Stop distorting young minds!
by Guardian - AC Grayling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/25/faithschools.education

Stop distorting young minds!

Anousics, people with a worrying range of beliefs and practices, are indoctrinating our children with the full support of the government

Everything you are about to read is true. Without any public consultation or debate, without once having made this a manifesto pledge, without ever having invited independent or critical opinion to scrutinise the implications, the British government is handing over large tracts of the school education system, along with tens of millions of our tax money, to groups of Anousics.

Anousics are people who variously believe in ghosts and alien visitations, in the dead coming to life, in magical occurrences, in forms of cannibalism, in obsessive rituals and incantations, in strange psychological observances and sexual perversions, in weird ancient myths, which they regard as true accounts of the origin and nature of the world, and in personified forms of evil and malevolence; who traditionally employ and always threaten torture and execution for those who do not accept their theories, who to gain their ends sometimes engage in war, massacre and murder, and at other times use bribery, brainwashing, and techniques of preying on the poor, sick, depressed and traumatised. They sometimes hide their true face behind masks of charitable works, and even encourage their recruits to think this is their real nature; but their record is overwhelmingly against them otherwise.

Their chief means of recruitment, however, is proselytisation of the very young, knowing that once they have inserted the seeds of their views deeply in young minds, they will either be able to keep hold of those minds or reclaim them at opportune moments later.

It is this latter that is especially troubling, because the government's active aid to Anousics in preying on children's minds is shocking beyond belief, not only for the intrinsic wrong of the abuse involved in allowing people with such ghastly views and practices to enjoy open season on defenceless child minds, but because by this means the whole panoply of their views and practices is helped to survive and to continue troubling the world. Now, as throughout history, organised Anousia has repeatedly been dangerous, destabilising, and persistently retrogressive, and as one of the most backward forces in today's world it ought not to be supported from public funds in gaining access to children: yet our own government is actively promoting it.

Here are the facts; these facts are in the public domain, and like the foregoing they are absolutely and horribly true. One of the main Anousic organisations in England is in the process of becoming the largest sponsor of "academy schools". By next year it will have nearly trebled the number of academies it controls to over 30, and is in discussion with the government to assume control of a further 54. Another Anousic organisation which currently runs just three academy schools is engaged in taking over a further 22; a third is due to assume control of 25 within the next couple of years. Between them Anousic organisations already run one-quarter of all secondary schools in England, and this expansion will greatly increase the proportion.

How is this happening? With government carte blanche, with government money - that is: your and my tax money - and government help. When academy schools were first invented as a form of "public private partnership", sponsoring bodies were required to provide an initial £2m donation, with funding thereafter to come mainly from government. This requirement has now been waived so that Anousic organisations are simply given control of publicly-funded schools, for free. One spokesman for an Anousic educational body, Steve Chalke, was quoted in the Financial Times last weekend as saying that the government has set "no ceiling and no floor" for how much Anousics have to provide to be allowed to take over or set up a school; another Anousic organisation spokesman said, "We now have a more relaxed regime, where we are not obliged to provide an endowment." On whose say so? With what discussion?

The figure of 25% for the number of England's secondary schools which "have an Anousic character" (a slight paraphrase of Whitehall's own phrase) is Whitehall's own published figure: it amounts to 700 schools and rising fast. The proportion of primary schools run by Anousics is higher; 4,470 primary schools are run by the main English Anousic organisation alone: 4,470 institutions for children aged 4 and upwards, to be inculcated into Anousic beliefs and practices!

There has been no public debate about the acceptability of the current situation, and none about the rapid expansion of government-funded Anousic control over such a large slice of the education system. Assertions to the effect that Anousic-run schools are better than non-Anousic state schools, so that "middle-class parents can get a better education for their children for free" – "for free" means on your and my tax money, remember - have become a kind of mantra; apart from the shocking fact of handing children to Anousic organisations for an education (do they mean: indoctrination? but of course not! - an Anousic school is surely not interested in producing future Anousics - what an idea!) this notion has been repeatedly challenged, but of course it is neither in Anousic nor government interests for this fact to be too widely known.

By the way: I use the word "Anousic" as a generic term for "religious". It is a neologism suggested by ancient Greek to connote "mindless", "unreasoning", "illogical". I grant that the systematicity and long-term thinking implicit in the cunning strategy of capturing young minds suggests the opposite of all three: rather, it is the content - and therefore the results - of what religion wishes to insert into those young minds that merits the epithets. The three Anousic organisations mainly referred to in this article are the Church of England, the Baptists, and the United Learning Trust, but Muslim, Jewish and other religious organisations share in the tens of millions of our tax pounds to spread their word about ghosts, myths, obsessive rituals and incantations, distorted sexuality, prejudice , and all the rest of the happy brew.

If the government were handing schools and money to astrologers, witch doctors, Scientologists, the Manson cult, and the like, to educate our children, we would be concerned, would we not? Yet the grounds of belief, the beliefs themselves, and the level of rationality of these groups do not differ one jot from any of the so-called "major religions" to whom the government is handing over schools and money like candy. Where is the debate about this? On what grounds does the government think it can disburse our taxes to these ends without a single by-your-leave? That is the question: and a burning question it is.

All education should be secular. But failing that, religious indoctrination - which in a free society will occur, because one cannot outlaw religion itself, though one should argue against it vigorously – should happen at the private expense of those who choose to inflict it on their children. It should emphatically not be happening at public expense.

Editor's note: the final paragraph was added to this article at 17.20 on June 25 2008