October 15, 2005
RABBI, HAS YOUR YESHIVA FILLED ITS EVANGELICAL QUOTA YET?
Faith schools warned: open gates to all or be shut down (Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, October 15th, 2005)
Faith schools should be shut down unless they agree to engage with pupils from other faiths, the work and pensions minister, Margaret Hodge, will say today.In a strongly worded speech to the Labour thinktank Progress, which Tony Blair will also attend, she will warn that overt racism is on the rise among Britain's white working class. As a result, she argues, tough measures must be taken to prevent race relations deteriorating.
Immigrants to the UK must be given the absolute duty to integrate. They must learn to speak English, while cultural practices such as forced marriages that are unacceptable within Britain must be banned.
Faith schools should be required to support tolerance and integration. "We need Ofsted to ensure the curriculum and values of faith schools are consistent with the national curriculum and with promoting tolerance. We should insist on admissions policies that do not exclude those of other faiths from attending a particular school."
If this issue gains traction, it is a very good bet that those defending the faith schools will blow it, just as those who tried to defend male-only military academies blew it. They will predictably try to argue the dubious, at best unprovable, propositions that faith schools in no way promote intolerance of other faiths or retard integration, failing to understand that modern secularists consider the mere existence of strongly-held faith to negate those assertions. Once the reality of the government’s resolve sets in, martyr-like words and actions will be awakened within faith communities with which the press will have a field day and which will scare the dickens out of many.
To the extent that words alone can win the day, this has to be attacked full-frontally on the principles that religion is not a private hobby, children are not pawns in community relations experiments and parents have no duty to let their children be indoctrinated in state-approved world views. Inter-faith and inter-cultural relations should be handled by community leaders, teachers and parents agreeing on (and enforcing) objective rules of public behaviour and speech grounded in a common sense of citizenship and respect for all in the public square, not by bureaucrats bending the minds of children. However, as grounds-up community and parental authority have been all but destroyed in Britain, it is hard to be optimistic on this one. Ms. Hodge's use of white racism to defend a policy aimed at controlling Muslim schools is insidious and very, very clever.
Posted by Peter Burnet at October 15, 2005 6:34 AMPeter:
[C]ultural practices such as forced marriages that are unacceptable within Britain must be banned.
Do you disagree ?
Posted by: Michael Herdegen![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://brothersjuddblog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 15, 2005 2:55 PM
Faith schools should be required to support tolerance and integration.
This is why I oppose vouchers. It will be used by govt education bureaucrats to force private schools to become indistiguishable from public schools.
Posted by: Gideon at October 15, 2005 4:01 PMMichael:
Most certainly, but they already are. She doesn't mean banned and I am not so sure that she really means forced in its literal sense.
Posted by: Peter B at October 15, 2005 6:37 PMActually, I don't know that a yeshiva would turn away a non-jew. But it would be a tough row to hoe.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at October 15, 2005 6:50 PMRobert:
They most certainly would. It isn't just an educational institute, but a religious one in every sense of the word - from prayer to ritual practice. Some practices are forbidden for a Gentile to maintain (from a Jewish point of view), such as keeping the Sabbath the way Orthodox Jews observe it.
Posted by: obc at October 15, 2005 11:54 PMFrom the Yeshiva University application:
The university is committed to a policy of equal opportunity and nondiscrimination in admission and all other facets of its educational programs and activities. The university encourages applications from qualified students regardless of sex, religion, age, race, handicap, color, or national origin, within the meaning of applicable law.
I doubt that their swamped with applications from kids whose safety school is SMU.
Posted by: David Cohen at October 16, 2005 1:19 AMPeter B:
Yes, many marriages throughout the world are forced in the sense that women must enter into them, or be killed.
If you like, I can provide you with a long list of resources so that you can read up on the issue.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 16, 2005 2:17 AM
Thank you, Michael, I am well aware of that and we can all agree such is an immoral outrage. But there is a long continuum between our modern notion that marriage must be 100% the uninfluenced, free choice of the parties (which brings it's own injustices and horror stories)and a woman (or man, for that matter) being given uncaringly as a chattel under pain of death or ostracism in order to profit the parents. It isn't an either/or issue with goodness and light all on one side. You won't get far on this question if you just compare successful love-matches with disastrous arranged marriages and ignore their respective failures and successes. The perps of honour killings are pigs, but what of the Western father who strongly suspects his daughter is headed into an abusive marriage, but says nothing to respect her choice?
As you know, we used to go for arranged marriages in the West, but feminist Antonina Fraser (Harold Pinter's wife) detailed how 17th century Englishmen who thought choosing a bridegroom for their dutiful daughters would be a straightforward affair were often flummoxed and beaten by decidedly determined daughters, legal rights or not. Don't make the mistake of thinking this issue can be understood simply by looking at the legal positions of the parties.
Now, PLEASE, I beg you not to roar in accusing me of beating a drum for arranged marriages. But I do have a question for you. Do you think a modern Western parent who is absolutely convinced his smitten daughter is making a dangerous and disastrous mistake is committing an outrage if he says he will not provide any financial assistance or even might disinherit her if the marriage proceeds? Assume he will still provide for any grandchildren.
Posted by: Peter B at October 16, 2005 5:09 AM[Is] a modern Western parent who is absolutely convinced his smitten daughter is making a dangerous and disastrous mistake committing an outrage if he says he will not provide any financial assistance or even might disinherit her if the marriage proceeds?
No.
Unfortunately, I have some personal experience in this area.
First, depending on the circumstances, it may not be an outrage to refuse to provide financial assistance to one's healthy children, even if they've made an acceptable match.
Parents have the responsibility to feed, clothe, shelter, and most of all to educate their children, but once that's successfully done, it's root, hog, or die.
(Many exceptions, but I'll skip 'em unless you want elucidation).
Parents often want to help their grown kids, but they have no obligation to do so, under normal circumstances.
Second, I think that the West could do with MORE arranged marriages.
My objection is to FORCING people into them, particularly on pain of torture and/or death.
While I dislike starting off with "The kids these days...", because it sounds like simple generational bias, I really have to say, the kids these days !
The Millenials in America, (outside of Mormon society, and a few other religious communities), have NO CONCEPT of how to court each other, or decide on a mate, or how to offer or accept a commitment...
They need help.
The Boomers dropped the ball big-time in this area. They rightly got rid of stifling traditions and unspoken rules, but neglected to replace them with some other system for courtship.
It's possible, I'm not sure how likely, that services like Match.com could eventually take the place of social networking by church congregations and friends of the family, but until that time, I'm all for greater interference by parents in their kids' social lives.
To specifically address the scenario you outlined, there are a number of considerations in deciding to cut someone off:
* How much will it hurt them ?
Will they be living in poverty ?
* Why, exactly, are you cutting your child off ?
Is it a personality conflict, or is the spouse really a very bad person ?
* How stubborn is your child ?
Will it do any good to cut 'em off, or would they rather be homeless than admit their parents are right ?
* If you do intend to provide for the grandkids, how do you intend to do so in such a way that it doesn't benefit your child's spouse ?
And more.
My experience has been that if the person making the mistake is stubborn, and if you truly care for their children, then they have you over a barrel.
You either have to live with their mistake, or accept that their kids are going to suffer more than they need to, and perhaps some permanent negative outcomes will result.
Or you can kill the mistake, if you're confident that it won't be repeated - but that's pretty high-stakes.
Sometimes life's a bitch.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 16, 2005 9:21 AM
BTW, thanks for the tip about The Weaker Vessel...
It looks great.
at October 16, 2005 9:33 AM