Faith Schools in Liberal Secular States: Identity, Integration and Citizenship

Abstract

Faith schools are far from a new phenomenon, but recent years have witnessed a growing interest and concern regarding their place and expansion in liberal secular states, with people such as Richard Dawkins (2001) declaring them as ‘lethally divisive’. Although the post 9/11 context with its greater attention to issues such as integration and the public place of religion has increased such interest, the question of whether faith based education exacerbates societal fragmentation has been an ongoing issue in places such as Northern Ireland for many decades. The importance of faith schools goes beyond what is taught. The ethos and environment is a tool towards the maintenance of a particular way of life. And, certainly the right to have your child educated in a particular way hardly seems excessive or contrary to a liberal political culture. Moreover, as diversity is now regularly posited as a source of civic strength in many plural states, why is the practical expression of it in education so problematic? Yet, faith based education has been charged with having more to do with communalism than communitarianism. Segregated education is seen to be at the heart of parallel communities. Indeed, moving beyond the physical lack of contact and communication that is implicit in faith based education; the mental distance it creates may also be problematic to a political culture which values autonomy and rationality as well as equality and liberty. In other words, if education in the Durkheim perspective socializes children into the norms of society, does a plural education system undermine the state? This panel then seeks to bring together scholars with an interest in the complex issue of faith schools and integration.

Title	Details
Neo-Protestant Confessional Schools and Religious Values in Post-Communist Countries	View Paper Details
Educational Responses from Religious Diversity. Homeschooling in United State and United Kingdom	View Paper Details
The Autonomy of Faith Schools in the Light of the Strasbourg Jurisdiction	View Paper Details
The Impact of School Characteristics on the Development of Ethnocentrism among Adolescents.	View Paper Details
The Dawn of Parochial Jewish Education in America: A Case Study of Striving for Integration through Separation—Darwinism and Judaism then and now	View Paper Details
Faith Based Schools and the Limits of Religious Diversity in Ontario (Canada)	View Paper Details
Modernity, Europe and the Nation through the ‘Faith School’ Debate in the Contemporary UK	View Paper Details