Just had a wicked thought. Some Hindus held a ceremony yesterday to mark their new Hindu school, which the British taxpayer is forking out for so that British children who happen to have Hindu-believing parents can have their brains stuffed with bullshit.
Don't get me wrong. There are wonderful, colourful stories tied up with Hinduism, and, as a mythology, it takes some beating. But let us teach about the Upanishads etc., not teach that what happens in these fascinating stories is actual, factual truth. And (yes, I know, we secularists do bang on about this, but it's true) it's just more segregation.
My wicked thought. Yes. I'll get to that in a minute.
This school is the Krishna-Avanti primary and it's going to be in London and will offer 236 places when it opens, possibly in 2009. It will teach the National Curriculum, it says, but, if it were going to teach only that, there would be no need for a Hindu school, would there? No, the idea is to ensure that the religion pumped into the kids' minds from birth continues to be pumped into their minds by teachers and peers as they grow older, depriving them of the opportunity to mix, in an educational establishment, with kids and teachers of all religions and none.
The British Humanist Association says there will be selection bias. The head teacher says no: the school will "promote community cohesion, inclusion and value inter-cultural and religious diversity".
If these people really believe that, why do they bother with a segregation school? But we know the answer to that: grubby politicians know there are votes in the ever-growing immigrant communities, and, anyway, it just doesn't do to be beastly to good, kind, faultless, cuddly religion, does it?
My wicked thought. Oh, yes. Well, you see, they held this ceremony yesterday called Bhumi Puja, during which they chanted and banged cymbals and all that, and sought permission from Mother Earth for the school to be built there.
And my thought was this: what if she'd said no? Seriously, what if that had happened? Would they go back to the drawing board and find another piece of land?
It will be interesting, assuming these segregation schools continue, to watch the Hindu ones to see if Mother Earth ever says no, piss off, find somewhere else. OK, we know Mother Earth won't actually use words, but these people presumably feel they are interpreting what higher entities say, just as Christians, conveniently, all seem to know what is in the mind of the ineffable God. My bet is that Mother Earth will always say yes – unless there's a Plan B that has also got the permission of those who really count in these matters, the planning authorities.
So Mother Common Sense has whispered in my ear and told me her sister Mother Earth will always say yes. Waste of a planning application otherwise, innit?
2 comments:
i suspect that the education on offer at Krishna-Avanti primary is somewhat more nuanced than your hyperbolic hissy fit would suggest
looks like the guy was praising hinduism for being colorful and his main concern, the "hissy fit" as you call it, was about segregationist schools not one paticular religion. Seems to me he was using this religion as an example is all. The whole blog is criticizing religion after all, so you would't expect him to praise segregationist schools that keep kids apart on religious grounds. Looking at other stories here, seems to be Hinduism comes off pretty well IMHO.
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