Accord Chair Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain on why he thinks the campaign is important
Why would a rabbi be critical of faith schools? It is a question I get asked repeatedly, with the assumption that I am either a renegade or demented.
How sad that people assume that being religious myself means I somehow want to indoctrinate my children and seclude them from contact with non-believers.
Perhaps they should be forgiven, as debates on religion tend to be sharply polarised – you are either a creationist or an atheist, a suicide-bomber or ungodly – without allowing for nuances or accepting that there are many who are both religious and liberal.
I am passionately committed to Judaism, spend my professional life deeply engaged in it as a congregational rabbi in Maidenhead and work hard to ensure its continuity to the next generation.
However, that does not mean I want to cut myself or my children (or the rest of my flock) off from the rest of society, or want them be “protected” from learning about different religious traditions.
The reasons are twofold: first, I believe in “the common good – that it is vital for the social cohesion of Britain at large that children of different faiths and religious cultures grow up together in harmony.
Faith schools may have positive aims but can also have the negative effect of segregating children. Isolating them from each other leads to ignorance, which can breed suspicion, spiral into fear and deteriorate into prejudice.
It is far better that Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh children mix freely together, feel at ease with each other, learn about their similarities and respect their differences.
There should also be a distinction between religious knowledge and religious beliefs – with the former being taught to everyone, while the latter learnt from the home, after-school classes or weekend studies.
The benefit would be not just to society at large, but would carry an additional bonus for members of minority faiths, especially those who are first or second generation immigrants, as they are the most likely to suffer if society is fragmented.
But the other main motive for community-based schools catering for all children is religious. The command to “love your neighbour as yourself” – found in the book of Leviticus, but common to most major faiths – can only be observed if you know your neighbour and interact with him or her.
That is why I sent my children not to a Jewish day school, but to one where they would sit next to a Catholic, play football with a Muslim during break, do homework with a Hindu and walk home with an atheist. I wanted my children to know those other ones, and for them to know mine.
Faith schools may teach about other traditions – well, some of them do, though is it questionable whether that is actually true of many of them – but even so, a short lesson is no substitute for daily contact.
On top of all this, a curious irony has emerged: that many faith schools are proving to be religious own-goals and harming local congregations.
The growth of Jewish day schools, for instance, has meant that whereas children used to attend Sunday classes and their parents become involved in communal life, they no longer do so; the day school has become their religious focal point, with the unintended result that both they and their parents have less contact with synagogue life.
It is because I believe in faith but not in expanding faith schools or perpetuating the insular nature of existing ones, that I have agreed to become the founding chairperson of Accord, a broad coalition of those who are working to improve the way we educate our children, so that they do not grow up as strangers but as fellow citizens. This includes those who think that schools sponsored by faith communities have a contribution to make to a broad school system, but who oppose the idea that they (or anyone) should be able to discriminate in selection and other areas.
Until now, there have been many individuals voicing various concerns about many faith schools: that admissions procedures are divisive, that the employment of staff is discriminatory, the religious curriculums are far too exclusive, that general studies are sometimes neglected, that the approach to science can be warped, that the teaching of sex education is inadequate.
Accord now offers a forum through which these issues can be discussed widely, as well as a means of liaising with government, teaching unions, religious bodies and other groups. Above all, it hopes to be an agent for change so that children receive a well-rounded education that equips them to be both loyal to their own religious tradition and actively involved with those around them.
This article was origninally published on Guardian Comment is Free
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/02/faithschools.schools)
