Forum Topic

Muslim Children and Sex Education

Muslim Children and Sex EducationMuslim parents teach their children to respect their teachers. From a very young age, we are taught that Islam teaches us that after our parents, our teachers are most deserving of respect. It must be an extremely confusing time for the Muslim parent in Leytonstone, London. For up to 30 parents may face prosecution for withdrawing their children from school, disobeying the teachers in the school, simply to secure a decent moral upbringing for their children. The school had decided to have a week of lessons about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history. Part of this was a special adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet retitled Romeo and Julian as well as fairytales and stories changed to show men falling in love with men. Rather than filling the heads of impressionable boys and girls with fatuous drivel about gay penguins, schools should be ashamed of the fact that they are sending children out into the world barely able to read, write and add up properly. Muslim children are leaving schools without learning their cultural roots and linguistic skills.The action was being taken against the parents as part of a policy of ' promoting tolerance'. So why not tolerate parents, who, for sincerely-held reasons, consider their children too young to be taught about gay relationships? This isn't education, its cultural fascism. A record numbers of pupils persistently played truant in 2006-07, with around 272,950 pupils persistently absent in 2007, missing more than 20% of school. We rarely see councils prosecute the parents of these persistent truants. Yet, the parents who removed their children as a one-off to protect their morality may be prosecuted!If the local council does decide to go through with a prosecution, it would be in line with the government's approach to the Muslim community. Muslims who believe homosexuality is a sin would be labelled as extremists. Liberal totalitarianism is a growing phenomenon in Britain and the west in general but many people will be shocked that the school can override a parent's view of what's appropriate or inappropriate to teach their children. This latest episode should be a wakeup call for Muslim parents. Muslim parents MUST explain our moral standards to schools and be prepared to take steps to protect our children’s morals and values from a growing agenda to impose liberal values upon them. This is an eye opening for those Muslim parents who keep on sending their children to state schools to be mis-educated and de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers.The solution of all the problems facing Muslim children is state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers. Those state schools where Muslim children are in majority may be designated as Muslim community schools. Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. Iftikhar Ahmadwww.londonschoolofislamics.or.guk

Iftikhar Ahmad ● 5874d14 Comments

No, but some of the wilder allegations put the odd duck house and moat cleaning into perspective. I hope they have no basis in reality

Sara Nathan ● 5867d

'Of course there are exceptions to any generalisation.'I don't think that the examples I quote are exceptions. My impression is that many of the RC schools in this area cater mainly to first and second generation Irish and Poles. They are not generally wealthy people and particularly more recent arrivals tend to work in low paid jobs but not such that requires them to claim free school meals. Recent arrivals claiming refugee status are not Catholics in the main and so would tend to go to other schools and would automatically qualify for free school meals. So comparing free school meals is too crude a measure to determine socio-economic standing. Although all the schools I named seem to add value I'm sceptical about the numbers being so low. It seems high attainment on entry makes it very difficult to show much value added even though these schools have exceptional GCSE and A Level results - in the case of London Oratory and Cardinal Vaughan often outperforming some of the private schools you mention. The high attainment on entry may have more to do with the quality of education at RC primaries than be indicative of higher socio-economic status.I did mention both Cardinal Vaughan and Cardinal Wiseman. I'm not sure of the nature of the allegations against the head there and parents I know with children at the school are supportive of him. If he has had his hand in the till it doesn't take away from the excellent results achieved by the school.

Andy Jones ● 5867d

Of course there are exceptions to any generalisation. I don't dispute that ordinary people can get their children into these schools sometimes and that others who think they should get their children in fail. The issue is not class, as your reference to a cleaner indirectly suggests, but socio-economic standing - for which entitlement to free school meals is sometimes used as a proxy - and educational disadvantage. Can all the schools you name prove added value? A primary school should take a child up at least 2 levels between KS1 and KS2 and so on. There are comparable measures in secondary.I don't know if you meant Cardinal Vaughan rather than Cardinal Wiseman (you may well have meant the latter, where there is apparently a slight problem at headship level currently).

Dan Filson ● 5868d

Once again I have to refer back to the local situation. All have not deserted LEA controlled schools but a substantial proportion have either moving out or going private. If you were to ask anybody in the area what were the top state schools in this part of London you would hear the names Twyford, Cardinal Wiseman, Cardinal Vaughan, Lady Margaret, London Oratory, Gunnersbury, Sacred Heart, Gumley House. I can't think of a single LEA school that you would consistently hear mentioned on this list.What Sir William Atkinson has achieved at Phoenix is admirable but the results (and I'm not just talking academic) are not comparable yet with these other schools. What he appears to have done is taken the approach of looking at what has made them successful and bottled it to use at his own school which is definitely the right approach.The argument that the difference between grant maintained performance and LEA controlled school performance is down to intake seems to me insupportable. There is a woman who cleans in our office. We chat sometimes and although her English is poor I recently learnt that her son had won a place at Oxford from one of the schools mentioned above. When I told this to another of my workmates he said he had tried to get his son into the same school but was told he wouldn't be offered a place because his son had attended a fee-paying school at primary level.

Andy Jones ● 5869d

If matters were as bad as you portray, all would have deserted local authority schools long ago, but they haven't nor have the parents voted for grant-maintained status or its successor, and academies are far from the universal panacea.Phoenix High School had a poor reputation some years ago, and a new headteacher (now Sir) William Atkinson and his staff turned it around, supported by the parents and governing body and by the local authority.I don't dispute there are some good independent fee-paying schools locally in West London (e.g. St.Paul's Girls, St.Paul's Boys, Latymer) and some good denominational schools (e.g. Lady Margaret School in Fulham) but there are good local authority schools too so it is wrong to assert sweepingly that they're all bad. And it should be remembered that the very success of the independent and certain denominational schools imbalances the intake of the remainder.

Dan Filson ● 5869d

"Let's begin with "the 'lowest common denominator ' attitude within the LEA" - where do you get that from? Nonsense."As I said in earlier posts my knowledge of this issue is largely second hand but those comments are based on the opinions of teachers in the state sector with decades of experience.I don't know what the picture is on a national basis but locally nearly all the schools that are regarded as good are outside local authority control and all the ones that are unpopular with parents are under. I'm sure that many who work in LEAs are well meaning but if they share your utter conviction they offer the best opportunity to local children, the evidence is against them. 

Andy Jones ● 5869d

AndyLet's begin with "the 'lowest common denominator ' attitude within the LEA" - where do you get that from? Nonsense.You refer to "turfing out some of the worst behaved pupils and making them someone else's problem". This explains in part Sara's rhetorical question - if a state school has an excess of places over pupils, it cannot turn away an expelled pupil from another school. A denominational school can, and indeed they do. So the expelled are on a merry-go-round and most end by truanting from all provision.You refer to "specious arguments about intake that are used to justify poor performance at some schools compared to others". Of course there are schools with intakes which achieve great results despite them, you would expect there to be a distribution curve of achievement, but there is without doubt a correlation between intake and achievement - the real issue is what added value does a school achieve for the generality of its intake. Many denominational schools are found to not have achieved as much added value as their secular competitors.I agree that schools "can succeed with the right approach regardless of the intake because the vast majority of parents want their children to do well and will support the school". A frequently occurring problem is that parents do not know how best to support the school - it's one of the intangible and unquantifiable measures of a good headteacher - whether they can harness that goodwill and those undirected energies.I think your remark about "self-serving bureaucracy which seeks to undermine what it can't control" is plain libellous; I have known many, many local authority education officers at a wide variety of levels and in more than one local education authority, and just do not recognise them as "self-serving". It is so easy to fire this kind of bullet. You could argue the same of every private sector operator, and by definition all of those operating for profit.Possibly it comes down to whether you believe that there are people out there in public service in schools and in education departments who work with all their energies for the general good of society rather than seeing it "just as a job". I do so believe.Incidentally when a school is failing, it is better to change the head and possibly change the governors than to close it. The institution is capable of change. Changing the governance by making it autonomous and unaccountable does not help matters. And making it denominational doesn't either.

Dan Filson ● 5870d

Of course the third story about a local school was about the headmaster accused of MP-like expenses claims...I wasn't sure if that wqas just Daily Mail rabble-rousing or based in fact.

Sara Nathan ● 5870d

Most of my uptodate experience of the state education system is second hand. In part I base my views on a secondary school teacher with decades of experience in a local LEA controlled school who described the LEA thus, "a highly politicised group of initiative-obsessed busy bodies whose only qualification for the job is that they couldn't hack teaching."This is probably why quite a few good secular schools are seeking foundation status. The Robert Clack school which has been in the headlines recently I understand opted out of local authority control. This allowed the head master to put in the kind of structure that turned a sink school into one of the top performing state schools in the country.I'm sure the 'lowest common denominator ' attitude within the LEA will protest that he only managed to do so by turfing out some of the worst behaved pupils and making them someone else's problem but that misses the point that a generation of children at Robert Clack school will get opportunities that wouldn't otherwise have been available to them. The specious arguments about intake that are used to justify poor performance at some schools compared to others are totally undermined by the success stories at places like Robert Clack. Schools can succeed with the right approach regardless of the intake because the vast majority of parents want their children to do well and will support the school.Locally recently we've seen two stories related to local schools; in one the school's Gospel Choir headlined a local Festival, in the other we heard how the former pupil of another school was eviscerated after a dispute over a drug debt. Despite this many including the local MP would argue that the first school should be handed back to the same authority that controls the second. In doing this I think they are not thinking of the interests of children but the self-serving bureaucracy which seeks to undermine what it can't control.

Andy Jones ● 5871d

"There is nothing whatever to inhibit secular schools developing in children sound moral values and good behaviour, and many do."if that's the case Dan, why do the church schools have such a good reputation for turning out well-disciplined, reasonably behaved and fairly well- educated kids when compared to secular schools in the state sector?

Sara Nathan ● 5871d

I was in the period 1978 to 1998 a governor of a range of local authority schools - primary, special, secondary - and just do not recognise "the dead hand of local authority control which stifles the initiative of teachers and reduces everything to the lowest common denominator". With respect, that is utter nonsense. Indeed I have seen local authority intervention as supportive rather than controlling, constructive rather than constraining. I doubt if matters have changed for the worse since I retired from school governships. There are good and less good schools in both the secular and denominational schools, some of each have extra-curricular activities (by no means the best test of the quALity of a school) and some are more popular than others. But many with experience of education would accept that denominational schools do in reality consciously or unconsciously operate a variety of mechanisms which have the effect of advantaging their intakes so as not to be on a level playing field with the secular schools. So it should be no surprise that there are differences in outcomes, though not so much - if at all - on the "value added" measure.In summary, there are good social reasons why extending the world of denominational school to include Muslim schools would be a serious mistake, and it has very little to do with Islam per se. There are also, in my view, good educational reasons for opposing any extension of the dual system of denominational schools in parallel with secular schools. There is nothing whatever to inhibit secular schools developing in children sound moral values and good behaviour, and many do.

Dan Filson ● 5871d

I can only go on local examples but I don't think the difference between faith and non-faith schools in the area can simply be explained by intake. Talking to parents and meeting the children there is a massive dichotomy in the approach of the different categories of schools and the type of attitudes they pass onto the children. These seem unrelated to the social class or ethnicity of the family or the academic ability of the child.I see one local school which seems to offer a broad range of extra-curricular activities to its children who are generally well behaved and well presented outside school and another which falls well short of these standards. The difference in my view is the dead hand of local authority control which stifles the initiative of teachers and reduces everything to the lowest common denominator.

Andy Jones ● 5874d

Our problem in society is separatism - communities developing wholly or practically isolated from others instead of integrating. The latter doesn't have to mean that culture, tradition or values need be lost.People withdraw their children from religious education lessons, withdraw their children from schools because they don't like this or that. Nations are partitioned because one cohort cannot live with another.Personally, I am an unrepentant secularist. I have no objection to families having religions if they so choose, and having moral values, but I have never seen why on any logical basis the state should fund religious schools. The historical background is that church schools predated secular schools and often had their own separate funding arrangements. By the Second World War many church schools had already suffered from serious under-investment and were not well placed for the imminent raising of the school leaving age to 15 that was coming at the end of the war. The repair bill caused by war damage and neglect, and the drying-up of funds, led to an absolute necessity for taking into public funding of part of this service, and the astonishingly generous terms were that the whole of the revenue running costs - chaplains apart - would be borne by the state, leaving the church authorities to fund capital works (and even there a modest state contribution). This pattern has survived the last 65 years, and would be hard to reform without huge public outcry.The tragedy has been the often quite spurious belief that church schools are "better", whatever that means, than state schools. Their religious tests of admission often meant that they could only admit those who had more stable home addresses, which led to slightly better results, and this then created demand for places, leading to more selectivity, etc. Bodies get buried, and the diocesan authorities - although containing quite astute inspectorates - tended to hush up some misdemeanours. One thing these schools never did was accept their role in the overall strategic provision - they would happily accept growth but never accepted contraction or merger without a fight, and this often meant a steady growth in denomination education.I firmly believe the answer is to secularise education. How you do it, whether you can do it, is far from clear and would certainly not be easy. The very last thing this country needs is a whole raft of separate education systems.

Dan Filson ● 5874d

First of all I am not a parent so do not know from a parents perspective how the education system works but I would have thought if 30 parents from the same school voiced such strong objections to these particular lessons surely the education body would have to look into the complaints?  And are they only muslim parents that have objected?

Carol Burge ● 5874d