported assertion, which doesn’t seem to me to be all that satisfactory. I also tend to regard “citizenship classes” as a complete joke and the sort of thing that doesn’t make me “Proud Of Britain“. And finally, I’m not happy with this:
I would go further and say that an awareness of our common heritage as British citizens, equal under the law, should enable us to assert with confidence that we are intolerant of intolerance, illiberalism and attitudes and values that demean the place of certain sections of our community, be they women or people living in non-traditional relationships. (I think this means gays, though it is drafted so as only to refer to gays who happen to be in relationships – dd)
Take out “women and gays” and insert “religous believers” and you’ve got the point of view of the Birmingham Sikhs. Surely the point of liberalism is that we’re not in the business of being intolerant of “attitudes and values” and we don’t regard “demeaning” someone as harming them, unless you’re taking “demeaning” as an action verb, which in context it can’t be, because the subject of the verb is an abstraction (“attitudes and values”). Unless what you do rises to the level of inciting hatred or committing harassment, our common heritage as British citizens says that you can believe whatever insane things you like. The Americans are much clearer on this subject thanks to the admirably consistent ACLU; Bell’s version of this seems to be aimlessly meandering into the militant PC-ism that was taken to extremes by Pim Fortuyn.
Sebastian Holsclaw 01.18.05 at 4:19 pm
It is an interesting problem. How does a society which tries to be accepting of many different points of view deal with a subculture which is militant about a point of view which the dominant culture believes is wrong. I think there is a close parallel with the Christian subsects in the US who want to teach ‘Intelligent Design’.
Not that I have any good answers, but trying to find the right balance is certainly one of the proper question.
abb1 01.18.05 at 4:26 pm
Surely the point of liberalism is that we’re not in the business of being intolerant of “attitudes and values†and we don’t regard “demeaning†someone as harming them…
This is certainly true, but let’s put it in the context of elementary education. These are young vulnerable children who are being indoctrinated by religious crap. We don’t want that, we want to brainwash them with our crap, the correct kind.
The right question here is: to what extent do the parents own minds of their children, to what degree do they have a right to harm them by filling their heads with garbage the society doesn’t like (as opposed to the garbage the society endorses at the moment)?
I say – parents’ freedom to abuse their children should be severely limited. No religious schools.
roger 01.18.05 at 5:47 pm
They have the same problem with Christian schools in the U.S. — especially the Southern U.S., where the schools boomed during the integration era, as white parents fled the public system. In Texas, for instance, Christian schools are perpetually being caught issuing incredibly harsh punishments to their kids, or teaching them that slavery was really a bible sanctioned form of labor for coloreds, etc., etc. Whenever one of the schools goes to far — seriously injures a child while whipping him, for instance — and the school is shut down, the fundie community goes into paroxysms of outrage.
Walt Pohl 01.18.05 at 6:41 pm
I have nothing meaningful to say on this issue, but I did want to point out that the phrase “rent-a-gob self appointed spokespeople for the Muslim community” is very funny. I don’t even know what gob means, but the sound of “rent-a-gob” just sounds so contemptuous.
billyfrombelfast 01.18.05 at 7:31 pm
“Gob” is slang for mouth Walt. As in “he didn’t need to open his gob”.
New vocab for the day!
Bob B 01.18.05 at 8:46 pm
Scott Martens very properly notes: “The Guardian article is pretty thin on the details of what Islamic schools in Britain are reputed not to be teaching.” And that is one of the main problems here: we are being asked to take on trust some highly critical comments about Muslim faith schools without being given any justification on which to make or defend a case.
The pressure to create faith schools has developed for many reasons, of which promoting a particular and exclusive faith is only one. Another powerful driver has been dissatisfaction with what some New Labour spokesman once very appropriately dubbed “bog standard comprehensives.”
In many places, although not everywhere, there has often been little effective choice open to parents as to which school in the state system their children could attend. Where choice did exist in principle, the evidently good school(s) were heavily over-subscribed so parents and children were obliged to accept what they didn’t want. In a system of supposedly universal comprehensive education, there were few escape routes except going private, moving residence where that was feasible, or creating some parallel structure within the scope of state funding. Faith schools are one such but there are other avenues – “technolgy colleges” or “city academies”, specialist schools focused on, say, languages, the arts, sports or sciences. In Wales, the Welsh language schools have fulfilled the role of providing an escape from attending the neighbourhood comprehensive.
In a few localities, systems with selective grammar schools have managed to survive from the past. The London district where I live (Sutton) is one of those localities. The curious thing is that for the past decade and longer, it has consistently been ranked at or close to the top of the schools league table for England based on results of the GCSE exams normally taken at 16: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4170197.stm
Judging by encounters on public transport with the pupils emerging from the schools at the end of the day to board passing buses, the intakes of the grammar schools are anything but Waspish – ethnic diversity is plainly the norm. On the evidence, retaining selective and single-sex schools has worked and worked well in achieving and maintaining high average education standards in schools. The interesting insight is that local average incomes in the two Parliamentary constituencies comprising the Borough of Sutton are comparatively modest to judge from the incomes data in the Excel link on this website (localities numbers 443 and 470): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3025321.stm
Jasper Milvain 01.18.05 at 10:08 pm
If these stories were composed like most modern reporting of speeches, then the press release is probably a more important primary document than the full text.
There, the ‘warning to faith schools’ bit is one of two long quotes. The one mention of Muslim schools is placed just above, and its figures turn up as a linking paragraph in the new BBC story.
Lazy journalism, well, yes; a tenuously justified reading, yes; but predictable lazy, tenuous journalism — fed, intentionally or not, by people who are paid to anticipate it.
harry 01.19.05 at 1:27 am
Bob B — a very quick look at the table you point to makes me highly sceptical. If you look at the top 30 or so LEAs I don’t think you’d get much of a correlation between retaining grammars and being in the top 30. On top of that, for exactly the reason you pinpoint, there’s a lot of selection where there aren’t grammars, so its very hard to know what we’re comparing with what. Then there’s the fact that 5 or more grade Cs at GCSE is a very, very crude proxy for quality. GCSEs are not, as the old O-levels sort of were, a ‘gold standard’ for anything. Finally, average incomes are less interesting than proportions of children who come from poor households — I don’t know Sutton, but I’d guess it has relatvely few very rich and relatively few very rich — which is much better than having lots of rich and lots of poor (from the perspective of getting effective schooling).
You didn’t mention the VA figure. Perhaps because like everyone esle int he world except for whoever devised it you don’t understand it? :) Now that deserves a post in itself and it will get one as soon as I have got my head round it.
Bob B 01.19.05 at 3:44 pm
Harry – Probably like yourself, I believe that the reasons for the failures and successes of the English education system are many and varied.
I was not suggesting grammar schools as a panacea or as a universal explanation of anything.
What I was doing is to suggest that the Sutton example shows that retention of a selective education system is consistent with achieving and maintaining high average education standards using, for want of a better indicator, GCSE exam results and that in a locality where average incomes are rather modest compared with elsewhere. Some years back, one published source of the league table used percentages of pupils receiving free meals as local indicators of poverty and, on that basis, Sutton came about a third down the rank order of education authorities reporting from few to more free meals.
It is plainly not an affluent place but has stayed near the top of the English local education authority league table for more than a decade and that despite – or because of – the retention of a cluster of outstandingly good selective schools. I’m constrained by what published indicators I can find. Taken together, these suggest there is something substantive about the Sutton result. Sutton has among the lowest percentages of adults without any education qualifications, for example, and among the highest percentages of adults continuing to participate in adult education.
It was only after my son had left school to go to university that I learned Chris Woodhead, erstwhile chief inspector of schools, had attended the same school.
Dave F 01.20.05 at 11:02 am
“Our coherence as a nation”.
“Ein volk. Ein vaterland”.
Bob B 01.20.05 at 12:15 pm
The British equivalents seem to be Disraeli’s notion of One Nation Conservatism – which evidently also enthuses Tony Blair – and hearty renditions of William Blake’s Jerusalem at meetings of the Women’s Institute or a preliminary to football matches.
Historically, we British seem rather given to political pluralism, nothwithstanding which we managed to evolve parliamentary government and pioneer industrialisation. Arguably, one of our biggest mistakes was allowing Karl Marx to settle in London as an asylum seeker to write his turgid books in the British Museum Library after he had been hounded out of mainland Europe in 1848. Would that he had read JS Mill instead.
One of the cleverest things was Henry the Eighth’s decision to nationalise the church in England. Another was the notions in Magna Carta of 1215.
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