Interesting article in the Independent about how a headmistress lost her job - the local council failing to stand up to misguided religious extremism appears to be the culprit. Here.
Faith and unreason: The headteacher hounded from her job
Erica Connor took a failing school and turned it into a beacon of academic achievement and racial harmony. So why was she driven from her job by religious extremists and misguided officials? Tim Walker hears her story
Thanks to anticant for this...
Faith and unreason: The headteacher hounded from her job
Erica Connor took a failing school and turned it into a beacon of academic achievement and racial harmony. So why was she driven from her job by religious extremists and misguided officials? Tim Walker hears her story
Thanks to anticant for this...
Comments
Situations like this are going to become far more common, and not only in schools. They are the inevitable result of the government's inane - actually insane - 'multiculturalist' policies and the incessant cries of "Islamophobia" which emanate from the Muslim community if they are criticised about anything.
When I first looked for a school for my son, I visited the nearest local school. It was a state school with an 80% Muslim intake. Non-Muslim parents in the area - including "died again" Atheists and Jews - were going to church on Sunday, pretending to be Christian in order to get their kids into Anglican or Catholic schools. It's exactly what I did.
Whatever we Atheists may write on blog posts, my direct experience is that most British Atheists will actively seek out Anglican or Catholic schools for their kids, and do almost anything to avoid sending their kids to nominally secular Muslim majority schools.
Most UK Muslims are economically disadvantaged, and English may not be the kids' first language. These school quality factors may be enough to make non-Muslim parents want to go elsewhere, without even considering the specific characteristics of Islam. But I don't think that's all.
My son went first to a Catholic school, then an Anglican one. In both I found the extent and intensity of religious indoctrination to be very very mild, and easy to counteract at home. With Christianity in the UK, it feels like we're mostly flogging a dead horse. We all sense "Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar". But Islam feels different. There's a confidence and assertion in British Islam, buoyed up by rising numbers of adherents. As noted here, for instance:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article5621482.ece
There's a feeling that Islam in the UK is a bad idea whose time has come. And it depresses me. Old battles we thought we'd won, we'll have to fight all over again. Only this time the other side knows what losing looks like.
Non-Muslims who naively think that 'multiculturalism' will ever work in the West, or satisfy Muslims living here, simply do not understand the nature of Islam and inhabit a mental cloud-cuckoo land. They resemble the ostrich-like appeasers of the 1930s who were saying, right up to the outbreak of war, "Oh, Hitler's not such a bad chap really. If we just leave him alone to do what he wants at home he won't bother us."
What is to be done?
If there were no misguided government policy on so-called 'faith schools' the opportunity for such intimidation would not have been there. The first practical step is for government to backtrack on the misguided policy and introduce legislation to enforce diversity on the governorship of all state schools. I'm not sure to what extent 'diversity' should reflect the makeup of the local population for the reasons georgesdelatour hints at. Maybe it depends whether local means 'catchment' or something wider. Even 'national'.
That is not to pander to a misguided 'multicultural' agenda. It is protect schools from such abuse.
Let those who wish to have faith schools do so by all means, so long as they are not in receipt of a penny of tapayers'money, and are subject to rigorous inspection by the state educational authorities to ensure that the pupils are being adequately taught about British democracy, pluralism and tolerance.