The Age reports today:
THE rapid growth of faith-based schools under the previous federal government has threatened the social cohesion of the nation, according to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s most senior education adviser.
The frank comments of Professor Barry McGaw, appointed this month to be the new head of the National Curriculum Board, contrast with the Howard government’s celebration of the proliferation of small independent schools, encouraged by generous public funding.
“These people often form a narrowly focused school that is aimed at cementing the faith it’s based on … If we continue as we are, I think we’ll just become more and more isolated sub-groups in our community,” Professor McGaw told The Age.
Professor McGaw’s comments are, of course, absurd. Our community is diverse and that diversity extends quite naturally to how people believe their children should be educated. The very fact that so many parents are opting out of the government-controlled education system in favour of private schools — secular or religious — demonstrates this diversity.
The real threat to social cohesion comes not from parents exercising their parental choice but from governments that seek to force these parents to conform with the state’s ideas about how and what their children should be taught. On this point, Andrew Norton, responding to McCaw’s comments today, writes the following:
As John Locke convincingly argued more than three hundred years ago, not only is the project of creating common belief futile, it creates the conflict it is intended to resolve. And this is as true now as it was in the seventeenth century, except now the religious believers are quietly getting on with their lives while the public school lobby stirs up conflict by attacking them. The ’social cohesion’ argument is a euphemism for intolerance.
Rather than limit the range of educational options available to children, we should welcome them: just as competition in every other market leads to a better range and quality of products, so will competition between education providers lead to better outcomes for students. For this reason, approaches such as school vouchers make a great deal of sense. As Milton Friedman, who invented the idea of ’school vouchers’, explained:
Government, preferably local governmental units, would give each child, through his parents, a specified sum to be used solely in paying for his general education; the parents would be free to spend this sum at a school of their own choice, provided it met certain minimum standards laid down by the appropriate governmental unit. Such schools would be conducted under a variety of auspices: by private enterprises operated for profit, nonprofit institutions established by private endowment, religious bodies, and some even by governmental units….[Vouchers] would bring a healthy increase in the variety of educational institutions available and in competition among them. Private initiative and enterprise would quicken the pace of progress in this area as it has in so many others. Government would serve its proper function of improving the operation of the invisible hand without substituting the dead hand of bureaucracy.
16 comments ↓
Amir said:
The real threat to social cohesion comes not from parents exercising their parental choice but from governments that seek to force these parents to conform with the state’s ideas about how and what their children should be taught.
Amir said:
“The real threat to social cohesion comes not from parents exercising their parental choice but from governments that seek to force these parents to conform with the state’s ideas about how and what their children should be taught.”
I totally agree with this point. The government should not be invoked regarding social matters, especially those regarding education.
Furthermore, when someone discusses the idea of integration, which is more of an issue in Europe, it entails people defining what it means to be British, or French or whatever. This sort of thinking is not only dangerous for Muslims in those societies but those who are ethnically British, French or German.
It also changes the whole vocabulary of the discourse to reflect authoritarian tendencies. Like “that is not how German’s behave” or the ever irrational appelation, “unAmerican.” Instead of invoking moral principles for good conduct they invoke ethnic or national qualifications which is the seed of racist and tribalistic thought.
Your post has been Islamified
I’m guessing this voucher system is one stop on the road to complete privitisation of education?
It’s a step in the right direction, Eudaemonion. Complete privatisation of education would be the end state, I’d hope.
[...] Amir believes that forced one-size-fits-all public education is destructive to social cohesion. [...]
“Instead of invoking moral principles for good conduct they invoke ethnic or national qualifications which is the seed of racist and tribalistic thought.”
Hmm, and what about religionist or theist thought?
I think the voucher system sounds very exciting.
That demand for good quality Muslim schools among Muslim parents certainly exceeds supply is something I have encountered in the research I have done.
As a parent myself, reasons I like my daughter’s Muslim school (she is in kindergarten) include: she is surrounded by people who think being Muslim is a good and normal thing; I don’t have to battle to explain Muslim religious requirements i.e. no pork in the food, why Mummy wears a headscarf, why we don’t gorge on chocolate in April etc.; her comprehensive curriculum includes time for Arabic and learning Qur’an and basic Islamic beliefs.
BUT, if we were in doubt about the standard curriculum of subjects offered (the three Rs etc.) at that particular school, we would take her out and put her in another school even if that was a non-Muslim school.
My personal experience (both as a parent of a child who attends a Muslim school, and as friends of teachers at Muslim schools) is that by and large Muslim schools are very interested in promoting engagement with the wider society. Years ago King Khalid (now AIA) set up a program with Wesley and a Jewish school – whose name escapes me – where children would develop pen-pal friendships and meet up at the end of the year. Yesterday my daughter came home having learned Maori songs. I think it is rubbish to suggest religious schools are inherently isolationist.
Muslim Youths
Muslim youths are angry, frustrated and extremist because they have been mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. Muslim children are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. They face lots of problems of growing up in two distinctive cultural traditions and value systems, which may come into conflict over issues such as the role of women in the society, and adherence to religious and cultural traditions. The conflicting demands made by home and schools on behaviour, loyalties and obligations can be a source of psychological conflict and tension in Muslim youngsters. There are also the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination to deal with, in education and employment. They have been victim of racism and bullying in all walks of life. According to DCSF, 56% of Pakistanis and 54% of Bangladeshi children has been victims of bullies. The first wave of Muslim migrants were happy to send their children to state schools, thinking their children would get a much better education. Than little by little, the overt and covert discrimination in the system turned them off. There are fifteen areas where Muslim parents find themselves offended by state schools.
The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right that should be available to all people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious background. Schools do not belong to state, they belong to parents. It is the parents’ choice to have faith schools for their children. Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim teacher or a child in a Muslim school. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools. An ICM Poll of British Muslims showed that nearly half wanted their children to attend Muslim schools. There are only 143 Muslim schools. A state funded Muslim school in Birmingham has 220 pupils and more than 1000 applicants chasing just 60.
Majority of anti-Muslim stories are not about terrorism but about Muslim
culture–the hijab, Muslim schools, family life and religiosity. Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as a western community, not as an alien culture.
Iftikhar Ahmad
www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
I think it is a very bad idea for Australian Muslims to go to Muslim schools. The reason the Muslims have come here in the first place is because the Muslim nations in the Middle East have become so dysfunctional and have fallen centuries behind the West. My take is that Sunni Salafism handicapped Arab civilisation after the 9th century.
After this time, all the top scholars and scientists in the “Islamic world” were either Persian Shia – mainly Ismaili and Twelver – Sufi, Xian, Jewish, Turkish or Mongol. Even Ibn Khaldun acknowledged the minimal scholarly achievements of Sunni Arabs.
Sadly, after the 15th century there were no more of these great scholars, when even the previously pro-knowledge Mongols succumbed to Sunni distrust of Science.
These are most certainly NOT the sort of values we want Australian children to be indoctrinated with!
For example note the number of very successful Aussie Muslims who attended Xian private schools, such as Waleed Ali and his Skippy Xian (now converted) wife.
And another excellent example is Tanveer Ahmed, whom I believe went to Sydney Grammar. He is now a Liberal candidate standing for Marrickville Council. No, I definitely think it is a very bad idea for Muslim children to go to Muslim schools in Australia. At least not in the first few generations.
Tanveer Ahmed is the No Bingo guy and the guy off the Pataks commercial. Hardly a great achievement.
Don’t feed the troll.
Steve
Let’s see. Tanveer has a double degree in Arts/Medicine, is a psychiatric registrar at one of our top research/teaching hospitals, a journalist, a prominent public intellectual, a fomer director of the AMA, a current board member of the Advertising Standards Board. And now he is running for public office.
No great achievement? What a bitter and ignorant comment. Steve, Tanveer is among the most respectable and accomplished Muhammadans alive today. And rather than cheering him, you try to put him down. No wonder you people are in such a pickle.
null
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
He’s also not a practicing Muslim.
Let’s see. Being a registrar is hardly the top rung of the medical profession and failing your medical exams and then rabbiting on about it in the Sydney Morning Herald isn’t so great either.
He’s not a public intellectual. He’s a guy who fakes an indian accent on television and hosts a bingo show. Oh and he advertises curry paste too.
Wikipedia lists him as a Comedian by the way.
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