Richard Dawkins sobre as escolas baseadas na religião

«Dear Secretary of State

The government has decided, reasonably enough, that heredity is no basis for membership of parliament, and the hereditary peers are either gone or on their way. Yet, in the very same year, you propose increasing the number of faith schools. Having disavowed the hereditary principle for membership of parliament, you seem hell-bent on promoting the hereditary principle for the transmission of beliefs and opinions.

(...)

For parents to influence their children's opinions and beliefs is inevitable and proper. But to tie labels to young children, which in effect presume and presuppose the success of that parental influence, is wicked and indefensible. But, you may soothingly say, don't worry, wait till they go to school, it'll be fine. The children will be educated in a variety of opinions and beliefs, they'll be taught to think for themselves, they'll make up their own minds. Well, it would have been nice to think so.

But what do we do? We deliberately set up, and massively subsidise, segregated faith schools. As if it were not enough that we have already fastened belief-labels on babies at birth, those badges of mental apartheid are now reinforced and refreshed throughout schooldays. In their separate schools, children, whose parents and grandparents were segregated in the same way, are separately taught their mutually incompatible beliefs.

(...)

'Protestant children' go to the state-subsidized Protestant school. If they are lucky, they won't actually be taught to hate Catholics, but I wouldn't bank on it, especially in Northern Ireland. The best we can hope for is that they will come out thinking only that there is something a bit alien or odd about Catholics. 'Catholic children' go to the Catholic school. Even if they are not systematically taught to hate Protestants (again, don't bank on it), and even if they don't have to run the gauntlet of hate in the Ardoyne Road, we can be sure they won't be taught the same Irish History as the 'Protestant children' down the street.

(...)

As for what is to be done, of course we don't want to destroy institutions that are working well. The way to be fair to hitherto unsupported denominations is not to give them their own sectarian schools, but to remove the faith status of the existing schools (just as the fair way to balance the bishops in the Lords is not to invite mullahs, monsignors and rabbis to join them, but to throw the existing bishops out). After everything we've been through this year, to persist with financing segregated religion in sectarian schools is obstinate madness.

Yours very sincerely

Richard Dawkins

Charles Simonyi Professor

University of Oxford.»

(Aconselho a leitura do artigo na íntegra. Está mesmo muito bem argumentado!)