I stil haven't got around to studying how wikipedia exactly works. However I took a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict which is to do with the present crisis in the Middle East and noted how the factual content is being built up minute by minute. It is well worth taking a look at and checking its accuracy. This really is history in the making. The interpretation of the facts is no easier but at least we can have the facts.
Josh
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Article from Nigerian Humanist
My friend in Nigeria the Chair of the Nigerian Humanist Movement sent a link to a recent article in the Guardian. Reading this article I found it was very complex and I sat down to try and analyse what it was saying. Here is the article with my analaysis within the text in red.
My analysis and comments on this article are to be found in red within the body of the text – JK
On a wink and a prayer
They don't believe. And vicars often know they don't. Yet more and more middle-class parents are going to church in order to get their children into church schools, where they think they will get a better education. The result is divided communities - so why is the church allowing it to happen?
JK analysis/comment:: What should the church do? Be more thoroughgoing in ensuring that people are really Christians? But wouldn't that somehow just force anyone wanting to 'fool' the system into trying to be more clever and underhand about it. Father Alex says "the clergy aren't stupid” I don't think anyone is saying they are but as he goes on to say some who enter the system by more or less covert means may end up getting "hooked". I suppose this would be an outcome which meets the genuine evangelical aspirations of Christianity. Jo says she knows of people who have even had their children Christened to gain admission to what they consider a better school.
The point made in this opening paragraph by the journalist is that this is resulting in "divided communities" Something she assumes the church would not/should not favour.
Natasha Walter investigates
Natasha Walter Friday July 14 2006 The Guardian
Tara Mullan is Jewish and an atheist; her husband, too, is an atheist. Most Sundays find them in the congregation listening to a traditional Church of England service in the local church with their two children, aged five and one. "Do I find it strange?" Tara wonders, sitting in the large, light living room of her London flat. "At first I found it amusing. Then I started to enjoy it. It's a nice family outing. It's rare that you have an hour to sit and be still, it's a time to reflect. Even if the words are gobbledygook to me, I like the music, I like the beautiful building, and the smell of the incense. My children enjoy it. They love going up for the blessing. The vicar touches their heads and says, 'God bless you' and they have started to say 'Amen', which I think is very cute."But Mullan didn't start going to church to experience the sweetness of God's blessing. She and her unbelieving husband trot to their church every other Sunday so that their children will be able to go to the local church school,which is high in the league tables. "I wouldn't have thought of it until I found out that this is, essentially, what middle-class parents do around here," Mullan says.
JK analysis/comment: The couple cited are described as atheists who are attending church for 2 reasons. 1. to gain entry for their children to "the local church school, which is high in the league tables". 2. It's what " middle-class parents do around here,"
Being atheists could mean that they are behaving hypocritically in wanting to have their children attend a church school. However they might be atheists who are not opposed to there being faith schools. I am an atheist and whilst I would like to see a time come when no parent feels the need to send their children to faith schools simply because they think that community schools are of a poorer standard, I recognise that this is something unlikely to happen soon. But the reason why these middle class parents are choosing voluntary aided (i.e. state-aided) faith schools is not only because of league tables and solidarity among the middle class but primarily because there aren't any school fees"
Mullan's decision will be a familiar one to many families, not only in the capital but beyond - parents from places as far apart as Bolton and Bournemouth emailed me during my research to tell me about the same phenomenon, about parents with no belief in God starting to go to church for the sake of a nearby school. But widespread as this practice seems to be, it is rarely discussed openly, which means that the repercussions - for the individuals and the communities concerned - have so far escaped real public examination.
JK analysis/comment: What are the repercussions? No doubt this is to follow.
Voluntary-aided church schools - that is, church schools funded mainly I think the folliwng phrase is missing - by the tax paying general public but partly by their own governing body, a majority of whose members are appointed by the church - are allowed to select their pupils if they are oversubscribed, by giving priority to children who come to church rather than children who live closest to the school. JK analysis/comment: I don't know enough about schools' admissions policies but gather from this that there is a difference in the procedure if a church school is over subscribed or not. Although this is intended to ensure that they give places to active Christians, families who decide to act a part can twist the system. The implications of this are gradually emerging. A recent study commissioned by an education think tank, the Institute for Research in Integrated Strategies (Iris), has found that, overall, church schools educate fewer children who are entitled to free school meals - that is, fewer of the most disadvantaged children in society - than community schools. The survey, whose results were published by Iris earlier this year, covered all primary schools in England, which number more than 17,000. It found that in church primary schools only 13.96% of pupils are on free school meals - compared with 18.96% in their catchment areas. In council-run community schools, the reverse is true, with 20.36% of pupils on free school meals - compared with 18.76% in their catchment areas. "The figures seem to indicate a strong correlation between Christianity and wealth," says Chris Waterman, the author of the report, "and yet that is not borne out by the population. The alternative explanation is that church schools are selecting or attracting better-off pupils."
JK analysis/comment: So one of the suggested repercussions is that the class/money profile of the parents of children attending schools in a given area will be skewed with more children from middle class/middle income backgrounds going to the faith school and conversely fewer going to the community state school.
In my own bit of north London, I have watched as the poshest families have marked out a club for themselves at the church school. Every morning that I take my daughter to her community primary school I cross the lines of families walking up to the church school, which is nearer to our house. I look at the neat uniforms of the church school pupils, their blonde pigtails, their parents' Volvos, and then I turn into the road of her school where a more diverse run of families make their way - some just as smart, some emphatically not - and I wonder how it happened that even such a very middle-class neighbourhood became split like this. I also wonder why the churches in London have decided that it is an acceptable part of their mission to divide neighbour from neighbour.
JK analysis/comment: The journalist provides a personal anecdote to illustrate her point. There are some other subtexts - the use of the words "poshest" and "club" suggest something snobbish; blond pigtails hints at a racial distinction. She points out that some of children going to the community school are "just as smart" and she may here be just referring to the state of their dress matching those of "the neat uniforms of the church school pupils", but she might also be speaking of aptitude. She reveals here that her daughter goes to the state school. She asks again why the church sees it as "part of their mission to divide neighbour from neighbour". But clearly this is ironic or sarcastic. It may not be part of the church's mission but we are being told it is one the repercussions? And in some areas, Waterman's statistical averages conceal much starker individual contrasts. At St Michael's Church of England primary school in Haringey, 5% of the children are entitled to free school meals; just up the road is Highgate community primary school, where 20% of children are entitled to free school meals. Emmanuel Church of England school in Camden has 17% of children on free school meals, nearby is Beckford community school, with 44%; St John's Highbury Vale, in Islington, has 15%, Gillespie school around the corner has over 48%; Dulwich Village infants school in Southwark, another Church of England school, has just 5%, while its nearest community schools with the same age intake, Heber primary school and Rosendale primary school, have more than 20%. I asked the headteachers of each of these church schools to talk to me about the selection of pupils at their schools, but none would.
JK analysis/comment: Here we are told that the situation in some areas of London, in respect of skewing of intakes in schools, is worse than the average. Headteachers of church schools refused to be interviewed by the journalist. We are not told whether they gave any reasons.
While some parents lament this situation but live with it, Katie Weston is among another group who are very angry at the way that the state system is, as they see it, facilitating covert selection with the collusion of the church. She is a BBC producer who lives in a part of London with high numbers of immigrants, where there is a Church of England school famous locally for drawing white middle-class children to its roll. Weston's children go to the community school, where there are a lot of Turkish and Afro-Caribbean children, and now she has experienced the strengths of that kind of educational environment, she has become furious with parents who have decided to take what she sees as an underhand route.
JK analysis/comment: We are not told of anyone who supports the system. There are only those who "lament" it and those who are "very angry at the way that the state system is, as they see it, facilitating covert selection with the collusion of thechurch".
She quotes the example of Katie Weston and others with similar views. They detest the racial and ethnic selection that is going on in their area. They applaud the "strengths" of the community school with its diverse intake and berate the parents for not supporting the community school and by "underhand" means ensuring their children go to the church school. I suspect that even if all the parents were to be genuine believers in Christianity, their choice would still be considered immoral. I would be interested to know why the parents of the "Turkish and Afro-Caribbean children” aren’t applying? Maybe they are less underhand?"
It sticks in my throat that they dress it up as religion," she says passionately. "I love the school my kids go to. I remember going to one openday there, with Turkish singing, Indian dancing, English line dancing. To me, that's what living in London is about - seeing a black kid in a hoodie next to a little girl in jilbab doing a line dance together. It's just amazing. That's how it should be. But up the road there are these white Christian kids turning their noses up at that, and it makes my blood boil. My feeling is that if these parents are so freaked out by the kids they are living next door to, they should get off back to Berkshire. It's not about religion. It's about snobbery and racism."
JK analysis/comment: The journalist quotes a passionate and angry Katie Weston. She says, "they dress it up as religion". Who exactly are "they"? There is a strange contradiction here. One of the accusations is that many of the parents aren't religious but simply want to access a 'better' school. But then she goes on to rage at "white Christian kids turning their noses up" at the multicultural diversity of the community school. The term “Christian” here is pejorative but in fact simply means that they are children going to a faith school and that because of the parents the school is snobbish and a middle class ‘club’. The result is that the children (or some of them) look down on the hoi polloi attending the local community school. Finally however she admits: "It's not about religion. It's about snobbery and racism." I think the last statement is closer to the heart of the matter.What should be done about this situation? What should the church do?
Of course, in other localities there are church schools whose intakes do not differ from the surrounding schools, or even where ethnic minority and disadvantaged children are over-represented. And other faith schools may create other patterns of segregation. But the effect of church schools is magnified by their sheer number: of the 7,000 faith schools in the state education system in England, the vast majority are Christian schools (there are just 36 state Jewish schools, seven Muslim schools and two Sikh schools,for instance), and nearly 2,000 of them are voluntary-aided Church of England primary schools. Defenders of the current system point out that middle-class parents always tend to cluster in certain schools, regardless of whether these are church institutions. In Islington, the state primary school with the fewest children on free school meals is not a church school, but simply a good school with a concentrated catchment area to which middle-class parents have gravitated.
JK analysis/comment: The journalist admits that the pattern isn't necessarily the same everywhere. In some cases there are church schools where "ethnic minority and disadvantaged children are over-represented". That's interesting and slightly confusing. I wonder why this happens? What she then goes on to say is that the problem is one of segregation and that because of the large numbers of state funded church schools the effect (I suppose on society at large) is magnified.
But no one can pretend that the rules on how faith schools select pupils do not, in some areas, work to the advantage of middle-class children, because their parents, in practice, seem most adept at playing the system. JK analysis/comment: Does she really mean "to the advantage of ... children."? Is she admitting that the faith schools that middle class parents try to get their children into are actually better for the children? In what way better? I can imagine what some might argue but it isn't obvious. Better academic results are not the only measure. I think what the journalist may actually have meant was, to the advantage of middle class parents and their aspirations!
Alan Johnson, the new education secretary, admitted as much in a speech to the Fabian Society in May, when talking about how parents make choices: "They can pretend to be God-fearing Christians if that helps their chances - hurrying to church for a quick knees-down on a couple of Sundays in the run-up to the new school year." But although his language seemed cynical, the answer he gave was not to promote an alternative, but to roll out new "choice advisers" - presumably to coach other parents how to do the same.
JK analysis/comment: So, the government realises that the church faith school system with its admissions policy favours middle class parents and we are told that new proposals are an attempt to rectify this distortion by providing support for working class parents to play the game equally well and gain equal access to church schools.
Canon John Hall is the chief education officer of the Church of England. Was the church, I asked him, allowing middle-class parents to exploit its selection processes? He initially insisted there was no major problem, and then said: "If there is a phenomenon like this, we are not willing victims. The church is thinking very carefully about how to advise schools on their admissions policies, so that it isn't just about amassing points by turning up to church." Then again, if parents decide to go this route, he conceded, there is not much the church can do except hope they find God alongside the good school. "The church doesn't turn anyone away, and if people come to church we won't peer into their souls. Many people find that they come to church for one reason, and stay for another; they find something that resonates with them, that answers the thirst for God that is within everyone of us."
JK analysis/comment: The chief education officer of the Church of England says (as did Father A) that the church isn't out to attract people who fake their Christian belief but what can they do if parents do this. He also says that they are considering how to tackle the 'problem' but at the same time concedes that from the churches perspective some who come "to church for one reason, ... stay for another." This latter result would seem to meet, unintentionally or not, an evangelical mission and must result in some conflict of interest.
Mullan is honest about the moral dimensions of her decision to go to church to get into a particular school. "I feel very guilty about the decision I took. I feel I've done what's best for my children but not what's best for the community. I think it's awful, immoral and unjust that people can do this in order to get their children into certain good schools. It's the system that is corrupt. It's a way of allowing selective education within a state-funded education system that isn't meant to be selective. The parent who cares enough about their child's education to do this is frankly the middle-class parent whose kids are likely to be the high achievers. If I were in charge of the education system, I'd stop it. But I'm not, so I have taken this decision for my children - because I think they will get a better education this way."
JK analysis/comment: Here we are provided with the view of the first atheist parent mentioned in the article as to what is wrong - and it is the system. Parents like her (middle class) care about their children's education more than others and are prepared to go to church to get their children into "certain good schools"; certain church schools. This isn't good for the "community" she says and should be stopped.
Mullan's target school has excellent results. But the community school that her children would otherwise have gone to is by no means a sink school. When she first moved to the area, she thought it looked fine and she sent her daughter to the nursery class. "It was a wonderful place in many ways," she says. "It has a great ethos, great teachers, great Ofsted report, a fantastic headteacher, and she was very, very happy there. But it has a huge intake of kids with English as a second language. As soon as I started talking to the other mothers like me that I met in the neighbourhood, I found that none of them would even consider sending their children there, and that put me off." I too have seen how a critical mass of families making for one particular school can induce panic in the ones left behind.
JK analysis/comment: Here the journalist pursues the interview with the atheist parent to discover that it isn't just the school's results that are important, but the fact that all the mothers in her neighbourhood wouldn't even consider going to the community school even though it has "great ethos, great teachers, great Ofsted report, a fantastic headteacher..."
For Mullan, the community primary school stopped looking so good once she realised all the yummy mummies in the neighbourhood wouldn't even go to take a look on the open day. "I tried to say to them, come and see it, but they wouldn't even go and look at it. I realised then that my daughter would be in a real minority there if she went on after the nursery class. I wanted her to go somewhere that would nurture her intellect and her inquisitiveness, and that is partly about the peer group, so I do feel Ihave made the right decision for her. But morally I feel bad."
JK analysis/comment: Without the "yummie mummies" (I haven't heard this one before but assume it means middle class mothers) the community school isn't seen as one that "would nurture her intellect and her inquisitiveness." although it actually seems to have many strong features including a good government inspection report. She admits that it "is partly about the peer group." There is a whole subtext here that isn't being addressed. Actually whilst it appeals to her social conscience to send her child to a culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse school, she is fearful of the consequences and all the more so if her child's cultural, ethnic and financial background is in a small minority. Interestingly religion/belief is not a factor because she would rather have her child in a school where the majority of children are from a Christian background although she is an atheist with a Jewish cultural background.
To get her husband to come to church with her, Tara worked out how much money they would save on private school fees, divided by the number of times they had to go to church, and showed him the sum saved with each church visit. Unsurprisingly, he agreed. Mullan has also been pretty honest with the vicar. "I told him I was Jewish and that we started going to church because of its links to the school. I wasn't going to pretend we'd suddenly had a religious conversion with two kids coming up to primary school age - I didn't think he'd be that naive. But I told him I appreciated going to church and that I wanted my children to have a good spiritual education, and he seemed happy with that. He's an open-minded man and he can see how the church attendance has grown with the link to a good school."
JK analysis/comment: Money is the key to persuading her atheist husband to go along with the scheme. This is how much it would cost to go to a private school. There are no school fees at the Church school (seen in quality as an equivalent to the private school). One can gain admission by simply going to church on a given number of occasions. She salves her conscience by saying she doesn't set out to deceive the vicar. But this isn't strictly true. She tells him she "appreciated going to church" and wants her children to have "a good spiritual education". These are clearly matters that she knows will appeal to a Vicar who is no doubt genuinely motivated with an interest in saving souls.
No doubt there are many parents who are genuine in attending churches linked to good schools, and others who find something more profound in starting to go to church for the sake of their children's education - spiritual guidance, a deep sense of being connected to tradition or to the rest oftheir community. But for others, the thirst is for good results rather than spiritual fulfillment.
JK analysis/comment: The journalists comment here seem to be blurring the issue. What does it mean to be "genuine in attending churches linked to good schools." I can't imagine that any parents take the risk of almost certain failure by saying to the vicar that they are confirmed atheists and they only want to go to church in order to meet the admissions criteria and that they have absolutely no intention of being converted or born again. Even so the vicar might have hopes for the children but I doubt whether this would be sufficient to gain entry. I think that if any atheist parents has the "spiritual guidance" aspect in mind it comes very far down the list of considerations well below academic results, class, race and no school fees.
Phyllida Crane lives in Bournemouth; she moved out of London with her husband and two children three years ago and quickly realised she did not want her son, a shy, gentle boy with health problems, going to the large local primary school. "I would drive past that school and I could see people picking up their kids - their kids with skinheads and earrings, and the mums with tattoos, smoking. I heard the language they used. I just didn't want him to be with people like that. But we simply could not afford the fees to go private."Asking around, just like Mullan, Crane discovered that the church school was the one that other middle-class mothers were choosing. "I started to get myself to church. My friends had to whisper to me about what to do there -I'd never been to church before, so they would say, stand up now, kneel now. They said, you had better go up and take communion. I'm not christened or confirmed, but they said, 'If you don't they'll tell you to start confirmation classes.' I was just hoping and praying that if there is a God, he wouldn't judge me harshly, because I had good intentions."Crane didn't feel she could be as honest with her vicar as Mullan. "I didn't actually tell him why I was there, but he was aware that that was why all these mums were coming to church. I think he sympathised with the fact we had been driven to make such a drastic decision. I'm normally a very honest person, but I was driven to act out that lie, because of our education system." Crane stopped going to church as soon as her son got his place at the school. "I don't want to go any more. I found it tedious. Also, to be honest, I could feel the hostility. The rest of the congregation was quite elderly, they used to glare at the mums coming in - we didn't feel welcome.They didn't approve of us coming to church just to get into the school."
JK analysis/comment: Here we have a further example of a parent, this time not in London, who has been frightened/appalled by the social mix at the local community school - kids with earrings and close shaven haircuts and parents who smoke and the way they all speak. She is advised that all the middle class mothers, unable to afford private school fees, take the church school route. Interesting to note that it is the mothers who are always referred to as deciding on these matters. Where are the fathers? She doesn't fool herself about the reasons why she wants her children to go to the church school and feels herself to be a hypocrite. She was sure that the vicar was aware of why all the middle class mums (no dads here again!) were now suddenly going to church.
For some parents who toy with taking this route into a selective school, the hypocrisy can become simply too much to stomach. Sally Sellick is an American who is married to a Serb; she is a glamorous film producer and he earns large sums in the City - although they are not plugged into the English class sytem, they are at the top of the tree and in a wealthy part of north London." Before I moved here I thought there would be no problem about schools - this is clearly a nice area with nice schools," she tells me over a glass of cold white wine in a bar near her large, elegantly decorated house. "But soon after we got here it was Christmas, and we were meeting the neighbours at drinks parties. The talk was all about schools. I said, 'Well, we're not religious, so we won't choose the church school', and the response was -'No, that's not the point, you should really make the effort for your kids'. That's the way it was phrased - do you care enough about your children to make this effort for them?" Sellick felt that she had stumbled into something completely unexpected about the education system. "I found it bizarre - more than that, I found it shocking. In America you don't have this crossover of church and state education. And nobody really hid the fact that it was actually about class. The schools aren't really much different, except that in the church school they are all middle-class, and the other school takes all the rest. I remember one mother saying quite openly that the community school is where the kids from the estates go. It was as though they were inviting us into their club, asking us to go to church with them. And if you stand out against that, you're seen as a brave pioneer."
In the end Sellick and her husband felt the local pressure so strongly that they tried going to church, but loathed the whole experience. "I know other non-believers who dress it up as wanting their children to have a moral education, or they say it's nice being part of the community. So I thought we'd try it. But I couldn't take it. I think you have to be really cynical to do it if you don't believe. My husband found it easier than I did, I think - he's from a former communist country and is used to having to do stuff he doesn't believe in. But I found it so uncomfortable, saying these prayers I knew I didn't believe in. I couldn't take my son up for the blessing. It was farcical. In the end we decided to go private. England is such a class-divided society, and I realised there was no getting away from that even in the state system, so it would be most straightforward to go toan independent school."
JK analysis/comment: The example of an American’s perspective cuts through some of the confusion: The American says "we're not religious, so we won't choose the church school" The neighbours say: "that's not the point, you should really make the effort for your kids'
She begins to understand that there are two social groups involved. There is ‘them’ and there is ‘us’. They come from the "estates" and go to the community school. We go to church. The Americans want to be sociable and join in, so they tried church. The American husband didn’t have a problem as he was used to doing things he didn't believe in. He had lived under a communist regime. His wife had difficulties keeping up the pretence and so....they send their child to a private school blaming it on the fact that "England is such a class-divided society". Diane Reay, professor of education at Cambridge University, has been researching the school choices that parents make for many years. She agrees that middle-class parents do make choices based on their fear that their child might lose their class status, and that schools are becoming more polarised as a result. She talks about the "white flight" not just into selective faith schools, but also into schools that select through their wealthy catchment areas, or, of course, school fees. But, "I wouldn't blame the parents," she says, "Parents are trying to behave ethically in a system that is radically unethical. The government has exaggerated the importance of choice in the school system, and put so much responsibility on parents to make the right choices for their children. In this context, how can we blame parents for making what they think are the best choices for their children, even if that conflicts with what they think is best for their community? These can feel like impossible moral dilemmas for the individual."
JK analysis/comment: Here we have an academic authority to back up what we have already gleaned; the choice is exercised by white middle class parents based on race, class and money. However I can’t see how she can then go on to say: “Parents are trying to behave ethically in a system that is radically unethical.” Surely the parents are behaving unethically but maybe we can have some understanding with some of the reasons offered in mitigation i.e. because the system allows them to and because they believe it to be in the best interest of their children.
If it isn't fair to ask individual parents not to play the system as they find it, perhaps the church should be asked to take a lead? Some vicars would agree with the feeling that Katie Weston expresses so vehemently, that selective faith schools are not good for the community. Stephen Coles is the vicar of St Thomas's Church in Finsbury Park. As a whole, this part of north London is a great melting pot, home to immigrants from all over the world, many of them Muslims. On its outskirts is a very good, very over subscribed church school, St John's Highbury Vale, which siphons off many of the Christian children, particularly white middle-class children, from the area. Of the three churches that feed the school, the most ethnically mixed congregation is at St Thomas's. Although Coles helps to run the system, by providing the references for parents if they have come to church regularly enough, he also denounces it."Yes, I help to operate a system I don't agree with," he says with what I realise is characteristic directness. "I think the Church of England should now take a self-denying ordinance to close their schools and use all the resources and energy that we currently put into our own schools towards enhancing the education that all children get, including the most disadvantaged. Church schools were originally set up to serve the poor, and we have lost sight of that."He knows that the situation is not all negative for the church; he can see people being brought into regular church attendance who would otherwise have drifted away. "I don't think people do it cynically - maybe just one or two in all my 17 years here have been cynical about it." Usually parents keep attending throughout their children's time in the school. "That does give you pastoral opportunities, yes, to touch families who would not otherwise come to church, or not regularly."Yet Coles also mentions that two of his own black congregants have avoided the church school in favour of the community school because the culture ofthe church school has come to be seen as too white and monolithic for them to feel comfortable. It seems extraordinary that a Church of England school could have become a club that alienates even some of its own faith community. At the same time, Coles is frustrated by the fact that there are so few active Christians now in community schools, and laments the implications for the possibility of real integration. "It means that Muslimsin those schools do not see anyone taking the western spiritual tradition seriously. I hear that Christian is now a term of abuse in the playgrounds."
JK analysis/comment: We are now provided with the views of a Church of England Vicar who sees the iniquities in the present system. He even finds that in addition to skewing the admissions away from the community school into the faith school there are even examples of black Christians choosing not to go to the faith school because they view it as a “white” school where their children wouldn’t feel comfortable. He offers the solution that the Church should close down its schools as “a self-denying ordinance”.
I wonder how this would/could work? Would it address the root problem (racism and class snobbery) or would it just slide it into some other area?At the end of our interview, Coles asks what is, I think, the most pertinentquestion of all for the church and for the parents who use the church to getinto certain schools: "Why wouldn't you want your children educated with thechildren of your neighbours? How else are children going to learn the mostimportant lessons of all, about tolerance and understanding?".
JK analysis/comment: This is a key question "Why wouldn't you want your children educated with thechildren of your neighbours? How else are children going to learn the most important lessons of all, about tolerance and understanding?"
The fact that many parents, the government and the churches clearly don’t see this make me sad.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
My analysis and comments on this article are to be found in red within the body of the text – JK
On a wink and a prayer
They don't believe. And vicars often know they don't. Yet more and more middle-class parents are going to church in order to get their children into church schools, where they think they will get a better education. The result is divided communities - so why is the church allowing it to happen?
JK analysis/comment:: What should the church do? Be more thoroughgoing in ensuring that people are really Christians? But wouldn't that somehow just force anyone wanting to 'fool' the system into trying to be more clever and underhand about it. Father Alex says "the clergy aren't stupid” I don't think anyone is saying they are but as he goes on to say some who enter the system by more or less covert means may end up getting "hooked". I suppose this would be an outcome which meets the genuine evangelical aspirations of Christianity. Jo says she knows of people who have even had their children Christened to gain admission to what they consider a better school.
The point made in this opening paragraph by the journalist is that this is resulting in "divided communities" Something she assumes the church would not/should not favour.
Natasha Walter investigates
Natasha Walter Friday July 14 2006 The Guardian
Tara Mullan is Jewish and an atheist; her husband, too, is an atheist. Most Sundays find them in the congregation listening to a traditional Church of England service in the local church with their two children, aged five and one. "Do I find it strange?" Tara wonders, sitting in the large, light living room of her London flat. "At first I found it amusing. Then I started to enjoy it. It's a nice family outing. It's rare that you have an hour to sit and be still, it's a time to reflect. Even if the words are gobbledygook to me, I like the music, I like the beautiful building, and the smell of the incense. My children enjoy it. They love going up for the blessing. The vicar touches their heads and says, 'God bless you' and they have started to say 'Amen', which I think is very cute."But Mullan didn't start going to church to experience the sweetness of God's blessing. She and her unbelieving husband trot to their church every other Sunday so that their children will be able to go to the local church school,which is high in the league tables. "I wouldn't have thought of it until I found out that this is, essentially, what middle-class parents do around here," Mullan says.
JK analysis/comment: The couple cited are described as atheists who are attending church for 2 reasons. 1. to gain entry for their children to "the local church school, which is high in the league tables". 2. It's what " middle-class parents do around here,"
Being atheists could mean that they are behaving hypocritically in wanting to have their children attend a church school. However they might be atheists who are not opposed to there being faith schools. I am an atheist and whilst I would like to see a time come when no parent feels the need to send their children to faith schools simply because they think that community schools are of a poorer standard, I recognise that this is something unlikely to happen soon. But the reason why these middle class parents are choosing voluntary aided (i.e. state-aided) faith schools is not only because of league tables and solidarity among the middle class but primarily because there aren't any school fees"
Mullan's decision will be a familiar one to many families, not only in the capital but beyond - parents from places as far apart as Bolton and Bournemouth emailed me during my research to tell me about the same phenomenon, about parents with no belief in God starting to go to church for the sake of a nearby school. But widespread as this practice seems to be, it is rarely discussed openly, which means that the repercussions - for the individuals and the communities concerned - have so far escaped real public examination.
JK analysis/comment: What are the repercussions? No doubt this is to follow.
Voluntary-aided church schools - that is, church schools funded mainly I think the folliwng phrase is missing - by the tax paying general public but partly by their own governing body, a majority of whose members are appointed by the church - are allowed to select their pupils if they are oversubscribed, by giving priority to children who come to church rather than children who live closest to the school. JK analysis/comment: I don't know enough about schools' admissions policies but gather from this that there is a difference in the procedure if a church school is over subscribed or not. Although this is intended to ensure that they give places to active Christians, families who decide to act a part can twist the system. The implications of this are gradually emerging. A recent study commissioned by an education think tank, the Institute for Research in Integrated Strategies (Iris), has found that, overall, church schools educate fewer children who are entitled to free school meals - that is, fewer of the most disadvantaged children in society - than community schools. The survey, whose results were published by Iris earlier this year, covered all primary schools in England, which number more than 17,000. It found that in church primary schools only 13.96% of pupils are on free school meals - compared with 18.96% in their catchment areas. In council-run community schools, the reverse is true, with 20.36% of pupils on free school meals - compared with 18.76% in their catchment areas. "The figures seem to indicate a strong correlation between Christianity and wealth," says Chris Waterman, the author of the report, "and yet that is not borne out by the population. The alternative explanation is that church schools are selecting or attracting better-off pupils."
JK analysis/comment: So one of the suggested repercussions is that the class/money profile of the parents of children attending schools in a given area will be skewed with more children from middle class/middle income backgrounds going to the faith school and conversely fewer going to the community state school.
In my own bit of north London, I have watched as the poshest families have marked out a club for themselves at the church school. Every morning that I take my daughter to her community primary school I cross the lines of families walking up to the church school, which is nearer to our house. I look at the neat uniforms of the church school pupils, their blonde pigtails, their parents' Volvos, and then I turn into the road of her school where a more diverse run of families make their way - some just as smart, some emphatically not - and I wonder how it happened that even such a very middle-class neighbourhood became split like this. I also wonder why the churches in London have decided that it is an acceptable part of their mission to divide neighbour from neighbour.
JK analysis/comment: The journalist provides a personal anecdote to illustrate her point. There are some other subtexts - the use of the words "poshest" and "club" suggest something snobbish; blond pigtails hints at a racial distinction. She points out that some of children going to the community school are "just as smart" and she may here be just referring to the state of their dress matching those of "the neat uniforms of the church school pupils", but she might also be speaking of aptitude. She reveals here that her daughter goes to the state school. She asks again why the church sees it as "part of their mission to divide neighbour from neighbour". But clearly this is ironic or sarcastic. It may not be part of the church's mission but we are being told it is one the repercussions? And in some areas, Waterman's statistical averages conceal much starker individual contrasts. At St Michael's Church of England primary school in Haringey, 5% of the children are entitled to free school meals; just up the road is Highgate community primary school, where 20% of children are entitled to free school meals. Emmanuel Church of England school in Camden has 17% of children on free school meals, nearby is Beckford community school, with 44%; St John's Highbury Vale, in Islington, has 15%, Gillespie school around the corner has over 48%; Dulwich Village infants school in Southwark, another Church of England school, has just 5%, while its nearest community schools with the same age intake, Heber primary school and Rosendale primary school, have more than 20%. I asked the headteachers of each of these church schools to talk to me about the selection of pupils at their schools, but none would.
JK analysis/comment: Here we are told that the situation in some areas of London, in respect of skewing of intakes in schools, is worse than the average. Headteachers of church schools refused to be interviewed by the journalist. We are not told whether they gave any reasons.
While some parents lament this situation but live with it, Katie Weston is among another group who are very angry at the way that the state system is, as they see it, facilitating covert selection with the collusion of the church. She is a BBC producer who lives in a part of London with high numbers of immigrants, where there is a Church of England school famous locally for drawing white middle-class children to its roll. Weston's children go to the community school, where there are a lot of Turkish and Afro-Caribbean children, and now she has experienced the strengths of that kind of educational environment, she has become furious with parents who have decided to take what she sees as an underhand route.
JK analysis/comment: We are not told of anyone who supports the system. There are only those who "lament" it and those who are "very angry at the way that the state system is, as they see it, facilitating covert selection with the collusion of thechurch".
She quotes the example of Katie Weston and others with similar views. They detest the racial and ethnic selection that is going on in their area. They applaud the "strengths" of the community school with its diverse intake and berate the parents for not supporting the community school and by "underhand" means ensuring their children go to the church school. I suspect that even if all the parents were to be genuine believers in Christianity, their choice would still be considered immoral. I would be interested to know why the parents of the "Turkish and Afro-Caribbean children” aren’t applying? Maybe they are less underhand?"
It sticks in my throat that they dress it up as religion," she says passionately. "I love the school my kids go to. I remember going to one openday there, with Turkish singing, Indian dancing, English line dancing. To me, that's what living in London is about - seeing a black kid in a hoodie next to a little girl in jilbab doing a line dance together. It's just amazing. That's how it should be. But up the road there are these white Christian kids turning their noses up at that, and it makes my blood boil. My feeling is that if these parents are so freaked out by the kids they are living next door to, they should get off back to Berkshire. It's not about religion. It's about snobbery and racism."
JK analysis/comment: The journalist quotes a passionate and angry Katie Weston. She says, "they dress it up as religion". Who exactly are "they"? There is a strange contradiction here. One of the accusations is that many of the parents aren't religious but simply want to access a 'better' school. But then she goes on to rage at "white Christian kids turning their noses up" at the multicultural diversity of the community school. The term “Christian” here is pejorative but in fact simply means that they are children going to a faith school and that because of the parents the school is snobbish and a middle class ‘club’. The result is that the children (or some of them) look down on the hoi polloi attending the local community school. Finally however she admits: "It's not about religion. It's about snobbery and racism." I think the last statement is closer to the heart of the matter.What should be done about this situation? What should the church do?
Of course, in other localities there are church schools whose intakes do not differ from the surrounding schools, or even where ethnic minority and disadvantaged children are over-represented. And other faith schools may create other patterns of segregation. But the effect of church schools is magnified by their sheer number: of the 7,000 faith schools in the state education system in England, the vast majority are Christian schools (there are just 36 state Jewish schools, seven Muslim schools and two Sikh schools,for instance), and nearly 2,000 of them are voluntary-aided Church of England primary schools. Defenders of the current system point out that middle-class parents always tend to cluster in certain schools, regardless of whether these are church institutions. In Islington, the state primary school with the fewest children on free school meals is not a church school, but simply a good school with a concentrated catchment area to which middle-class parents have gravitated.
JK analysis/comment: The journalist admits that the pattern isn't necessarily the same everywhere. In some cases there are church schools where "ethnic minority and disadvantaged children are over-represented". That's interesting and slightly confusing. I wonder why this happens? What she then goes on to say is that the problem is one of segregation and that because of the large numbers of state funded church schools the effect (I suppose on society at large) is magnified.
But no one can pretend that the rules on how faith schools select pupils do not, in some areas, work to the advantage of middle-class children, because their parents, in practice, seem most adept at playing the system. JK analysis/comment: Does she really mean "to the advantage of ... children."? Is she admitting that the faith schools that middle class parents try to get their children into are actually better for the children? In what way better? I can imagine what some might argue but it isn't obvious. Better academic results are not the only measure. I think what the journalist may actually have meant was, to the advantage of middle class parents and their aspirations!
Alan Johnson, the new education secretary, admitted as much in a speech to the Fabian Society in May, when talking about how parents make choices: "They can pretend to be God-fearing Christians if that helps their chances - hurrying to church for a quick knees-down on a couple of Sundays in the run-up to the new school year." But although his language seemed cynical, the answer he gave was not to promote an alternative, but to roll out new "choice advisers" - presumably to coach other parents how to do the same.
JK analysis/comment: So, the government realises that the church faith school system with its admissions policy favours middle class parents and we are told that new proposals are an attempt to rectify this distortion by providing support for working class parents to play the game equally well and gain equal access to church schools.
Canon John Hall is the chief education officer of the Church of England. Was the church, I asked him, allowing middle-class parents to exploit its selection processes? He initially insisted there was no major problem, and then said: "If there is a phenomenon like this, we are not willing victims. The church is thinking very carefully about how to advise schools on their admissions policies, so that it isn't just about amassing points by turning up to church." Then again, if parents decide to go this route, he conceded, there is not much the church can do except hope they find God alongside the good school. "The church doesn't turn anyone away, and if people come to church we won't peer into their souls. Many people find that they come to church for one reason, and stay for another; they find something that resonates with them, that answers the thirst for God that is within everyone of us."
JK analysis/comment: The chief education officer of the Church of England says (as did Father A) that the church isn't out to attract people who fake their Christian belief but what can they do if parents do this. He also says that they are considering how to tackle the 'problem' but at the same time concedes that from the churches perspective some who come "to church for one reason, ... stay for another." This latter result would seem to meet, unintentionally or not, an evangelical mission and must result in some conflict of interest.
Mullan is honest about the moral dimensions of her decision to go to church to get into a particular school. "I feel very guilty about the decision I took. I feel I've done what's best for my children but not what's best for the community. I think it's awful, immoral and unjust that people can do this in order to get their children into certain good schools. It's the system that is corrupt. It's a way of allowing selective education within a state-funded education system that isn't meant to be selective. The parent who cares enough about their child's education to do this is frankly the middle-class parent whose kids are likely to be the high achievers. If I were in charge of the education system, I'd stop it. But I'm not, so I have taken this decision for my children - because I think they will get a better education this way."
JK analysis/comment: Here we are provided with the view of the first atheist parent mentioned in the article as to what is wrong - and it is the system. Parents like her (middle class) care about their children's education more than others and are prepared to go to church to get their children into "certain good schools"; certain church schools. This isn't good for the "community" she says and should be stopped.
Mullan's target school has excellent results. But the community school that her children would otherwise have gone to is by no means a sink school. When she first moved to the area, she thought it looked fine and she sent her daughter to the nursery class. "It was a wonderful place in many ways," she says. "It has a great ethos, great teachers, great Ofsted report, a fantastic headteacher, and she was very, very happy there. But it has a huge intake of kids with English as a second language. As soon as I started talking to the other mothers like me that I met in the neighbourhood, I found that none of them would even consider sending their children there, and that put me off." I too have seen how a critical mass of families making for one particular school can induce panic in the ones left behind.
JK analysis/comment: Here the journalist pursues the interview with the atheist parent to discover that it isn't just the school's results that are important, but the fact that all the mothers in her neighbourhood wouldn't even consider going to the community school even though it has "great ethos, great teachers, great Ofsted report, a fantastic headteacher..."
For Mullan, the community primary school stopped looking so good once she realised all the yummy mummies in the neighbourhood wouldn't even go to take a look on the open day. "I tried to say to them, come and see it, but they wouldn't even go and look at it. I realised then that my daughter would be in a real minority there if she went on after the nursery class. I wanted her to go somewhere that would nurture her intellect and her inquisitiveness, and that is partly about the peer group, so I do feel Ihave made the right decision for her. But morally I feel bad."
JK analysis/comment: Without the "yummie mummies" (I haven't heard this one before but assume it means middle class mothers) the community school isn't seen as one that "would nurture her intellect and her inquisitiveness." although it actually seems to have many strong features including a good government inspection report. She admits that it "is partly about the peer group." There is a whole subtext here that isn't being addressed. Actually whilst it appeals to her social conscience to send her child to a culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse school, she is fearful of the consequences and all the more so if her child's cultural, ethnic and financial background is in a small minority. Interestingly religion/belief is not a factor because she would rather have her child in a school where the majority of children are from a Christian background although she is an atheist with a Jewish cultural background.
To get her husband to come to church with her, Tara worked out how much money they would save on private school fees, divided by the number of times they had to go to church, and showed him the sum saved with each church visit. Unsurprisingly, he agreed. Mullan has also been pretty honest with the vicar. "I told him I was Jewish and that we started going to church because of its links to the school. I wasn't going to pretend we'd suddenly had a religious conversion with two kids coming up to primary school age - I didn't think he'd be that naive. But I told him I appreciated going to church and that I wanted my children to have a good spiritual education, and he seemed happy with that. He's an open-minded man and he can see how the church attendance has grown with the link to a good school."
JK analysis/comment: Money is the key to persuading her atheist husband to go along with the scheme. This is how much it would cost to go to a private school. There are no school fees at the Church school (seen in quality as an equivalent to the private school). One can gain admission by simply going to church on a given number of occasions. She salves her conscience by saying she doesn't set out to deceive the vicar. But this isn't strictly true. She tells him she "appreciated going to church" and wants her children to have "a good spiritual education". These are clearly matters that she knows will appeal to a Vicar who is no doubt genuinely motivated with an interest in saving souls.
No doubt there are many parents who are genuine in attending churches linked to good schools, and others who find something more profound in starting to go to church for the sake of their children's education - spiritual guidance, a deep sense of being connected to tradition or to the rest oftheir community. But for others, the thirst is for good results rather than spiritual fulfillment.
JK analysis/comment: The journalists comment here seem to be blurring the issue. What does it mean to be "genuine in attending churches linked to good schools." I can't imagine that any parents take the risk of almost certain failure by saying to the vicar that they are confirmed atheists and they only want to go to church in order to meet the admissions criteria and that they have absolutely no intention of being converted or born again. Even so the vicar might have hopes for the children but I doubt whether this would be sufficient to gain entry. I think that if any atheist parents has the "spiritual guidance" aspect in mind it comes very far down the list of considerations well below academic results, class, race and no school fees.
Phyllida Crane lives in Bournemouth; she moved out of London with her husband and two children three years ago and quickly realised she did not want her son, a shy, gentle boy with health problems, going to the large local primary school. "I would drive past that school and I could see people picking up their kids - their kids with skinheads and earrings, and the mums with tattoos, smoking. I heard the language they used. I just didn't want him to be with people like that. But we simply could not afford the fees to go private."Asking around, just like Mullan, Crane discovered that the church school was the one that other middle-class mothers were choosing. "I started to get myself to church. My friends had to whisper to me about what to do there -I'd never been to church before, so they would say, stand up now, kneel now. They said, you had better go up and take communion. I'm not christened or confirmed, but they said, 'If you don't they'll tell you to start confirmation classes.' I was just hoping and praying that if there is a God, he wouldn't judge me harshly, because I had good intentions."Crane didn't feel she could be as honest with her vicar as Mullan. "I didn't actually tell him why I was there, but he was aware that that was why all these mums were coming to church. I think he sympathised with the fact we had been driven to make such a drastic decision. I'm normally a very honest person, but I was driven to act out that lie, because of our education system." Crane stopped going to church as soon as her son got his place at the school. "I don't want to go any more. I found it tedious. Also, to be honest, I could feel the hostility. The rest of the congregation was quite elderly, they used to glare at the mums coming in - we didn't feel welcome.They didn't approve of us coming to church just to get into the school."
JK analysis/comment: Here we have a further example of a parent, this time not in London, who has been frightened/appalled by the social mix at the local community school - kids with earrings and close shaven haircuts and parents who smoke and the way they all speak. She is advised that all the middle class mothers, unable to afford private school fees, take the church school route. Interesting to note that it is the mothers who are always referred to as deciding on these matters. Where are the fathers? She doesn't fool herself about the reasons why she wants her children to go to the church school and feels herself to be a hypocrite. She was sure that the vicar was aware of why all the middle class mums (no dads here again!) were now suddenly going to church.
For some parents who toy with taking this route into a selective school, the hypocrisy can become simply too much to stomach. Sally Sellick is an American who is married to a Serb; she is a glamorous film producer and he earns large sums in the City - although they are not plugged into the English class sytem, they are at the top of the tree and in a wealthy part of north London." Before I moved here I thought there would be no problem about schools - this is clearly a nice area with nice schools," she tells me over a glass of cold white wine in a bar near her large, elegantly decorated house. "But soon after we got here it was Christmas, and we were meeting the neighbours at drinks parties. The talk was all about schools. I said, 'Well, we're not religious, so we won't choose the church school', and the response was -'No, that's not the point, you should really make the effort for your kids'. That's the way it was phrased - do you care enough about your children to make this effort for them?" Sellick felt that she had stumbled into something completely unexpected about the education system. "I found it bizarre - more than that, I found it shocking. In America you don't have this crossover of church and state education. And nobody really hid the fact that it was actually about class. The schools aren't really much different, except that in the church school they are all middle-class, and the other school takes all the rest. I remember one mother saying quite openly that the community school is where the kids from the estates go. It was as though they were inviting us into their club, asking us to go to church with them. And if you stand out against that, you're seen as a brave pioneer."
In the end Sellick and her husband felt the local pressure so strongly that they tried going to church, but loathed the whole experience. "I know other non-believers who dress it up as wanting their children to have a moral education, or they say it's nice being part of the community. So I thought we'd try it. But I couldn't take it. I think you have to be really cynical to do it if you don't believe. My husband found it easier than I did, I think - he's from a former communist country and is used to having to do stuff he doesn't believe in. But I found it so uncomfortable, saying these prayers I knew I didn't believe in. I couldn't take my son up for the blessing. It was farcical. In the end we decided to go private. England is such a class-divided society, and I realised there was no getting away from that even in the state system, so it would be most straightforward to go toan independent school."
JK analysis/comment: The example of an American’s perspective cuts through some of the confusion: The American says "we're not religious, so we won't choose the church school" The neighbours say: "that's not the point, you should really make the effort for your kids'
She begins to understand that there are two social groups involved. There is ‘them’ and there is ‘us’. They come from the "estates" and go to the community school. We go to church. The Americans want to be sociable and join in, so they tried church. The American husband didn’t have a problem as he was used to doing things he didn't believe in. He had lived under a communist regime. His wife had difficulties keeping up the pretence and so....they send their child to a private school blaming it on the fact that "England is such a class-divided society". Diane Reay, professor of education at Cambridge University, has been researching the school choices that parents make for many years. She agrees that middle-class parents do make choices based on their fear that their child might lose their class status, and that schools are becoming more polarised as a result. She talks about the "white flight" not just into selective faith schools, but also into schools that select through their wealthy catchment areas, or, of course, school fees. But, "I wouldn't blame the parents," she says, "Parents are trying to behave ethically in a system that is radically unethical. The government has exaggerated the importance of choice in the school system, and put so much responsibility on parents to make the right choices for their children. In this context, how can we blame parents for making what they think are the best choices for their children, even if that conflicts with what they think is best for their community? These can feel like impossible moral dilemmas for the individual."
JK analysis/comment: Here we have an academic authority to back up what we have already gleaned; the choice is exercised by white middle class parents based on race, class and money. However I can’t see how she can then go on to say: “Parents are trying to behave ethically in a system that is radically unethical.” Surely the parents are behaving unethically but maybe we can have some understanding with some of the reasons offered in mitigation i.e. because the system allows them to and because they believe it to be in the best interest of their children.
If it isn't fair to ask individual parents not to play the system as they find it, perhaps the church should be asked to take a lead? Some vicars would agree with the feeling that Katie Weston expresses so vehemently, that selective faith schools are not good for the community. Stephen Coles is the vicar of St Thomas's Church in Finsbury Park. As a whole, this part of north London is a great melting pot, home to immigrants from all over the world, many of them Muslims. On its outskirts is a very good, very over subscribed church school, St John's Highbury Vale, which siphons off many of the Christian children, particularly white middle-class children, from the area. Of the three churches that feed the school, the most ethnically mixed congregation is at St Thomas's. Although Coles helps to run the system, by providing the references for parents if they have come to church regularly enough, he also denounces it."Yes, I help to operate a system I don't agree with," he says with what I realise is characteristic directness. "I think the Church of England should now take a self-denying ordinance to close their schools and use all the resources and energy that we currently put into our own schools towards enhancing the education that all children get, including the most disadvantaged. Church schools were originally set up to serve the poor, and we have lost sight of that."He knows that the situation is not all negative for the church; he can see people being brought into regular church attendance who would otherwise have drifted away. "I don't think people do it cynically - maybe just one or two in all my 17 years here have been cynical about it." Usually parents keep attending throughout their children's time in the school. "That does give you pastoral opportunities, yes, to touch families who would not otherwise come to church, or not regularly."Yet Coles also mentions that two of his own black congregants have avoided the church school in favour of the community school because the culture ofthe church school has come to be seen as too white and monolithic for them to feel comfortable. It seems extraordinary that a Church of England school could have become a club that alienates even some of its own faith community. At the same time, Coles is frustrated by the fact that there are so few active Christians now in community schools, and laments the implications for the possibility of real integration. "It means that Muslimsin those schools do not see anyone taking the western spiritual tradition seriously. I hear that Christian is now a term of abuse in the playgrounds."
JK analysis/comment: We are now provided with the views of a Church of England Vicar who sees the iniquities in the present system. He even finds that in addition to skewing the admissions away from the community school into the faith school there are even examples of black Christians choosing not to go to the faith school because they view it as a “white” school where their children wouldn’t feel comfortable. He offers the solution that the Church should close down its schools as “a self-denying ordinance”.
I wonder how this would/could work? Would it address the root problem (racism and class snobbery) or would it just slide it into some other area?At the end of our interview, Coles asks what is, I think, the most pertinentquestion of all for the church and for the parents who use the church to getinto certain schools: "Why wouldn't you want your children educated with thechildren of your neighbours? How else are children going to learn the mostimportant lessons of all, about tolerance and understanding?".
JK analysis/comment: This is a key question "Why wouldn't you want your children educated with thechildren of your neighbours? How else are children going to learn the most important lessons of all, about tolerance and understanding?"
The fact that many parents, the government and the churches clearly don’t see this make me sad.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
writer's blog
Oh well.
a touch of what one might call writer's blog.
Today the lunchtime observers took lunch.
They chatted about this and that.
I got home and discovered I had received this email from Israel:
**************
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 3:09 PM
Subject: FW: This is the truth
This is the truth!!!!
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel's part for whatever reason, the following two sentences really say it all:
If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.
If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
****************
Is this true? Is this relevant? Who are the "Arabs"? Are "Jews" the same as "Israel"?
Who is saying that Israel had no right to defend itself? The real question is what is the best policy and tactics for Israel to adopt in order to defend itself? Will the present policies and tactics really result in a greater certainty for Israel's future existence? I hope so but I doubt it.
a touch of what one might call writer's blog.
Today the lunchtime observers took lunch.
They chatted about this and that.
I got home and discovered I had received this email from Israel:
**************
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 3:09 PM
Subject: FW: This is the truth
This is the truth!!!!
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel's part for whatever reason, the following two sentences really say it all:
If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.
If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
****************
Is this true? Is this relevant? Who are the "Arabs"? Are "Jews" the same as "Israel"?
Who is saying that Israel had no right to defend itself? The real question is what is the best policy and tactics for Israel to adopt in order to defend itself? Will the present policies and tactics really result in a greater certainty for Israel's future existence? I hope so but I doubt it.
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