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Old 19-10-2006, 18:59   #147
Maggy
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Re: School forces girls to wear head scarves

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris T View Post
My, there's a lot of conclusion-jumping going on this afternoon.

The point of my question was not to imply the non-religious have no morals. That would be an insane suggestion, it is plainly not the case (truth be told I'm a little disappointed, I thought some of you knew me better than that).

My point is that it seems arbitrary to suggest that religion should play no role in school life, precisely because the non-religious *do* have a moral compass of their own. What you're doing is not, as appears on the face of it, removing moral assumptions and (dare I say it) prejudices from the classroom; all you are doing is substituting one, readily identifiable set with another, possibly less obvious set (less obvious because outside of the framework of a religion, a personal moral direction can be harder to define and pin down).

The follow-on question from that is, who are you (aimed at no-one in particular) to say that your personal morality should be favoured over that of someone who is comfortable to claim their morality is derived from an external, supernatural source? Again, what appears to be a libertarian argument has decidedly illiberal undertones once you examine it.

By way of dragging this back on topic ... I suppose I'm defending the right of this Islamic school to exist, and defending its right to derive the school code from Islamic morality. Where I draw the line is in the forcing of individual pupils to submit to overtly religious acts when they do not subscribe to the religion.
Which is why it would be better for all concerned if we kept all religions at arms length in schools.No one is denying the right of all faiths to instil the values and beliefs of their religion but I contend that one doesn't need morality to learn science,english,maths,geography or any of the other subjects.What one does need is a sense of right and wrong as defined by the WHOLE of the society we live in and religion isn't the only way to pass that knowledge on to the next generation.The rules of life don't have to be presented as a religious package.
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