The BBC humanist, the faith school and a lesson in hypocrisy
by Julie Lynn, The Conservative Woman:
How wretchedly uncomfortable it is for the rich and famous with ideological credentials to protect when they have to find a school for their offspring. BBC presenter Alice Roberts is just the latest to have been rumbled as having her two children at a school of whose very existence she does not approve. The presence of her son and daughter at a Church of England primary would have been nobody’s business were it not for the fact that Roberts is the new president of Humanists UK. This means she is at the forefront of its campaign to ‘End Faith in Schools’, as its slogan goes, bringing an end to state funding of such schools.
[…] Roberts, who is also Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham, was at pains to claim that she had no choice but to send her children to what one can only assume is a rather good Church of England school. She said that her applications to two non-faith primary schools had been unsuccessful, adding that academic performance had not been a factor in her choice of school, only ethos. Of course, there is no way, conveniently enough for her, of challenging the latter point.
But it is disingenuous in a more straightforward way. Children do not appear fully formed at school age and it beggars belief that Roberts didn’t notice she was going to have a ‘really tricky’ issue about Church of England schools at some point. As an intelligent individual as well as a committed humanist, did Roberts really not have what it took to make sure she secured that place at one of the non-faith schools she would so have preferred (allegedly)? That is to say, a house move in the years she had to think about it? Did she and her husband not admit to themselves that, as humanists in favour of making life financially difficult for faith schools, a C of E primary for their children was simply not on: it was crossing a line? Hypocrisy, in other words. Maybe Professor Roberts just hoped she could get away with it.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
