Religious Education
Lord Taverne Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, I welcome this report because it seems right that our approach should be that of a Weltanschauung. I speak as a humanist and atheist. I do not believe in divine revelation or miracles such as the resurrection, but religion plays an important part in our society—often for good, although not always. It is important that we should know about the historic contribution that Christianity has made to our history and culture in Britain, and about the important role of Islam in the Middle East and Asia and, indeed, in today’s Europe. I wish I had learned more about Islam and other religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, at school.
I went to a Church of England boarding school. Its approach was not a million miles away from that recommended in this report. Every day started with chapel, but actually chapel was not a very religious experience. We wondered which boy—there were no girls then—would read the lesson, commented on how well or badly it was read, hoped there was a good stirring hymn and took bets on the length of the sermons on Sundays. Generally speaking, religion was not thrust down our throats at school. Indeed some masters positively encouraged independent, and even dissident, views about politics as well as religion, but that is not true of many faith schools.
Teaching should teach us about beliefs—to understand them and be tolerant towards other beliefs, when they too preach tolerance—but in my view schools should not teach beliefs. They should teach children to think and question and if that leads them to adopt a religion or confirm their parents’ religious views, as they mostly do, that is well and good. But it should not treat children as Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jewish any more than we would treat them as Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat children. That would narrow their Weltanschauung. Children should have a chance to choose their beliefs for themselves. Religion should be taught in the context of science.
One of the great moments of history and civilisation, as Isaiah Berlin observed, was the Enlightenment. It dethroned authority, especially theocracy, as the arbiter of truth. Evidence, not dogma, was now the test for truth in the natural world. It undermined superstition, prejudice and autocracy because it taught that there was uncertainty and doubt. Some truths about nature are now established as facts, no longer as heavenly portents. Evolution, for example, is overwhelmingly supported by evidence and can be regarded as a fact—except in the United States—as is the fact that night follows day and the earth is round. But however well-established they are today, some theories about how evolution evolves—for example, Darwin’s theory of natural selection—may one day, like all theories, be succeeded by a better one. There are always uncertainties.
Pope wrote:
“Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.
God said, Let Newton be! And all was light”,
to which one later wit added:
“It did not last: the Devil howling ‘Ho!
Let Einstein be!’ restored the status quo”.
There is always some room for doubt, and science is not to be confused with scientism—as science’s opponents often do—which believes that science has an answer for everything. Of course it does not. Scientism has no room for doubt and was one of the flaws in certain aspects of Marxism, which certainly allowed no doubt.
It may be unrealistic to suggest that teaching about the Enlightenment should be part of the curriculum in all schools, but the new Weltanschauung should place religion in a wider context to avoid dogma. Perhaps one key quotation should be Locke’s plea for tolerance, which I regard as basic to the defeat of autocracy and the promotion of democracy:
“For where is the man who has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or who can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men’s opinions?”
Schools: Religious Education
Lord Taverne Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Taverne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government in what way the guidance produced by Dr Satvinder Juss on the implications of the High Court’s ruling in R (Fox) v Secretary of State for Education is “inaccurate” as they have stated.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, the Government believe that Dr Juss’s guidance is inaccurate in a number of respects, not least in its suggestion that the need to accord equal respect means that the teaching of other principal religions must be balanced by compulsory and systematic teaching of a non-religious world view to the same extent. We do not accept that it is appropriate for such views to be presented to schools as statements of fact. It is right for the Government to say that they do not agree.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, first, I must declare an interest as a member of the British Humanist Association and apologise for the obscurity of the Question. The case referred to was a very complex but important case in which the judge ruled in favour of three humanist parents who challenged the Government’s policy that non-religious views could be excluded from schools’ curricula of religious studies. The judge found that the Government had made an error of law and that such studies should be pluralistic and should include non-religious world views. Dr Juss of King’s College London issued guidance on those lines.
Will the Government explain why they have condemned this guidance, which on the face of it is a fair interpretation of the judgment? More generally, it is of course right that children should be taught about religions of the world and about the importance of Christianity in the history of this country, but is it really the Government’s view that children should not be encouraged to think critically and make up their own mind and should not be made aware of the views of a very large and growing number of people in this country who do not subscribe to any religion?
Lord Nash
The case was on a very narrow, technical point, but the noble Lord may be pleased to hear that all six GCSE-awarding bodies’ GCSE content includes development of students’ understanding of wider beliefs, including a non-religious world view. The judge made clear that there was no challenge to the content of the GCSE and no requirement in domestic or human rights law to give equal air time to all shades of belief. We do not accept the wider interpretation that Dr Juss places on the case.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Taverne Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, I want to follow the excellent speech made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and discuss the question of the future of health and social care. Our National Health Service is heading for a crash and it may come sooner than even the pessimists fear. You cannot run a viable health service if the Government are committed to reducing their share of national income while health costs increase much faster than GDP, but that is what is happening. Health costs are rising inexorably because the population is ageing, new lifesaving drugs are expensive, the needs of mental health and many other urgent demands have been neglected and so require more funding. More and more hospitals are piling up huge deficits. Yet according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the share of GDP allotted to the NHS will decline from 6.1% in 2014-15 to 5.4% in 2020-21, the lowest of any comparable country in the European Union. At the same time social care, which also desperately needs more money, as the Barker commission showed, faces draconian cuts. Social care and health cannot be separated. How else can the problem of, for instance, bed-blocking ever be solved?
The Government claim that efficiency savings will keep the NHS afloat, but even a miraculous leap in efficiency greater than anything experienced to date cannot close the huge gap between health and social care needs and what the Government are prepared to spend. What is required is a new cross-party commission on the future of health and social care, as advocated by Norman Lamb and others. But the NHS as we have known it will cease to exist long before any commission has had time to report, which is likely to take years.
To survive, the NHS needs a substantial injection of extra funds in the next few years. Unfortunately, the Conservative manifesto has committed the Government to not increasing income tax, corporation tax, VAT or national insurance contributions, so where can the money for health and social care be found? There is only one source left: a new, reformed national insurance system, earmarked specifically and exclusively for health and social care. Of course, the Treasury strongly dislikes hypothecated taxes. Indeed, they reduce government flexibility and the ability to allocate tax receipts according to spending priorities and best value for money. There are other, technical objections, but they are not insuperable.
There is one overwhelming argument for a system of especial health and social care contributions. According to opinion polls, people seem far more willing to pay additional money to fund the NHS, which is still regarded as a national treasure, than taxes in general. Indeed, in 2002, when Gordon Brown, with some hesitation, increased NICs by a penny to finance extra spending on the NHS, he was surprised to find that it was very popular. Of course, in the event, less than half the proceeds went to their declared purpose. Most were swallowed up in the general tax pool.
In fact, NICs no longer make sense. They were originally designed to finance the NHS and pensions—most people believe that they still do—but most of the proceeds go into the general pool of tax receipts. Only some 20% goes to the NHS; 80% of the NHS is financed from general taxation. Likewise, the basic state pension is now almost entirely unrelated to contributions, and is also financed from general taxation. The public are unaware of what they are paying for when they pay NICs, contrary to every principle of a good tax system.
Who should set the health and social care budget and be responsible for its oversight and administration in such a reform? The answer should be a new independent health and social care mutual, as advocated by Frank Field and others, the trustees of which would include not only representatives of the Government and the relevant professions, but members elected by the public. After hearing his speech, I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, would be a very good member. It would be part of a new deal between the public, politicians and the NHS.
Education: Polish A-level
Lord Taverne Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Nash
My noble friend makes a very good point about the decline in German, but as I said, we believe that, with our expectation that 90% of pupils will take the EBacc, this will further increase the number of pupils taking GCSEs in modern languages. Certainly, the number of pupils taking languages in the EBacc has gone up by 25% over the last five years. We hope that this will have a compounding effect on A-levels.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, do the Government not agree that, while traditionally our relations with Poland have been extremely close, one or two statements recently made by the Prime Minister have not improved them? Would not the encouragement of the learning of Polish by British, as well as other, students be of considerable importance at a time when our relations with Poland are so important?
Education: British Values
Lord Taverne Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, unlike the previous speaker, I am deeply sceptical about teaching “British values”. Some that have been suggested are the rule of law, human rights and parliamentary government. But these are no longer special British values. We largely drafted the European Convention on Human Rights, but the Conservatives are now trying to get rid of it. We championed parliamentary democracy, but now it is the referendum which is trumpeted as the ultimate expression of democracy. That, of course, is the doctrine of Rousseau, the hero of dictators and autocrats. I prefer the British tradition of Locke and Burke.
We were once praised for our courtesy and readiness to listen to others, but in many respects Rule Britannia has been replaced by Rude Britannia, such as at Prime Minister’s Question Time, for example. The organised shouting and jeering makes Millwall fans look by comparison like a convention of bishops in Lambeth Palace. Nothing could do more to destroy respect for Parliament.
The invocation of national values is part of our current obsession with national identity. That is a very elusive concept. Tony Judt, the last of the social democratic philosophers, asked what it meant to be a Jew if you were not religious and detested the policies of the Israeli Government. He decided that he was a non-Jewish Jew. Jonathan Miller famously observed that he was not a Jew; he was just Jew-ish. As for being English, and the same could be said for being British, this was summed up long ago by Daniel Defoe as quoted in that splendid book by Robert Winder entitled Bloody Foreigners:
“Thus from a mixture of all kinds began
That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman …
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction”.
A nation at ease with itself does not have to search for an identity or assert it. Let us teach “civilised values” instead.