National Secular Society - Allowing children to languish in illegal religious 'schools' is the bigotry of low expectations

NSS campaigns manager Stephen Evans warns that growing numbers of unregulated religious 'schools' are badly letting children down, and argues that the rights of children to education should be prioritised. 

This week it was revealed that officials at the Department for Education (DfE) are investigating up to fifty unregulated schools set up by Islamists, including several established by a former teacher at the centre of the so-called Trojan Horse scandal...

Read on: National Secular Society - Allowing children to languish in illegal religious 'schools' is the bigotry of low expectations

What to do about research assessment (the REF)? A proposal for two-stage university education

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the latest in a series of 6-yearly attempts to assess the quality of research in UK universities. It’s used to decide how to allocate about £1.6 billion per year of taxpayers’ money, the so-called "quality-related" (QR) allocation...

Read on: What to do about research assessment (the REF)? A proposal for two-stage university education

UCL’s senior common room and the Boston marathon: emancipation in the 1960s, and now

I have always been insanely proud to work at UCL. My first job was as an assistant lecturer. The famous pharmacologist, Heinz Otto Schild gave me that job in 1964, and apart from nine years, I have been there ever since. That’s 50 years. I love its godless tradition. I love its multi-faculty nature. And I love its relatively democratic ways (with rare exceptions).

From the start, the intellectual heart of UCL has been the staff Common Room. As I so often say, failing to waste time drinking coffee with people who are cleverer than yourself can seriously damage your career (and your happiness). And there’s no better place for that than the Housman room.

It is there that I met the great statistician Alan Hawkes, without whom much of my research would never have happened. It was there that Hyman Kestelman (among others) gave me informal tutorials on matrix algebra over lunch. It was there where I have met John Sutherland (English), Mary Fulbrook (German), many historians and people from the Slade school of Art. And it was there where, yesterday, I had an illuminating conversation with Steve Jones about the problems of twin studies for measuring heritability...

Read on:  UCL’s senior common room and the Boston marathon: emancipation in the 1960s, and now

Steiner Waldorf Schools Part 3. The problem of racism

This post deals with the most contentious and serious aspect of Steiner schools, racism. It makes, in my view, a convincing argument that Steiner’s undoubtedly racist views remain a problem today. They can’t be dismissed simply by saying that Steiner was a child of his times.

This post was written by an ex-Steiner school parent, known on the web as @ThetisMercurio.

The essay supplies yet more reasons to think that Steiner schools are all based on pseudo science: Steiner’s Spiritual Science. It is important that we understand these schools because funding of these schools is imminent, through Michael Gove’s Free Schools policy.

Extracts from works by Olav Hammer and Peter Staudenmaier are included with the permission of the authors.

Read on: Steiner Waldorf Schools Part 3. The problem of racism

The Steiner Waldorf cult uses bait and switch to get state funding. Part 2

This essay is largely devoted to the methods used by the Steiner movement in the hope of getting state funding. That involves concealing from ministers and inspectors some of the less desirable aspects of the cult. That is sadly easy to do, because ministers and inspectors usually use a tick box approach that can easily be corrupted (just have a look, for example, at what goes on at the University of Wales). It is a classical case of bait and switch, a method that was used by chiropractors and acupuncturists to pervert the normally high standards of NICE. The technique is standard in alternative medicine, as described by the excellent Yale neurologist Steven Novella, in The Bait and Switch of Unscientific Medicine..

Steiner’s bible of the cult, 1905

The involvement of a few universities with Steiner training is every bit as disgraceful as their involvement with quack medicine, In fact Anthroposophical medicine is among the barmier forms of quackery.

Read on: The Steiner Waldorf cult uses bait and switch to get state funding. Part 2

The true nature of Steiner (Waldorf) education. Mystical barmpottery at taxpayers’ expense. Part 1

I have to admit that until a few years ago I had thought of Steiner schools as being rather cuddly experiments in progressive education. Perhaps a bit like Montessori schools or A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School.

But then I discovered that they advocate "biodynamic farming". That includes utterly barmy doctrines about how the phase of the moon affects crops and such like astrological baloney (as well as some possibly sensible stuff about compost). Then I had a series of mails from a correspondent that made me realise that Steiner schools have some much more unpleasant ideas than a bit of astrological baloney, including the dangerous ideas about anthroposophical medicine.

Read on, it gets worse: The true nature of Steiner (Waldorf) education. Mystical barmpottery at taxpayers’ expense. Part 1

Fairy-tale fallout - Education - The Listener

Te Ra Waldorf School has mastered the art of first impressions. “Oh my God, you hear this all the time,” says former staff member Sophie Perkins. “You feel like you’re coming home. It has this very peaceful feeling about it. It is church-like, almost. They do it so well.”

If you visit in the morning, you’ll smell fresh bread being baked. The school bell really is a bell – not an alarm tone piped through speakers. You won’t see kids scoffing chippies or plugged into iPods, or wearing branded clothing. No: Te Ra is a place of greenery, of airy wooden buildings, a place for kids to be kids.

But two years ago, parents at this Steiner school discovered a darker side to the writings of Rudolf Steiner. They found what Perkins now considers to be “evil, evil white racism”.

Over an extraordinary few months, parents and staff left the school in droves. The school has no clear record of numbers. But those we talked to say the racism – and the way the school “vilified” those who spoke out against it – drove out six of Te Ra’s 35 staff members and more than 29 families. It was a huge hit for the roll, which is now 140.

Perkins spent more than five years working at Te Ra and sent her children there. “We’ve managed to get ourselves out of something,” she says. “It’s like being woken up – I felt like Snow White, I really did – I felt like the poisoned apple came out of my mouth and I woke up.”

Last month an official investigation commissioned by the Ministry of Education...

Read the read of the article here: Fairy-tale fallout - Education - The Listener

(Thanks to @lecanardnoir for the heads-up)

National Secular Society - Yes, “faith schools” really are the problem

Politicians are in denial over the problems caused by "faith schools" and religious influence in education, argues Terry Sanderson.

The National Secular Society has been saying it for years – "faith schools" are a bad idea. And despite the events of the past few months in Birmingham, the simple message still hasn't got through to the politicians who are responsible for the education system: religious schools are the problem, not the answer. The Church of England is about to launch another great tranche of schools that they'll run but the taxpayer will pay for.

Under the Gove regime, with its promotion of academies and free schools, which give religious proselytisers virtual carte blanche to promote all kinds of questionable religious ideologies, the situation has worsened.

With a host of religious proselytisers out there desperate to get access to those pesky children who obdurately will not attend their churches and mosques, the free schools and academies are – in their terms – a God-send.

Read more here: National Secular Society - Yes, “faith schools” really are the problem

After being taken to task on Twitter for expressing the view that faith schools were (a) State-subsidised brainwashing and (b) psychologically damaging for those forced to attend them because the State cannot, or will not, provide children with places in secular schools, I reckon this article needs a wider audience