My moral dilemma - What would you do?

[nobby]

My daughter is coming up to school age. In my area there are three primary schools. One secular, one Church of England and one Catholic. My daughter would qualify for all of them as my wife is Catholic and the C of E school is quite liberal and will accept any denomination (I was brought up as a Methodist).
The C of E school is by far the best for its educational standards and achivements, very closely followed by the Catholic school. The secular school is way down the league tables. The secular school is also quite a bit further from my home.
My dilemma is do I jepoardise my daughter's education for the sake of my atheist stance on education. I strongly believe it to be immoral and discriminitive to have church schools where there is no real choice for secular families. I believe that I could have the option to ask for my daughter to be excluded from the religious aspects of the education if I pushed hard enough, but I also don't think that would be healthy for my daughter as there is nothing worse for children that to be "different" in that kind of environment. My wife is not a practicing Christian and has no strong feelings about it. She basically doesn't see any harm in it (despite every action and thought she has having some kind of guilt attached to it!).
I have said that I definitely won't allow her to go to the Catholic school.
I want my daughter to be taught theology and not a religion so she can make her own mind up when she is old enough. I want her to have the choice to be Christian, moslem, hindu or atheist or whatever, but I want it to be her choice when she is mature enough to take it.

What would you do? Good education within the church or poorer education outside?

[Agemegos]

Send her to the best school. The religious instruction won't be able to overpower the effects of a rational and inquiring attitude at home, unless you leave too much to the teachers, which you ought not to do whatever school you choose. And the advantages of a good education will last her her whole life.

[travc]

Agreed with the last post. Go for the objectively best. But do prepare her for it. Teach her what the religious aspects are and what they mean. If she is old enough to understand it, you might even teach her about the role of the Church as a social institution.

I've personally been to a huge myriad of churchs, and understanding what they are about before going into the doors makes them much less opressive. It is easy to appreaciate the sentiment and purpose even if you think they are delusional.

As for "old enough" to make her own decision. This will vary of course, but just knowing what other faiths believe is the first and biggest step. I personally didn't realize what the Babtist church was wanting me to commit to (babtism) until I had a long talk with a Bhuddist firend of mine and realized that no everyone thought the same way about such things. Only then could I really think for myself.

[MediocrityInAction]

So long as you take an active role in her moral upbringing, I cannot see much of a problem with her attending the best possible school. Take an interest in her education, and provide a rational secular counterpoint for her to form a balanced opinion.

[EverLastingGodStopper]

What would you do? Good education within the church or poorer education outside?
I have a friend in Philadelphia whose wife loves the neighborhood where they live, but hates the school system. He's an atheist, she's a practicing Catholic. They send their daughter, who I think is 10 or 11 now, to the local Catholic school, because it's safer than the local public school. (They presume it's a better quality education, too.)

He tells his daughter that he is an atheist, that he doesn't share mommy's faith but he respects her position, and that it's up to her to decide what to think about the religious things she sees and hears in school and from mommy each day.

Trust me, Catholic schools produce a LOT of atheists. Heh.

Go ahead and send your child to the best school you can, and make sure as she gets older that you tell her where you stand on the things she learns and hears in school. Hey, if not for the USA's Pledge of Allegiance recital in public schools, my kids would never hear the concept of being "Under God."

Also, a little Mod note, this thread was moved to Secular Lifestyle from Church-State Separation forum, because it's more of a "needing support living in a religious society" thead. But I had to reply first, it reminded me of my friend.

[HelenM]

What would you do? Good education within the church or poorer education outside?

In my experience, C of E schools vary quite a bit in how religious the teaching actually is. I suggest you find out more about the specific school to see how seriously they take the "C of E" part.

Helen

[Potterist]

I have to agree; go for the better education.

I went to a very small local private school, which wasn't specifically of any denomination but still had The Lord's Prayer and hymns every morning. (My current secondary school is exactly the same without the prayer...) We also learnt some of the more famous Bible stories. None of it ever really took root as true, mainly because I had a great interest in mythology at the time.

I think if they're simply singing the songs and learning the Bible stories, it's better to go along with it for the sake of the education. After all, you can convert and deconvert at any point in your life, but if you get a bad start to your education...

Another point to consider is: how 'secular' is the third school? I've done voluntary work in three primary schools in the past year or so, all of which are not Chruch-based at all. Two of them had hymns and prayers in the morning assembly. I'm not sure about the third since I don't help on a day they have assembly - I'm only there an hour a week, in a maths lesson, so I don't have much of a view of the religious life - but they also learn about religion; they're sometimes finishing off work from the RE lesson earlier before they start Maths. Just yesterday, they were finishing off a retelling of Jonah and the whale (or wail; the story of which happened quite a bit in Ninnyvah City with a large amount of sailers :D )

So even if you go for the secular one, she could still be getting quite a lot of religious teaching, and you know the education there will be worse anyway. I'd go for the CoE.

[Agemegos]

Trust me, Catholic schools produce a LOT of atheists.

Indeed. I went to a Catholic school for four years.

[Ninasgrandpa]

We had precisely this problem with our daughter. She is currently in year 1 at a C of E primary school just across the road from where we live. I had a lot of reservations about sending her there. The next nearest primary school is over a mile away, and there is a good community primary school within two miles.
Decisions about schooling are always going to have to be compromises. In our case, we finally decided that proximity to the school, the fact that she would be going to the same school as most of our neighbours children, that it is two minutes walk rather than ten minutes drive, that is is a good school with good teaching practices, all more than balanced the down side of it being a C of E school.

The school was fully subscribed the year my daughter went, (but not apparently last year) and if that is the case with your local school, you may have to make it your first choice to have any chance of getting in. If you make a distant secular school your first choice, and it too gets fully subscribed, and you don't get your daughter in because of your lack of proximity, it is quite possible that you won't get into your second choice either if it has filled its places with first choice applicants.

We didn't have any problems with having to attend church to obtain a place; the school reserves 40% of it's places as community places anyway, but this is a problem in some places. We would not have done this just to obtain a place at the school, though some parents do.

There are some things which we found very misleading and is some cases even dishonest about the admissions procedure.

You may know that most C of E schools are voluntary aided schools. This means that all the running costs of the school are paid for by the local government. Furthermore 90% of capital expenditure is subject to grants from central government. So the school has to find 10% of it's capital expenditure from somewhere else. How this happens varies from diocese to diocese. In our diocese the school levies a fee from the parents to pay for this expenditure. No matter what the school says, this is a voluntary payment. You do not have to sign up for it. When we applied for a place, we got a letter back which had a slip to send back which said something like

I accept the offer of a place at ... school, and agree to pay the levy to the ... diocesan board of education.

with just one place to sign. We crossed out the second clause before signing it.

My wife stood for and was elected to the board of governors. We hoped that this would mean that we could raise our concerns about children of non C of E parents. However the C of E gets to appoint a majority of the governors, most of whom don't acknowledge that there could be a problem. In fact a common response to our questions was 'Why would a non religious person want to send their child to a C of E school?' She gave up after a year as it was clear she was never going to get anywhere.

The bottom line is that you must make the best decision for your child. We are very happy with the education that our daughter gets, but it does grate when she comes home and says something like 'It's true that Jesus is alive'.
We don't try and contradict her too much at this stage, because at only six, she's not going to be able to resolve conflicting arguments, but she is certainly aware that we don't believe in that stuff.

Perhaps the best thing you can do is campaign to stop this ridiculous situation where the Church of England can nominate a majority of the school governors, discriminate against non christians in their admissions and maybe their employment policies, and run schools without paying a single penny for the priviledge.

Good luck with your decision. I hope you find a good school for your daughter.

Ninas grandpa.

[Phishfood]

definitely send her to the best school and offset the religious doctrine with secular resources and activities at home. BTW, my nickname on my soccer team was Nobby, after Nobby Stiles, so i appreciate your handle.

-Pf

[Proxima Centauri]

Have you considered moving?

[nobby]

Your posts have confirmed what I was thinking anyway. I'd love to make a stand but never at the expense of my child. Maybe I can make some kind of change, however small once I'm on the "inside".
Ninasgrandpa - looks like we may be neighbours - I'm in Surrey too, I appreciate the time spent to give me such a good overview of the system.

Here's to all the awkward moments and difficult explanations in the future

cheers

[Agnostic Theist]

Go for the best school. If she does start to suffer a little indoctrination, just give her a little extra atheist stle home education.

My neighbour and godparents are highly religious, so was my teacher when I was ten and the teacher I had through GCSE RS. As long as you encourage her to think for herself (as I did) and mak sure she is exposed to both sides of the argument (as I was, though I didn't have help on this bit) then she should be OK.

If she does become a christian just remind her to honour her parents - then make her pay board ;)