However, the genie is out of the bottle now on Faith Schools where sadly and unfortunately for perfectly understandable reason Muslim parents will want exactly what Catholic and Jewish parents are getting.
Should this grotesque legacy to New Labour's education plans get the go ahead we increasingly will have a serious problem with Kids segregated on the basis of Faith rather than harmoniously brought together at an early age to understand others from a different faith and no faith.
The next stage will be the intra religious wars as in this case where without wishing to intrude into private grief you resort to a legal battle on the definition of a Jew. Can you imagine a legal battle on the definition of a Muslim when some headbanger from Saudi says you are from the wrong school of thought or within Sikhism a Guru says that you follow the wrong caste.
For God sake (no pun intended) lets begin the process of eradicating faith schools and promoting integration and cohesion amongst all our kids or pay the consequences of an increasingly divided and broken society.
Down with Faith Schools!
ReplyDeleteBritish children are being born with the virus of racism. All of them show racism even at nursery level. Muslim children are victim of racism in every walk of life. They are unable to develop self-confidence and self-esteem.. They need state funded Muslim schools right from nursery level. Since they are bilingual, they need bilingual Muslim teachrs as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place foir a non-Muslim child and a teacher in a Muslim school.
ReplyDeleteThere are hundreds of state and church schools, where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools.
Bilingual Muslim children need to learn and be well versed in standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. At the same time, they need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.
A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit.
Iftikhar Ahmad
Ifitkhar thinks it's just fine and dandy for Muslim kids to attend (Christian) church primary, comprehensive and grammar schools but not for kids from a Christian (or Hindu or Jewish or Sikh or Pagan or Non-religious) background to attend Muslim schools (without conversion,of course). Such blantant hypocrisy just supports LondonMuslim's opposition to all faith schools - which I, as a non-Zionist, secular Jew also support. My own child attended a 'bog standard' secular comp and is now a Urologist.
ReplyDeleteQuite right. You only have to look at Northern Ireland to see where segregated education gets you.
ReplyDelete(And no, Iftikhar, children are not born racist and going to a normal school does not turn you into one!)
Iftikhar Ahmad,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you need to clarify what you are saying. No child is born with racism. Perhaps some might acquire some racist traits from home but no one is born racist.
Muslims are victims of racism no more than any other group. They will have to learn to deal with it early on because when it comes to the world of work, it will not disappear.
Muslims are generally the children of immigrants and are therefore bilingual. The weight of continuing the culture and language is on the children's parents, not on the school. It is unreasonable to demand that every immigrant's child that comes to this country should have a teacher that is able to speak English and the childs native language.
If you want to segregate children at primary and secondary school - the question is where does it end? Should they have Muslim colleges and university? Muslim work places?
Muslims should actually work to change people attitudes and fear towards them. Perhaps this way we can help fight the racism rather than contribute to it. Muslims should integrate with the wider community and making special faith schools is not the way to go about it.
I think the point you are trying to make is that you do not want your children to assimilate. No one does. Integration, not assimilation. But this duty is YOURS alone and not the states.
MuslimScot