Why Labour don’t care about equality
Dear Ed Balls,
For months now, you have refused to set schools free from state control, ensuring that local authorities maintain their grip on our education system and condemn it to many more years of failure and stagnation. It is, therefore, ironic that when you finally announce some element of freedom for schools, it is the most repugnant form of freedom imaginable. Sex education is to be made compulsory in all state state schools, but faith schools will be allowed to preach against sex outside marriage, homosexuality and contraception, under your latest proposals.
A government-commissioned review by Sir Alasdair Macdonald, headteacher of Morpeth school in east London, on how to make PSHE compulsory, concludes that schools will be legally obliged to teach pupils about health and nutrition, safety, drugs and alcohol and sex education. For the first time pupils will be taught how to stay safe – from tackling cyber-bullying to resisting pressure to join gangs – and how to manage their bank accounts, but the most controversial element is making sex education compulsory. An optional curriculum in secondaries covering both homosexual and heterosexual relationships as well as contraception will be made compulsory – previously schools had to teach only the fundamentals of reproduction, contraception and puberty in science lessons. A new curriculum for primary schools will include teaching 5-year-olds about different kinds of relationships, managing their emotions and about physical changes to their bodies in childhood. However, faith schools will be allowed to deliver the lessons in line with the “context, values and ethos” of their religion, the review says. Parents will also retain the right to withdraw their child from sex education lessons.
After Harriet Harman’s vindictive Equality Bill yesterday, I am truly fascinated as to how you can allow religious groups to be treated differently from everyone else. Surely every child is equal, so there should be no room for these exemptions? Why should my taxes be used to fund some Catholic school brainwashing children into thinking that homosexuals are evil and contraception is a stupid idea? What about all Labour’s initiatives on sexual health problems among teenagers – how does that square with these plans? Personally, I am sick and tired of Stonewall (a fake charity representing gay rights) interfering in the school curriculum using government funding, but allowing schools to use taxpayers’ money to actively preach against homosexuality is absolutely outrageous. And don’t even get me started on teaching 5-year-olds about different kinds of relationships and physical changes during childhood. One wonders whether parents have any role at all in their children’s lives, now that schools are being asked to do everything instead. Furthermore, no parents should ever be allowed to withdraw their children from sex education lessons – parents shouldn’t be allowed to choose whether their child understands sexual relationships or not, regardless of which religious book they adhere to.
‘Equality’ has become a valuable tool for the Labour Party. It allows you to selectively target particular groups in society who you crave more votes, such as ethnic minorities and women in the new Equality Bill that openly discriminates against white men, yet you selectively ignore the notion of ‘equality’ when there are votes to be gained elsewhere, such as the Catholic Church preaching against homosexuality and contraception. Of course, if you really did care about equality, you would treat everyone the same but that wouldn’t work too well – for example, you’d lose the Islamic vote by giving women more rights and lose the Catholic votes by removing their exemptions in education. I’d still despise Labour even if you did apply ‘equality’ consistently, but at least you’d look like you actually had some principles.
Yours disrespectfully,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
There was a time – long ago now – when the purpose of schools was to educate children in old fashioned things like numeracy and literacy. Now they are there to indoctrinate.
Is it necessary to teach kids about health, nutrition, resisting gang culture, how to stay “safe” and sex? Maybe – but the real question should be WHY is it necessary to teach them these things today?
Answers on a postcard to Tory HQ.
The irony of this is – if you believe it is necessary to teach kids these things now, then you have accepted that the liberal progressive experiment of the last 50 years has utterly failed.
“After Harriet Harman’s vindictive Equality Bill yesterday, I am truly fascinated as to how you can allow religious groups to be treated differently from everyone else.”
Well, they set a hell of a precedent for themselves by agreeing to let religious groups block post mortems the other day:
http://www.asianimage.co.uk/northwest/4307820.Families_may_get_right_to_block_post_mortems/
So, why not continue as they mean to go on?
Well, they set a hell of a precedent for themselves by agreeing to let religious groups block post mortems the other day
Well Julia, that will make it easier to get away with honour killings… Praise Jesus! Allah u akbar!
Maybe this is a cunning concession to the BNP; brainwash a generation of kids with pre-industrial religions, let them get used to spouting their hate at gays (Any Abrahamic faith), adultery (Christianity and Islam), spostates (Islam) or whatever. Then wait a decade and see them kill each other. And now, no inquests! Genius!
Stan, the abdication of parenting responsibility to the state has left many children vulnerable, but instead of strengthening families and supporting parents the government have taken the easy (and probably most expensive) option available.
Julia, the list special exemptions is growing longer by the day, it seems.
Shaun, it is ironic how Labour introduce laws banning hatred against homosexuals, only to allow Catholics to teach it. Talk about sucking up to different voters on different occasions!
Agreed. The whole thing is so self-contradictory and counter-productive and damaging that it’s becoming difficult to work out what a proper policy should be, or quite likely, whether there should be no policy on any of these things whatsoever.
Also, what Shaun P says.
Sex education / PSHE is a tricky one, because schools are the perfect place to discuss, consider and even solve some of the challenges facing teenagers. What really annoys me is the way that schools are now expected to do everything when parents are let off the hook.
There should be a division of labour (no pun intended, tho its clear Labour are fairly well divided already!).
Parents should look after all the ‘pastoral’ stuff – non-violent dispute resolution, respect for others, any religion rubbish they want to burden their kids with in the firm expectation that they’ll rebell against it as soon as they become teenagers…
Schools should concentrate on things like Reading and Writing, maybe some Maths, some Logic, historical facts (yes, rote learning dates/events) and the differing views of those events, maybe how politics fits into this…
It would also be great if someone could teach them that Reality TV offers an illusory way to fortune and wellbeing but I’ll not hold my breath on that one…
“After Harriet Harman’s vindictive Equality Bill yesterday, I am truly fascinated as to how you can allow religious groups to be treated differently from everyone else”.
LFAT, I think you need to adopt a bit more consistency, too. Either you support Labour’s liberal-progressive equality agenda or you don’t. If you don’t, then wouldn’t it be consistent to support the freedom of ‘religious groups’ to educate children in accordance with their beliefs, which you are framing here as being an exception to New Labour’s politically correct rule?
Don’t you actually believe in religious freedom? If so, this involves giving religious communities the freedom to teach children what they believe about the role and ethics of sex and relationships. You seem to have a rather prejudiced, selective and immature view about what actually goes on in churches, mosques and faith schools. When was the last time you went to a Catholic service or PSHE lesson? It’s extremely rare nowadays for anyone in these settings to ‘preach’ that “homosexuals are evil and contraception is a stupid idea”. Even the formal doctrine of the Catholic Church is not that ‘homosexuals are evil’, let alone being how the actual teaching (that gay sex is inconsistent with Catholic beliefs about the ultimate purpose of human sexuality, and with a life of holiness) is put across to children or adult believers in sensitive pastoral situations such as the classroom or the confessional.
And if this were what was actually taught, do you not think there would be an enormous scandal and vast numbers of complaints from non-Catholic (or non-Muslim) parents, many of whom also send their children to faith schools, partly because of their high standards of pastoral care and moral discipline? Ultimately, if parents were not happy about how sex education was being done in such schools (i.e. it was too ‘biased’ towards the religious view), they could of course exercise their new right of withdrawing their children from such classes – something that you seem to think only religious-minded parents would do if the classes were too liberal.
I think you need to think a bit more carefully about the consequences that would flow from actually implementing what appears to be your position in this matter, i.e. if you BANNED faith schools from informing their PSHE classes with a moral perspective deriving from their religious beliefs. This might ultimately force such schools to close altogether in order not to have to propagate beliefs about sex, relationships, contraception, homosexuality, etc. that ran counter to their conscience – similar to the way Catholic adoption agencies were forced to close in order not to have to treat prospective gay parental couples ‘equally’ to married straight ones.
You might think that would be a good thing; but I don’t think the overall standards of education or teaching about ethics in schools would improve as a result. Furthermore, your position in this regard seems rather contrary to traditional Conservatism, which is sympathetic to faith schools and religious values (certainly, Christian ones anyway), which place a strong emphasis on the family and marriage, which David Cameron’s Conservatives claim they wish to support.
Surely, freedom of belief and education is an essential freedom that Conservatives should support. And that includes supporting the right of schools to impart their own particular morality, whether that be of a traditional religious kind or a New Labour-style secular liberalism. Parents are then free to choose which type of school they want their children to attend.
Surely, freedom of belief and education is an essential freedom that Conservatives should support. And that includes supporting the right of schools to impart their own particular morality, whether that be of a traditional religious kind or a New Labour-style secular liberalism.
Maybe you only want to protect ‘nice’ religions. What about those you feel aren’t nice and who the hell are you to decide?
What about the muslims who use Labour’s religious hate speech laws to protect their overt racism towards jews, their homophobia-driven desire to kill homosexuals or their religiously-motivated totalitarianism compelling them to kill apostates or subjugate non-believers to a special tax in their Islamist utopia? Protected, right? Well at the moment Saudi-wahibiist funded UK schools seem to feel it is.
What about the Catholics teach that gays are ‘disordered’ or ‘mentally ill’ or, like the Pope said, a greater threat to us than Global Warming? Fine, right? Despite their hypocritical past as a global network of of gay pedophiles? Really?
Why should ‘my sky fairy said so’ be a defence to inciting hatred in ways that would put non-religiously motivated people in prison? That’s not ‘freedom of belief/religion’, it’s giving primacy to people who can point to an ephemeral sky fairy at the expence of people who don’t share their beliefs.
You aren’t arguing for freedom of religion. You are arguing for the protected *primacy* of religion, where because you claim to believe in some ‘god’ or ‘holy text’, you are free to promote whatever illiberal hatred, whatever sectional bigotry you feel like regardless of the laws of the land that bind non-believers
Nice, but some flavour of Iran or Franco’s Spain or Ireland’s De Valera era awaits you…
@ Shaun Pilkington:
What a diatribe, Shaun! I must say you come across as more bigoted than many of the religious people you rail against. There are actually laws that prohibit people from inciting hatred against gays, discriminating against women or persecuting people on religious grounds; and I’m fully in favour of these being used against faith schools, churches or mosques where applicable. There’s no excuse for homophobia, racism or all the other crimes you seems to think are part of the religious mainstream rather than just the extremes; and where these exist, they should be prosecuted.
But I do think you come across as being as prejudiced and phobic towards religion as you claim religions are towards those whose lifestyle or beliefs conflict with those religions’ teachings. I think you need to think through your basic assumptions and their consequences. You seem to think that only your a-religious belief system and morality have any claim to objectivity, and that therefore all other systems of belief have no right to exist within public education. But THAT is authoritarianism and dogmatism, just of the liberal-secularist kind.
Who gives YOU the right to say that only your morality is valid and should be taught in schools? The truth of the matter is that all points of view should be taught and respected in schools, as they should be in society: respected (not intellectually, perhaps, but socially and humanly), not cow-towed to. And there should be a right to express divergent points of view and beliefs in all schools: those with a religious foundation and those without.
But maybe you don’t adhere to such a pluralistic view of the world: only your version of the truth is valid, and everyone else is monstrously striving to pervert our children. That seems to be what you’re saying. Well, you’re welcome to your nightmare view of the world – but it’s not the reality for most schools in the UK, religious or other.
There are actually laws that prohibit people from inciting hatred against gays, discriminating against women or persecuting people on religious grounds
Oh really?
So the new Pope didn’t say that homosexuality was as much a threat to humanity as climate change? And as the infalliable leader of Catholics, it’s not that doctrine that would get taught in schools is it? And its not that kind of bigotry that, thanks to Blair and other religious types, is exempt from laws inciting hatred against homosexuals, is it?
Who gives YOU the right to say that only your morality is valid and should be taught in schools?
Unlike you and your fellow sky-fairy worshippers, I don’t believe that children should be brainswashed with what an ancient book says about morality, be in the Torah, the Bible or the Koran. I’ve not said we should teach morality of an sort – that’s the job of parents, no? I don’t believe that we should have schools that do political brainwashing either – I only want schools that teach demonstrable facts. Things like the earth going round the sun (denied by Catholics for years on pain of execution) or that the sky is a gas contained by the Earth’s gravity and is not a blue carpet set their by Allah (an Islamic fallacy that caused freuent problems in training Pakistani air force pilots).
If you want to impart your fair tales and bigotry to your kids at home, go for it but don’t expect me to pay for it and don’t be surprised when they grow up to be arrest for some act of bigotry or other.
@ Shaun Pilkington:
Actually, the Pope said that the blurring of the distinction between male and female, at work in active homosexuality and transgenderism, could lead to the self-destruction of the human species (as the article you link to makes clear) – which is a rather more nuanced and complex point than you’re making; and one which, incidentally, I don’t agree with despite being a Catholic.
And no, this isn’t infallible doctrine: only doctrine that is formally declared as a dogmatic teaching, binding on all Catholics, is regarded as infallible truth. One of these teachings is indeed that gay sexual acts are sinful – but so are straight ones outside of marriage, and even many (most?) straight ones in marriage, in the sense that only unprotected genital sex between spouses is regarded as without sin. Notwithstanding this, many (most?) Catholic couples take a different view and use contraceptives, etc. You could say this is hypocritical; or you could just say it’s an exercise of freedom of conscience, which even we Catholics can do.
As for what should be taught in schools, I don’t think the Catholic view should be taught as the incontrovertible truth, even in Catholic schools. Yes, it’s legitimate for Catholic schools to teach their children about what the Church’s position actually is; but they should also put opposing points of view. In practice, they can’t get away without doing so – either because of the curriculum and the fact they are required to teach things from an ‘objective’, scientific point of view; or because the children themselves are exposed to so many conflicting influences that they simply raise the questions and demand answers of their own accord. Which is a good thing.
Maybe it would also have been a good thing if you had been taught what the Catholic view and practice really is; which could have removed some of your apparent misconceptions.
Maybe it would also have been a good thing if you had been taught what the Catholic view and practice really is; which could have removed some of your apparent misconceptions.
Or not. Although since I oppose you and your Church I can understand why you’d wish I shared your mental straight-jacket since, in the post-enlightenment world, you can’t have us heretics burned at the stake any more which, I know, must be a source of tremendous disappointment to you.
Considering that my grandfather’s brother was an IRA General in the Irish Civil war and then became a Catholic Priest or that my father was basically tortured by the Christian Brothers until he was 14 in Ireland where the Church had a free hand in education gave me more than enough insight into the workings of the Church and, more particularly, how it’s teachings were all about maintaining it’s own temporal power.
The only thing it did better, of course, was cover up for rampant pedophillia – moving pedo Priests around if the complaints got too hot but never getting rid of them, silencing the victims, but protecting the kiddy fiddlers. Faith in action, I guess. Actually, considering that history, it really is the rest of society that should be keen on protecting children from an organisation that has institutionally cossetted and protected predatory pedophiles…
@ Shaun Pilkington:
Clearly, there have been, and continue to be, terrible abuses; but the fact that you reel out this personal background in a sense only demonstrates all the more how personal and subjective your views on the Church are.
There’s absolutely no excuse for paedophilia, and the Church’s behaviour in the matter has been appalling. That said, it’s an unfortunate fact that paedophilia exists everywhere. The Church doesn’t have a monopoly in it; just as it doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth.
No but it did deliberately and institutionally cover up for what were known groups of pedophile priests, protecting them from criticism and silencing the victims. But yeah, light a candle and play with some prayer beads and praise the Lord, right?