Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Education - state vs private
On the day following the recent Town Meeting with David Lammy, Christy added a short post to ask how the meeting had gone. Matt was the first to reply. In that reply he echoed a question asked at the meeting about the education of MPs' children.
That question opened a debate about whether the education of MPs' children should be a topic for public debate as well as about private vs. public education more broadly. These two related issues came to dominate the discussion which asked a question about a meeting which was 99% focussed on other local issues.
May I suggest that we continue the debate in general terms about MPs choices about education. There is significant question as to whether we should have any debate which results in a focus being placed on any particular MP's children.
To allow the debate about the main issues of the meeting to flourish but to also allow the education one space, I have moved all the education related debates to this thread.
The first post below is Matt's original one and so includes issues other than education. I have added it in its entirety to provide context. All other comments have been added in full. None have been deleted or altered.
Reply by matt on 13 February 2009 at 7:01am It was well attended, possibly because it's the first general public meeting Lammy has had in Harringay ward since becoming our MP 9 years ago (that I'm aware of). I learnt the following; 1. Lammy was at the inauguration of Obama 2. Lammy wouldn't commit to sending his children to his nearest local school, located in the very road he resides in. 3. Lammy was happy to publicly lambast the local Labour councillor over the issue of HMOs and has started to take certain cases to the ombudsman rather than deal with this Labour Council 4. HOL was praised by Lammy as an important local forum, after Hugh & Liz met with Lammy last week. 5. Lammy emphasized that he has little power as our MP to represent us decisively on the issues of traffic & gambling and can only 'lobby' the council and/or fellow MPs.
6. There's a general election in the not too distant future.
Reply by Julie on 13 February 2009 at 9:44am
David did not say he wasn't sending his children to local schools, he said he wouldn't allow them to be brought into his political life and wasn't going to discuss their schooling plans.
The local councillor who attended the meeting was told off because she began to fall into the trap of emptily defending the council and the meeting, rightly, got annoyed with her. All elected members have got to stop boasting about how many awards and stars they've got, when there are clearly problems. However, she was the only councillor to attend the meeting and she is a respected and hardworking councillor for the ward.
It is not David's role to 'deal with' with council. He is not a member of the local council, he's actually a local resident, perhaps with a bit more clout than other residents. He doesn't line manage, or appoint, anybody in housing, planning or enforcement. His role is to represent Tottenham constituents in parliament. The council are very annoyed with him over the ombudsman case, in fact, and his office has uncovered landlord fraud that council officers should have discovered.
It was a courteous and constructive meeting and David put himself up, for more than two hours, to take open questions. Not many MPs would do that.
Reply by chris~ty on 13 February 2009 at 10:28am
I am going to get shot for this I know, however,
If anyone wants information on how to send their kids to public schools very cheaply or for free please contact me, I did it. Before I am shot, my kids also went to state schools too. I assume David Lammy is considering not going state...
Reply by chris~ty
Its a contentious issue and a very political one.
Bursaries and Scholarships are the way to go, public schools are crying out for clever kids of all backgrounds to take up the scholarships etc.
Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE)
As Matt says, there's probably a General Election in the offing, even before our next local elections. Perhaps North Harringay School should get a big banner up: "DAVID LAMMY, GET YOUR KIDS OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!" (btw, does chris~ty mean 'public' or 'private' schools?)
Reply by chris~ty
I mean public ie, excellent education, centuries old and private. Unlike private, expensive for no real reason in most, but not all cases.
Reply by james walsh
christy please explain "..... centuries old and private. unlike private,........."
i'm lost.
Reply by chris~ty
What I mean is private = all fee paying schools. public = some some of the fee paying schools.
OAE was asking what I meant. And, also the local primary schools are excellent, my kids went to one.
Reply by james walsh
i thought that it was generaly accepted that public school and private school were the same thing. whereas state school was where ordinairy folks went. non brits get confused which is no suprise.
Reply by chris~ty
Ordinary folks at Public Schools too - Westminster, Harrow, Eton, which was my original point. People in Harringay with not much dosh and who have clever kids can send them to top schools, if anyone wants to know how - they should contact me.
Private = schools people pay for not necessarily public. These schools are sometimes very good, sometimes not.
Public = schools people pay for that are famous, offering excellent education and old. These schools are often very well funded and are crying out for clever, not wealthy kids to attend.
Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE)
Chris~ty, OAE wasn't really asking for information - he was just being a little historically mischievous, as is sometimes his wont. As this belongs in a different thread, I'll try to be brief. Your original point ("ordinary folks at Public Schools too ... people in Harringay with not much dosh and who have clever kids can send them to top schools") goes unintentionally to the heart of the matter.
Eton, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby and the rest were all founded for the education of the poor - in contrast to the elite private schooling reserved for the sons of their lords and masters. Nobody with an income of more than 'five marks' per annum could send their kids to Eton. The original Wykehamists of Westminster were 70 sons of the poor - but Wykeham wisely provided a further 10 places for sons of his wealthy benefactors. All of these schools were for "clever kids" (male) of the public poor. THAT's WHY THEY WERE CALLED PUBLIC!
Of course the skullduggery set in in the following centuries and continued right up till the so-called Education Act of the 1860's/70s. The Public School foundations were hijacked and the deserving poor had their public schools stolen from under them. Read up on how Westminster was grabbed on the grounds that it didn't really have an Elizabethan charter with an option for the poor. And that scamp, the supposedly great Thomas Arnold of Rugby managed to de-register the poor and ensure that they couldn't make it up from the lower school to Rugby proper.
So now the clever and deserving poor (or not-so-poor) of Harringay Ladder & Gardens should go cap in hand to fill up a few spare places in the back rows of the halls of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster and the rest - places that were originally theirs by right? Chris-ty, if they take up these places will their History syllabus cover the truth about their new 'alma mater' ?
Unfortunately, England's deserving poor never had even an inglorious revolution - mainly because they'd been castrated after the first Poll Tax revolt. They didn't have to wait for Thatcher.
Reply by james walsh
Nice, i like that oae.
Also don't forget that cambridge university was set up in reponse to a botched murder investigation at oxford of a young girl in 1209. When the suspect, a student at oxford, appeared to have fled it was taken out on his room mates and they were hanged. In protest scholars moved to cambridge and the rest is history as they say.
Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE)
Ta, James. Excuse my unpardonable lapse above. "Wykehamists of Westminster"??? I don't think so. Winchester, of course.
Reply by chris~ty
OAE.
"A few spare places in the back rows of Westminster?!" What an interesting statement. My son sat on no back rows when he went to Westminster. His history syllabus did cover the 'truth' as you put it. The headmaster of Westminster at the time sat me down and said the following: "Tell your friends, we need kids like him" and without kids like him, ie, the not so wealthy of Harringay, at these schools, the best schools in Britain are full of rich kids. Eton, Westminster etc are desperate to give clever kids a chance from ALL BACKGROUNDS, clever kids from Haringey SHOULD go.
I have made it my work to tell my friends and this is what I am doing.
When my son went to the awful sink comprehensive I tried my best and become a governor there, I supported my local school and it was simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Reply by Birdy_Too
It is up to everyday folk of Harringay to make them good enough. The local primaries around here have come on leaps and bounds in recent years due to parents showing interest and confidence. Secondary schools are a problem for every parent in this area and you have to do what you think is right, which differs from parent to parent.
Education begins at home and a large proportion of it continues at home as they get older. Most of the people I know came through the disfunctional comprehensive system and are doing fine.
Reply by DavidJ
The idea of a LABOUR MP, a LABOUR MP not sending his children to the (perfectly decent) local school over the road is beyond parody.
Reply by Julie
The MP is entitled to keep very quiet about where his kids are at school. He's also entitled to say it's none of your business. It doesn't mean he's enrolled them in a private prep school. Accept the idea that they may well be at (or be going to) either of the excellent ladder schools, Stroud Green, St Mary's, or the wonderful Seven Sisters for that matter. You'd be annoyed if he asked about where you intend sending your kids. Give him the same space and be fair.
Reply by james walsh
i think it's right that lammy or anyone else should be left alone to choose where their kids go to school. i also, paradoxically, think it's ok to ridicule members of the labour government whos responsibility it is to maintain state schools to a sufficient standard yet do not and opt out when ordinairy folk do not have the means.
i agree with those that say leave him alone yet i also agree with those that are angry with a system administered by those who choose not to be affected by their OWN parlimentary actions.
Reply by chris~ty
That paradox is spot on. He is entitled to his privacy and to make private decisions on his children's education however, will he send his children to local secondary schools? And if not why not?
The issue of primary education is a red herring, having travelled all over the UK seeing both private and state primary schools I am not sure that there are any differences worth talking about or worth paying for. Where it really does make a difference is at secondary school level and I really do wonder, why is it our MPs don't feel confident in their local schools?
Reply by DavidJ
"You'd be annoyed if he asked about where you intend sending your kids."
Why on earth would that annoy me?
I do not understand the argument that suggests that this is a private issue. To me education is a serious public and community issue.
That question opened a debate about whether the education of MPs' children should be a topic for public debate as well as about private vs. public education more broadly. These two related issues came to dominate the discussion which asked a question about a meeting which was 99% focussed on other local issues.
May I suggest that we continue the debate in general terms about MPs choices about education. There is significant question as to whether we should have any debate which results in a focus being placed on any particular MP's children.
To allow the debate about the main issues of the meeting to flourish but to also allow the education one space, I have moved all the education related debates to this thread.
The first post below is Matt's original one and so includes issues other than education. I have added it in its entirety to provide context. All other comments have been added in full. None have been deleted or altered.
Reply by matt on 13 February 2009 at 7:01am It was well attended, possibly because it's the first general public meeting Lammy has had in Harringay ward since becoming our MP 9 years ago (that I'm aware of). I learnt the following; 1. Lammy was at the inauguration of Obama 2. Lammy wouldn't commit to sending his children to his nearest local school, located in the very road he resides in. 3. Lammy was happy to publicly lambast the local Labour councillor over the issue of HMOs and has started to take certain cases to the ombudsman rather than deal with this Labour Council 4. HOL was praised by Lammy as an important local forum, after Hugh & Liz met with Lammy last week. 5. Lammy emphasized that he has little power as our MP to represent us decisively on the issues of traffic & gambling and can only 'lobby' the council and/or fellow MPs.
6. There's a general election in the not too distant future.
Reply by Julie on 13 February 2009 at 9:44am
David did not say he wasn't sending his children to local schools, he said he wouldn't allow them to be brought into his political life and wasn't going to discuss their schooling plans.
The local councillor who attended the meeting was told off because she began to fall into the trap of emptily defending the council and the meeting, rightly, got annoyed with her. All elected members have got to stop boasting about how many awards and stars they've got, when there are clearly problems. However, she was the only councillor to attend the meeting and she is a respected and hardworking councillor for the ward.
It is not David's role to 'deal with' with council. He is not a member of the local council, he's actually a local resident, perhaps with a bit more clout than other residents. He doesn't line manage, or appoint, anybody in housing, planning or enforcement. His role is to represent Tottenham constituents in parliament. The council are very annoyed with him over the ombudsman case, in fact, and his office has uncovered landlord fraud that council officers should have discovered.
It was a courteous and constructive meeting and David put himself up, for more than two hours, to take open questions. Not many MPs would do that.
Reply by chris~ty on 13 February 2009 at 10:28am
I am going to get shot for this I know, however,
If anyone wants information on how to send their kids to public schools very cheaply or for free please contact me, I did it. Before I am shot, my kids also went to state schools too. I assume David Lammy is considering not going state...
Reply by chris~ty
Its a contentious issue and a very political one.
Bursaries and Scholarships are the way to go, public schools are crying out for clever kids of all backgrounds to take up the scholarships etc.
Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE)
As Matt says, there's probably a General Election in the offing, even before our next local elections. Perhaps North Harringay School should get a big banner up: "DAVID LAMMY, GET YOUR KIDS OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!" (btw, does chris~ty mean 'public' or 'private' schools?)
Reply by chris~ty
I mean public ie, excellent education, centuries old and private. Unlike private, expensive for no real reason in most, but not all cases.
Reply by james walsh
christy please explain "..... centuries old and private. unlike private,........."
i'm lost.
Reply by chris~ty
What I mean is private = all fee paying schools. public = some some of the fee paying schools.
OAE was asking what I meant. And, also the local primary schools are excellent, my kids went to one.
Reply by james walsh
i thought that it was generaly accepted that public school and private school were the same thing. whereas state school was where ordinairy folks went. non brits get confused which is no suprise.
Reply by chris~ty
Ordinary folks at Public Schools too - Westminster, Harrow, Eton, which was my original point. People in Harringay with not much dosh and who have clever kids can send them to top schools, if anyone wants to know how - they should contact me.
Private = schools people pay for not necessarily public. These schools are sometimes very good, sometimes not.
Public = schools people pay for that are famous, offering excellent education and old. These schools are often very well funded and are crying out for clever, not wealthy kids to attend.
Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE)
Chris~ty, OAE wasn't really asking for information - he was just being a little historically mischievous, as is sometimes his wont. As this belongs in a different thread, I'll try to be brief. Your original point ("ordinary folks at Public Schools too ... people in Harringay with not much dosh and who have clever kids can send them to top schools") goes unintentionally to the heart of the matter.
Eton, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby and the rest were all founded for the education of the poor - in contrast to the elite private schooling reserved for the sons of their lords and masters. Nobody with an income of more than 'five marks' per annum could send their kids to Eton. The original Wykehamists of Westminster were 70 sons of the poor - but Wykeham wisely provided a further 10 places for sons of his wealthy benefactors. All of these schools were for "clever kids" (male) of the public poor. THAT's WHY THEY WERE CALLED PUBLIC!
Of course the skullduggery set in in the following centuries and continued right up till the so-called Education Act of the 1860's/70s. The Public School foundations were hijacked and the deserving poor had their public schools stolen from under them. Read up on how Westminster was grabbed on the grounds that it didn't really have an Elizabethan charter with an option for the poor. And that scamp, the supposedly great Thomas Arnold of Rugby managed to de-register the poor and ensure that they couldn't make it up from the lower school to Rugby proper.
So now the clever and deserving poor (or not-so-poor) of Harringay Ladder & Gardens should go cap in hand to fill up a few spare places in the back rows of the halls of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster and the rest - places that were originally theirs by right? Chris-ty, if they take up these places will their History syllabus cover the truth about their new 'alma mater' ?
Unfortunately, England's deserving poor never had even an inglorious revolution - mainly because they'd been castrated after the first Poll Tax revolt. They didn't have to wait for Thatcher.
Reply by james walsh
Nice, i like that oae.
Also don't forget that cambridge university was set up in reponse to a botched murder investigation at oxford of a young girl in 1209. When the suspect, a student at oxford, appeared to have fled it was taken out on his room mates and they were hanged. In protest scholars moved to cambridge and the rest is history as they say.
Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE)
Ta, James. Excuse my unpardonable lapse above. "Wykehamists of Westminster"??? I don't think so. Winchester, of course.
Reply by chris~ty
OAE.
"A few spare places in the back rows of Westminster?!" What an interesting statement. My son sat on no back rows when he went to Westminster. His history syllabus did cover the 'truth' as you put it. The headmaster of Westminster at the time sat me down and said the following: "Tell your friends, we need kids like him" and without kids like him, ie, the not so wealthy of Harringay, at these schools, the best schools in Britain are full of rich kids. Eton, Westminster etc are desperate to give clever kids a chance from ALL BACKGROUNDS, clever kids from Haringey SHOULD go.
I have made it my work to tell my friends and this is what I am doing.
When my son went to the awful sink comprehensive I tried my best and become a governor there, I supported my local school and it was simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Reply by Birdy_Too
It is up to everyday folk of Harringay to make them good enough. The local primaries around here have come on leaps and bounds in recent years due to parents showing interest and confidence. Secondary schools are a problem for every parent in this area and you have to do what you think is right, which differs from parent to parent.
Education begins at home and a large proportion of it continues at home as they get older. Most of the people I know came through the disfunctional comprehensive system and are doing fine.
Reply by DavidJ
The idea of a LABOUR MP, a LABOUR MP not sending his children to the (perfectly decent) local school over the road is beyond parody.
Reply by Julie
The MP is entitled to keep very quiet about where his kids are at school. He's also entitled to say it's none of your business. It doesn't mean he's enrolled them in a private prep school. Accept the idea that they may well be at (or be going to) either of the excellent ladder schools, Stroud Green, St Mary's, or the wonderful Seven Sisters for that matter. You'd be annoyed if he asked about where you intend sending your kids. Give him the same space and be fair.
Reply by james walsh
i think it's right that lammy or anyone else should be left alone to choose where their kids go to school. i also, paradoxically, think it's ok to ridicule members of the labour government whos responsibility it is to maintain state schools to a sufficient standard yet do not and opt out when ordinairy folk do not have the means.
i agree with those that say leave him alone yet i also agree with those that are angry with a system administered by those who choose not to be affected by their OWN parlimentary actions.
Reply by chris~ty
That paradox is spot on. He is entitled to his privacy and to make private decisions on his children's education however, will he send his children to local secondary schools? And if not why not?
The issue of primary education is a red herring, having travelled all over the UK seeing both private and state primary schools I am not sure that there are any differences worth talking about or worth paying for. Where it really does make a difference is at secondary school level and I really do wonder, why is it our MPs don't feel confident in their local schools?
Reply by DavidJ
"You'd be annoyed if he asked about where you intend sending your kids."
Why on earth would that annoy me?
I do not understand the argument that suggests that this is a private issue. To me education is a serious public and community issue.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Fair enough. Hugh, can we have your thoughts on this post too; Party Time Harringay 2009!
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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Julie Wrote"If anybody at Thursday's meeting had been asked, by David, 'What do you intend to do with your kids when they reach school age?' They would have been justified in answering that it was none of his business. No?"
If anyone was to ask me that I would answer, why would I want to hide that? It's personal choice I guess, but for me I would tell them why I sent my child to a particular school.
On a side note I met Joan Walley (Labour MP - Stoke North) yesterday and had nothing but praise for Mr Lammy : )
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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If Mr Lammy stood up as an MP at a public meeting and said that local schools were brilliant and everybody should send their children to local schools then I think we would be justified in asking him what his intentions are. But there seems to be a whiff of little Leo Blair and the MMR vaccine here. Silence breeds suspicion.
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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I wondered when the Blairs would take their bow in this discussion. I'm not sure whether we can blame Cherie for the present outbreak of measles and I'm sure Leo's immune to rubella - I recall instead their decision to ship Euan and his sister Kate half way across London to the Oratory and a W.London convent school rather than (a) support their local Islington comprehensive; (b) expose their offspring to the horrors of some blackboard jungle sink in the heart of Islington's socialist republic. (Choose a or b according to your usual predilections.)
Fact is, though, the Blairs supported their local PRIMARY school (St Joan of Arc, Highbury) without question for their first three children, even through the final half-term after their move to Downing St. Yes, it has always been a consistently good school and, yes, it's Catholic, so for a practising catholic Ma and a (then) closet Catholic Da it was an obvious choice - but it still ranks as the local community school within the state system. One would expect a local politician and government minister with a QC wife to do no other. St Joan of Arc, I'm sure, flourished and gained from the experience and so, too, the Blairs.
The irony was that when the Blairs (like Harriet Harman) opted for the Oratory cachet, and the tory-leaning pretensions of its headmaster, poor Islington Green School took all the flak from every lazy journalist in London. Izzy Green should never have been in the frame but when in the mid-90's the school went into 'special measures' and through three heads in as many years the headline writers trotted out the old "school rejected by Blair" cliche ad nauseam.
Meanwhile up in Islington's extreme north, where the Borough meets Haringey, Camden & Barnet, we in St Aloysius' College hunkered down behind our parapets on Highgate Hill & Hornsey Lane. None of us stuck up our hand to say, 'No, we are the (Catholic) school the Blairs rejected - so please lay off Izzy Green.' Fact is, we too were going through a bit of a trough or a slough of despond, so why call the 'meedja's attention to ourselves? It took our own 'special measures' experience and our fifth headmaster in fifteen years to do the trick and put the school back on the road to where it used be. No great magic involved - just a bit of consistent traditional headmastering and a restoration of confidence in staff and students, and a bit of the vision thing.
Secondary schools (comprehensive, 'faith schools', 'academies', private and, I'm sure, 'public') go from peaks, through plateaus to troughs. Sometimes through sitting on their laurels or their butts, through loss of the vision thing, or through loss of a Sixth Form which no longer proves viable, or through opting to introduce a Sixth Form when neither staff nor students are up to it, or through governors appointing a succession of heads or deputies from practically non-existent shortlists, or just because these schools tend to be big and awkward beasts.
Would the embarrassment of having Blair's babes in the front row of every lesson have helped either Izzy Green or Aloysius' get over their problems? Probably not. But if national & local politicians, cabinet members and others who depend on the votes of local communities every four or five years are not in the lead in supporting their communities' schools to make them good enough for their own sons and daughters, why on earth should we even turn up to listen to them? By all means let them come over all shy and plead their own version of the fifth amendment when asked where they're schooling their kids, but never let us be told by (New) Labour's minders and fans, or (worse still) by leading reps and officers of the National Union I'm still proud to be a member of that we shouldn't dare ask the question.
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Bob, you're welcome to your view of 'faith' or Church run schools - whether as a citizen or a humanist. It's just that some of us with much longer and closer experience of schools across the range have found nothing socially divisive about the best of church schools, for example. Some may indeed offer that 'closet kind of selection' you mention (no doubt, one of the four Catholic schools I mentioned above certainly did just that among other more positive aspects of its educational offering) but the 130-year old school I spent the last quarter-century of my career in - a former Grammar which embraced as much as possible of the comprehensive and intercultural ideal in its past forty years - was certainly no bolt-hole for the middle classes. Just maybe, if our experience of 'faith schools' equals our experience of 'Iraq' we should avoid the comparison.
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A few points so a long post, sorry,
Other than some early primary schooling in a CoE VC school I have no direct experience. What I object to is tax monies being spent on facilities to which certain sectors of society are excluded solely based upon their religious convictions. This is not the case for any other form (as far as I am aware) of state delivered service. I have no objection to faith based schools if people wish to fund them themselves (as indeed there are private hospitals which are focused on certain faiths) but not at the expense of the general taxpayer.
In addition it has the potential to teach our children morals which are unsavoury, I know a number of people who have no religious convictions but attend church and lie on application forms to ensure their children get in at their choice of school. This cannot be good as a moral lesson (effectively, the ends justify the means).
As to MPs, I think it depends on their public comments on the issue. If Davis has siad publicly that he thinks selection and fee-paying schools are wrong then he should follow his convictions, otherwise he risks looking like someone who will say what is necessary for election. If he hasn't said that then he should be entitles to do what he pleases.
And finally as it relates to sending children to lower achieving local schools to improve the results as opposed to sending them to fee-paying schools, as someone who went through that I would never put my children’s happiness and education through that. I also have "done alright" from attending a local comprehensive but I wouldn't say it was because of the school but rather than because of my parents, however achievement and happiness are different things and I could never say I was happy at my secondary school. The over focus on achievement is causing us to de-prioritise children’s childhood too much in my opinion.
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Bob, I'm sorry if that seemed like an assumption too far on my part - I was simply trying to stress an experience across a range of types of schools over the years in these neighbouring boroughs. It seems to me that pupils are as likely to benefit from (or sometimes suffer from) as divergent an array of values or ethos, or lack thereof, across, say, different state comprehensives here in Haringey (or state comprehensives in more leafy Barnet) than they might notice if they started off Years 7&8 in a Catholic VA in N.Islington, transferred at Year 9 to a slightly CofE Foundation school in S.Islington's Old Street before opting for a recently introduced 6th Form in Hackney's Stoke Newington state comprehensive. Indeed the ethos of Haringey's leading comprehensive when it was Creighton in 1978, when I taught under Molly Hattersley's headship, would scarcely be replicated today now that it's Fortismere and, I believe, a 'Foundation' school mecca. (I'd better be careful as at least two Fortismere teachers are HOL members!)
It hasn't been my experience, or that of most of my colleagues, that many Church schools have been into indoctrination or inculcating a narrow hand-me-down set of values. The best of them would have a discernible ethos about the place which tends to lead students outwards towards a balanced view of the multicultural world around them rather than inwards to a narrow confessional view.
I recognise there are other strong contra arguments which both you and Anthony have touched upon. I won't pretend I have the answers - in fact during my time teaching in one or two Catholic schools I have found myself putting those very arguments rather than opposing them.
I just wonder why we can't all be a bit more relaxed about the range of schooling types we have inherited in this country from at least a millennium of social, political, religious and humanist history. If we were, we could extend the same understanding to the case for Islamic schools. Yes, I do genuinely get angry over the historical hijacking of the Public schools, but OK if they're beginning to rediscover even a teeny bit of their original raison d'etre and vocation. And fair dues to Chris-ty who seems to have really walked the walk and amassed the evidence on places at these 'people's schools'.
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Bob, I don't know when you left the West of Scotland but it's not like that now, and probably never was. Most of the sectarian violence took place in the fevered imagination of the journalists on the Scottish red-tops. I went to a Protestant school in Ayr and some of my friends went to a nominally Roman - Catholic school. It didn't stop us playing together afterwards. It's like the violence in Northern Ireland during the "Troubles" - It was never about religion.
Oh and there have been faith schools in this country for about 1500 years, which predates Blair by quite a bit.
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John D, our telepathy pleases me no end. I deliberately avoided mentioning my own happy schooling and my early years of teaching at home in Northern Ireland in both Catholic and state (= Protestant) schools. You've made my point for me. I'm afraid that on this side of the Irish Sea critics and commentators could never stop blaming our separate school eggs rather than the historical chicken.
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Check out the A&Es in any part of the country on a Saturday night and you will find that much of the violence of the patients is related to alcohol. I think it's crazy that a mind-altering drug such as this is on sale without prescription.
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Well, that's funny - two of us thought you did " I think that 'faith' schools are (after Iraq) Blair's worst gift to society "
I forgot to mention that when I was a Protestant teenager in the West of Scotland my first girlfriend was an RC. I have to admit though that she placed strict limits on the amount of "contact" I was allowed but that was not based on religion :-)
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OK, Bob, let's abolish them all - but first maybe we need to re-roll history's scroll back to Augustine of Canterbury or at least the Venerable Bede's time. And we'll have to send a lot of folks packing. Despite the rumours, Blair didn't invent 'faith schools'.
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