The postwar British establishment is rightly said to have had an unusually enlightened sense of public duty. The NHS, the Arts Council and Lord Reith's BBC were among its ornaments.
The Reithian spirit also affected the Anglican church. For instance, 1970 saw the publication of the Durham report on religious education, which addressed, among other matters, the future of C of E schools. Durham distinguished between two functions that religious schools might serve; a general or service function, offering education for its own sake, and a domestic or nurture function, inculcating the faith. It then went on to argue in good Reithian spirit that Anglican schools should favour the first over the second.
Anglican schools, moreover, largely followed the report's recommendation. Non-religious parents who sent their children to the local C of E school-and in some areas that was and is the only choice-felt a little uncomfortable about Christian assemblies and all that. On the other hand, many of these schools provided an excellent education and no one expected parents to believe in God or join in the hymns.
This summer, however, the Church issued another report, "The way ahead: Church of England schools in the new millennium," which marked a radical shift in its position. The report called, in effect, for a subordination of the service to the nurture function. C of E schools, it announced, should be more "distinctively Christian," with a mission to "nourish those of the faith; encourage those of other faiths; challenge those who have no faith... religious education and collective worship should be seen as an integrated experience, with collective worship acting as an expression of what is taught in many RE lessons." The church, the report admits, "has a major problem in attracting young people to its services" with the result that it now sees religious schools as crucial to the whole proselytising "mission of the church... and its long-term well-being." This, moreover, as the report acknowledges, represents a tardy articulation of what had already become the practice of many C of E schools. Hence the sad spectacle of blameless atheists attending service, asking the vicar to tea, and otherwise becoming dishonest Christians so as to get their child into the local Anglican school.
The C of E, it is true, only controls about two thirds of Britain's 7,000 religious schools. Catholic schools, however, which make up most of the remainder, have never made any attempt to pretend that they are anything but confessional-about nurture over service-and all the evidence suggests that the Sikh, Hindu and Muslim schools now being established will be, if anything, more exclusive still. Britain is a far more secular and diverse place than it was 30 years ago, but state-funded religious schools are becoming increasingly confessional.
This, you might expect, would have set alarm bells ringing. Yet the present government is promoting religious schools. It welcomed "The way ahead" report and its proposals for over 100 new C of E schools, it has backed new schools for Sikhs, Muslims, Greek Orthodox and Seventh Day Adventists, and, in its recent white paper, proposed cutting the amount that religious schools are obliged to contribute to capital projects from 15 to 10 per cent. The white paper was delivered in a summer that saw race riots in Bradford and the publication of Lord Ouseley's report warning that segregation in education and housing had caused deep racial divisions in the city.
Since the events of the summer, and of the 11th September, government ministers have, admittedly, been having second thoughts. David Blunkett, formerly in charge of education, has pleaded "guilty to the contradictions and schizophrenias that we all face." Estelle Morris, his successor, has acknowledged cause for concern. There may now be more foot-dragging on non-Christian schools, but having already accepted the principle of publicly-funded Jewish and Muslim schools it is hard now to pull back.
So what is the problem with religious schools? Opposition to such schools does not depend on opposition to religion itself. We opponents of religious schools don't want to see them replaced by atheist schools, but by secular schools that refrain from teaching the truth of any religious or anti-religious standpoint. Contrary to some militant atheists, the argument rests not on the alleged irrationality of religious belief, but on two fundamental liberal values: autonomy and tolerance.
The point about autonomy is simply put. One of the first goals of any decent education should be to give people a high degree of critical independence, enabling them to assess rival beliefs on their merits. But religious schools, in setting out to persuade children of the validity of one religious tradition, tend to diminish their capacity, as adults, to make autonomous choices. Teachers are rightly forbidden from instilling socialist principles into their pupils, or instructing them in the evils of monetary union. By the same logic, they should be forbidden from educating them into "the truths of Christianity."
It is worth considering one powerful objection to this argument. It might be argued that parents, after all, instil contentious values and beliefs into their children-they raise them up to certain political views, take them to church, or send them to Sunday school -and that there is nothing objectionable in this. Nevertheless, the basic contention still stands. Parents have the right, or perhaps the duty, to pass on their own beliefs, values and practices onto their children. But it is just because parents don't, quite properly, seek to instil a capacity for critical reflection in their children, that we need schools to do it for them.
If church schools fail on the score of autonomy, they do likewise on the count of tolerance. We want children to be educated into an understanding of one another's beliefs and a critical respect for their traditions, and this is a much more difficult task in a religiously and therefore racially divided school system. In Northern Ireland, the separation of Catholic and Protestant schools has played a big part in perpetuating sectarianism. The ban on publicly funded religious schools in the US, on the other hand, has done much to diminish anti-Catholic prejudices.
Here too, there is a familiar objection. Britain has become, it is said, a multi-cultural society. It follows, as the Parekh reported argued last year, that communities have a right to bring their children up in accordance with their own traditions and a right to see these traditions publicly honoured and affirmed. But once again, we can safely leave it up to the family, churches, and other community institutions to perpetuate religious and other traditions. Schools on the other hand, have an essential role-one that no other institution can adequately duplicate-in bringing children together and educating them in liberal political virtues.
What about the final argument in favour of religious schools-that they provide a better education? This, in fact, is not as incontrovertible a truth as is often claimed. Most religious schools are highly selective in a back-stairs sort of way. The figures show that only 12 per cent of pupils at C of E schools are entitled to free school meals, compared to 20 per cent in secular schools-religious schools, in other words, draw their pupils from richer families. But even if we grant that religious schools do, as the government claims, tend to have a superior "ethos," surely the right response is to argue that secular schools should learn from religious schools and adopt whatever it is in their practice-strict discipline, active involvement of parents-that accounts for their success. It is hardly proper, after all, to expect parents who send their children to secular schools to accept second best.
In a better world, we would not have religious schools. But if we are stuck with them, as it seems we are, they should at least be obliged to put service some way beyond nurture. That means church schools taking a high quota of children of different faiths and no faith; it means ensuring that the religious education they provide represents a critical introduction to different religious standpoints, rather than instruction in one religious tradition. Those who run church schools can comfort themselves with the old-fashioned thought that in doing society a service, they are doing God's work. What they must not be allowed to do is use the schools to compensate for their dwindling influence in our culture.
