Anglican Mainstream

From the Church Mouse blog

From Mailonline

Schoolchildren as young as six are subjecting teachers to a shocking level of sexual abuse – from leering and sexual comments to groping and threats of rape.

New figures reveal that hundreds of teachers have been touched inappropriately or propositioned by pupils, and other reports say that children have fondled themselves in class in a bid to embarrass or intimidate their teacher.

It comes as police reports reveal that children – also as young as six in some cases – are being arrested for serious crimes including assault and battery and robbery.

The increasing incidence of children sexual harassing their teachers has been highlighted in private logs kept by local councils, which have been made available through the Freedom Of Information Act.

Read here

Exclusive to The Church Mouse

You don’t agree to take part in a documentary by Richard Dawkins about faith schools and expect to be able to convince him that they are a valuable part of our maintained education system! But I have to say that in the hour-long interview I took part in earlier this summer I was pleasantly surprised at how carefully Professor Dawkins listened to my points and sought to engage with me on the reality of what CofE schools are about. He was genuinely taken aback to be filming in a Church of England ‘faith’ school where 85% of the pupils are Bengali Muslim. That clearly didn’t fit the picture he was trying to establish of exclusive admissions policies and indoctrinatory RE.

It was more than a little disappointing that, in the final edit, last night’s documentary managed to present a thinly-argued case as a matter of common sense. The programme was more interested in scaremongering than in what actually happens. Today’s reviews in the newspapers, sadly, seem to have bought the story, too.

I’m grateful to Church Mouse for the chance to hopefully correct some of the distorted assertions, and to fill in some more of the details I discussed with Professor Dawkins:

Read here

By Bill Bumpas, OneNewsNow

News that several "gay" and lesbian-identified college and university presidents met recently to organize a push for the homosexual agenda is drawing the ire of pro-family organizations.

From The Spectator

Right now Britain is engaged in the single most dramatic schooling reform for half a century, freeing up teachers and empowering Britain’s faith schools. Against this backdrop The Spectator dares to ask the obvious: should taxpayers really be funding faith schools? There is already evidence that ambitious parents are faking their own beliefs in order to place their children in these insitutions. Is that inappropriate, or simple testament to the fact that faith schools are also better schools? The Spectator debate panel will be armed with wit, insight and perhaps a little piety.

For the motion:

• Polly Toynbee, Columnist, The Guardian
• Minette Marrin, Journalist, Broadcaster and Fiction Writer
• Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, Minister, Maidenhead Synagogue

Against the motion:

• Cristina Odone, Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Studies
• Bishop Malcolm McMahon, of Nottingham
• Melanie McDonagh

Join The Spectator debate, chaired by Andrew Neil, on Tuesday 12 October 2010 at Church House, Westminster SW1 between 6.45pm and 8.30pm.

More details here

By Bill Bumpas, OneNewsNow

By R R Reno, First Things

Recently, Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor who worked for Newman Center at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, was told by his department chair that he could no longer teach there. His offense: explaining and clarifying the Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality while teaching a class on Catholicism. A couple of students complained to the department chair with the usual charge: his moral reasoning is hate speech that creates a hostile environment for gays and lesbians.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Keeton, a student at Augusta State University in Georgia, was forced to undergo "sensitivity training." Her offense: believing Christian teaching on homosexuality. She was told that if she did not change her moral beliefs and affirm homosexuality, she could not graduate with a degree in counseling.

Note the difference. Ken Howell did not insist that students believe or affirm the reasoned Catholic arguments against the moral legitimacy of homosexual acts. Rather, he required students who had chosen to taken an elective course on Catholicism to know and engage those arguments.

Read here

From Church Times

UNIVERSITY theology departments are facing a turbulent autumn with rounds of staffing cuts and closures.

The Student Christian Movement (SCM) said that it was “very con­cerned” over the plans of some uni­versities to axe courses and shed staff. Redundancies are likely to occur in departments across the country, as the higher-education sector suffers from swingeing government spend­ing cuts.

The reduced budget for universities means that an estimated 200,000 students will be left without university places this autumn.

Bangor University has announced that its School of Theology and Religious Studies will close, and the course will be “phased out”. The de­partment will merge with the equi­valent department at Trinity Saint David.

A spokesperson for Bangor Uni­versity said: “This is part of a new strategic approach to the subject in Wales, which is designed to safeguard and strengthen theology teaching, and which will result in the creation of a national centre of excellence in teaching and research in theology and religious studies.”

At the University of Birmingham, which has one of the largest and strongest theology and religion de­part­ments of any university in the UK, up to a third of staff could be cut. An ongoing review of the department will report this autumn. Eleven members of staff are earmarked for redundancy.

Read here

By Ed West, Telegraph

From The Spectator

Right now Britain is engaged in the single most dramatic schooling reform for half a century, freeing up teachers and empowering Britain’s faith schools. Against this backdrop The Spectator dares to ask the obvious: should taxpayers really be funding faith schools? There is already evidence that ambitious parents are faking their own beliefs in order to place their children in these insitutions. Is that inappropriate, or simple testament to the fact that faith schools are also better schools? The Spectator debate panel will be armed with wit, insight and perhaps a little piety.

For the motion:

• Polly Toynbee, Columnist, The Guardian
• Minette Marrin, Journalist, Broadcaster and Fiction Writer
• Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, Minister, Maidenhead Synagogue

Against the motion:

• Cristina Odone, Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Studies
• Bishop Malcolm McMahon, of Nottingham
• Speaker to be announced

Join The Spectator debate, chaired by Andrew Neil, on Tuesday 12 October 2010 at Church House, Westminster SW1 between 6.45pm and 8.30pm.

More details here

 

By Graeme Paton, Telegraph

The Education Secretary said he would be "interested" to look at proposals for non-religious schools from figures such Professor Richard Dawkins.

Prof Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said last month that he approved of the idea of setting up a "free-thinking” school.

The comments follow the publication of Coalition plans to give parents' groups, teachers and charities powers to open their own schools at taxpayers' expense.

Addressing the Commons education select committee, Mr Gove said parents opposed to faith-based schools should be properly catered for in the state education system.

"One of the most striking things that I read recently was a thought from Richard Dawkins that he might want to take advantage of our education legislation to open a new school which was set up on an explicitly atheist basis,” he said.

"It wouldn't be my choice of school, but the whole point about our education reforms is that they are, in the broad sense of the word, small "l", liberal. That they exist to provide that greater degree of choice."

Read here

Read the rest of this entry »

By Bill Bumpas, OneNewsNow

The National Education Association (NEA) continues to alienate more and more of its conservative constituents as the organization showed its liberal leanings at its 2010 national convention.

by Bill Bumpas for OneNewsNow

The National Education Association (NEA) continues to alienate more and more of its conservative constituents as the organization showed its liberal leanings at its 2010 national convention.

At this year's meeting in New Orleans, the largest professional organization and labor union in the U.S. recognized a new caucus: the NEA Drag Queen Caucus. (See list of recognized NEA caucuses )

"They already have had the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, [and] Transgender Caucus and apparently felt that the drag queens needed their own caucus," explains Finn Laursen, executive director of Christian Educators Association International (CEAI).

Read more

By Margaret Holness, Church Times

THE Church of England was warned last week that, unless there are further amendments, its 140-year-old partnership with the Government over schools could be ended by the new Academies Bill (News, 25 June).

The warning came in a client-advice paper from Lee Bolton Monier Williams (LBMW), the firm of solicitors that acts for the National Society, the body set up in 1811 to found church schools. It works closely with the C of E’s Education Division to maintain and promote church schools.

The new Bill is potentially the largest change in the provision of education in England since the 1870 Act established a system of state schools, the paper says. Before 1870, schools had been provided over­whelmingly by voluntary bodies, principally the Church of England. Thereafter, the balance swung towards state provision; but the new legislation could swing the balance back again to the voluntary sector, says LBMW’s education specialist, Howard Dellar.

“We suppose that the Govern­ment would ideally wish to see the end of local authorities as providers of schools.” He warns, however, that the new shape of voluntary provision would not be as before. “This Bill could bring the historic nature of the dual system to an end,” he writes.

Read here

By Martin Beckford, Telegraph

The author of The God Delusion, who has previously described religious education provided by faith schools as a form of child abuse, said he would want pupils to be taught to be skeptical and to appreciate the value of evidence rather than receive “indoctrination” about atheism.

He also said that his “free-thinking school” would provide lessons about the gods of ancient Greece and Norse legend, and would treat the Bible as a work of literature rather than a basis for morality.

The former Oxford University professor and evolutionary biologist, now a bestselling author who has called for the Pope to be arrested for “crimes against humanity” during his visit to Britain, made his comments during a webchat with users of Mumsnet.

Prof Dawkins was asked to set up a “secular school” or an “atheist free school” as an antidote to faith schools by women who believe they are divisive and anti-scientific.

Under plans disclosed by the Coalition last week, parents, charities and voluntary groups will be able to set up “free schools” funded by public money but independent from state control.

He replied: “Thank you for suggesting that I should start an atheist free school. I like the idea very much, although I would prefer to call it a free-thinking free school.

“I would never want to indoctrinate children in atheism, any more than in religion. Instead, children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded.

Read here

By Gerald Warner, Telegraph

Although I am not religious myself, I would happily send my children to faith schools. However, if we pay for them as state schools, they should be open to all. We should not see in the bill a rowing back from the commitment to include the wider community in faith schools that we have extracted from the churches to date. Nor should we see an increase in sectarian teaching. There are Catholic schools that teach that Gandhi is burning in Hell. Frankly, I do not think that we should fund that on the state. (Lords Hansard, Academies Bill Debate, 7 June, Column 562)

By Peter Hitchens, Mailonline

It was the churches, not the State, who began mass education in this country. Thanks to their schools, they also spread the Christian story and its revolutionary moral message – helping to make Britain what it was until recently: a beacon of ordered liberty.

When the schools were nationalised after 1945, the State promised to carry on teaching the faith. But that promise has now been almost completely broken, even in many officially Christian schools. Ofsted – too busy classifying terrible schools as ‘good’ – has at last caught up with this scandal.

Christianity has been under attack here for decades, especially in the universities, so it is no surprise that it’s hard to find anyone willing or able to teach it.

But I wonder whether the anti-Christians will like the society that results from the death of the faith that shaped our civilisation. Sharia law, here we come.

By Julie Henry, Telegraph

Schools are neglecting to teach children the core beliefs of Christianity in religious education lessons, a damning new report will reveal.

From The Telegraph

Children as young as 11 are being asked to debate myths surrounding rape – including claims that “women ask for it by wearing short skirts”.

A charity is distributing teaching materials to secondary schools as part of a campaign to end violence against women.

The pack, which schools can buy for £100, covers subjects such as domestic violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, prostitution and human trafficking.

Rape Crisis said the lessons were intended to encourage mixed classes of boys and girls to discuss issues surrounding rape.

In one class, pupils are asked to debate claims that “women enjoy rape”, while another lesson instructs children to discuss the myth that “women ask for it by wearing short skirts, drinking alcohol etc”.

Youngsters are also encouraged to act out a role play, including four-letter words, where a boy and girl recall a drunken encounter.  Read here