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Abstract

The article explores whether faith-based schools are necessarily a threat to social cohesion.
Faith-Based Schools:
A Threat To Social Cohesion?
GEOFFREY SHORT
The British government recently announced its willingness to
expand the number of state-funded faith schools. It was a
decision that aroused considerable controversy, with much of
the unease centring around the allegedly divisive nature of
such schools. In this article I defend faith schools against the
charge that they necessarily undermine social cohesion and
show how they can, in fact, legitimately be seen as a force for
unity. In addition, I challenge the critics’ key assumption that
non-denominational schools are inherently better positioned
than their faith-based counterparts to promote a tolerant
society.
INTRODUCTION
In a Green Paper issued in February 2001, the British government made
clear its commitment to fund an expansion in the number of faith-
based schools (Department for Education and Employment (DfEE),
2001a). Predictably, the policy met with a mixed response: welcomed by
some, especially within the faith communities, but vehemently opposed
by others. In criticising the policy, detractors seem generally to have
eschewed some of the most frequently articulated arguments against
faith schools concerning, for example, the importance of autonomy in
liberal education (e.g. Gardner, 1991) and the right of parents to choose
the form of their children’s schooling (e.g. Flew, 1987). Instead, the
debate, conducted largely through newspaper columns, has tended to
focus on the charge of divisiveness.1Following the terrorist attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States, the race
riots in the north of England the previous summer and the dispute at
Holy Cross primary school in Belfast, it is perhaps not surprising that
concern over the government’s policy has highlighted its implications for
social cohesion (e.g. Judge, 2001; Hewer, 2001). Typifying the chorus of
disapproval, one prominent member of the Labour party said of the
initiative, ‘before September 11th it looked like a bad idea; it now looks
like a mad idea’. The government appears to have been somewhat taken
aback by the welter of criticism directed at its proposals and in a White
Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 36, No. 4, 2002
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Paper published in September 2001 suggested a compromise position
whereby newly established denominational schools were to be encour-
aged to become more inclusive (DfEE, 2001b). Specifically, they would
be required either to loosen their admissions policies, such that they
include a proportion of children from outside their own faith community,
or they would have to work closely with neighbouring schools.
In this article I attempt to defend faith schools against the charge that
they are, by nature, divisive in the sense of creating or reinforcing com-
munal tensions. This is the central concern in the current debate and the
one about which Terence McLaughlin, a decade ago, stated that there was
‘insufficient evidence to make a clear judgement’ (McLaughlin, 1992,
p. 125). I consider initially the different ways in which faith schools can
be looked upon as divisive, showing in each case that the projected
consequences for society are either benign or based on arguments that
are logically flawed, ahistorical or lacking in empirical foundation. In
light of this discussion I conclude that faith schools per se pose no
threat, actual or potential, to a unified society. On the contrary, I
contend that from an educational standpoint the critical determinant
of social cohesion is the content of children’s learning and not the type
of school in which that learning takes place. The second strand in my
defence of faith schools is diametrically opposed to the view that con-
ceptualises them as setting one religious or ethnic group against others,
for I consider sympathetically the possibility that they can legitimately
be seen as a force for unity. I refer here to the claim that they enhance their
pupils’ academic attainment, self-esteem and sense of cultural identity,
and that the result of such enhancement is the strengthening of inter-
communal ties. The third and final part of my defence challenges the
key assumption underpinning the criticism of faith schools, namely,
that their non-denominational or pluralist counterparts are inherently
more likely to promote a tolerant society.
INTERPRETING DIVISIVENESS
I want to begin by examining what is involved in the claim that faith
schools are necessarily divisive, for it would seem that the notion of
divisiveness can be interpreted in a number of ways. At one extreme it
could mean little more than that the schools reinforce religious or ethnic
identities such that the children who attend them develop a preference
for associating with members of their own group. A predilection of this
kind does not, in itself, entail the acquisition of negative attitudes
towards those outside of the group; nor does it preclude or inhibit the
interaction with other groups that might be seen as a requirement of
living in a pluralist society. Acting in accordance with the predilection
thus poses no threat to social cohesion. On this definition of divisiveness,
society clearly has nothing to fear from faith-based schools.
For some critics, though, faith schools are divisive in a fundamentally
different sense, for it is argued that their mere existence is bound to fuel
enmity between religious or ethnic groups. The distinguished scientist,
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Peter Atkins, is among those who believe that inter-communal friction is
an ineluctable by-product of these schools.
No single type of school founded on religion, be it Church, Temple,
Synagogue, Mosque or Voodoo tent, can contribute to the unification of
society, even though it purports to instruct its members in toleration.
Religions, being fundamentally irrational, are fundamentally intolerant of
each other, and schools set up on the shoulders of religions inevitably
propagate that intolerance into future generations (Atkins, 2001, p. 7,
emphasis added).
It should be noted that there is no evidence to support Atkins’ assertion
that all faith schools propagate intolerance if the latter is taken to refer
to hostility towards those who think and act differently on religious
matters. There is not even circumstantial evidence in the form of data
comparing levels of hostility among pupils attending denominational
and non-denominational schools. Nor are there data of any kind to
support Atkins’ claim that the instruction offered by faith schools ‘in
toleration’ is necessarily ineffective. However, an implicit assumption to
this effect has, in the past, been employed by those who see faith schools
as an obstacle to cultural understanding and racial justice. For example,
in their study of an English local education authority, Wendy Ball and
Barry Troyna found that faith schools were significantly less likely than
non-denominational schools to adopt the authority’s policy on multi-
cultural education and they accounted for this reluctance partly in
terms of ‘the religious ethos and practices (the schools) promote’ (Ball
and Troyna, 1987, p. 20). Some teachers ‘felt that the promotion of
tolerance and understanding for all cultures was best tackled through
the established religious, Christian ethos of the school and not by the
introduction of multicultural education’ (ibid., p.21). The authors made
no attempt to assess the efficacy of this alternative approach. They appear
rather to have assumed, like Atkins, that because it was underpinned by
religion it could not be effective as a vehicle for the promotion of tolerance
or, at any rate, not as effective as the secular policy of the local authority.
A third way in which faith schools might be seen as divisive is to argue
that they lead to ill-feeling between religious or ethnic communities but
only under particular circumstances. Exemplifying this point of view,
Rabbi Jonathan Romain wrote in The Times shortly after the riots in
the north of England: ‘If Muslim, Christian, Jewish and other children
do not mix — and nor do their families — they become ignorant of each
other, then suspicious, fearful and hostile’ (Romain, 2001). While
Romain’s article can be criticised for its failure to consider any expla-
nation for the riots other than segregated schooling (an illustration of
Bhikhu Parekh’s ‘fallacy of the single factor’ —Department of Education
and Science, 1985, p. 69), there is no doubt that faith schools can result
in religious or ethnic hostility given certain conditions. Romain’s formu-
lation of the relationship, however, is problematic, for it rests on two
non sequiturs. The first relates to his contention that if members of
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religious groups do not socialise with those from different religious
traditions ‘they become ignorant of each other’, a causal link that only
follows if direct experience is seen as the sole means of learning about
other people and their way of life. Romain writes as though unaware
of the existence of books, television and other instructional media. His
view is certainly at odds with that of the eminent psychologist, Gordon
Allport, famed for his work on the nature of prejudice. While not
wishing to dismiss or belittle the potential benefits of direct experience,
Allport observed that ‘there are many ways to impart knowledge about
people [one of which] is straight academic teaching in . . . schools’
(Allport, 1954, p. 265). Romain’s second non sequitur is his belief that
ignorance (in the literal sense of a lack of knowledge) automatically
leads to suspicion, fear and hostility. It is not clear to me why ignorance,
in and of itself, should necessarily lead to anything, although it might
be conceded that the ignorant, ceteris paribus, are more likely to be
influenced by any unfounded prejudice in circulation.
A fourth perspective on the relationship between faith schools and
divisiveness differs from the previous three in that it conceptualises the
schools as a kind of infection that prevents existing divisions in society
from healing. Keith Porteus Wood, General Secretary of the National
Secular Society articulated this view of faith schools as an obstacle to a
tolerant society when stating that ‘children of all races and creeds need
to mix if we are ever to eradicate racism and religious prejudice’ (Porteus
Wood, cited in Kelly, 2001). This assertion of what is no more than an
article of faith has been endorsed by Professor Richard Dawkins (2001)
with specific reference to the situation in Northern Ireland, a site of
conflict which critics of faith schools often point to as a paradigm case of
their malign impact. According to Dawkins, ‘if Protestant and Catholic
children ceased to be segregated throughout their schooldays, the
troubles would largely disappear’ (p. 17). Essentially the same claim has
been made by the British Humanist Association (BHA):
[If] children grow up within a circumscribed culture, if their friends and
peers are mostly from the same religion and hence also, very likely the
same ethnic group, and if they rarely meet or learn to live with others from
different backgrounds, this is hardly calculated to promote the acceptance
and recognition of diversity. We have clear evidence to the contrary in
Northern Ireland, where the separation of Catholic schools and Protestant
schools has played a significant part in perpetuating the sectarian divide
(British Humanist Association, 2001, p. 35).
Some research findings are consistent with the BHA’s accusation that
separate schools have ‘played a significant part in perpetuating the
sectarian divide’ in Northern Ireland. One study by Cairns, Dunn and
Giles in 1993 showed:
how little young people from each community know about their
counterparts, and how few opportunities there were for meetings and
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contacts ....While pupils in both types of school [Protestant and
Catholic] often studied world religions such as Buddhism or Islam, they
were very unlikely to study the religion of their nearest neighbours (cited
in Dunn, 2000, p. 89).
Other research contradicts the line taken by the BHA. For example,
more than two decades ago, Robert Crone and John Malone maintained
that ‘segregated education in the province had not been a major cause of
community conflict, but another by-product of the religious and political
antagonisms of the past’ (Crone and Malone, 1979, p.2). More recently,
Seamus Dunn recalled that ‘when questions about the role of separate
schools were initially posed in the early 1970s it was very difficult to find
any evidence to prove that damage was caused by separation’ (Dunn,
2000, p. 89). In light of these statements, some might find Dawkins’
advocacy of mixed schooling as a panacea for the problems in Northern
Ireland less than compelling, particularly when it is borne in mind that
the religious conflict long pre-dates the establishment of a national
school system (the latter having been introduced only in 1831). But even
if it is the case that segregated schooling has helped to entrench the
religious divide, McNichol’s survey of education in the province suggests
that the relationship reflects a contingent truth rather than a necessary
one. She found ‘a considerable amount of material (that) aims to promote
tolerance, mutual understanding and education for reconciliation in the
curriculum’ of both Protestant and Catholic schools (McNichol, 1988,
p. 111). She also commented on a significant ‘number of small projects
and initiatives involving inter-school links and exchanges that have
developed over recent years’ (ibid., p. 114). Admittedly, these measures
have yet to be evaluated but, prima facie, they are hard to reconcile with
the contention that faith-based schools, by their nature, have to per-
petuate sectarianism.
In order to substantiate their claim that faith schools are necessarily
detrimental to society (in the sense of leading to its fragmentation), it
will be necessary for the critics to demonstrate that all such schools
operate in ways consistent with the claim. McNichol’s work has just
been cited as evidence to the contrary. A more recent study which was
carried out in England and investigated the policy and practice of Jewish
schools vis-a
`-vis education for cultural diversity presents no less of a
challenge to the critics (Short and Lenga, 2002; Short, forthcoming). It
found that a number of primary schools taught about a range of faiths
in addition to Judaism although their voluntary-aided status freed them
from any legal obligation to do so. Moreover, the teaching was under-
taken as a conscious response to the need to prepare pupils for a
multicultural society and was often delivered by members of staff who
were adherents of the faiths concerned. In line with current government
policy, some primary schools had also forged links with their non-Jewish
counterparts that involved pupils from different religious backgrounds
(and from none) working with one another on joint projects. In common
with the Northern Ireland situation referred to above, the success of
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these various initiatives is unknown, but they scarcely support Atkins’
allegation that faith schools ‘inevitably propagate . . . intolerance into
future generations’. His critique seems even less credible in light of the
fact that some orthodox Jewish primary schools have appointed non-
Jewish Heads and a number of secondary schools currently employ a
majority of non-Jewish teaching staff. Even among those schools
(primary as well as secondary) that made little or no effort to prepare
their pupils for life in a multicultural society, there was no suggestion
that they actively or implicitly encouraged negative attitudes towards
those outside of the Jewish fold. On the contrary, the Heads of such
schools were at pains to stress that while they did not find it necessary to
teach about religions other than Judaism in any depth, if at all, they
attached the highest priority to their pupils treating others with
tolerance and respect regardless of their ethnic identity or religious
affiliation. Admittedly, a number of secondary students (and some
children in primary schools) said in interview that they were unhappy
about their school’s failure to engage more enthusiastically with the
wider society, but again there was no suggestion that this failing had
resulted in any hostility towards other groups; indeed, the converse was
the case. The secondary students resented a religious education
curriculum that, until the sixth form, focused exclusively on Judaism;
they objected to learning about different faiths from what they deemed
to be an inauthentic source (that is, Jewish members of staff) and they
also wanted more opportunities to associate with their non-Jewish peers.
Plainly, the nature of these complaints fails to bear out the contention
that faith schools are inherently geared to breeding intolerance.
All that has been said so far underlines McLaughlin’s warning that it
would be ‘rash ...tocondone or condemn certain kinds of separate
school solely on grounds of philosophical principle’ (McLaughlin, 1992,
p. 115). He stresses that ‘much depends on how the institutions actually
operate, and what their effects actually are on students and the broader
community’. It seems reasonable to infer from his caveat that a major
determinant (and perhaps the major determinant) of the effects on students
and the community is the faith school curriculum. The suggestion in other
words is that the content of children’s learning is likely to be one of the
most important factors influencing their attitudes and certainly a factor
of more importance than the type of school in which their learning takes
place. In order to appreciate the truth of this claim and illustrate its rele-
vance for social cohesion, one need only consider the historic relationship
between Christians and Jews. Prior to the New Delhi Assembly of the
World Council of Churches in 1961 and the Second Vatican Council
declaration Nostra Aetate issued in 1965, Protestant and Catholic children
who attended church schools may well have been exposed to what the
French historian Jules Isaac referred to as ‘the teaching of contempt
(Isaac, 1960, p. 1) the charge levelled by the Church Fathers that the
Jews were guilty of deicide and should suffer eternal damnation as a result.
The all-too predictable outcome of this teaching for relations between
Christians and Jews has stained European culture for centuries, but it
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matters not whether the teaching was undertaken in a denominational
or non-denominational school, a Sunday school or in the child’s home,
for the message and, in all probability, the consequences, remain the same
irrespective of the setting.
If curricular content is as significant as has been suggested in shaping
children’s attitudes towards others, it follows that there is less need to
treat seriously those factors, such as a faith school’s exclusive admissions
policy, that are believed by some commentators to provoke social
discord — see, for example, the Cantle Report (2001) on the riots in the
north of England which recommended that no more than three-quarters
of a school’s intake should come from any one culture. In the view of
Jonathan Sacks:
Faith schools must teach and exemplify tolerance to those of other faiths.
The way to do this is not to insist that they be compelled to take pupils
of other faiths or no faith. It is, rather, to require that they demonstrate,
through teaching and practical programmes, a willingness to engage with
the society, beyond the boundaries of their community (Sacks, 2001, p. 7).
THE ROLE OF THE FAITH SCHOOL IN PROMOTING SOCIAL
COHESION
It might be argued that, in principle, faith schools are not only com-
patible with social cohesion but can actually reinforce it. The reasoning
in support of this contention is contained in the following syllogism.
Unemployment poses a major threat to social harmony; the relatively
high academic attainment associated with faith schools (for example,
Burn et al., 2001) is conducive to lowering the level of unemployment;
therefore faith schools are an aid to social harmony. Critics would no
doubt bridle at the minor premise, asserting that all talk of academic
superiority on the part of such schools in the maintained sector is
spurious, for the results simply reflect a selective intake. While the latter
is generally acknowledged to play a part in accounting for their success,
there is good reason to think that it is not the whole story. In fact, faith-
based schools catering for ethnic minority pupils provide a learning
environment that might be seen as contributory in a number of ways to
academic achievement. Certainly, the pupils should have to contend
with less individual and institutional racism making it easier for them to
realise their academic potential. As the Swann Report made clear, the
pernicious and pervasive influence of racism was one of the grounds on
which sections of the Asian community began lobbying in the 1980s for
the setting up of their own schools, various Black groups having launched
similar campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s (Department of Education and
Science, 1985). However, Lord Swann’s committee was not persuaded of
the merits of separate schools, arguing that much of the demand for
them would evaporate if existing schools within the mainstream offered,
among other things, ‘a more broadly-based curriculum, [reflecting] the
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multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-faith nature of Britain’ (ibid., p. 509).
The committee did not offer a view as to what should happen if existing
schools failed to comply with its recommendations. That task was left to a
minority of members whose submission argued that separate schools were
justifiable until such time as those in the mainstream fulfilled their
responsibilities as outlined in the main report (ibid. p. 515). Nevertheless,
the Swann committee recognised ‘that even with the implementation of
(its) recommendations . . . there may still be some sections of certain
ethnic minority communities who, primarily for reasons of religious
conviction, will feel that in order to meet their children’s educational
needs fully, they need to establish their own voluntary aided schools’
(ibid., p. 514). Significantly, it was hoped that if such schools were to be
established they ‘would adequately prepare pupils for our multicultural
society’ (ibid.). In voicing this aspiration the committee implicitly
acknowledged that while separate schools were potentially divisive and
conceivably a source of racism, they were not invariably so.
A recent Home Office commissioned study (Weller, Feldman and
Purdam, 2001) suggests that there is still much that schools need to do to
accommodate the needs of ethnic minority pupils. It noted that the
Muslim community in the United Kingdom perceives itself to be discri-
minated against in various walks of life and especially in education.
Parents felt that some teachers not only had negative attitudes towards
Islam but occasionally undermined their children’s beliefs and practices.
The community also shared with other faith groups dissatisfaction over
the curriculum, holidays, timetabling and school dress. Now, insofar as
this perception of unfairness is well-founded and acts as a barrier to
ethnic minority children taking full advantage of their education, the
case against expanding the number of faith-based schools is necessarily
weakened. Geoffrey Alderman has recently drawn the same conclusion
in relation to a demand from a race-relations adviser in London for
separate schools for Afro-Caribbean children. The demand was made in
order that the children might escape the institutional racism of the
education system. Alderman believes that ‘If, from an educational
perspective, Afro-Caribbean children in Britain do indeed do better in
Afro-Caribbean educational environments, it would be a serious matter
to deny them such opportunities’ (Alderman, 2001). Improved vocational
prospects resulting from better academic qualifications are not the only
reason for thinking that faith schools might actually reinforce social
cohesion. For some contributors to the current debate also point out
that these schools raise their pupils’ self-esteem, a process that according
to Abdullah Trevathan, head teacher of the Islamia school in London,
‘leads to tolerance’ (cited in Kelly, 2001). (It might also, of course, help
to explain the higher levels of academic attainment.) Now whether
faith schools do, in fact, benefit their pupils’ self-esteem is an empirical
question for which there are currently no relevant data. Should it prove
to be the case, however, that the schools have this effect, the link with
tolerance ought to be taken seriously, for the clear implication of such a
link is that faith schools serve the interests of social cohesion. The
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possibility of a causal connection between self-esteem and tolerance has
long been recognised by both philosophers and psychologists. In the
Leviathan, for example, Hobbes observed that a desire for ‘glory’ (or
pride) was one of the sources of human conflict, a claim with which
Allport was subsequently to concur. He maintained that one of the ways
in which we attempt to bolster inadequate self-esteem is to demean and
disparage ‘unfavoured out-groups’.
In addition to the prospect of raising their pupils’ self-esteem it may
be the case that faith schools operate to the advantage of society as a
whole by strengthening their pupils’ knowledge of their cultural heritage.
(The assumption is that they are able to do this to a greater extent than
would be possible in non-denominational schools.) To quote from the
Swann Report:
[S]everal of the leading Muslim organisations with whom we have
discussed the issue of ‘separate’ schools have suggested that they would
offer a valuable means of fostering multi-racial understanding by enabling
children to become secure in their cultural and religious roots . ...Itis
argued that the youngsters would thus . . . have a confident and balanced
view of their place is this society, free from [a] sense of alienation (DES,
1985, p. 502).
The Heads of two departments of Jewish studies in secondary schools in
the study referred to earlier made a similar point:
Many students often ask me why we don’t learn more about other reli-
gions. The answer that I usually give is that the place of the faith school is
to prepare students to be happy and understanding of themselves and
when you’re clear about who you are, you can relate well to everybody else.
The philosophy of the school is that the more the students feel
comfortable with their own religious identity the less inhibited they are
to relate to other groups.
Circumstantial evidence in support of these claims comes from a study
carried out a few years ago of white racist youth in the London Borough
of Greenwich. The author concluded that the nature of anti-racist edu-
cation in local schools was such that white students felt the ‘absence of
any ‘‘culture’’ with which they themselves (could) identify. It is exactly
this absence that drives young people into their symbolic identification
with racist political groups’ (Hewitt, 1996, p. 42).
COMBATING RACISM: HOW RELEVANT IS THE FAITH SCHOOLS
DEBATE?
As has been seen, an explicit assumption made by some of the critics of
faith schools is that mixing with children from diverse backgrounds
constitutes an effective antidote to racism. This assumption (known to
psychologists as ‘the contact hypothesis’) might seem perverse and even
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absurd in view of the body of research that has, on the one hand, exposed
racist activity in mixed primary schools in general (see, for example,
Troyna and Hatcher, 1992) and, on the other, documented in particular
the series of events at a mixed secondary school in Manchester, where in
1986 an Asian teenager was murdered by a white racist pupil. The
inquiry set up in the wake of the murder referred to ‘the [racist] culture
and context in which it took place’ (Macdonald et al., 1989, p. 45).
Evidence of this kind demonstrates that contact per se cannot be relied
upon to diminish prejudice, a lesson that has been available to educa-
tionalists and policy makers since Horowitz’s (1936) pioneering studies
of children and ‘race’ in the United States. He found that sixth-grade
white boys attending an all-white school in New York showed the same
level of prejudice as those attending an integrated school in the city
despite, presumably, fewer opportunities for inter-racial contact. This
and other research has prompted psychologists over the past half
century to condemn early versions of the contact hypothesis as naı
¨ve and
misleading. As Allport put it: ‘It has sometimes been held that merely by
assembling people without regard for race, colour, religion or national
origin, we can thereby destroy stereotypes and develop friendly attitudes.
The case is not so simple’ (Allport, 1954, p. 261). He went on to note that
‘whether or not the law of peaceful progression will hold seems to depend
on the nature of the contact that is established’ (ibid., p. 262). Subsequent
research (for example, Amir, 1969; Cook, 1978) has identified five con-
ditions that need to be satisfied if contact is to be effective in reducing
prejudice. In the first place, there must be the potential for real
acquaintance. Those taking part have to interact in circumstances in
which they can get to know each other as individuals. Second, the social
norms of the contact situation ‘[must favour] group equality and
equalitarian inter-group association’ (Cook, 1978, p. 97). Third, those
involved must not reinforce stereotypical perceptions. In Cook’s words,
‘the attributes of the disliked group members with whom the contact
occurs [must be] such as to disconfirm the prevailing beliefs about them’
(ibid.). The fourth condition is that ‘circumstances define the status of
the participants from the two social groups as equal in the situation in
which the contact occurs’ (ibid.) and the fifth is that there has to be ‘a
mutually interdependent relationship’, that is, co-operation in pursuit of a
joint goal (ibid.).
Not surprisingly, researchers have found that when other (sometimes
opposing) conditions obtain, contact tends to worsen the inter-personal
attitudes of those taking part (for example, Connor, 1972). Such findings
might be thought to pose few problems for the critics of faith schools
who would, presumably, simply urge pluralist schools to ensure that
they meet Cook’s five conditions. However, this recommendation might,
in turn, be seen as a counsel of perfection, for the conditions cannot be
guaranteed, especially those relating to stereotypical exemplars and social
support for the contact. It is precisely because they cannot be guaranteed,
that children from religious minorities who are denied an opportunity
to attend a faith school of their choice may find themselves in a learning
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environment inimical to their interests. But even if it was possible to
ensure that the contact was successful (in the sense of lessening prejudice)
there is a more serious issue that has to be faced and that is the extent to
which the positive attitude change generated by the contact will gener-
alise to other contexts. Research shows that generalisation does not
occur. In fact, there is no reason to think that inter-racial contact, even
under the most propitious circumstances would ever achieve what was
claimed on its behalf. For if people who are prejudiced against a parti-
cular religious group find themselves, somewhat incongruously, enjoying
the company of individual members of that group, it would be quite
illogical for them to conclude that the company of other (unknown)
members of the group would be just as congenial; far more logical for
them to reserve judgement on the matter and this appears to be what
happens. In Cook’s words: ‘It has long been supposed that negative
attitudes survive inter group contact experiences because of the tendency
to perceive liked individuals as the exceptions to the ethnic group from
which they come’ (Cook, 1978, p. 112). In light of this claim the question
that has to be asked is whether there is any point in the contact. In other
words, why argue for pluralist or non-denominational schools on the
grounds that they promote inter-racial contact when the potential
benefits of that contact do not extend beyond the boundaries of the
school? The fostering of social cohesion seems to require something
additional to or instead of contact between different ethnic or religious
groups. This was a point recognised by Horowitz whose research led him
to conclude that:
Attitudes towards Negroes . . . are chiefly determined not by contact with
Negroes, but by contact with the prevalent attitude towards Negroes
(Horowitz, 1936, pp. 34–35).
Engagement with the prevalent racial attitudes in society has long
been a core concern of antiracist education (see Troyna, 1993, for a
comprehensive review). Among other things, anti-racism deals with the
origin of such attitudes, with the nature and limitations of stereotyping,
and with understanding the scapegoating process. It is concerned too to
undermine the ‘logic’ of racist discourse by providing students with
alternative and more plausible explanations for the range of social and
economic problems that afflict the communities in which they live. If
anti-racist education has the potential to promote a socially just and
tolerant society, as its advocates claim, public concern over the
government’s proposals for faith schools would be justified only if
such schools were deemed to be inherently incapable of teaching con-
ventional anti-racism or if they were considered less likely than their
non-denominational counterparts to do so. While there are no a priori
grounds for believing the former to be the case, Ball and Troyna’s
findings, cited above, give credence to the latter. But even if there is a
reluctance on the part of some faith schools to engage in antiracism, this
would not, in itself, constitute a good argument for opposing the
Faith-Based Schools: A Threat to Social Cohesion? 569
&The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 2002.
government’s policy of expansion. It would suggest, in the first instance,
no more than the need to exhort and assist all faith schools to promote
anti-racism.
In summary, two reasons have been advanced for suggesting that non-
denominational schools may be no more likely than faith schools to foster
ethnic and religious harmony. The first is that the prerequisites of
successful contact cannot be guaranteed and, even if they could be, the
benefits, seemingly, are of limited value, for changes in attitude tend not to
generalise outside of the original contact situation. Second, it has been
argued that, in any case, the relevant consideration is not contact, even
under ideal conditions,but anti-racist education which can, in principle, be
undertaken as effectively in a faith school as in a non-denominational one.
ENDNOTE
I have attempted in this article to show that if Britain is to become a
tolerant and cohesive society, it will be necessary to recognise that the
debate surrounding faith schools is a distraction. There is no reason to
believe that they are inevitably divisive — in a socially destructive
sense as the long history of Anglican, Catholic and Jewish schools
in England clearly demonstrates. It is the curricular content of such
schools rather than their existence that is the crucial issue, and the
critics have yet to demonstrate that their distinctive content is socially
harmful. While there may be less equanimity in respect of the more recent
phenomenon of state-supported Muslim schools (see, for example, The
Economist, 26 September–5 October, 2001, p. 36), there is no evidence
that the pupils attending them are any more prone than pupils attending
other types of school to develop feelings of animosity towards adherents
of other faiths or towards non-believers.
The debate over faith schools can also be seen as a distraction from
another perspective and that is the lack of good reason for accepting
that non-denominational schools are any more likely to promote social
cohesion. Notwithstanding their curricular orientation and exclusivist
admissions policy, faith schools are, in principle, as well positioned as
their non-denominational counterparts to contribute towards a well-
integrated society.
Correspondence: Geoffrey Short, Faculty of Humanities and Education,
University of Hertfordshire, Wall Hall Campus, Aldenham, Watford,
Herts., WD2 8AT.
Email: eduqgas@herts.ac.uk
NOTE
1. For the purposes of this article, the charge of social divisiveness relates only to those faith schools
that admit children from the founding religious community (for example, those under Catholic,
Muslim or Jewish auspices). I am not concerned with Anglican schools set up to serve the
broader community irrespective of religious commitment.
570 G. Short
&The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 2002.
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