Is that realistic? Sometimes it may be too late for the state to do this. I’m reading that book called They **** you up ” by Oliver James whose clinical studies show that a child’s personality & mental ‘hard wiring’ (inc. conscience) is largely developed by 3 – well before the state education.

The child’s (home)environment is instrumental in this early development. We cannot leave all the responsibility to the state to cover everything.

Absolutely. Apart from my teachers, I have to thank my parents and family for making us read, read, and read and holding education up to the highest degree. Sure, they often view education as a way to make money (ie, study medicine or engineering so you can ‘settle down’ well) as opposed to learning in general, but they were happy to see me reading about history, politics, etc, and they always encouraged my brother and I to do so. Learning and education is often times 50% on the family and 50% on teachers. Both need to work in tandem to make sure children get an informed education.

As to your experiences in a non faith school. Children do pick on each other.I was picked on when I started to wear glasses at 11. My response was not to find a another school with only spectacle wearing students but deal with the problem – as my parents expected me to rather than run away from it.

I went to a school in a low income area – my father being a teacher believed the combination of a striving child (backed by parents who inculated love for learning, challenging) seeking an education from their teacher was the basic ingredient for a successful education. It worked. I had some good teachers who taught me to achieve in classes where I remember a boy throwing a chair at the Physics teacher (I also got teased by the boys in that class as I was one of few girl studying Physics…). Yes I got a few not so good teachers who taught by rote but even they, when I was coasting, pulled me up on it. Am I glad that I got the opportunity for such an education – we should not wish it away seeking for some fuzzy nirvana – some children in underdeveloped countries would kill for such an education.

Answer: because the secular education seeks to be all embracing.

I don’t know why you see it as everyone paying for ‘them’, while they’re sitting back and getting handouts.

Correct.

Religious people also pay taxes and they contribute to a secular education they don’t believe in;

Faith schools are supposed to teach national curriculum, which is secular, no? Are you saying they don’t believe in it?

and Shuggy’s points. Again, if you’re talking about ‘faith schools’ in themselves, that’s completely one thing. State funding is quite another. Why should parents who want to exclude their children from mainstream society want mainstream society to pay for that? it’s ridiculous. good trick too.

Like Leon, I want to give a big shout out to my US history teacher Mr. Rhone and my English teacher Mrs. Lammers. And my other history teacher, what’s-his-face. Might as well include my bio teacher, MUN instructor, and physiology teacher. Much love to you all.

When I’m delivering a course on philosophy for children (or P4C as I’m apparently expected to call it) one of the first thing I hope my students grasp is that ‘it’s obvious’ is seldom a valid argument.

I doubt any teacher is that important in the development of someone’s philosophy on life

Hmm. Some people obviously haven’t seen Good Will Hunting, or Dead Poets Society. Or a certain classic sitcom involving characters with names like Dwayne Wayne.

Or, indeed, the legendary ’80s TV show Head of the Class, depicting the even more legendary inspirational teacher “Mr Moore”.

I doubt any teacher is that important in the development of someone’s philosophy on life.

Heh you obviously never had any good teachers (big shout out to Mr Doherty!).

Not many are the products of madrasas either. Unless you count the ability to reel off the Quran from memory as a form of enlightenment.

Seriously? I mean, really? I’d be wary of saying something as sweeping as that. You certainly don’t speak for me or for a lot of other people I know. I had some teachers who were exceptionally good and whose teaching definitely sent me in directions I wouldn’t otherwise have followed.

critical thinkers and enlightenment philosphers aren’t produed via GCSE syllabi

I think you are confusing subject matter with quality of teaching. A GCSE syllabus is just a list of topics to be taught. A good teacher’s teaching is far more than just ticking a load of boxes on a form. The point is not that the subjects are taught, but how they are taught, and how teachers teach their pupils to think about those subjects. I’m not going to say that there aren’t some teachers who teach as if they were ticking off boxes on a form, I’m sure there are – but most of the teachers I’ve met, both as a student and as an adult, approached teaching as a vocation, not just as a job, and were genuinely committed to widening the horizons of the children they taught.

It sounds to me as if perhaps your teachers weren’t particularly inspired, but I wouldn’t use that as a springboard to say that teachers generally have no real effect on a student’s outlook, or that education doesn’t produce critical thinkers.

Don, I haven’t conducted studies on this, nor am I woman of conviction. But it’s fairly obvious that critical thinkers and enlightenment philosophers aren’t produced via GCSE syllabi

Ala, I have in fact worked as a teacher. And no, it is not only about teaching the barest possible. It is about arming students with the basic tools to think critically.

I’m not really sure what your point is, to be honest. I don’t get why you think that good schooling amounts to ‘philosophical enlightenment’. And you seem to take the abysmal state of education as proof that schooling sucks, that it should be really fuzzy and warm, or that it should be done away with. You don’t hate the institution itself, but rather the way the institution is run.

“Desi, funnily enough some of my best teachers, who expanded our minds and taught us to be critical, were from my faith school, so there goes one of your arguments that this is somehow impossible.”

Didn’t you write this earlier:

“When I felt an itch for enlightenment I went home and read a book or watched panorama.”

If your schooling at a faith school was so great, why go home and read or watch Panorama for purposes of enlightenment? Consistency, please.