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TechnoratiSheer silliness about British schools
An MP has called for an investigation into schools which teach subversive notions like lifelong marriage.
Ever heard of a chap called Barry Sheerman? Neither had I. He sounds a very tiresome man, so I can’t say he’s on my must-invite-him-round-for-tea list. But we need to notice what he’s doing, because he’s determined to try to wreck some of the schools in Britain which happen who be doing a competent job, and some of the families that are raising their children with sound values and a reason for living.
Sheerman is a Labour Member of Parliament and chairman of something called the Children, Schools, and Families Committee in Parliament. It’s a Select Committee, which as I understand it means that it’s not directly concerned with legislation, its task being more that of keeping a "watching brief".
Sheerman doesn’t like Church schools, and his particular beef is that they will insist on teaching the Christian understanding of marriage and family life. That means teaching that aborting babies is wrong, that marriage is a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman – and only a man and a woman, not two men or two women – and that sexual communion belongs only to this relationship and not to any other.
"A lot of taxpayers’ money is going into church schools and I think we should tease out what is happening here" he has announced. He doesn’t like the fact that Catholic schools teach the Catholic faith and morals – or that schools with such an approach are clearly popular with Catholics and non-Catholics alike. He says there is evidence of Catholic schools taking a more "fundamentalist line" than he would like.
Mr Sheerman’s problem is that he appears to believe that taxpayers’ money – including that of Catholic taxpayers – should only go to schools that teach his version of things. He doesn’t think that the Church is right on certain issues so he doesn’t think there should be Catholic schools giving the Church’s message.
Will he, one wonders, adopt the same approach to other tax-funded activities? There are tax-funded schools instructing children in music, teaching very specific rules on musical notation and the fixing of the sound made by an instrument when trying to hit a particular note. Perhaps he doesn’t like it. He’d rather they used a wholly different idea of notation, or that the tonal system should be different, or that the examiners and various authorities concerned with musical matters should not be allowed to be responsible for these things: "A lot of taxpayers’ money goes into music and I think we should tease out what is happening here."
Poor Mr Sheerman seems to think that governance in Britain means telling churches what to do. Not so. The Catholic Church was running schools in Britain for a full thousand years before any government was doing so. Our great universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded by the Church, along with our great hospitals – and all the great universities and hospitals of Europe. Using public funds to support the educational work begun and still carried out by the Church is useful and sensible – but it doesn’t take away the rights of the Church or of the people who have chosen to make use of Church schools in preference to those established by secular authorities (for which church members willingly pay as part of their contribution to the common good, and because they may also make use of them).
What poor Mr Sheerman needs to grasp is that being a Member of Parliament doesn’t mean he can expect to claim that public money can only go to things of which he personally approves, or believes that others should approve. It doesn’t give him any right at all to dictate that there should only be one set of ideas taught to children. On the contrary. It is his task to be of service to the rest of us, and to ensure that the institutions created to serve the community are safe in his hands.
Catholic schools have a good record of service in Britain and are, as Sheerman well knows, over-subscribed and immensely popular. They do not always adhere as strongly as they should to the Church’s teachings – for people in such schools, as for those working in many fields, it may be tempting to fudge things, or to believe it virtually impossible to uphold the great Christian truths because they seem so much at variance with the selfishness, voyeurism, vulgarity and brutality of our modern British community life.
But that is a matter for the Church – and when Bishops try to tighten things up, to improve the teaching, to inspire and encourage teachers, all that a politician should do is leave them to it. Such Bishops are to be warmly commended – just as a musician should be when visiting a music school and encouraging the pupils there to apply themselves to the highest standards and achieve the ability to play Mozart and Beethoven and Handel and not just to squawk on their violins without proper instruction or help.
Now, none of this would be a matter for much debate except that the man Sheerman is a Labour Member of Parliament and we are living in times that are not easy for opponents of the Labour political machine. Our Bishops have, in ways they are probably now regretting, been far too enthusiastic about supporting the Labour governments since 1997. They appeared to believe that the Labour party was a lovely collection of home-loving folks who wanted peace and goodwill and universal abolition of poverty. Instead, we’ve got human/animal hybrids, a massive crime wave, same-sex "civil unions" and our Army embroiled in a war in Iraq.
It’s time for the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales to stick up for the Church in a robust and unflinching way. Catholic schools have an absolute right to teach Catholic doctrine and morals. Catholic schools will have crucifixes in their classrooms, daily Catholic prayers, regular confession and Mass on school premises, and solid teaching on any and every aspect of the Catholic Faith that is appropriate to the children’s age and understanding. That includes, as and when relevant, the Catholic message on loving your neighbour, obeying your parents, telling the truth, refraining from sexual activity outside of marriage, protecting unborn babies, caring for the poor, worshipping God at Mass on Sundays, confessing sins and receiving absolution, and an absolute ban on theft, bullying, adultery, reading pornography, taking part in homosexual activity, killing sick people, killing well people, killing babies, and a number of other sins too numerous to mention.
Mr Sheerman may not like the Catholic Church’s teachings, but that is a problem for him and not for the nation which is well-served by Catholic schools and other institutions and very fortunate to have them.
Joanna Bogle writes from London.
To Bruces’ response to Adebowale Oriku; If the private schools received government funding they would then have to follow government educational guidelines; which is EXACTLY what the private school and home-school families want to get away from.
Adebowale Oriku,
‘The children of the rich are now getting most of the places in Catholic, Anglican and Jewish schools.’
Sorry if this seems obvious but if these schools received more government funding, school fees would be less, giving those less well-off families an opportunity to send their children to a school of their choice rather than being forced to send them to a public school or home-schooling them.
Aussie schools are generally pretty good in this aspect.
Please allow me to ask a simple question. Does mercatornet plan to condemn the BNP’s ideology?
Hi Nwachukwu. Actually I was not bitter about your usage of the word relativism. While I would not call myself a black-and-white moral relativist myself, I think the term relativism has been given a lot of superfluous bashing… Secondly, I do not wish to proselytize, I only feel strongly about certain things - one of them is not so much religion as religiosity. Rest assured, I have nothing against you or your religion. And even if you consider me irreligious, I would like to be left alone to pursue this road of good intentions which might as well lead to hell.
I would also like thank Jenny Blake for her mature comment. What could be more Christianly than the conciliatory attitude she had urged Joanna Bogle to adopt towards MP Barry Sheerman? I mean it’s clear that the tone of Ms Bogle’s article is too adversarial. Must Mr Sheerman be demonised for having a different view of life? Thanks Ms Jenny Blake.
Dear Joanna,
I met you some thirty years ago, when you were going to have a go at another Labour MP, Donald Anderson who went on to serve the Lord in Parliament until recently when he retired - son went out with YWAM and he was very proud of him.
Joanna, I think the first thing you should do is pray for Barry Sheerman. God loves him as much as he loves you and he died on the cross for him. You said you would not have him on your invite him round to tea list, but I have found over the years that one of the most effective ways of leading people to Christ is to invite them for coffee and a chat. They need God’s love, even though they may be rejecting it. I will certainly pray for Barry Sheerman. The Bible tells us to pray for those in authority and at at that time it meant Nero!
I know your concern. Again, one of the most effective ways of leading young people to Christ is to go out to them on the streets where they are. They don’t fancy coming into church, so young people in my town who are Christians have gone out to the rough housing estates with hot chocolate and starting to befriend them. We older ones pray for them. It’s been encouraging that a Bible study is going on at lunchtime in one of the toughest secondary schools in the city and young people are coming because they know the Christians have shown love and an interest in them.
God loves even those who reject him and we must pray that one day they will turn to God.
Am quite suprised that Adebowale was quite bitter with a seemingly harmless phrase.
I don’t think I need to write a thesis on the dictatorship of relativism in order to make myself as clear as Adebowale would wish.
It is the height of bias for a person to think he has a mandate to make others irreligious. The same attitude was employed in NIgeria, if Ademowale will be so gracious to recall. Those who were masters of Nigeria then were not Christian and they were afraid of the what they termed the evangelising dimension of schools. In order to stop this, they forcefully took over the schools from Christian missionaries.
Did this solve the problem, on the contrary, it created more problems. The moral vaccum created in Nigeria’s educational system is haunting us till today. Have the public schools done any better? The former minister of education and currently Vice President of World Bank - Oby Ezekwesili, wept when she presented the a report on the state of public schools to the public.
Presently, private schools are again in bloom. However, it will take a while to repair the damage done.
Fair point, Mariusz :-)
Wladyslaw,
Your comment does not contradict my statement, it just complements it. I also completely agree with it. However, I did not write “in defense of animals”, only to point out the inappropriate use of the term “animalistic” in reference to our disintegrating society. Animals would have never got into this mess in the first place.
Mariusz Wesolowki writes in defence of animals, “They do not engage in prostitution, drugs, sexual perversions and political correctness, to name just a few human vices.”
Actually, animal behaviour comprises a fascinating smorgasbord much of which in a human context would be tantamount to the grossest of debaucheries. Animals are incapable of vice or virtue. Their behaviour is variously adaptive to their ecological niche. Humans, by contrast, are rational animals and hence make choices which may be both adaptive to our survival as a species and have a moral dimension.
I think I should start with a caveat: This posting is not meant to be facetious.
This morning the headline of a British newspaper reads: RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS CREAM OFF RICH PUPILS. To render down, the children of the rich are now getting most of the places in Catholic, Anglican and Jewish schools.
Isn’t this a case of the rich receiving grace at the expense of the poor? Isn’t there anything the ‘religious’ schools can do about this? Isn’t this somewhat simonical? I am very much aware of how the Church feels about the offering and receiving of simony, although it is a term that is becoming as archaic as it sounds.
And yesterday I also read about the students of a Jewish school who refused to sit for an examination that had the name Shakespeare. Shakespeare, they protested, was antisemitic because of the way he depicted Shylock in the Merchant of Venice!
Ron Henderson said:
“When a society gives up its morals and becomes animalistic then its demise is near.”
I completely agree but I don’t think the term “animalistic” is really fair to animals. They do not engage in prostitution, drugs, sexual perversions and political correctness, to name just a few human vices. They also do not turn them into virtues and “rights”. Therefore the good old term “nihilistic” would be much more accurate.
I lived in Huddersfield, Barry Sheerman’s Constituency, for three years. During that time I witnessed a population visibly labouring under the weight of the culture of death - widespread alcohol abuse, endemic prostitution and petty drugs wars. I wrote to Mr Sheerman MP drawing his attention to this and linking his own anti-life policies to the culture of his own constituency. The result was that he would not enter into a discussion with me but instead complained to my Bishop. I heard no more.
Absolutely correct. Christianity has been the backbone of Europe; now we are seeking to stand without backbone. When a society gives up its morals and becomes animalistic then its demise is near. My heart goes out to Britain (my home). However, as Jesus said, as it was in the time of Sodom and Gomorrah so will it be in the end of time. The UK is a good example of this.
Soon the Spirit of God will allow the forces of evil to take much more control in Europe for men love darkness rather than Light. Terrible destruction awaits us ahead. The most I can say is to call us all to repentance and conversion. May God have mercy on us all.
Thank you for this informative article, Ms. Bogle. I find it quite interesting to read about the school system in Great Britain. I was unaware that public funds are used to pay for the cost of educating children in private schools in the U.K. There has been much discussion about the possibility of allowing some sort of voucher or tax relief for parents of children in private schools over here in the U.S. Currently, no public funds may be used to pay for or subsidize religious private schools, which I think is quite unfair.
As a taxpayer, I must pay my share of the taxes which pay for the public schools, yet none of these monies are available for my children unless I choose to send them to the state-run school system. On the other hand, since private schools receive no federal funding, they are also not subject to the government oversight in terms of the curricula used.
Perhaps this fact has been a factor in the growing movement of parents who choose to teach their children at home over here. As a home-schooling parent myself, I have encountered many others who, for various reasons, do not want to send their children to public schools. Of those, many simply cannot afford the high tuition costs of private schools. The option many take is to educate their children at home.
In the end, it has turned out to be a very good choice for us… but it would be nice to have a bit of our tax money back to help with buying books and supplies.
Thanks again.
Some previous posts discussed “relativism”, etc.. I believe this situation goes beyond relativism. In discounting the integrity of “traditional morals” and introducing “new lifestyles” to the young, the road is being paved for a totally AMORAL government and society.
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