When starting to peg down a few more blogs and aggregators a few days back to increase my scope of reading I came across this blog that simultaneously tries to condemn the Labour government for trying to "abolish" mass worship and at the same time heap praise on faith schools and, therefore, Christianity. It's the sort of blog that just makes me angry to read it and gives me a desire to find out more with the hopes of just completely being able to discount what bollocks it being said. So with that, here we are, and it's time to look deeper into Cramner's claims.

Labour government is intent on hacking away at another layer of the nation’s Christian heritage, and will be 'reviewing’ (i.e., eroding and thereby abolishing) the statutory obligation upon schools to hold a daily act of collective worship.

The author gets off to a great start here, taking the advice of "officials" and seemingly attributing it to the minister for schools, when in fact Jim Knight actually said he was talking about RE lessons and not collective worship. But it is essential to misrepresent the truth on this matter if you wish to make a rhetoric filled post to rant about how godless society has become.

While the practice may seem anachronistic, it is a profoundly important dimension of a child’s education. One may learn about religion in class, but one can only experience it in practice. Of course this raises questions of induction, indoctrination, and liberty, but all of these issues are addressed in existing legislation which ultimately gives parents the right to withdraw their children. But very few do. And this is because of the reality that if children don’t experience something of the divine in a school assembly, they are increasingly unlikely to experience it anywhere.

Oh really, it's because the parents know that their children will be in deficit if they don't "experience" religion on a daily basis? I have to call bullshit on that but unfortunately, like the author, there are no statistics to back up what either of us believe. The facts are though that somewhere around 1% of parents take their children out of collective worship, most of which are Mulsim. Given Muslim's make up some 2.7% of the population, and the average British family is 2.3 children this would tally, with around .6% of the "families" in the UK likely to be Muslim. So why doesn't the majority of families holding no faith not rebel, en masse, with the idea of collective worship? Anecdotal searches seem to suggest that some don't realise they have the option, some are intimidated by the idea of creating a problem socially for their child, some do indeed think religious education is beneficial (probably spurred on by slightly erroneous school statistics, we'll come on to this later) and others seem to think that really it won't make any difference to their child if they do take part. It's this last thought that is so interesting, but let's continue quickly with Cranmer's post.

Since 1944, schools have been on the frontline of a rapidly-changing society. While the school act of collective worship had traditionally been uniform and predominantly confessional up until the 1960s - reciting the Apostle’s Creed, saying the Lord’s Prayer, singing hymns and listening to a mini-sermon

So since 1944 schools have been the "frontline"? Perhaps the church's strategy has backfired since year on year there has been a decline in religious association to Christianity, drastically by some 40% over 20 years. Importantly this number is even higher if you're looking at the younger person, two thirds of 18-24 year olds don't "have" a religion. So perhaps parents are right, far be it that daily collective worship is indoctrinating their child in to Christianity, it seems more likely that it puts them off!

immigration and the advent of other religions, coupled with the process of secularisation inherent to the postmodern era, has forced change.

Advent? I think Cramner forgets that Christianity is one of the newest religions around, but it is interesting to see him present his faith as the most true in this way.

Educational theory is replete with the themes of modernity; the metanarrative being empiricism which seeks knowledge via the senses and human experience. Thus scientific theory, mathematical logic, and historical fact are corroborated by the senses, and they outweigh the metaphysics of morality, aesthetics and religion. There are no agreed criteria by which conflicting religious claims can be settled, and they are therefore a matter of personal preference. Morality thereby becomes largely a matter of taste or opinion, and moral error ceases to exist. For many teachers, there is a gulf between ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’, and collective worship is perceived to belong well and truly to the ‘senseless’ realm.

So I suppose that the author would prefer that teachers spend their time getting our children to learn baseless opinions that are ever changing rather than the ability to think objectively and based on truths? Morality SHOULD be a taste of opinion because morality would unfortunately not have departed the days when it was ok to hang a man for stealing a loaf of bread, or for the act of hunting down innocent women and burning them for being witches...oh...wait...that practice hasn't changed much.

Quite aside the fact that religion, in the terms of Christianity, offers us little except resistance in the face of positive societal change, why should there be any way in which opinions are "settled"? To try and claim that religion has a place in our education system because "opinions" are important and to then make a claim that different religious claims need to be "settled" is entirely hypocritical. Either accept that you believe Christianity to be correct and unquestionable or that it is a purely a belief that cannot be factualised.

Some schools believe that they should be uncommitted religiously, irrespective of those teachers who may hold Christian beliefs. This conflict consists of three themes – autonomy, equality and rights – the values that allow each to be whatever he or she chooses. Yet left unfettered this leads to anarchy, so a values system has to be imposed, defined in community and by community. And one can make the ‘broadly Christian’ directive relevant for all pupils, irrespective of their faith.

Typical psuedo-libertarian rubbish. Why should the right of a teacher to hold religious beliefs a) be infringed upon because she would not be allowed to preach that belief and b) involve the right to infringe on the rights of scores of children and potentially their parents truest wishes? A teacher should have autonomy to teach, not to indoctrinate, equality to hold their own beliefs while respecting children should develop their own as they did.

I don't disagree that a "broadly Christian" directive is unnecessary, but then a broadly Jewish, Mulsim, Hindu, Sikh and countless other religion's directives are 99.9% the same. We don't need religion to make simple moral lessons relevant, and I would argue that using the framework of a religion that teaches a set of morals on one hand then hypocritically blows them apart with intolerance to individuals based on sexuality and with stories of child abuse is going to do more to screw a kid up than not having that religion as a basis for their life's learning.

And is it any coincidence that those schools which take the Christian daily act of collective worship seriously, and do it very well, are invariably those with the highest educational standards, yielding best academic results, turning out some of the most reasonable and most excellent contributors to society?

Let me think...um...yes it is a coincidence. A well orchestrated and manufactured coincidence at that mind you. The trouble with the assumption above is that faith is the cause for higher educational achievement, the reality is that better results are achieved by specifically selecting the highest educational achievers. Let me just hammer this point home, a quote originating here...

The figures show that - while only 4 per cent of those with admissions run by the local authority are likely to be in the top 10 per cent of schools with the most high-flyers in national curriculum tests for 11-year-olds - 38 per cent of those controlling their own procedures are.

Faith schools that pick their own students are ten times more likely to reach the top 10% of schools, 10 times more likely to do better by taking the cream of the crop. And just in case you think this is chance for some reason, follow this link...

Separate research by the National Foundation for Educational Research found that foundation schools, voluntary-controlled (VC) and voluntary-aided (VA) schools, which include all faith schools, were the most socially selective, taking fewer children eligible for free meals and with special needs, but more bright 11-year-olds. So although most faith schools were established to serve the poor, it seems that many no longer do this.

The facts, in reality, are these: Faith in schools is doing nothing to stem the flow of individuals "losing" religion nor the drop in perception about how important religion is. Faith is not intrinsically linked to morals, and in fact history will show that for every moral good dead there is a quite evil bad one to counter it with the Christian church. And finally, the big myth, faith schools do not offer your child a better opportunity at education unless you were already predisposed for good educational achievement in the first place due to your social and economic background. So, kindly, take your sanctimonious bollocks and shove it up your collective worship.