November 5, 2004
HOW ABOUT “DERRIDA HIGH”?
Dispute over naming of faith school (The Guardian, November 5th, 2004)
A row has broken out over whether a Church of England school should be allowed to keep its religious name when it becomes one of the government's flagship city academies.St Mary Magdalene Church of England Primary School in Islington, north London, has been urged by its local council to adopt a more "community-friendly" title when it changes status.
The primary school is set to be incorporated into a new academy for five to 18-year-olds and the local council has suggested the school should lose its religious name and be called the Islington Academy or the Barnsbury Academy.
But the academy's sponsors, the London Diocesan Board for Schools (LDBS), want to keep its Christian character. [...]
Liberal Democrat councillor James Kempton was reported as saying: "We need to ensure this is a school which is appropriate for Islington in the 21st century.
"Church-going is now a much less significant part of people's lives."
If the Ten Commandments in a courthouse is oppressive, surely we would want to shield our children from regular exposure to this incitement to theocracy.
Their children
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 5, 2004 3:02 PMThis is getting annoying. It's one thing to not be religious but to behave around religious symbols as if you are a Transylvanian peasant scared of vampires is a bit much.
Maybe Mr. Kempton should just content himself with wearing a necklace made of garlic if he ever goes near a church or anything with a religiously inspired name like Chateauneuf du Pape.
Posted by: Bart at November 5, 2004 7:07 PMWorks two says, Bart. Remember the furor of the Catholics that forced changing the name of the nuclear submarine Corpus Christi to City of Corpus Christi?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 5, 2004 9:44 PMHmm, a formerly religious school turns secular while keeping some tenuous connection to its past. I have the perfect name: Georgetown.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 5, 2004 10:40 PMHarry,
No I don't. But then it seems that there is a type of paranoid, intolerant ultramontane Catholic who is always in a furor about something or other. They often seem like Muslims, but without the explosives.
The Navy has a series of rules for how its ships get named. For example, battleships are always named after states. It would be absurd, and arguably sacrilegious to think that they would name a submarine after the body of Christ rather than Corpus Christi, Texas, the site of a long-time naval base.
Posted by: Bart at November 5, 2004 11:34 PM