Black-list of 'inappropriate' school sponsors leaves religious proselytizers untouched.
Yet more evidence of the UK government's disingenuousness and double-standards concerning its educational 'reforms' has come to light in an article in today's Independent newspaper.
It appears that education ministers have published a list of the types of companies and individuals that they consider to be 'inappropriate' as sponsors for Blair's new 'trust' schools. This list includes those companies or individuals involved in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and adult entertainment.
Significantly, the black-list does not include religious organizations or individuals - not that we could have had any realistic hope that it might, of course, because these types of sponsors seem to be the main beneficiaries of Blair's education 'reforms', as he and his ministers no doubt intended from the very outset.
The apparent rationale behind their black-list seems to be that they don't want trust schools to be funded with money that might be considered 'tainted' because it comes from businesses which they deem to be morally ambiguous - a judgement which, in itself, carries overtones of religious moralizing (not to mention naked hypocrisy, considering all the tax revenue that the Treasury gleans from alcohol and tobacco sales alone...). And perhaps they also fear that such companies might try to use schools in order to promote their products and services to schoolchildren.
But it is hard to imagine that such sponsors might have secret agendas relating to the manipulation of the school curriculum in order to brainwash and indoctrinate school children into becoming future consumers of their products or services; I cannot imagine that a brewery company would attempt to install a bar on a school's premises, for instance, or that a gambling company might try to use maths lessons to introduce students to the heady thrills of Blackjack or Roulette!
And yet our government sees no problem at all in allowing trust schools to be run by religious organizations and evangelical Christian millionaires, even though these most certainly do have agendas - and not even secret ones - relating to the manipulation of the school curriculum in order to brainwash and indoctrinate school children into becoming future believers and followers of the faiths they promote!
Which would be more damaging to a child's moral and intellectual development - teaching him how to calculate the odds in Blackjack, or teaching him that God created the world in six days, that vast chunks of modern science are wrong because they contradict the Bible, that homosexuals are the spawn of Satan, and that he will burn in Hell for all Eternity unless he 'accepts the grace of Jesus Christ' into his life? In the former case, he may not be gaining a moral education, but at least he will be learning some useful mathematics. In the latter case, it is doubtful that he will be learning anything of value at all, other than to place his trust in a book written 2000 years ago by men who knew nothing about evolution or cosmology, but an awful lot about how to create social divisions, intolerance, hostility towards minorities and a mortal dread of the callous judgementalism of an imaginary deity!
It is precisely this kind of complete inversion of priorities that seems to characterize this government's entire ideology regarding education, and which has led teachers, educational theorists, MPs and members of the public to conclude that placing the education of the next generation in the hands of Blair's government is as suicidally idiotic as placing the fate of nuclear arms proliferation in the hands of Iran's psychotic Islamist president.
May common sense and reason save us from them all!
It appears that education ministers have published a list of the types of companies and individuals that they consider to be 'inappropriate' as sponsors for Blair's new 'trust' schools. This list includes those companies or individuals involved in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and adult entertainment.
Significantly, the black-list does not include religious organizations or individuals - not that we could have had any realistic hope that it might, of course, because these types of sponsors seem to be the main beneficiaries of Blair's education 'reforms', as he and his ministers no doubt intended from the very outset.
The apparent rationale behind their black-list seems to be that they don't want trust schools to be funded with money that might be considered 'tainted' because it comes from businesses which they deem to be morally ambiguous - a judgement which, in itself, carries overtones of religious moralizing (not to mention naked hypocrisy, considering all the tax revenue that the Treasury gleans from alcohol and tobacco sales alone...). And perhaps they also fear that such companies might try to use schools in order to promote their products and services to schoolchildren.
But it is hard to imagine that such sponsors might have secret agendas relating to the manipulation of the school curriculum in order to brainwash and indoctrinate school children into becoming future consumers of their products or services; I cannot imagine that a brewery company would attempt to install a bar on a school's premises, for instance, or that a gambling company might try to use maths lessons to introduce students to the heady thrills of Blackjack or Roulette!
And yet our government sees no problem at all in allowing trust schools to be run by religious organizations and evangelical Christian millionaires, even though these most certainly do have agendas - and not even secret ones - relating to the manipulation of the school curriculum in order to brainwash and indoctrinate school children into becoming future believers and followers of the faiths they promote!
Which would be more damaging to a child's moral and intellectual development - teaching him how to calculate the odds in Blackjack, or teaching him that God created the world in six days, that vast chunks of modern science are wrong because they contradict the Bible, that homosexuals are the spawn of Satan, and that he will burn in Hell for all Eternity unless he 'accepts the grace of Jesus Christ' into his life? In the former case, he may not be gaining a moral education, but at least he will be learning some useful mathematics. In the latter case, it is doubtful that he will be learning anything of value at all, other than to place his trust in a book written 2000 years ago by men who knew nothing about evolution or cosmology, but an awful lot about how to create social divisions, intolerance, hostility towards minorities and a mortal dread of the callous judgementalism of an imaginary deity!
It is precisely this kind of complete inversion of priorities that seems to characterize this government's entire ideology regarding education, and which has led teachers, educational theorists, MPs and members of the public to conclude that placing the education of the next generation in the hands of Blair's government is as suicidally idiotic as placing the fate of nuclear arms proliferation in the hands of Iran's psychotic Islamist president.
May common sense and reason save us from them all!
posted by AlephNull at Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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